While I was waiting in the jury room, I read one of the many books from my “To Be Read” pile, this particular one on KGB activities from the mid-1950’s through the early 1980’s. I’ve mentioned this book before once or twice here. It’s thought to be fairly authoritative since it’s drawn primarily from KGB archives.
The section I’m reading now is on KGB activities in South and Central America. The section on Allende is quite interesting. He was definitely in the pay of the KGB not to mention incompetent and decadent. Also interesting is that both the U. S. and the Soviet Union attempted to influence the election that brought Allende to power in Chile. They outspent us.
Several things struck me as I read the book. The first is that we’re fortunate that the KGB’s active operations were no more effective than the CIA’s. They had their own Bay of Pigs equivalents, several of them in fact, only not so well publicized.
The other is just how effective and persistent the disinformation they spread around has proved. A glaring example is the lie that’s been repeated so often that it’s taken for the truth, that the United States overthrew the Mossadegh government in Iran (not to mention that the Mossadegh government was a liberal democratic one).
I was gratified that in his speech in Cairo President Obama in mentioning the event took, shall we say, a more nuanced view saying something to the effect that the U. S. had participated in the overthrow of Mossadegh which I think is a fair statement. Basically, Kermit Roosevelt paid a bunch of thugs to riot in the streets. Subsequently, Mossadegh was overthrown by a putsch orchestrated by military officers loyal to the Shah.
More examples of KGB-supported disinformation include imperialism and its offspring neocolonialism and the omnipotence and omnipresence of the CIA. This is not to say that we haven’t engaged in imperialism (mostly in the opening decades of the twentieth century) or that the CIA hasn’t engaged in a lot of lamentable activities. It’s the lack of proportion I’m referring to.
Lack of economic development in Africa and South America has been attributed to imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism for the last half century. A more likely culprit is despotic incompetent government. And that can’t be blamed entirely on foreigners.
Here’s another example of lack of proportion. In 1976 the New York Times published sixty-six stories on how awful the Pinochet government was. In the same year it published four stories on Cambodia. This was the period during which Pol Pot’s government murdered 1.5 million Cambodians, a fifth of the population of the country. Of course Pinochet’s government was bad. Worse than Pol Pot’s?
Purportedly from the CIA files and written by Wilber himself on the overthrow of Mossadeq. He claims we took a fairly active role, with the Brits at least as active. Just to quote one interesting bit about disinformation.
““In cooperation with the Department of State, CIA had several articles planted in major American newspapers and magazines which, when reproduced in Iran, had the desired psychological affect in Iran and contributed to the war of nerves against Mossadeq.“
http://web.payk.net/politics/cia-docs/published/one-main/main.html
Steve
I’ve read that account, Steve, as well as the accounts by Kermit Roosevelt, Mossadegh, and the Iranian officers who actually took part. Less a bit of resume-padding little in Wilber’s account contradicts my interpretation of events.
The accounts from Iranian officers show a significantly less important role on the part of the U. S. and a somewhat more significant role on the part of British agents.
Not surprising. What was Allende thinking, cozying up to the Soviet Union as a President in that particular area? Did he seriously think that the US and others wouldn’t try to prevent that, lest a second Cuba-style situation arise?
He wasn’t even that particularly popular, winning only 37 or 38% of the vote in the Presidential election (his conservative competitor won 35%).
The problem with Mossadegh’s government was that he was going to be overthrown by someone – if not an external force, then by one of the major factions (either the Tudeh or the religious faction). By the time the US toppled him, he had become increasingly authoritarian and unpopular.
I think it’s important to realize that the British-American coup attempt actually failed, and the Shah fled Iran. Once the putsch happened, though, they obviously backed him to the hilt.
As for Kermit Roosevelt, we have to keep in mind that he was a massive, massive self-promoter, whose account of the events (exaggerating his own role in them) basically became the “official” account for a long time.
One of the fascinating things that the book reveals is that in many instances the KGB and the Soviet foreign service were actually at odds with the foreign service taking a significantly more cautious approach. The general feeling there was that the Americans were allowing the Soviet Union more or less free rein in Eastern Europe, its sphere of influence, and that they would be prudent to allow us the same in ours.
The Soviet view of Allende was that he was enormously convenient symbolicly but something of a loose cannon actually. That role was actually enhanced when he was overthrown and “martyred”. The preponderance of the evidence seems to be that he took his own life but, in another instance of tremendously effective KGB disinformation, the notion that he’d been killed in the takeover has taken hold and become a useful bit of anti-American propaganda.