Published on CIA FOIA (foia.cia.gov) (https://www.cia.gov/readingroom)
NEW YORK ARTICLE 'THE SHAH'S SECRET POLICE ARE HERE'
Document Type:
CREST [1]
Collection:
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP81M00980R000600050015-5
Release Decision:
RIFPUB
Original Classification:
K
Document Page Count:
7
Document Creation Date:
December 15, 2016
Document Release Date:
May 24, 2004
Sequence Number:
15
Case Number:
Publication Date:
September 18, 1978
Content Type:
NSPR
File:
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 CIA-RDP81M00980R000600050015-5.pdf [3] | 961.45 KB |
Body:
ARTICLE fyffid For Release 2004/07/08: CIA-RDP81 M00980R000600050015-5 NEW YORK ON PAGE 18 September 1978 By Gregory F. Rose'. "...SAVAK agents operate with impunity in America, watching and harassing Iranian dissidents and opponents of the regime... .The sidewalk in front of the Iranian Embassy looked like a cops' conven- tion:. people from District of Columbia Metropolitan Police, United States Park Police, Federal Protection Service, Se- cret Service-one moment talking, jok- ing, the next glancing nervously down Massachusetts. Avenue to the line of Washington cops, three men deep, be- tween them and the Iranian student demonstrators. A SWAT team, in their blue fatigues, lolled beside their van across from the building that is Brazil's consular annex. "Shah is a U.S. puppet. Down with the shah," 60 demonstrators chanted with a rhythmic monotony. Less fierce than weary from. their trek from La- fayette Park to the. police line 500 feet from the embassy, the only danger afforded the massed officers was, per- haps, sunstroke. As the demonstration ended, the stu- dents rolling up their banners for another time and making their way in Gregory F. Rose has written for Politics Today and National Review. His novel, Neither Fear Nor Courage. will be pub- lished next year. small clusters for home, the embassy - and its operations in the United State& garrison relaxed. Suddenly a blue, Checker-like sedan -D.C. license DPL 4138-pulled from Massachusetts Avenue into the embassy drive. The doors swung open and four men, one in a 'white suit, emerged. A bodyguard scanned the street across from the embassy and, seeing a photog- rapher, grabbed the white-suited man, whirling him around, his back to the street. He moved quickly, back still to the camera, from the drive to the am- bassador's private entrance at the side of the embassy residence. As he reached the doorway, an Iranian emerged, breathless, from the residence: They conferred, the white-suited man. taking a sheaf of papers from his briefcase. A moment later, the second man dashed for a waiting embassy car. With two more steps the white-suited man was in the residence. Moments later the police supervisors arrived. They, too, entered the residence through the am-, bassador's private door. The man in the white suit was Man- sur Rafizadeh. As chief of station, he heads SAVAK, the shah's secret police, SAVAK-the Persian acronym for the National Information and Security Organization-has a sinister reputation. International organizations, including Amnesty International, have repeatedly scored SAVAK for the repression and even torture of dissidents in Iran. Some knowledgeable Western observers have gone so far as to claim that SAVAK maintains greater control over the lives of most Iranians than does the KGB over citizens in the Soviet Union. A pattern of SAVAK's torture and execution of political prisoners, censor- ship of the press, denial of dueprocess, and surveillance of suspected oppo- nents has been established by interna- tional human-rights monitoring groups. While the Iranian government asserts that there are fewer than 1,000 politi- cal prisoners in all Iran, SAVAK's deputy director; Parviz Sabeti, has told Western reporters that 1,000 political prisoners are held in one prison alone, just outside the city of Isfahan, and that SAVAK maintains dozens of prisons around the country. The best estimate Approved For Release 2004/07/08 : CIA-RDP81 M00980R000600050015-5 Approved For Release 2004/07/08 : CIA-RDP81 M00980R000600050015-5 of the number of officers and inform- ants SAVAK maintains in Iran is 20,- 000. Sabeti would admit to 3,500 to 4,000; Prime Minister Hoveida claimed 2,500. The shah would admit to 1,500. SAVAK's true strength, like 'the fate of many of its prisoners, is a mystery. Fora country in which the apparatus 0 The use of prostitutes and drugs at parties attended by members of Congress. 0 An extensive campaign of surveil- lance and harassment of Iranian dissi- dents and American opponents of the shah in this country. Many of these operations have been of repression is so well developed, ,undertaken with the tacit approval of tine opposition. The opposition runs the gamut of extreme left to extreme right, with the majority falling in the camp of conser-- native Moslems disturbed by Shah Mo- hammed Riza Pahievi's "White Revo- lution," a complex of modernization and economic-development measures that has created serious social and economic dislocation in Iran. State Department experts have main- tained in congressional testimony that the Pahlevi dynasty could collapse without the massive infusion of United States military technology which a 25- year relationship between the CIA- Defense Department and the shah has spawned. It is, in part, for. this rea- son that the shah and his secret police have shown considerable interest in the opposition leaders and students in exile in the United States, and that opposi- tion figures have frequently alleged that SAVAK has operated against them within American borders. Extensive investigation has disclosed that SAVAK and its agents (known in intelligence circles as "SAVAKs") are operating with impunity in the United States. Among the allegations are: 0 The payment of $1 million from the shah's private Swiss bank account by SAVAK to President Richard Nix- on's Committee to Re-elect the Presi- dent in early 1974. Griffin Bell has since early this year attempted to increase FBI attention to violations of United.States. law by for- eign intelligence services, they continue with little effort by American authori- ties to put a halt to them. The Recruiting of UhNilling Agents Wallace' We turned. to the shah's secret police force, his FBI and CIA combined. They are called SAVAK, and they have a reputation for brutality. He acknowledged that he has SAVAK agents on duty in the United States... . And they are therefor the purpose of checking tip on Iranian students? Shah: Checking tip on anybody who becomes affiliated with circles, organi- zations hostile. to my country, which is the role of any intelligence organi- zation. -"The Shah of Iran," 60 Minutes, October 24, 1976 Ahmed looks older than his nearly 30 years. His forehead is deeply creased and his hair, already thinning, has begun to gray. His. eyes, moist `with fear, scan the restaurant where we meet. He has, good reason to be afraid: He is one of hundreds of Iranians who have spied for SAVAK on Iranians and Americans alike in the United States, and he, fears for his life if SAVAK learns that. he has talked. "I was recruited by SAVAK in Teh- ran,". Ahmed begins, lighting another cigarette from the one he just finished. '.'I was arrested in a mosque for taking a leaflet that criticized the shah. After that, I lost my job. For months I would be fired from a job days after I was hired. No explanation was ever given. I wanted to leave' the country, to come to America to. find work, but they wouldn't give me a passport. They pointed to my record. I was practically penniless. Finally, SAVAK called me in and one of their officers said, 'You want to go to America? Good. We will see that you get to America. But you must help us.' He told me that I must spy on Iranian students in America. I didn't have any choice. - "When I got to America, I took a job as a waiter in an expensive restaurant. 1. reported to Mansur Rafizadeh at the embassy. Officially he works at the United Nations, but he is really a pow- erful SAVAK. When he wanted, to see me, the embassy would call. A man would only say,'Come to the embassy.' And I would go." Ahmed can barely control his anger when he speaks of Rafizadeh. "He is an animal, a pig. He cares for nothing. 'I have heard agents beg him to leave them alone. They begged him and still he made them work for him. Once I knew a man and his wife who went to the embassy to tell Rafizadeh that he wouldn't work for him anymore. Rafi- zadeh sent the man downstairs and then tried to rape his wife..Rafizadeh is an animal.. He dares for nothing." . Ahmed was used primarily to inform on Iranian students'groups opposed to the shah. He reports a well-organized campaign to infiltrate and disrupt these organizations with a chilling sophisti. cation. "It was my'duty to report-on the student groups. SAVAK sometimes told you what to say. They would give you a line that you were to say only after you heard another line said. It was funny to be in the radical groups' meetings. I remember one time I had my line to say, after I heard someone else say his. Suddenly, the worst anti., regime, radical, hot-tempered *Commu-- nist student stood up and shouted. And I realized that he had said the line I was waiting for. He was a SAVAK. It took me totally by surprise." Often, Ahmed relates, these pre-ar- ranged scripts included provocations aimed at inciting violence. SAVAK would use any such violence to per- suade local U.S. authorities to take action against the student leaders. At times, Ahmed was required to travel to New York on SAVAK's orders. "Once I was sent to New York to cover a huge gathering of Iranian students. I went with an Iranian woman from San Francisco. She was a SAVAK too. We flew to New York from Wash in-ton and stayed there in a college dormitory. We attended the meetings all day, taking notes on who said what, and reported in the evening to Rafi- zadeh at a safe-house apartment in the East Eighties. That night, some of the students thought they recognized the woman who had come with me. They Approved For Release 2004/07/08 : CIA-RDP81 M00980R000600050015-5 Approved For Release 2004/07/08 : CIA-RDP81 M00980R000600050015-5 found notes in her room. The whole place went into a frenzy. 'Search every room,' they shouted. I had to get to my room quickly. My notes were hid- den in my suitcase, and I had to get to them before they did. I ran like you couldn't believe and went into my room and shut the door. I didn't know what to do. I tried to sneak out, but I heard them coming down the hall. I finally burned my notes in an ash- tray and scattered them on the rug. Suddenly the students burst in. I didn't have any notes, but they smelled the smoke-there was a lot of it and were suspicious. I tried to explain that I had accidentally set the rug on fire with a Security: Farraneh sees that SAVAK operations stay undercover. cigarette. Just then some other students caught the woman SAVAK. They ran out of my room to question her. They beat her badly. She was almost killed." Ahmed's other targets included United States government and business figures who dined at the restaurants where he worked. He reports a net- work of Iranian waiters and restaurant owners in Washington, D.C., who work as SAVAK informers. "Every week a SAVAK officer comes in and sits at your table. He asks if you need any money or other help. Then he asks if you've overheard anything interesting. Colonel Farivari runs this network. He is a very big SAVAK at the embassy. xrzrE~~'Ai~ts sera Through various sources an inside view of SAVAK's spy apparatus in the United States has been obtained. This in- formation has been checked with former SAVAKs, well- placed Western journalists, Senate Foreign Relations Com- mittee staffers, and State Department and FBI sources. Nothing has been included for which cross-confirmation was not obtained. SAVAK in the United States is headed by Mansur Rafi- zadeh, officially an attache in the Iranian Mission to the United Nations. Sources describe him as ruthless and cal- culating, an operator who plays on his subordinates' fears and vices to retain his grasp on SAVAK's network. Wary of public exposure, Rafizadeh has been known to use a double to attend many embassy functions. Rafizadeh chairs SAVAK's Security Committee in the United States, a body that sets priorities and supervises operations throughout the country. Other members of this Security Committee include Ahmad Moshavegh-Zade, a political counselor of the embassy in D.C.; Mohammad Farzaneh, an embassy attache; and Farouk Parsi and Bahmen Esfandiri, both of the U.N. Mission. At the Iranian Embassy in D.C. the SAVAK station is organized into four sections: financial, press liaison and dissident-groups surveillance, political liaison, and visa clearance. The financial section handles payments to SAVAK agents and, sources allege, U.S. politicians, including some members of Congress. It consists of Youssef Akbar, head of the embassy's economic and petroleum section; Colonel A. A. Farivari, who handles most payments to agents and informants; and Malektaj Javan, an embassy secretary. The press-liaison and dissident-groups-surveillance sec- tion is responsible for monitoring the United States press Visas: Kazemian maintains a list of Iran's friends and enemies. for any comment on Iran and keeping tabs on Iranian dissidents, especially students, and American opponents of the shah. This section is headed by Manoutchehr Ardalan, press-and-information-affair counselor. He is assisted by Nasrollah Soltani and Farhad Vakil. Congress and the White House are the main targets of the political-liaison section, headed by Nasser Ghoush- beigui, a political counselor. Other targets include the De- partments of Energy,Commerce, and the Treasury. Ghoush beigui is assisted in these operations by Zahed Dadash- Rashidi and Abdol K. Adibpour. The visa-clearance section is headed by Dr. Gholam Kazemian, the embassy's minister for cultural affairs. Sources report that he retains a list of United States citi- zens who are to be refused visas to Iran and Iranian nationals whose passports are not to be renewed. When- ever an American citizen requests a visa at the embassy or one of the Iranian consulates, his or her name must be checked again Kazemian's list. Kazemian is assisted by Anoushirvan Ashraf, cultural-affairs counselor. Each of the Iranian consulates has a SAVAK base, controlled by the Security Committee. At the consulate in New York, the SAVAK base headed by Parsi and Esfandiri. Other SAVAKs staNcned here are Zia Niaverani and Mokhtar Saed, both attached to the U.N. Mission, and Mohammad-Reza Modjtahedza- deh, a vice-consul. In Houston, the Iranian consulate shelters SAVAK offi- cers Hossein Haji-Jafari and Hamid Parviz, both vice- consuls. The consulate in Chicago is the base of operations for SAVAKs Abbas Sharifi Tehrani and Mohammad Ali Izadi-Seradj. -GFR Approved For Release 2004/07/08 : CIA-RDP81 M00980R000600050015-5 He keeps files on Iranians in Washing- ton." SAVAK's attempts to recruit inform- ants like Ahmed have often been di- rected at Iranian students.already en- rolled in American colleges. Between 22,000 and 50,000 Iranians attend U.S. schools, and the shah's policy of heav- ily endowing many of these institutions has raised questions as to the degree to which American universities have en- tered into tacit agreements to police Iranian students as a condition of fund- ing. Published reports of the Reza Zan- janifer case highlight the dangers of collusion that these endowments pre= sent. Approved For Release 2004/07/08 : CIA-RDP81 M00980R000600050015-5 sident groups. A cable labeled "Top Secret," signed by Deputy Sabeti, de- clares: "You must intensify these dif- ferences [between dissident student groups] by all possible means with an aim to provoking some severe actions against each other." Another cable in- structs all SAVAK bases to acquire information on "demonstrations of dis- sident Iranians, strikes, students' calls to imperial embassies and consulates, holding of meetings, publishing of pub- lications, conventions and seminars, and activities of pro-government stu- dents." Reports were to be transmitted by diplomatic courier to Tehran. Professor Richard Cottam, an Ira- nian specialist at the University of Pitts- burgh and former foreign-service offi- cer in Tehran, says of these docu- ments, "Although they were, gathered in Geneva, they bear markings which indicate their applicability to all SAVAK stations. Their authenticity is unquestionable. ' Th t f SAVAK' ill e exten o s surve ance ~r and harassment operations in the United . Co esmen States is suggested by a set of events in upstate New York in late 1976. Alerted to the purchase by Iranians of farmland near Boonville, Iranian dissidents went to the farm to find what its owners called" the world's larg- est dairy barn" under construction. The purchasers of the farm, Mansur's Farms, Inc., included Houshang Namvar Teh- rani, identified as a New Jersey phar- macist. Tehrani was also Mansur Rafi- zadeh's brother-in-law. Reza Baraheni, an Iranian dissident poet and novelist, is said to have told U.S. Senate investi- gators in April 1977 that he believed Tehrani was one of the SAVAK in- vestigators who tortured him in an Iranian prison. Iranian dissidents as- serted that SAVAK had purchased the Boonville farm for a "torture cen- ter" in the United' States. There was no corroboration at the time for these allegations. Now, however, former SAVAKs and United States government sources have disclosed the story behind the Boon- ville-farm affair. These sources report that Tehrani bought the farm with SAVAK money provided by Rafizadeh. It was to have served as SAVAK's U.S. Canadian operations center, hous- ing computerized files on Iranians in America and Iranians and American opponents of the shah, as well as a communications center to connect SAVAK's bases with SAVAK head- quarters in Tehran. Preliminary con- tact was made with Rockwell Inter- national to obtain electronic equipment. critical to the facility (a Rockwell spokesman refused comment). When the farm's existence was reported. in the press, Tehran vetoed the operation. "Christ. if you think Koreagate's bad, just hope they never start poking around in Tehran."- -House ethics-committee staffer For months rumors of sex and opium available to select VIP's at Ambassa- dor Ardeshir Zahedi's Massachusetts Avenue residence have bounced around the Washington cocktail circuit. These stories were attributed by many to Zahedi's reputation as an international swinger. However, it has been learned that many of these parties were in fact organized by Manoutchehr Ardalan, officially the embassy's press-and-in- formation counselor, who has been identified by numerous sources as a senior officer of SAVAK's Washington QQQT1$ use of agents prW0fAt rWcF sh4Thajse 2004/07/08 : CIA-RDP81 M00980R000600050015-5 Zanjanifer. an otherwise apolitical George Washington University student, was photographed by SAVAK at his first and only demonstration in March 1976. In August of that year, his faculty adviser, Professor Philip D. Grub, an American, informed Zanjanifer on be- half of the Iranian Embassy that his scholarship was being canceled. Grub's role as embassy messenger was charac- terized by university officials as "un- heard of." However, as Ayramehr professor of multinational manage- ment, Grub owed his chair to the shah's endowment and boasted of his Iranian-cabinet connections. Anonymous phone calls followed cancellation of Zanjanifer's scholar- ship. The callers said: "If you want to be `forgiven,' write in detail the names of your friends, any meetings you may have gone to, the people you saw there." Zanjanifer refused. The calls continued.- "If you want your scholarship reinstated, you must work for SAVAK, you must infiltrate student groups at GWU and report on them." Again he refused. SAVAK tried to. reach him three more times over the next two months. Zanjanifer refused. That SAVAK is actively recruiting informants to compromise anti-regime dissidents in the United States is a fact. However, certain SAVAK documents obtained by Iranian students occupying the Iranian consulate in. Geneva point to break-ins of dissidents' homes as another universally applied SAVAK technique. One document, tagged "confidential," is a cable from SAVAK headquarters to Geneva ordering: Clandestine entries to opposition homes should be preceded by an operations plan (such as complete information on the subject, loca- tion of his or her residence, time of his or her leaving home and returning, emergency avenues of exit in case of unpredictable inci- dents, etc.). Please instruct your officers that in any future case. of clandestine entry of an opposition residence, the full plan must be forwarded to headquarters for ap- proval. It was signed by. Parviz Sabeti, SAVAK's deputy director. and was accompanied by two pages of de- tailed instructions on copying keys using a substance called "Plastilin," molding new keys, and various tools for opening locks. This document con- cluded, "If you send us pictures of different locks and keys, or sample keys, more guidance will be given." These documents also corroborate Ahmed's allegations about SAVAK's Enterta bimi ; Eey Approved For Release 2004/07/08 : CIA-RDP81 M00980R000600050015-5 station. Other senior SAVAKs attended these parties where, witnesses report, members of Congress engaged in ac- tivities which could well be character- ized as seriously compromising. "It was like something out of The Arabian Nights," recalls a member of the embassy's staff, witness to one such party at the embassy residence in Oc- tober 1977. "There would be caviar in crystal bowls on the tables around the room and wine and liquor. After an hour or so of socializing, Zahedi would call to his bodyguard, who would bring out an opium pipe and hashish. Everyone would sit on pillows in a circle and pass the pipes around. After a while, Zahedi would tell one of the women there-they were mainly prostitutes; Ardalan procured. them but some of them were female embassy employees-to dance. She would strip in the center of the room while the Iranians and their guests watched and shouted obscenities. When she had fin. ished, the men would fall on the women and f - - k with them for the rest of the night. Zahedi, is a man with- out culture, without humanity." Among the SAVAKs who attended these orgies were Mansur Rafizadeh, Manoutchehr Ardalan, Nasser Ghoush- beigui, and Gholam Kazemian. A wit- ness places an eastern senator and a midwestern congressman as other par- ticipants. "At one of the parties I attended, I saw Congressman X. He was the guest of honor and sat next to Zahedi," this source reports. "He didn't smoke the opium, but he shared some hashish with Zahedi's bodyguard. Zahedi pa- raded the women in front of the con- gressman and gave him the first choice. He chose one of the Iranian woman. I watched them have sex. "At another party I saw Senator Y smoke opium with Zahedi. Later in the evening I saw him making love with two of the prostitutes." The con- gressman and the senator, for their part, have both denied the allegations. Other sources, independently ap- proached, have confirmed this account. A bizarre set of events occurred while this article was being checked. Two hours after this reporter spoke to Congressman X, one of the sources -an embassy officer-called the maga- zine, said that the embassy was aware of the story and that a senior SAVAK officer had called an 8:30 meeting the following morning at the embassy to deal with the situation. The source begged this reporter never to contact him again and hung up. Other sources around SAVAK have independently confirmed that SAVAK informants were being asked if they had. been contacted by this reporter. A call to the senior SAVAK at 8:30 the next morning revealed that he was in a meeting and could not be disturbed. One week later, Manoutchehr Arda- lan-the SAVAK who is said to have procured prostitutes for Congressman X and Senator Y-was suddenly ap- pointed consul general in San Fran. cisco after five years at the Washington embassy. A source close to Ardalan's wife reports her saying, "This has happened so fast we've had no time to pack." Ten days later they were gone. It is not possible to determine whether the sudden transfer is directly connect- ed to this magazine's investigation, but such haste is not usual. ' The danger posed by alleged partici- pation of members of Congress in these Iranian Embassy sex-and-drug parties is political rather than moral. At the very least their activities open them to compromise by SAVAK. The use of sexual favors, entrapment; and black- mail have been long favored by intelli- gence services as means of recruiting agents, especially agents of influence. Both the senator and the congress- man have been firm proponents of Iranian-supported legislation, as their voting records on the floor and in com- mittee show. It is reasonable to ques- tion whether a relationship can be in- ferred from their participation in these parties and their voting records on mat- ters dear to SAVAK and the shah. However, evidence of graver SAVAK tampering with the American political process has been obtained-evidence which points to the buying of the sup? port of a president of the United States by the shah and his secret police. In early 1974 a SAVAK operation transported $1 million from the shah's private Swiss bank account to the Committee to Re-elect the President- Nixon-via a Mexico City bank. A telegram from Geneva banking sources confirms that this transfer from Geneva to Mexico City occurred. Approved For Release 2004/07/08 : CIA-RDP81 M00980R000600050015-5 Approved For Release 2004/07/08 : CIA-RDP81 M00980 000600050015-5 A participant described the opera- ton Jr., assistant secretary of state for tion this way: Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, ,,In February or March 1974, a mil- paid a visit to Ambassador Zahedi to lion dollars was transferred from the shah's account at the Schweizerische Bankgesellschaft to the Banco de Londres y Mexico in Mexico City. [Iranian] Ambassador Amir-Aslan Af- shar, who was then ambassador to Mexico as well as the United States, went down to pick it up. A mem- ber of his staff who accompanied him brought the money up to the embassy in Washington in the dip- lomatic pouch. Afshar counted the money himself in his office and then put it in a suitcase. He and his body- guard drove to the Committee to Re- elect the President and gave it to offi- cials. I don't know precisely who." A witness reports that when Ambas- sador Afshar recounted this story to a group of Iranians at the embassy, he added, tellingly, "Now we own Nixon." ;T A Special T_ he ( ANOM relationship "We do not 'make agreements for their [SAVAK's] activities in our coun- try." -CIA Director Stansfield Turner, March 9, 1977 "There is a tacit agreement between our ttvo governments about our opera- Lions here and yours in my country. On the basis of a 1959 bilateral security agreement between Iran and the United States, we are obligated to. exchange information regarding the national se- curity interests of both parties. . Your CIA has been very helpful in these matters." -Manoutchehr Ardalan, Iranian Embassy press-and-information counselor, July 26, 1978 The shah's matter-of-fact admission to Mike Wallace in October of 1976 that SAVAK operates. in the United States with the. knowledge and con- sent of the United States government touched off a controversy which left a secretary of state, a State Department spokesman, and a director of the CIA looking very much like liars. At an October 27 press conference, a grave Henry Kissinger, then secre- tary of state, responded, "It is not correct that the United States is aware of the fact that Iranian intelligence personnel are checking on individuals living in the United States or keeping them under surveillance." He an- nounced that a State Department in- vestigation of Iranian activities would be undertaken. Twelve days later, Alfred L. Ather- inform Zahedi that the United States would tolerate no illegal activities by SAVAKs in the United States. A State Department spokesman reported the next day that no evidence had been found to confirm "allegations of any illegal or improper activity and the Iranian embassy has assured.us that none of its officials are committing any such activities." Official explana- tion: The shah had made a mistake. Case closed. While a request under the Freedom of Information Act for a copy of the Kissinger report was denied by State Department officials, new documentary evidence of State Department and other United States-agency collusion with the Iranian government in an opera- tion against a United States citizen was obtained. . Nasser Afshar, a United States citi- zen since the early 1950s, is an Iranian dissident, the publisher of the Iran Free Press. Documents he has won.through a Freedom of Information Act suit es- tablish State Department cooperation with SAVAK at the time Henry Kis- singer was secretary of state. One document labeled "confiden- tial" is a cable from the United States Embassy in Tehran to the secretary of state, dated May 1973, three years prior to Kissinger's denial. It requests further information for transmission to the Iranian government on the issu- ance of a passport to Afshar. Four paragraphs of the cable were deleted. The remainder reads: 5. DCM [deputy chief of mission] said .that embassy was generally aware of Afshar's activities in U.S., including Iran Free Press, and agreed that Afshar's perform- ance was scandalous and his ef- forts to mount. anti-Iranian cam- paign in U.S.. extremely unfortu- nate. In fact in last two years em- bassy had several times raised with Department question whether Iran Free Press could be closed down.. Matter had been carefully studied but lawyers had concluded that under U.S. laws there was regrettably no basis for such ac- tion. As for U.S. passport, embas- sy was not informed on this as- pect of case and would ask De- partment for full report. 6. FYI embassy files include message (Tehran 2932, Jan. 19. 1967) indicating Afshar had U.S. passport in 1967. End FYI. 7. Comment: In dredging un this case it occurs to us that GOT [government of Iran] is putting us on notice and indirectly sug- gesting that we tidy up as much as possible anti-Shah elements in U.S. to reduce or avoid untoward incidents or anti-Shah demonstra=tions during his forthcoming visit to U.S. . 8. Action requested: All rele- vant information on circumstances leading to issuance of U.S. pass- port to Afshar which we can pass to GOI. The document was sent by Richard Helms, the U.S. ambassador and for- mer CIA director. The involvement of other agencies is suggested by the routing instructions which appear at the top of the cable. Copies were sent to the CIA, Depart- ment of Defense, National Security Agency, the United States Informa- tion Agency, and the National Security Council. Sources report that this "special re- lationship" between U.S. government agencies and SAVAK continues to the present. Nowhere is this better illus- trated than in the CIA's continuing liaison with the Iranian service. Since SAVAK's inception in 1956, the CIA has trained, equipped, and advised SAVAK officers. A State Departtnritj:spokesman con- firmed that 175 SAVAKs are current- ly undergoing training at the CIA's McLean, Virginia, facilities. This is down from the last five years' average of 400 per year. CIA officials refused to comment. Some ' sensitivity to the dangers SAVAK . operations in the United States. present can be found in the Depart- ment of Justice. Senior Justice aides report that Attorney General Griffin Bell, early this year, gave orders to the FBI to investigate activities of so-called "friendly intelligence services" in the ? United States. An investigation of alle- gations that the Iranian Embassy pro- vided plane tickets and hotel rooms for pro-shah demonstrators in Wash- ington in November 1977 is under way. If the allegations are true. the activity would be prosecutable under the For- eign Agents Registration Act. .. 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[2] https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/collection/general-cia-records
[3] https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP81M00980R000600050015-5.pdf
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