Silenced Histories and Sanitized Autobiographies: The 1953 CIA Coup in Iran

Abstract

Some six decades after the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadeq, the history of British and US involvement in the event remains riddled with gaps. This critically important history is relegated to the realm of “colonial aphasia.” With many documents destroyed and others heavily redacted, memoirs by spies involved in the 1953 Iranian coup fill in the historical narrative.

The last forum of accountability? State secrecy, intelligence and freedom of information in the United Kingdom

“…Despite the fact that MI6 and the CIA have not yet released the relevant operational documents, often blaming each other for the continued restrictions, historians have patiently unpicked this episode. By carefully sifting what has been released, combing memoirs and conducting interviews, they have provided a remarkably full account that now runs to a dozen monographs (Balaghi, 2013). Although 'truth' is an unfashionable word, the sober judgement of historians after decades of reflection is a crucial site of intelligence accountability and perhaps its last moment of judgement.…”