The CIA created pamphlets and posters proclaiming that Mossadegh was a communist, an enemy of Islam. They paid off journalists to write that he was a Jew. The CIA hired gangsters to pretend to be Tudeh Party members and attack a mosque. Two of Roosevelt’s Iranian agents, who were handling some of the hired muscle, tried to turn down further work at one point, saying the risk was becoming too great. But Roosevelt convinced them by saying that if they refused, he’d kill them.
