The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles and the Rise of America's Secret Government

by David Talbot

democratic government as a “cause to rejoice.” The New York Times took a similar celebratory line, calling Mossadegh “a rabid, self-seeking nationalist” whose “unlamented” disappearance from the political stage “brings us hope.” The U.S. press even avoided using awkward words like “coup,” preferring to describe the CIA-engineered operation as a “popular uprising” or a “nation’s revolt.” If Dulles carefully concealed the CIA’s role from the American public, he made sure that the shah was made fully aware of the debt he owed the agency. U.S. national security forces would continue to prop up the shah’s reign for the next quarter of a century, encouraging the ruler’s “megalomania,” as Jesse Leaf, who served for a time as the CIA’s chief analyst on Iran, remarked. But the agency’s contempt for the man on the Peacock Throne only grew with time. Leaf found him “basically a hollow man, a straw man, a pipsqueak.”