While revealing new details about one of the most famed CIA operations of all times — the spiriting out of six American diplomats who escaped the 1979 U.S. Embassy seizure in Iran — the intelligence agency for the first time has acknowledged something else as well.
The CIA now officially describes the 1953 coup it backed in Iran that overthrew its prime minister and cemented the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as undemocratic.
Other American officials have made similar remarks in the past, but the CIA’s acknowledgment in a podcast about the agency’s history comes as much of its official history of the coup remains classified 70 years after the putsch. That complicates the public’s understanding of an event that still resonates, as tensions remain high between Tehran and Washington over the Islamic Republic’s rapidly advancing nuclear program, its aiding of militia groups across the Mideast and as it cracks down on dissent.
The “CIA’s leadership is committed to being as open with the public as possible,” the agency said in a statement responding to questions from The Associated Press. “The agency’s podcast is part of that effort — and we knew that if we wanted to tell this incredible story, it was important to be transparent about the historical context surrounding these events, and CIA’s role in it.”
Sadly words have definitions. If you look at those societies that claim to have been communist, you’ll find that almost none of them have been.
It’s like saying democracy is terrible because of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea…
So which countries have been?
American Indian societies were quite communistic depending on tribe.
Surely. But if something looks like fascism, talks like fascism, acts like fascism, you’re not gonna tell me it’s not fascism because a definition you made up said it’s not. I mean, you just did, but it’s quite fruitless. I guess hitler too thought nazism was actually peaceful and all that good stuff.