A Journal of Undergraduate History
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
1
About ARCHIVE, PAT and UHA
2
A Note from the Editor-in-Chief
3
About the Editors
4
ARCHIVE Editorial Board
5
About the Authors
6
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Extermination of the
Southern Black Farmer
7
The Secret War in Laos: A Revolutionary Way of War
19
The Spectacle of Rebellion: British Minor Theatres and the Pre-Revolution in France
36
Citing Thanatology: An Ethical Response to the Medical Data of Nazi Doctors
48
How Night Baseball Brightened America during the Great Depression
54
Waging a Propaganda War Against Iran: The American Effort to Oust
Mohammad Mosaddeq
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About Archive
In 1997, the UW-Madison chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, with the support of the
UW-Madison History Department, created Archive: A Journal of Undergraduate
History. Thus far, Phi Alpha Theta has sponsored the publication of ten volumes
of the journal. Students wishing to work on Archive’s staff are not required to be a
history major or a member of Phi Alpha Theta. Members of the staff work
together to select papers, publicize the journal, and edit the chosen submissions.
Archive will accept papers for next year’s volume until February 18, 2011.
Requirements and submission forms can be found at
http://uwho.rso.wisc.edu/archive.shtml#online.
About Phi Alpha Theta and the Undergraduate History Association
(UW-Madison)
The UW-Madison chapter of Phi Alpha Theta and the Undergraduate History
Association function as one group. Together, they provide student representatives
to the History Department’s Undergraduate Council, hold regular meetings on
historical topics, and publish Archive. Information about the group can be found at
http://uwho.rso.wisc.edu/index.shtml.
2
Cover photo: Outside of the former Commerce Hall in Madison, Wisconsin. Police subduing violent
student riots in 1970 against the Dow Chemical Company’s recruitment on the UW-Madison campus.
Reprinted with generous permission from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Library Digital Archives.
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A Note from the Editor-in-Chief
In the midst of an accelerated, forward-thinking society, the challenge of all
historians remains to produce historical research which sparks genuine curiosity among
other people. By choosing a wide variety of topics – from Depression-era baseball,
to warfare in Laos, to Iranian propaganda – the authors of this year’s ARCHIVE have
demonstrated the relevance and vitality of historical research through an undergraduate
perspective. An entirely student-run endeavor, the publication of ARCHIVE represents
the highest degree of undergraduate scholarship, conscientiousness, and creativity.
As a result of a concentrated publicity campaign by the Editorial Board, ARCHIVE
experienced an amazing 300% increase in submissions from last year. Each member of
the Editorial Board worked closely with an author to edit and improve their paper, and I
am profoundly impressed by the collective nal product – a provocative, innovative, and
high-quality collection of research.
I consider myself humbled and honored to serve as the Editor-in-Chief of such
a remarkable journal. For their enthusiasm, expertise, and patience with my all-too-
often visits to the History Department Ofce, I am deeply indebted to Scott Burkhardt
and Amy Phillips, the Undergraduate History Advisors. For her insight and support,
I wholeheartedly thank ARCHIVE’s Faculty Advisor, Professor Camille Guérin-
Gonzales. For their generous nancial support, I sincerely thank the Undergraduate
History Department. For his support and invaluable assistance obtaining future funding
for ARCHIVE, I thank UHA President Andrew Huenink. For the amazing cover, I am
indebted to the incredibly talented graphic designer Lucas Altschwager. Another artistic
genius, Ashley Jensen cannot be thanked enough for her expertise and dedication to
the beautiful layout of ARCHIVE. For his unending wealth of knowledge, I thank John
Jafferis and his team at DoIt Printing Services. Finally, the ARCHIVE Editorial Board
deserves endless recognition for their creativity and deep commitment to historical
accuracy and scholarship. Building upon the foundation of previous Editors, I am
condent that this year’s ARCHIVE has set a remarkable precedent for the direction of
future ARCHIVE editions published at UW-Madison – ones which will be steeped in
historical curiosity, invigorated by dedicated student Editors, and shaped by the passion
of undergraduate authors.
Teague Briana Harvey
Madison, Wisconsin
April 14, 2010
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About the Editors
James Doing is a junior majoring history, with a concentration in 20th-century Europe. He also studies
German and ESL, and hopes to spend a few years abroad teaching English before coming back to Madison
for graduate school. In his free time James enjoys analyzing language and costume errors in historical lms
(especially atrocious hairstyles from the sixties).
Claire Elizabeth Huntley is a senior majoring in history with a focus on the late 18th–century North
America and mid 20th–century Germany. In the fall of 2010 she will attend Western Washington
University’s History, Archives and Records Management Masters program. When Claire is not playing
Scrabble, she is working at the Wisconsin Historical Society where she trains for her dream job at the
Grateful Dead Archive.
Ashley Jensen is a junior majoring in History with a concentration in agrarian reform and collective
memory in Latin America. Ashley is also a member of the Undergraduate History Association, Phi Alpha
Theta, and the Wisconsin Historical Society and is also a National and Regional History Day volunteer.
She also enjoys the smell of old books and naming her beta sh after Pat Conroy characters.
Samuel Frederick Jonas is a Junior majoring in History and English, and plans on teaching in some
capacity after college. His concentration is in general American History, but his true passion lies in the
history of Antebellum and Reconstruction America. He also recently announced his candidacy for school
elections as a member of the Whig party.
Andrew O’Connor is a fth year senior majoring in History along with certicates in Middle Eastern
Studies, Religious Studies, and Medieval Studies. He is currently writing a senior thesis on Medieval
Egypt and will be traveling to Cairo this summer for an Arabic immersion program. He is a member of the
Undergraduate History Association, Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society, and the Lubar Institute for
Study of the Abrahamic Religions Undergraduate Forum. He enjoys studying languages and traveling in the
Middle East.
Kristen Schumacher is a sophomore majoring in American and social history. She is an education
volunteer at the Wisconsin Historical Museum, a member of the Undergraduate History Association, and a
card-carrying member the Wisconsin Historical Society. In the summer of 2010, Kristen will be working
with the Institute of Southern Jewish Life in Jackson, Mississippi, compiling original research on Jewish
communities throughout the American South. While Kristen hangs a picture of Robert M. La Follette, Sr. in
her bedroom and occasionally sports a 1904 Theodore Roosevelt campaign button, she also prides herself
on being surprisingly socially adept.
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Photos by Derek Woolley
2010 ARCHIVE Editorial Board
“No harm’s done to his-
tory by making it some-
thing someone would
want to read.”
- David Mccullough
Above (L-R): Sam Frederick Jonas, Claire Elizabeth Huntley, Kristen
Schumacher, James Doing, Teague Briana Harvey, Andrew O’Connor,
Ashley Jensen
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About the Authors
Brett Bernsteen is a sophomore majoring in United States History and Spanish. He is the author of “Citing
Thanatology: An Ethical Response to the Medical Data of Nazi Doctors,” originally composed for Laura
Weinstein’s fall 2009 History 515 seminar on the Holocaust. Following graduation, he hopes to pursue a
career in law.
Amanda Detry is a sophomore majoring in English and History, with a focus on the British Romantics and
Early Modern Europe. She wrote “The Spectacle of Rebellion: British Minor Theatres and the
Pre-Revolution in France” for Professor Suzanne Desan’s Fall 2009 course on the French Revolution.
She will be spending her junior year abroad at the University of Warwick in Coventry, UK.
Alec Luhn is a graduating senior majoring in history, journalism and Russian Language and Civilization.
He wrote “The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Extermination of the Southern Black Farmer” for
Professor Brenda Plummer’s Fall 2009 course “History of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.”
Next fall, Luhn plans to travel to Tajikistan study post-Soviet nationalism and write freelance news and
feature articles.
Kazu Matsushima is a graduating senior majoring in Mathematics and American History. In the fall
of 2009 he wrote “The Secret War in Laos: A Revolutionary Way of War” for Professor Alfred McCoy’s
seminar on the CIA’s Covert Wars and U.S. Foreign Policy. After graduation he is going to help teach
English in Spain for an academic year then going on to pursue a Master’s degree in Public Policy.
Ryan Panzer is a junior majoring in history and psychology. He wrote “How Night Baseball Brightened
America During the Great Depression” for Professor John Cooper’s course on American History, 1914-
1945 during the spring of 2009.
Arthur Zarate is a graduating senior double majoring in Languages and Cultures of Asia and History.
He wrote “Waging a Propaganda War Against Iran: The American Effort to Oust Mohammad Mosaddeq”
for Professor Alfred W. McCoy’s Fall 2009 seminar on CIA covert warfare and the conduct of US foreign
policy. After graduating, he plans on pursuing PhD in modern Middle Eastern history.
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Extermination of the Southern Black
Farmer
Alec Luhn
The pamphlets and lms of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s pest-
extermination campaigns in the 1950s are lled with exaggerated images of benign
pests. The most infamous example is the Argentine re ant, a harmless pest that was
portrayed in much the same horrifying light as the creatures of sci- horror lms like
Attack of the Crab Monsters. Missing from the USDA propaganda, however, are images
of another inhabitant of the South that the department regarded as no less undesirable:
the black farmer. Whereas the USDA proved unable to eradicate the Argentine re ant
after a lengthy, expensive campaign, it virtually exterminated the southern black farmer
in the quarter-century starting with World War II.
1
In an era of agricultural transformation
during which farmers depended on federal aid programs to survive, the USDA
discriminated against southern black farmers by allowing white elites to cheat them out
of loans, among other underhanded tactics. Such red-tape racism effectively drove the
vast majority of black farmers off the land over the ensuing decades.
In the twentieth century, the USDA helped facilitate a sea change in southern
U.S. agriculture. Small-scale labor-intensive agriculture, which was reliant upon the
labor of sharecroppers and tenant farmers, was replaced by large-scale capital-intensive
agriculture dependent on chemicals and machines. The rst signs of this conversion
appeared in the years leading up to the Great Depression, and a few years later the New
Deal agricultural reform programs laid the foundations for massive change. Starting
in World War II, the implementation of capital-intensive agriculture accelerated and
expanded to a truly signicant scale.
2
As USDA agriculture programs transformed the
southern landscape, they drove the small-scale farmer off the land. This transformation
took a disproportionate toll on southern black farmers, who comprised a larger share
of small farmers in the South.
3
Of greater import, however, was the direct, deliberate
discrimination that southern white USDA administrators engaged in with the tacit support
of superiors at the state and federal level.
1 Pete Daniel, Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina
Press, 2000), 84-85.
2 Anthony Badger, New Deal/New South: An Anthony Badger Reader (Fayetteville: The University of
Arkansas Press, 2007), 33-34.
3 Ibid., 38.
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Thus, even as the establishment of agribusiness—in essence, the replacement of labor-
intensive with capital-intensive agriculture—discriminated against poor farmers who
could not survive in the new system without government assistance, the corresponding
agrigovernment bureaucracy deliberately and directly discriminated against black
farmers, denying them such government assistance.
This direct discrimination occurred primarily through policy implementation at
the local level.
4
For instance, land-owning white elites retained control of the popularly
elected county committees that carried out USDA reform policies through electoral
abuses and voter intimidation. Additionally, in a phenomenon that might be called “red-
tape racism,” USDA bureaucrats withheld information to discourage black farmers from
applying to assistance and cited vague regulations to disqualify those who did. Such
local discrimination, however, was aided and abetted by USDA ofcials at the state
and federal level. For example, secretaries of agriculture up until the administration of
Ronald Reagan practiced a two-faced policy of advocating anti-discriminatory action but
failing to implement the necessary measures to achieve their stated goals.
This paper is intended to contribute to the body of historical work on the
transformation of southern agriculture in the twentieth century and to raise questions
about the long-term effects of USDA discrimination against black farmers. The
historiography of southern agricultural transformation has sometimes been guilty of
underestimating the role played by USDA programs in the disappearance of the southern
black farmer, focusing on the eradication of the southern small farmer in general
without acknowledging the added challenges for black farmers and the deliberate,
institutionalized discrimination directed against them.
5
Articles by historians of the South
Pete Daniel and Jeannie Whayne have begun to address this lacuna in the historiography
by exploring the institutionalized discrimination perpetrated by agricultural reform
programs. Nonetheless, we must exercise caution, lest we allow an emphasis on USDA
discrimination in the mid-twentieth century to distract from the longevity of systemic
discriminatory practices in the South since emancipation.
4 Pete Daniel, “African American Farmers and Civil Rights,” The Journal of Southern History 73, 1
(2007): 4.
5 Examples include earlier works by Daniel and Whayne: Jeannie M. Whayne, A New Plantation
South: Land, Labor, and Federal Favor in Twentieth-Century Arkansas (Charlottesville: The University of
Virginia Press, 1996) and Daniel, Lost Revolutions.
6 Daniel, “African American Farmers and Civil Rights.”
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Finally, questions remain about whether the extermination of the black farmer was
inevitable and whether its consequences could have been different.
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The Decline of the Black Farmer
The questionable and incomplete nature of data on black land ownership presents a
major obstacle to detailed study of the southern black farmer’s decline.
8
Even periodic
census data, not being uniform throughout the years in question, poses difculties for
comparative studies. Nevertheless, census data does indicate that the number of farm
operators in the South (dened in the census as the 16 contiguous states stretching from
Texas to Maryland, plus the District of Columbia) declined from a peak of 3.4 million
in 1935 to under 2.7 million in 1950, a number that continued to decline. This decrease
comprised primarily tenant farmers, as both full owners and part owners of farms actually
increased. Nonwhite farm operators, 95 percent of whom were located in the South,
decreased from a highpoint of 949,889 in 1920 to 580,919 in 1950.
9
Land owned by
black farmers in the South dropped astronomically from a high of an estimated 15 to
16 million acres in 1910 to six million acres in 1969, while the total number of black
farms decreased from 925,000 in 1920 to 96,000 in 1969.
10
lack sharecroppers and tenant
farmers were the rst casualties of this shift and formed the majority of southern blacks
to leave the land during the New Deal. The decrease in black farm owners accelerated
greatly in the second half of the twentieth century. According to census data, between
1950 and 1974, the number of black farm owners in the South dropped from 186,540
to 38,182.
11
Data from the 1965 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report and the 1969
Census of Agriculture also show that white farmers were able to consolidate and intensify
their agricultural operations to a much greater degree than blacks. Average annual
sales per farm were over $12,000 for white operators but ess than $3,400 for minority
operators. Furthermore, the disparity
7 Badger, 49.
8 William E. Nelson, Jr., “Black Rural Land Decline and Political Power,” in The Black Rural
Landowner—Endangered Species: Social, Political, and Economic Implications, ed. L. McGee and R.
Boone, 1st ed. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1979), 86.
9 United States Census of Agriculture, 1950, Vol. V, Part VI, 72-3. A truly critical treatment of
source material must also acknowledge that the Census of Agriculture is a product of the USDA.
10 Daniel, “African American Farmers and Civil Rights,” 3, Nelson, 86,
11 Loren Schweninger, “A Vanishing Breed: Black Farm Owners in the South, 1651-1982,”
Agricultural History 63, 3 (1989): 52.
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between the sizes of white and black farms on average increased between 1935 and
1959. In his analysis of this data, James Lewis notes that minority operators in the South
“held less in absolute terms, regardless of the resource measure used,” and also held
proportionately less resources than whites.
12
The causes for the disappearance of the black farmer are problematic and certainly
cannot be attributed to USDA discrimination alone. In a pioneering study of black
attitudes toward and knowledge of land ownership, professors of education Leo McGee
and Robert Boone identify three main reasons for the departure of black farmers from the
land: 1) the increasing allure of employment opportunities in large urban centers as farm
mechanization reduced the need for tenant labor; 2) general illiteracy and legal ignorance
among black farmers; and 3) “chicanery perpetrated under unscrupulous lawyers, land
speculators, and county ofcials.”
13
The spike in employment opportunities for blacks
offered by the defense industry in World War II and the Second Great Migration have
been well documented by historians, although these opportunities were not “unlimited,”
as McGee and Boone suggest.
14
A less historiographically visible but equally salient
issue is that of literacy. Legal literacy, or the ability to comprehend legal documents
pertaining to land ownership, is particularly important in understanding this phenomenon.
On the basis of their survey of 147 randomly selected landowners in three of the ounties
in Tennessee most heavily populated with black farmers, McGee and Boone argue that
a high incidence of illiteracy contributed to black land loss. Although their designation
of “widespread illiteracy” and assumption of its prevalence may gloss over variations of
partial illiteracy, there seems to be little doubt that, at the very least, black legal illiteracy
hindered land transfer. For instance, over 90 percent of survey participants agreed that
much land was lost because of the failure of black landowners to write wills. McGee and
Boone also found that illiteracy and ignorance of real estate procedures led to land loss by
undercutting blacks’ ability to to negotiate transactions. Finally, 96 percent of respondents
ascribed black land loss primarily to illegal means, and
12 James A. Lewis, “Ownership and Control of Resources by Minorities and Small Farmers in the
South,” in McGee and Boone, 46, 49, Equal Opportunity in Farm Programs: An Appraisal of Services
Rendered by Agencies of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1965, 67.
13 Leo McGee and Robert Boone, “A Study of Rural Landownership, Control Problems, and At-
titudes of Blacks Toward Rural Land,” in McGee and Boone, 55.
14 See discussions of job discrimination during WWII in Mark Newman, The Civil Rights Movement
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 33-68.
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88 percent blamed two major factors: the refusal of mortgage companies to loan to blacks
and a conspiracy of public ofcials to take black-owned land.
15
Although a perceived conspiracy of people in ofcial capacities suggests
the culpability of government ofcials in black land loss, it is supremely difcult to
determine how much of an effect USDA discrimination had on the black farmer’s
disappearance vis-à-vis other causes. Nonetheless, the sundry discriminatory practices
of USDA entities were on the whole quantiable, overwhelming, and inescapable.
Whereas white and black farm owners alike lost land due to economic pressures in the
rapidly changing agricultural system, black farmers bore the additional burden of racial
discrimination. For example, a 1965 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
found that the USDA’s Farmers Home Administration—a program ostensibly designed
to provide loans and technical assistance to help small farmers—made smaller loans on
average to blacks than to whites of equal economic status between May 1963 and July
1964. Similarly, loans to white farmers were on average four times the size of those to
blacks at the lower end of the economic spectrum.
16
Even prosperous black farmers faced
extinction if they did not take advantage of USDA subsidies to adapt to the sea change
in southern agriculture, but seeking such subsides meant subjecting themselves to USDA
discrimination.
17
USDA Discrimination in Practice
Although the USDA had grown steadily since its founding during the Civil War,
the New Deal was like a steroid injection, rapidly swelling the agency’s muscles and
expanding its reach to theretofore unseen proportions. However, the New Deal planners
failed in their two main goals for southern agriculture. First, they were not able to
effect a switch from high-cost cotton production to a more diversied, internationally
competitive system of agriculture. Second, they failed to relocate farmers working on
small plots on poor land to credit- and cooperative-based farm communities. Instead,
they strengthened the clout of large planters and reinforced conservative attitudes toward
economic strategy and race relations. As World War II brought the New Deal era to
a close, the USDA bureaucracy and land-grant university scientists began devising a
utopian vision of a modernized southern agricultural system based on pesticides and
machines.
15 McGee and Boone, 62-64.
16 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 77-78.
17 Daniel, “African American Farmers and Civil Rights,” 33.
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This vision became possible with the advent of the rst commercially marketed
mechanized cotton picker.
18
After the war, when the USDA-led charge to modernize
agriculture began amid the fallout of the New Deal’s failure to transform southern
farming, the fate of the region “was not in the hands of New Deal-style reformers but
of the familiar local elites who were determined that economic growth should not
undermine traditional patterns of dependency and deference and of white supremacy.”
19
In what has become a trope of civil rights history, local ofcials frustrated attempts—
professed or genuine—by USDA leaders at the federal level to enforce nondiscriminatory
policy and follow newly expanded civil rights legislation.
During this period, three preeminent programs carried out the USDA’s sweeping
agricultural reform policies. The Farmers Home Administration (FHA) provided credit
to farmers. The Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (ASCS) awarded
acreage allotments and heard appeals when farmers disagreed with its distribution,
oversaw conservation programs, and approved certain loans. The Federal Extension
Service (FES) provided farmers with technical assistance, organized youth 4-H clubs, and
taught farming and household management techniques to farm families. The directives of
all three programs were administered by county committees that set acreage allotments,
disbursed loans, hired extension agents, distributed information, and mediated disputes.
20
From the beginning, these county committees were essentially the exclusive domain of
local white elites. Prior to 1964, no black served on a county committee.
21
Even amidst
increased concern for civil rights ve years later, black participation remained minimal,
with the ASCS counting just two blacks among its 4,100 committeemen.
22
Through “old
boy” style networking, county committee members looked out for family and friends
and enforced a culture of white supremacy, driving black activist farmers off the land by
denying them agricultural and home loans and reducing their acreage allotments.
23
The dearth of black county committee members is hardly surprising given that
USDA committeemen were elected to their positions in sham elections that gave rise to
electoral abuses and kept whites in power. ASCS county committee elections in
18 Badger, 33, Jeannie M. Whayne, “Black Farmers and the Agricultural Cooperative Extension Ser-
vice: The Alabama Experience, 1945-1965,” Agricultural History 72, 3 (1998): 531-532.
19 Daniel, Lost Revolutions, 61, Badger, 44.
20 Daniel, “African American Farmers and Civil Rights,” 5.
21 Ibid.
22 “Federal Agency Is Called Biased,” New York Times, 30 November 1969, p. 39.
23 Daniel, “African American Farmers and Civil Rights,” 9.
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particular were often marred by corruption, lack of information and intimidation
of black voters and candidates. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC), a national civil rights group that waged voter awareness campaigns to educate
blacks about the workings of complicated USDA programs in several Alabama,
Georgia and Mississippi counties before the 1965 ASCS elections, acknowledged
the “tremendous personal risks involved in running.”
24
Meanwhile, ASCS county
committees and employees withheld information about the upcoming elections, failed
to distribute ballots to black sharecroppers and tenant farmers, placed additional black
candidates on the ballot to divide the black vote, and deliberately misplaced and
invalidated black votes. U.S. Congressman Joseph Resnick, who was observing the
Mississippi elections, allegedly witnessed so many instances of racial discrimination
that he recommended voiding the elections altogether.
25
The balloting proceeded
along similar lines in Alabama, where SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael observed
that ASCS committeemen gave black voters ballots for the wrong county and placed
additional black candidates on the ballot to split the vote. In Greene County, ve black
sharecropper families were evicted after it was discovered they had voted.
26
Their power thus couched in a virtually unassailable network of county
committees, white elites sapped the besieged resources of poor southern black farmers
with a mixture of blatantly discriminatory policy and more surreptitious racist practices.
In the Mississippi ASCS, for example, ofce jobs were open to black candidates only
when white employees retired and there was a space to be lled.
27
A lack of black farm-
program employees translated directly into a lack of attention for black farmers. In
USDA programs, agents almost always worked with farmers of their own skin color,
so in counties where black agents were not employed, black farmers received virtually
no services.
28
Programs likewise had no qualms funding segregated projects; the FHA,
for instance, was still making loans for the construction of segregated buildings three
years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
29
More insidious than the FHA’s
segregated building loans, however, was a system of predatory lending intended to ruin
black farmers.
24 Ibid., 18.
25 Ibid., 20, 22
26 Ibid., 20-21.
27 Ibid., 19.
28 “Racial Pattern Noted in U.S. Farm Service,” The Los Angeles Times, 1 March 1965, p. 2.
29 Daniel, “African American Farmers and Civil Rights,” 15.
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FHA ofcials would pressure a black farmer to assume larger loans in order to draw him
into debt, a process which culminated in “cleaning him out,” just as white landowners had
previously done to black sharecroppers. White ofcials like Alabama state FHA director
Robert Bamberg would even work against program policy when it conicted with their
own interests. Bamberg charged the 25 black tenant farmer families on his personal
plantation six percent interest on loans when similar loans from the FHA carried only ve
percent interest, seeing no need to help his own workers out of poverty.
30
Such conicts
of interests were no doubt frequent, given that virtually all USDA committeemen and
many state ofcials were land-owning white elites.
Local bureaucrats had many underhand tactics of discrimination at their disposal,
which have come to light largely with the recent uncovering of unofcial documents.
They displayed a mastery of red-tape racism, citing vague regulations, making up
problems on applications and withholding forms and information to place black farmers
at a distinct disadvantage.
31
This included changing or even inventing numbers. For
instance, in 1966, the ASCS altered records of one black farmer’s yield gures and
acreage allotments to set him up for nancial failure. On a broader scale, the FES made
up false numbers in 1965 to bolster its claims of service to black farmers, asserting that
it had contacted 312,000 non-white farm residents when in fact only 200,000 non-white
farm residents remained in the South.
32
The USDA bureaucracy discriminated not only against black farmers, but also
against black farm agents and employees in its service, who were underemployed
and demeaned in the workplace. For one, black employees were almost always paid
less. A 1951 investigation of discrimination in FES 4-H programs by the Pittsburg
Courier revealed that the average salary for black county agents was $3,138, whereas
white county agents received an average salary of $4,904. In some states in both the
Deep and Upper South, the disparity was egregious, such as in Alabama, where white
agents received an average $5,331 to the black agent’s $2,872. In addition, black home
demonstration agents also received lower salaries, and salaries for all black agents
continued to lag behind those for whites until at least the early 1960s, if not longer.
33
30 Ibid., 11.
31 Ibid., 9.
32 Ibid., 14-15, 29.
33 Bevella Clay, “Courier Investigation Discloses National 4-H Clubs Reek with Discrimination
from Top to Bottom,” Pittsburgh Courier, 15 December 1951, p. 25, Whayne, “Black Farmers and the
Agricultural Cooperative Extension Service,” 541
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The Civil Rights Commission’s 1965 investigation discovered that all USDA programs
gave blacks inferior training, except in North Carolina, and often provided black
employees with inferior ofce space.
34
It also noted that black agents were virtually
excluded from policy-making positions in USDA programs, an inveterate problem
that was cited again in a 1976 report by the commission.
35
Informational stonewalling
occurred at white land-grant universities, which hosted FES ofces, but refused to give
out important information to black agents.
36
Racist modes of communication and the assignment of tedious, pointless duties
and inferior segregated facilities by the FES humiliated blacks in the workplace. For
example, black agents were given demeaning job titles and forced to spend the majority
of their time on 4-H and home demonstration projects to the neglect of black farmers.
37
As late as July 1965, the FES ofces for black agents in 33 of the 35 Alabama counties
in which blacks were employed were kept in separate buildings, which were often
dilapidated and without proper equipment or even ofce supplies.
38
Finally, black agents
were actively persecuted for civil rights activism, real or assumed. In Alabama, two
respected black county agents were red from the FES in 1949 and 1953 for demanding
wage parity and requesting a lunchroom be built in a black school, respectively.
39
Moving On to a Better Future?
In response to the scathing Commission on Civil Rights report of 1965, Secretary of
Agriculture Orville Freeman appointed William Seabron, a black man, as assistant to the
secretary for civil rights.
40
Seabron’s long, lonely struggle for civil rights at the USDA
was from the beginning stymied by the recalcitrance of local, state, and federal USDA
ofcials. One of the rst of Seabron’s many Sisyphean tasks was establishing equal
employment regulations at the FES, regulations that were essentially delayed to death
by the stubbornness of state FES ofcials.
41
However, the intractability of ofcials in
state USDA programs was rivaled by that of federal ofcials, including secretaries of
agriculture themselves.
34 Los Angeles Times, 1 March 1965.
35 “Calls U.S. Unfair to Negroes,” Chicago Tribune, 1 March 1965, p. 5, “Butz Helped Circumvent
Rights Laws, Critics Say,” Los Angeles Times, 5 October 1976, p. B1.
36 Daniel, “African American Farmers and Civil Rights,” 26.
37 Ibid., 9, 28.
38 Whayne, “Black Farmers and the Agricultural Cooperative Extension Service,” 525, 536.
39 Ibid., 539-540.
40 Daniel, “African American Farmers and Civil Rights,” 6.
41 Ibid., 33-34.
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When it came to civil rights, these ofcials practiced a two-faced political strategy that
combined rousing civil rights rhetoric in public with deliberate inaction on these same
professed ideals once the press’s ash bulbs had retreated. Seabron’s appointee Orville
Freeman loquaciously pledged to root out discrimination in the USDA after the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, but did not enforce these verbal directives.
42
For instance, Freeman
neglected to properly regulate the notoriously corrupt 1965 ASCS elections despite
repeated requests for federal oversight. Pete Daniel, who studied Freeman’s private
correspondence of the time, charges that the secretary “abetted white discrimination.”
43
To whom could black farmers turn for help if even the highest authority in government
agricultural reform callously ignored their plight?
It was with this two-faced policy—ostensibly championing civil rights while
allowing discrimination to continue unabated in the invisible layers of its bureaucracy—
that the USDA entered the modern era. Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture
Clifford Hardin dissolved Seabron’s civil rights staff in a purported attempt to restructure
the agency. In reality, this move completely de-fanged civil rights efforts at the USDA;
Hardin lled his civil rights advisory committee with appointments hand-picked for
their lack of interest in civil rights enforcement.
44
Hardin’s successor Earl Butz secretly
helped to change regulations so that seven state programs found to be in violation of
antidiscrimination laws would not lose USDA funding. Butz was later forced to resign
for uttering racial slurs.
45
Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Agriculture John Block stopped
investigating black farmers’ complaints altogether, despite court cases and congressional
hearings on USDA discrimination, and closed the USDA Civil Rights Ofce in 1983.
46
In 1999, the USDA settled for $400 million in Pigford v. Glickman, the largest-
ever civil rights lawsuit, which alleged discrimination toward thousands of black farmers
between 1983 and 1996.
47
42 Chicago Tribune, 1 March 1965.
43 Daniel, “African American Farmers and Civil Rights,” 22-23.
44 Ibid., 35-36, “Agriculture Department Forms New Rights Unit,” The New York Times 7 August
1971, p. 33.
45 Grayson Mitchell, “Butz Helped Circumvent Rights Laws, Critics Say,” Los Angeles Times 5 Oc-
tober 1976, p. B1, Don Irwin, “Butz Resigns, Admits ‘a Gross Indiscretion,’” Los Angeles Times 5 October
1976, p. B1.
46 Daniel, “African American Farmers and Civil Rights,” 36, The Pigford Case: USDA Settlement of
a Discrimination Suit by Black Farmers, Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, 2005, 2.
47 Congressional Research Service Report, 1, 3, Steven Holmes, “Black Farmers Are Divided on
Settlement Over Racism,” The New York Times, 3 March 1999, p. 10.
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This year, the U.S. government reached a $1.25 billion settlement to compensate an
estimated 70,000 black farmers who were left out of the Pigford settlement because
they missed deadlines to le claims. Meanwhile, outstanding suits brought by Hispanic
and Native American farmers since the Pigford case allege similar discrimination in
the awarding of agriculture loans and subsidies.
48
At a hearing after the initial Pigford
settlement, hundreds of black farmers, including the eponymous Timothy Pigford, voiced
their discontent over the settlement’s failure to end discriminatory policies at the USDA.
In addition, District Court Judge Paul Friedman noted persistent problems with the USDA
loan program, including an over-reliance on county committees.
49
Such statements echo
past complaints, leaving us with the unsettling notion that the USDA’s discrimination
against black farmers persists in our era.
Conclusion
The extermination of the southern black farmer is essentially complete. According to
one estimate, less than 20,000 black farmers remain, down from 925,710 in 1920.
50
The transformation of the South from labor-intensive to capital-intensive agriculture
in the mid-twentieth century forced many small farmers off the land, but it took a
disproportionate toll on black farmers due largely to institutionalized discrimination
by the USDA. The agency’s actions resulted in a catastrophic decline in black farmers
that is documented by census data. Although we should not discount the constancy,
persistence and injuriousness of racial discrimination in the South throughout the
twentieth century, the historiography should also acknowledge the particularly
devastatingimpact of post-war USDA discrimination.
Such discrimination took place at the local, state, and federal level. The local
elites who ran the USDA’s agriculture reform programs, aided and abetted by callous
state and federal ofcials who failed to act on civil rights rhetoric, waged a campaign
of extermination against black farmers. Sham elections protected white dominance of
county committees, predatory lending and red-tape racism “cleaned out” black farmers,
and demeaning employment practices constrained black county agents and employees.
Meanwhile, a string of secretaries of agriculture practiced a two-faced approach to
discrimination, publicly championing civil rights measures but neglecting to implement.
48 Carrie Johnson, “U.S. approves settlement for black farmers,” The Washington Post, 19 February
2010.
49 The New York Times, 3 March 1999.
50 Ibid.
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In 1999, the USDA settled for $400 million in a class-action lawsuit over long-term
discrimination, but black farmers were disappointed with the lawsuit’s failure to induce
change at the agency, raising the ugly specter of USDA racism over 50 years after the
discrimination against black farmers began to drive them off the land en masse.
The long-term effects of USDA discrimination demand further study. Some
scholars argue that land loss translated into less political power, as the lack of land
holdings deprived many blacks of the sine qua non for economic and political
independence.
51
When we consider this argument in light of the disintegration of the civil
rights movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, by which time USDA discrimination
had driven the vast majority of black farmers from the land, we cannot but wonder at the
wider ramications of their exodus. Did the extermination of the black farmer play a
role—alongside the Vietnam War and the rise of black power—in undercutting the civil
rights movement and ending a string of political achievements?
51 Nelson, 83-84, McGee and Boone, 55.
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The Secret War in Laos: A Revolutionary Way of War
Kazu Matsushima
The Secret War in Laos from 1955 to 1975 was one of the darkest CIA operations
in the government agency’s history. The operations ravaged the small nation with a
pristine countryside and made it the most bombed nation on the planet.
1
After subverting
its own policies, causing massive casualties, and diminishing the United States’ moral
standing in the world, Laos is to this day still a Communist nation. It seems almost
impossible that a series of operations as large as the one in Laos was able to be kept
a secret from Congress and the American people until 1969.
2
Laos, a former French
colony, gained its independence in 1954 when it “appeared to lack all of the economic
and political criteria for nationhood”.
3
The edgling nation had economic problems from
the beginning; the government could not function alone by collecting corporate, mineral,
or personal taxes, and therefore had to tolerate the smuggling of gold, guns, and opium.
4
France set up Laos with its ideological and ethnic divisions so that the nation would be
easier to manipulate and because of this, foreign power were able to pit factions against
each other in a three-way civil war.
5
One of the groups that were drawn into this war was
the Hmong, a decentralized society that lived in different countries throughout Southeast
Asia with local leaders in towns spread out across the mountains. When they controlled
Southeast Asia, the French worked with the Hmong people and transported their opium,
but the CIA’s relationship with the Hmong in the worked with the Hmong people and
transported their opium, but the CIA’s relationship with the Hmong in the drug trade was
far more extensive.
6
1 America’s secret war in Laos, 1955-75, Alfred McCoy. IN: Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buz-
zanco (eds.), A companion to the Vietnam War , (Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2002). McCoy, Alfred W.
Pg. 291. Description and analysis of the secret war in Laos.
2 Halloran, Richard. “Fulbright Assails Operation in Laos.” New York Times 29 Oct. 1969: 1-2.
Chairman of Senate Foreign relations committee, Senator Fulbright, says that the operations in Laos is a
clandestine war and is unconstitutional upon hearing the extent of the operation.
3 McCoy, Alfred W. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade Chicago:
Lawrence Hill Books, 2003. Pg. 292. Description and analysis of the CIA’s involvement in the international
drug trade since the Cold War
4 Ibid
5 America’s secret war in Laos, 1955-75, Alfred McCoy. IN: Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buz-
zanco (eds.), A companion to the Vietnam War , (Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2002). McCoy, Alfred W.
Pg. 292
6 Ibid 289
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When the CIA took over the drug trade from the French, there was a shift of areas of
transport from the airelds in the Plain of Jars to the mountain villages of the Hmong.
7
The Plain of Jars was a strategic location; it was at a crossroads in Laos and during
certain times it was the location in the middle of the Communist forces in Sam Neua
and the administrative capital of Vientiane.
8
Different villages would compete with
one another and occasionally ally themselves with an outside power in order to gain
the upper hand in these confrontations. The CIA joined the ranks of former patrons of
certain Hmong tribes including China, Laos, Vietnam and France. The Hmong villages
were mostly made up of farmers whose main crops were rice for food and opium as a
cash crop.
9
Though they were the principal anti-communist ground force, the Hmong did
not have a real stake in the war. Before the Vietnam War, the CIA was called upon by
the President to quietly prevent a communist takeover in Laos and they came up with a
short term solution. This short term solution compromised the integrity of United States,
arguably weakened its national security, caused mass casualties, and ultimately failed its
objective. The CIA helped the Hmong tribes with opium transportation and cultivation,
in exchange for the Hmong signing up to ght against the Pathet Lao.
10
This arrangement
led to the devastation of the Hmong population and played an integral role in the
destruction of their homelands.
The reason why the United States had a major interest in the kingdom of Laos
is because of its geographical location. The U.S. government considered Laos one of
four “roads” in which communism could spread from China in Southeast Asia.
11
Laos
remaining anti-communist had a greater signicance once the Vietnam War started. Laos
joined the South East Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) in late 1954 so that, like South
Vietnam, Laos would be protected from any communist aggression by Thailand and the
7 Nevard, Jacque. “Embattled Plaine des Jarres in Key to Laos.” New York Times 26 Apr. 1963:
1,5. This article is a description of how the Plain of Jars gets its name and a briey describes some activity
there.
8 America’s secret war in Laos, 1955-75, Alfred McCoy. IN: Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buz-
zanco (eds.), A companion to the Vietnam War , (Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2002). McCoy, Alfred W.
Pg. 291-292 ]
9 Ibid 289
10 McCoy, Alfred W. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade Chicago:
Lawrence Hill Books, 2003. Pg. 289, 308
11 America’s secret war in Laos, 1955-75, Alfred McCoy. IN: Marilyn B. Young and Robert
Buzzanco (eds.), A companion to the Vietnam War , (Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2002). McCoy, Alfred
W. Pg.289
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United States. The U.S. and Laos made a diplomatic agreement in July of 1955
stipulating that the U.S. would fund a 25,000-person Royal Laotian Army.
12
President
Eisenhower took these measures to show that he was serious about stopping the spread of
Communism, which was a popular political rallying point. This consequently increased
the importance of the region for both sides on the Cold War.
The political divisions in Laos stemmed from the Lao nationalist movement
called the Lao Issara. The Lao Issara split three ways during the First Indochina War: the
communist Pathet Lao, the neutralists, and the rightists. The Pathet Lao, led by Prince
Souphanouvong, broke away from the Lao Issara in 1950. They allied themselves with
the North Vietnamese and took the province of Sam Neua. As a leader of the neutralist
wing, Prince Souvanna Phouma became prime minister in 1951 when the French were
still in control of the country. When Laos gained independence there were no ofcial
land concessions made for the Pathet Lao.
13
It is understandable that neutralists would
not want to divide their power, but in retrospect, the situation for the rightists and
neutralists might have been more favorable if initial concessions had been made. After
several months of talks, the Pathet Lao and Prime Minister Phouma formed a coalition
government in November 1957 without consulting the U.S. government. This action
caused the CIA to support the rightists for fear of communist inuence in the Lao
government. Under this agreement the Prince Souphanouvong became Phouma’s nance
minister and the Pathet Lao guerrilla forces were integrated into the Royal Laotian Army,
both of which greatly worried the rightists and the CIA. The rightists took control of
Parliament in 1958 because of the CIA funded conservative coalition and in 1960 Col.
Phoumi Nosavan, a CIA ally, took power.
14
During the 1960s the CIA gave money to
politicians who would follow the Agency’s orders and eventually fty-four out of fty-
seven seats in the National Assembly in Laos were lled by CIA-chosen leaders.
15
The
CIA thus contributed to strengthening the political divisions that existed in Laos.
The CIA’s actions supporting the rightists were not as covert as they would have
liked. Captain Kong Le was angered by foreign intervention and led a neutralist coup in
1960 and managed to drive out Phoumi Nosavan from the administrative capital in
12 Ibid 285
13 Ibid 285-286
14 Ibid
15 Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA New York: Doubleday, 2008. pg. 292 This
book describes the history of the CIA.
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Vientiane. Phoumi Nosavan traveled to Savannakhet and allied himself with Hmong
Leader Touby Lyfoung. Kong Le was aided by the Soviets and the North Vietnamese.
The principle ghting took place over Vientiane and the Plain of Jars. The situation in
Laos intensied and the country soon became a ashpoint for the Cold War. It escalated
to the point where the Pentagon recommended President Kennedy send 10,000 marines
to the Plain of Jars in 1961 and the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended using nuclear
weapons.
16
Faced with this advice, President Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev
started negotiating for a peaceful, neutral resolution.
17
Both Kennedy and Khrushchev
managed to come to an agreement.
The Geneva Accords were signed in 1962 which exempted Laos from the Cold
War, but this minor success was only temporary for President Kennedy. The Geneva
Accords were soon ignored, though not ofcially repudiated, by the Communist forces
and America could only overtly operate in Laos for humanitarian missions. At the same
time, the counterinsurgency efforts in South Vietnam were not working and the United
States could not contain the Communists. American interference in Laos was necessary
in order to win the Vietnam War, but the Geneva Accords prohibited it. Kennedy’s efforts
at peace ended up being a strategic error which only left the option to use covert warfare;
instead of a conventional large ground force, Kennedy was forced to use massive air
power and Hmong guerrilla ghters with a small group of CIA overseeing the operation.
18
By 1965 there were tens of thousands of troops in Vietnam, in comparison, there were
about thirty CIA agents in Laos.
19
When Congress nally found out about the Secret
War in Laos in 1969, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called
it unconstitutional.
20
The White House kept the war in Laos a secret from the public,
Congress, and the international community so it could maintain plausible deniability and
16 America’s secret war in Laos, 1955-75, Alfred McCoy. IN: Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buz-
zanco (eds.), A companion to the Vietnam War , (Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2002). McCoy, Alfred W.
Pg. 286
17 Baldwin, Hanson. “The Realities of Laos.” New York Times 7 Mar. 1961: 1,9. Baldwin writes how
there are only three options in Laos: escalate, negotiate, or pull out, and Kennedy will need to decide soon.
18 America’s secret war in Laos, 1955-75, Alfred McCoy. IN: Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buz-
zanco (eds.), A companion to the Vietnam War , (Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2002). McCoy, Alfred W.
Pg. 287
19 Weiner 291.
20 Halloran, Richard. “Fulbright Assails Operation in Laos.” New York Times 29 Oct. 1969: 1-2.
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not face harsh opposition.
21
Because of a diplomatic move away from escalation of
conventional warfare in Laos, the United States cornered itself into a policy that resulted
in Laos becoming a Communist state and the Hmong population suffering numerous
casualties and becoming refugees.
The CIA saw the renewed guerrilla action in South Vietnam and Laos as the
Communists trying to take over Southeast Asia and the subsequently sprang into
action by nding a leader to mobilize the Hmong. By 1959 the CIA started working
with Hmong guerillas in Laos for a regional intelligence-gathering program against
the Communists.
22
The CIA picked Vang Pao to lead the Hmong because he was more
willing to ght and let his troops die in battle. Touby Lyfoung, who had previously
worked with the French as a Hmong leader, earned a reputation of being too cautious
and willing to retreat too easily.
23
The CIA gave Vang Pao the resources he needed,
including food, munitions, and air transportation, so that he could be a patron to the
Hmong villages and maintain political control over them.
24
Because the Hmong lived in a
decentralized society and there were only a few CIA operatives to keep control, the CIA
would pick one leader from every tribe to become part of the hierarchy. These leaders
were responsible for using CIA funds and resources to recruit and lead guerillas into
battle. By putting military and economic control with the local leaders, the CIA made
them autocrats under Agency control, thus solidifying the power structure.
25
The CIA was
very effective at organizing the Hmong into a ghting force. The CIA put Vang Pao in
control of the rice drops and opium shipments through the CIA-owned charter airline, Air
America.
26
By 1965, Air America became the only form of air transport available in
northern Laos, which made the Hmong economy more dependent than ever on the CIA.
n the early 1960s Air America started to y opium out of the Hmong mountain villages to
Vang Pao’s headquarters at Long Tieng which makes the CIA complicit in the opium and
heroin trade.
27
21 The White House kept the war in Laos a secret from the public, Congress, and the international
community so it could maintain plausible deniability and not face harsh opposition.
22 McCoy, Alfred W. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade Chicago:
Lawrence Hill Books, 2003. Pg. 305
23 Ibid 308
24 Ibid 209
25 Ibid 308
26 Ibid 290
27 Ibid 304
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Vang Pao was initially chosen to aid rightist Nosavan Phoumi, but when his defenses
failed in the Plain of Jars, Vang Pao became the CIA’s main native resource.
28
With the
CIA’s help, Vang Pao was able to transform the Hmong from being separate isolated
tribes into a united people.
29
The CIA had their leader, a native who could exercise
control over the Hmong and was willing to sacrice their lives for his gain.
During the 1960s, Vang Pao ew courtesy of Air America’s helicopters and Helio-
courier aircraft to mountain villages throughout Laos to recruit guerrilla ghters. He
traveled from village to village offering food, guns, ammunition, and money in exchange
for enlistment.
30
According to Vang Pao, if Hmong men did not want to ght against
Pathet Lao, then they were Pathet Lao, and their village would have to be attacked.
While a possibly effective way of recruiting, this was not the best way to maintain a high
morale. At the same time, Green Berets, Thai police, and CIA operatives were training
the growing Hmong Secret Army. Their strategy was to build up Hmong forces in the
mountains surrounding the Plain of Jars so they could keep the Pathet Lao from moving
from it. Crude landing strips were constructed so that each village could be connected
with the CIA base at Padoung, just south of the Plain of Jars.
31
The CIA was very
successful at organizing and recruiting the Hmong into a Secret Army.
The Secret Army did not waste time in attacking the neutralist and Pathet Lao
soldiers in the Plain of Jars. . In retaliation, Kong Le shelled the CIA base in Padoung
in May of 1961 and after two weeks Vang Pao was forced to move his base to Phao
Khao. CIA operative Edgar Buell helped evacuate about 9,000 Hmong civilians from
Padoung to Phao Khao. Many died on the march through the jungle.
32
While the men
were ghting, their families back home needed food so Buell, who ofcially was a
humanitarian relief worker for the United States Agency for International Development
(USAID), arranged for humanitarian missions to drop food to compensate for the loss of
of man power back in the villages.
33
28 Ibid 311-312
29 Ibid 291
30 America’s secret war in Laos, 1955-75, Alfred McCoy. IN: Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buz-
zanco (eds.), A companion to the Vietnam War , (Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2002). McCoy, Alfred W.
Pg. 290
31 McCoy, Alfred W. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade Chicago:
Lawrence Hill Books, 2003. Pg. 312
32 Ibid 312-313
33 America’s secret war in Laos, 1955-75, Alfred McCoy. Pg. 293
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The relief put the Hmong in a cycle of increased dependence on the CIA.
In June 1961, President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev met to negotiate the
end of the superpower conict in Laos. They urged the factions to make a ceasere
agreement, and for fourteen months they searched for an internal settlement.
34
Kennedy
told Phoumi to merge his right-wing government into a tripartite coalition, but in
February 1962 Phoumi refused to do so and the U.S. cut off the $3 million per month
it had been supplying to his government. Phoumi had to look for another source of
income and he decided to produce heroin. Laotian opium was already being used in local
markets so he imported Burmese opium. This led to Laos becoming one of the biggest
heroin producing centers in the world.
35
During the ceasere agreement, Nosavan Phoumi felt the strain of the lack of
U.S. support and in March 1962 he claimed that, during a battle with the Pathet Lao in
the northwestern Nam Tha province, Chinese forces had crossed the border.
36
Korea-like
situation, prepared for battle. He issued deployment orders for 1,000 Marines at the Laos
border and 4,000 more troops in Thailand. He had the Navy take up battle stations off
the coast of Thailand and there were nuclear attack plans drawn up against China. “Crisis
demonstrated the dangers when superpowers attached global signicance to the volatile
internal politics of a fragile nation.”
37
This escalation is what led to the 1962 Geneva
Accords, which supposedly ended military operations in the area. The Green Berets and
the military advisers had to leave, but the CIA stayed in the area. The CIA stayed in
Thailand and agents ew back and forth from Thailand into Laos every day.
38
Civilian
workers, including Edgar Buell, could stay and operate in Laos, though frequently his
humanitarian missions included opium drops.
39
The peace agreements were not as benign
as would normally be expected.
34 Ibid 286
35 McCoy, Alfred W. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade Chicago:
Lawrence Hill Books, 2003. Pg. 301
36 “Laos Sees Red Drive.” New York Times 19 Mar. 1962: 7. Communist Chinese and North Viet-
namese troops reportedly assaulted the provincial capital of Nam Tha in northwestern Laos.
37 America’s secret war in Laos, 1955-75, Alfred McCoy. IN: Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buz-
zanco (eds.), A companion to the Vietnam War , (Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2002). McCoy, Alfred W.
Pg.287
38 McCoy, Alfred W. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade Chicago:
Lawrence Hill Books, 2003. Pg. 313
39 Salsbury, Harrison E. “War Signs Mark a Laos at ‘Peace’” New York Times 13 June 1966: 1,2.
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A CIA operative named Anthony Poshepny, better known as Tony Poe, became
Vang Pao’s chief adviser at his headquarters in Long Tieng, from where Tony Poe led
the 1963-1964 offensive. Instead of attacking villages in the valleys, Tony Poe ew
Hmong guerillas to mountain after mountain all the way into the center of the Sam Neua
province, capturing the remote villages located at each stop. When the Pathet Lao were
taken care of, an airstrip was built so that Edgar Buell could distribute supplies among
the people. It was very successful in expanding Vang Pao’s domain and making the
conquered villages and Long Tieng more connected.
40
Long Tieng became a secret city of
20,000 people.
41
After the Pathet Lao captured the Plain of Jars in 1964 the U.S. greatly
increased its bombing campaigns.
42
President Johnson appointed William Sullivan as the ambassador to Vientiane in
1964 and as ambassador he created a command structure with the U.S. embassy at the
center of the war. As the air campaigns became more expensive, the White House kept
it a secret by shifting money around from acceptable projects with large budgets. The
White divided the operations in Laos; Sullivan controlled the tactical bombing around
the Plain of Jars and the U.S. Air Force was put in charge of bombing the Ho Chi Minh
Trail.
43
Sullivan was able to get permission from Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma for
the covert bombings and Sullivan expanded the air war from a few clandestine bombings
to one of the largest aerial bombardments in history. As the Vietnam War was escalating,
one of the reasons why President Johnson ordered the clandestine bombing of Laos is
to disrupt the communication lines between North and South Vietnam.
44
Using all of the
50,000 airmen located in bases in South Vietnam, Guam, and Thailand, the air operations
in Laos cost an estimated $2 billion a year. In 1964 the air campaign’s goals were to
strike enemy supply routes, troop concentrations and to aid Laotian soldiers.
45
40 McCoy, Alfred W. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade Chicago:
Lawrence Hill Books, 2003. Pg 316
41 Ibid 318
42 America’s secret war in Laos, 1955-75, Alfred McCoy. IN: Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buz-
zanco (eds.), A companion to the Vietnam War , (Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2002). McCoy, Alfred W.
Pg.291
43 Ibid 292
44 Ibid 290
45 Branfman, Fred. “Presidential War in Laos,” in Nina S. Adams & Alfred W. McCoy, eds., Laos:
War and Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pg. 231 A history of the Secret War in Laos high-
lighting the fact that it was conducted for the most part without congressional oversight or knowledge.
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This approach became impractical for two important reasons. First, the area is very
mountainous and has an abundance of trees which made it harder for aircraft to nd
and shoot the target. Second, the Communist forces usually moved in small mobile
groups at night so they would be even harder to spot. This led to the tactic of bombing
towns and villages because they were clear targets and the bombing raids were covert
missions anyway, so there would not be any public uproar. This signied the switch
from tactical, which targeted bombing on a smaller location, to saturation bombing,
which is “saturating” an entire area with bombs. Its objectives were to demoralize the
civilian population, deprive the Pathet Lao of food, kill potential Pathet Lao ghters or
sympathizers, eliminate their commerce and trade, and to deprive them of safe havens to
regroup or store supplies.
46
These were the objectives of the U.S. Embassy’s side of the
Secret War.
The other side of the Secret War was coordinated by the U.S. Air Force.
Operation Steel Tiger, which started in 1965, had the objective to slow down enemy
inltration as much as possible along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in southern Laos.
47
By
1966 communist trucks stopped attempting to move during daylight. The realistic goal
of Operation Steel Tiger was never to stop movement along the Ho Chi Minh Trail
completely, as that would have been an unreasonably ambitious goal to achieve; instead
its goal was just to slow down trafc past the point of being effective.
48
Another mission,
Operation Barrel Roll, had the objective of supporting Hmong guerillas in northern
Laos by dropping bombs.
49
At rst, Operation Barrel Roll had a lower priority out of the
bombing campaigns in Southeast Asia; from 1965 to 1968 Operation Barrel Roll had an
average of ten to twenty sorties, or missions, each day. The Tet Offensive in Vietnam in
46 Ibid 232
47 America’s secret war in Laos, 1955-75, Alfred McCoy. IN: Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buz-
zanco (eds.), A companion to the Vietnam War , (Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2002). McCoy, Alfred W.
Pg. 290
48 Correll, John T. “The Ho Chi Minh Trail.” Airforce-magazine.com. United States Air Force, Nov.
2005. Web. 3 Nov. 2009. A brief history of the different military operations along the Ho Chi Minh Trail
during the War in Vietnam.
49 America’s secret war in Laos, 1955-75, Alfred McCoy. IN: Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buz-
zanco (eds.), A companion to the Vietnam War , (Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2002). McCoy, Alfred W.
Pg. 290
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1968 raised the intensity.
50
When U.S. forces stopped bombing North Vietnam in 1968,
more planes became available for bombing campaigns in Laos.
51
At the height of
Operation Barrel Roll in 1969 it averaged 300 sorties a day.
52
The U.S. Air Force ew out
of bases from Thailand to saturate the Plain of Jars with explosives, but even with their
help, whether the Hmong gained or lost land to the Pathet Lao varied on the season.
53
CIA’s Deputy Chief in Saigon, Vietnam, William Colby came to Long Tieng for
an inspection in October of 1965. At this time the Vietnam War was in full tilt and the
key to defeating the North Vietnamese was in slowing them down drastically on the Ho
Chi Minh Trail. The Communists were transporting men and supplies through the Trail
and the United States could not slow them down enough. Colby appointed Ted Shackley,
who had never worked with Asians before, as the new station chief. Shackley wanted
to strike the Ho Chi Minh trail hard and he increased the number of CIA men working
in Laos from 30 to 250.
54
The CIA managed to raise the Hmong Secret Army to 30,000
guerilla ghters in the same year.
55
The main locations where the Hmong fought were the
Plain of Jars and the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
56
If the Pathet Lao took control of Vientiane they
could force themselves into power and out the American intervention which would have
meant failure and shame for U.S. Shackley wanted to avoid this scenario at all costs.
By April 1966, there were twenty-nine road watch teams that reported enemy
movements back to headquarters so that American bombers could destroy them. With
the combination of Hmong guerillas and relying on air power, Shackley thought he had
“revolutionized irregular warfare” because there were so many suspected Communists
dead, an incredibly high number of Hmong had been recruited, and the Ho Chi Minh
50 Correll, John T. “Barrel Roll.” Airforce-magazine.com. United States Air Force, Aug. 2006. Web.
3 Nov. 2009. A history and background of Operation Barrel Roll.
51 “Operations Increasing.” New York Times 23 Sept. 1969: 9. Operations Barrel Roll and Steel Tiger
are increasing sorties because of the end of the North Vietnamese bombing campaigns.
52 Correll, John T. “Barrel Roll.” Airforce-magazine.com. United States Air Force, Aug. 2006. Web.
3 Nov. 2009.
53 America’s secret war in Laos, 1955-75, Alfred McCoy. IN: Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buz-
zanco (eds.), A companion to the Vietnam War , (Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2002). McCoy, Alfred W.
Pg. 290
54 Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA New York: Doubleday, 2008. pg 294-296 55
McCoy, Alfred W. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade Chicago: Lawrence
Hill Books, 2003. Pg 304.
55 McCoy, Alfred W. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade Chicago:
Lawrence Hill Books, 2003. Pg 304
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Trail was torn up.
57
He thought he was winning the war, but the Communists kept
coming.
58
“The road was never cut for more than a few days. The Vietnamese did an
incredible job of repairing and rerouting to keep supplies owing southward.”
59
American
efforts could not slow down trafc on the Ho Chi Minh Trail enough.
The CIA wanted to use state-of-art technology to develop new ghting tactics
against the Pathet Lao which came to be known as Operation Igloo White, but while in
the laboratory the technology might have been successful, in the eld it was not. The
three components to Operation Igloo White were sensors to detect the enemy, aircraft to
relay the signal, and the Inltration Surveillance Center at Nakhon Phanom Air Base in
Thailand. The network of 20,000 sensors was mostly dropped by planes every couple
of weeks since the sensors were battery powered. The sensors could either hear, smell,
or feel, enemies approach. But there were several false alarms.
60
The computers of Igloo
White claimed to have destroyed 25,000 trucks from October 1970 to May 1971, but
there was never any evidence found the next day.
69
This failure to terminate a costly and
ineffective program may illustrate incompetence, but more likely stubbornness on the
part of the CIA. Igloo White was impressive in theory and in presentation and the CIA
was probably too dedicated to the idea of victory that it managed to convince itself that
an elaborate program would always be successful, even when faced with contradictory
evidence. Operation Igloo White was a sophisticated program with extensive resources
committed to it, but it had too many weaknesses to be successful.
On January 12th, 1968, the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese forces regained
control of the Sam Neua province and in the process captured Phou Pha Thi.
56 America’s secret war in Laos, 1955-75, Alfred McCoy. IN: Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buz-
zanco (eds.), A companion to the Vietnam War , (Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2002). McCoy, Alfred W.
Pg. 291-292
57 Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA New York: Doubleday, 2008 pg. 296
58 Ibid
59 Holm, Richard L. “Recollections of a Case Ofcer in Laos, 1962-1964.” Studies in Intelligence
47.1 (2007). Central Intelligence Agency. Central Intelligence Agency, 14 Apr. 2007. Web. 3 Nov. 2009.
<http://www.cia.gov>.
60 Correll, John T. “Igloo White.” Airforce-magazine.com. United States Air Force, Nov. 2004. Web.
3 Nov. 2009. This article provides the in depth history and background of operation Igloo White.
61 America’s secret war in Laos, 1955-75, Alfred McCoy. IN: Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buz-
zanco (eds.), A companion to the Vietnam War , (Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2002). McCoy, Alfred W.
Pg. 291
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On the mountain of Phou Pha Thi, the U.S. air force built a radar guidance center to
provide accurate information for bombing operations in North Vietnam.
62
President
Johnson called off a partial bombing campaign soon after the radar guidance center was
destroyed. Vang Pao tried to take back the base at Phou Pha Thi in late 1968, but left
after suffering many casualties in January 1969. There was a massive migration from the
Sam Neua province led by Edgar Buell, wherein over 9,000 people were evacuated from
the province by Air America. From 1968 to 1970 the Pathet Lao offensives drove Vang
Pao back and tens of thousands of Hmong became refugees.
63
In several regions of Laos
there were huge Hmong casualties and the surviving refugees could not all be own out,
so they had to endure forced marches with 10-30% dying along the way.
64
The Hmong
people suffered as a result of Vang Pao’s military failings through his reckless ways.
The CIA and Vang Pao’s strategy continued to deteriorate. In 1964, the Pathet
Lao and the neutralists took the Plain of Jars in three days and after six years of
saturation bombing and the “revolutionized irregular warfare” to keep them out of the
area, communist forces took the Plain of Jars in ve days in February, 1970.
65
The rapid
reclamation of the Plain of Jars by the Communists calls into question the effectiveness
of the American strategy. As a result of the Communist takeover of the Plain of Jars in
February, about 17,000 civilians were evacuated from the region.
66
Vang Pao was forced
to abandon several outposts because of the Pathet Lao offensives.
67
The Pathet Lao and
North Vietnamese attacked Long Tieng in 1971, and the Hmong guerilla dependents
were evacuated to Ban Son, located in between the then Communist-held Long Tieng and
administrative capital, Vientiane.
62 Woodcock, Keith. “An Air Combat First.” Studies in Intelligence 52.2 (2008). Central Intelligence
Agency. Central Intelligence Agency, 20 June 2008. Web. 3 Nov. 2009. <http://www.cia.gov>. This article
gives a brief summary of the attack on Phou Pha Thi and a description of what it was used for.
63 McCoy, Alfred W. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade Chicago:
Lawrence Hill Books, 2003. Pg 319
64 Ibid
65 Branfman, Fred. “Presidential War in Laos,” in Nina S. Adams & Alfred W. McCoy, eds., Laos:
War and Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pg. 242
66 Kamm, Henry. “Laos Will Evacuate Civilians From Plaines des Jarres.” New York Times 5 Feb.
1970: 4. Due to approaching Communist forces, Laos is evacuating an estimated number of 17,000 from
the Plain of Jars.
67 “Fighting is Reported.” New York Times 24 Jan. 1970. The Pathet Lao forces are gaining ground
and are expected to attack the Plain of Jars.
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By the middle of the year USAID estimated that 150,000 refugees, mostly Hmong,
had relocated to the Ban Son area. The refugees were conned in a smaller area with
very hot temperatures. Malaria and other diseases were spreading, and the refugees
were completely dependent on the rice drops made from USAID.
68
Some refugees ed
because it was safer in the mountains, but the rice was only dropped by USAID in the
middle of the Ban Son area where it was exposed, forcing the Hmong to choose between
food and physical safety.
69
Ban Son was a buffer zone and USAID refused to move the
refugees because the CIA thought that the refugees would ght more effectively if their
families were threatened.
70
Edgar Buell said that there was corruption throughout the
workers at USAID and that most of the organization’s money went to the employees
or high ranking ofcials in the area and not to the civilians in need. He also claimed
that USAID employees were not concerned at all with the well being of the Hmong.
71
Some workers were only concerned about the mission and themselves; working for an
organization called USAID was a complete façade for them. By this point, most Hmong
resented Vang Pao for his lack of concern for his soldier’s lives, but since USAID USAID
controlled where the rice was dropped, they have no other option to stay and ght.
72
The Battle for Skyline Ridge, which connected the Vang Pao’s base camp at
Long Tieng to a major refugee camp at Sam Thong, which took place from December
1971 to May 1972, was initially heralded as a CIA victory, but its long term success is
questionable. The communist forces and the Hmong fought back and forth over the ridge
and it was actually friendly re which destroyed most of the CIA base in Long Tieng in
February 1972.
73
68 McCoy, Alfred W. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade Chicago:
Lawrence Hill Books, 2003. Pg. 320
69 “Laotian Center Attacked.” New York Times 7 Mar. 1971: 14. This article describes the attack of
the refugee camp in Ban Son and how some refugees ee.
70 McCoy, Alfred W. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade Chicago:
Lawrence Hill Books, 2003. Pg. 320
71 “An Un-Ugly American Helps Tribesman.” New York Times 11 Oct. 1972: 12. The article is a
prole of Edgar Buell’s humanitarian efforts in Laos.
72 McCoy, Alfred W. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade Chicago:
Lawrence Hill Books, 2003. Pg. 321
73 Leary, William M. “The CIA and the ‘Secret War’ in Laos: The Battle for Skyline Ridge, 1971-
1972.” Journal of Military History 59 No. 3 (July 1995)
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Thai forces were brought in because the Hmong were weary from a decade of ghting.
74
The Hmong were outnumbered and too old or too young for military service. Edgar
Buell reported in 1968 that most Hmong recruits were ten to sixteen years old or over
forty-ve years old, because anyone older than seventeen and younger than forty-four
was either already ghting or dead.
75
Eventually they fought to a standstill and deeming
the battle not worth the time or resources North Vietnamese backed off and went to South
Vietnam.
76
It was considered a success that contributed to the ceasere agreement and a
coalition government.
77
In a matter of months the coalition government fell to the Pathet
Lao.
78
A covert war is inherently removed from the public consciousness so there is no
sense of moral responsibility for the actions that the United States makes. Constructively,
it never happened. There is no sense of restraint either, because it is not happening
anyway, so it can brutally not be happening. The understanding that the CIA had with the
Hmong people was not a fair give-and-take relationship; when the Hmong rst entered
the relationship it was not as bad as the obvious exploitation it eventually became.
The Hmong had to ght. They became dependent on USAID for food, so they had
to cooperate with their partner, the CIA.
79
If the Hmong elected not to ght they were
threatened with losing their village or death.
80
As a result of the Secret War in Laos tens
of thousands of Hmong became refugees.
81
About 30,000 ed to Thailand, but they were
starving and the Nam Province Governor said, “if they have no rice and die,
74 Buttereld, Fox. “Siege Reported Broken.” New York Times 16 Jan. 1972: 2. This article docu-
ments the ongoing ghting for Skyline ridge that is above the Long Tieng base.
75 McCoy, Alfred W. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade Chicago:
Lawrence Hill Books, 2003. Pg. 321
76 Leary, William M. “The CIA and the ‘Secret War’ in Laos: The Battle for Skyline Ridge, 1971-
1972.” Journal of Military History 59 No. 3 (July 1995)
77 Browne, Malcolm W. “Pact to End War in Laos, Including Political Plan, Is Signed by 2 Sides.”
New York Times 21 Feb. 1973: 1. This article describes the set up of an interim coalition government.
78 Kamm, Henry. “End of Laos War Has Brought No Peace to Thousands in Meo Clans.” New York
Times 13 July 1975: 2. This article describes how the Hmong are trapped in Laos and they face the threat of
the Pathet Lao
79 McCoy, Alfred W. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade Chicago:
Lawrence Hill Books, 2003. Pg. 320
80 Ibid 312
81 Kamm, Henry. “Laos Will Evacuate Civilians From Plaines des Jarres.” New York Times 5 Feb.
1970:4.
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that is their problem.”
82
The United States took a similar position. Edgar Buell called
the understanding between the Hmong tribes and the CIA a “marriage of convenience”
and that “there was no deal” between the two groups, “The [Hmong] wanted to ght
and needed arms, we wanted to stop the Communists.”
83
It was Buell’s ofcial position
that America did not have any obligation to these people. That cold statement may not
correctly illustrate how he truly felt, but when operations are covert and operatives deny
reality, then the United States can turn their back on those they once depended on.
As a result of this conict the Communists took over the government and the
Lao People’s Democratic Republic is still a communist state. When the United States
rst intervened with Lao’s elections in the late 1950s there was a coalition government.
84
The CIA’s “revolutionized warfare” techniques achieved the short term goals of not
having many American lives lost and preventing the Pathet Lao from taking any major
cities.
85
But the air war might have been harmful overall to the U.S. because it increased
recruitment for the enemy. Massive bombing gave villagers the choice to die hiding
from a bomb or to die ghting against the people who drop the bombs. Many villagers
understandably chose the latter. The air war might have helped the Pathet Lao also
because American involvement meant that the North Vietnamese had a greater stake
in the war in Laos.
86
Escalation invites further escalation. In the very short term, the
CIA managed to ght the Communists to a standstill and form a coalition government,
ultimately considering it a success despite the fact that there was a coalition government
in place before the agency became so deeply involved in Laos. Shortly after this success,
the Communists took over and held on to power tightly instead of sharing it in a coalition
government.
82 Franjola, Matt. “Meo Tribesman From Laos Facing Death in Thailand.” New York Times 15 Aug.
1975: 3. This article describes how 30,000 refugees ed from Laos to Thailand and starvation is a prob-
lem.
83 Buttereld, Fox. “Battered Laotian Tribe Fear U.S. Will Abandon It.” New York Times 11 Oct.
1972: 89. This article outlines the devastation that the Hmong have faced and that they may suffer more
without U.S. help.
84 America’s secret war in Laos, 1955-75, Alfred McCoy. IN: Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buz-
zanco (eds.), A companion to the Vietnam War , (Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2002). McCoy, Alfred W.
Pg.285-286
85 Branfman, Fred. “Presidential War in Laos,” in Nina S. Adams & Alfred W. McCoy, eds., Laos:
War and Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pg. 242
86 Ibid 241
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The War on Drugs was sacriced for the Cold War. The CIA’s aid of opium
transportation and cultivation meant that heroin went to the American troops in Vietnam
and created addicts in America when they returned.
87
This is an example of how the
CIA’s approach was reactive. The Agency can be very effective at creating short term
solutions; they were able to ght the Secret War without conventional ground troops. The
operations in Laos showed how the CIA does not plan for the long term overall stability
of regions around the world. This problem is inherent in the Central Intelligence Agency;
their task is to solve the problems presented to them, not extensively to plan foreign
policy. The CIA is the option for the Executive Branch when there are no other options,
so the Agency can use any means necessary, whether it means cultivating a country’s
economy around narcotics, torture, or putting innocent people’s lives at risk. This leads
to another consequence; the moral standing of the United States being diminished. The
U.S. could probably be found guilty of war crimes under the 1949 Geneva Convention
for not protecting non-combatants.
88
If boundaries are not set for the CIA, then the United
States will continue to subvert itself.
Heavy airpower with a minimal ground force was also considered a revolutionary
way of ghting.
89
Creating the highest mortality rate in modern warfare for a people who
were our allies should not be considered a success that should be put into practice again.
This has been used again however because it is a method of ghting a war without risking
too many American lives.
90
Since the Secret War in Laos was kept that way, secret, there
was no chance for public opposition to it. So this “revolutionary” strategy was used as
a model for Cambodia in 1969.
91
These tactics have become standard. Ronald Reagan
considered the War in Laos a success and used veterans from it to train guerillas in
Nicaragua. President Clinton used a massive air power campaign without a substantial
ground force in Iraq, Kosovo, and Bosnia.
92
87 McCoy, Alfred W. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade Chicago:
Lawrence Hill Books, 2003. Pg. 291
88 America’s secret war in Laos, 1955-75, Alfred McCoy. IN: Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buz-
zanco (eds.), A companion to the Vietnam War , (Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2002). McCoy, Alfred W.
Pg. 284
89 Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA New York: Doubleday, 2008 pg. 296
90 America’s secret war in Laos, 1955-75, Alfred McCoy. IN: Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buz-
zanco (eds.), A companion to the Vietnam War , (Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2002). McCoy, Alfred W.
Pg. 284
91 Ibid 296
92 Ibid 311
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Within two weeks of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, the United States had
already contacted the Northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban military-political organization,
to ght on the ground in Afghanistan while the United States would run an air
campaign.
93
This strategy might have saved American lives, but it does not save lives,
instead, it exposes civilians to being homeless, injured, or killed. Creating animosity
towards the United States on such a scale could at best cultivate anti-American sentiment
around the world and at worst be the rationale behind a terrorist attack. Because it saves
American lives, this strategy makes the commander-in-chief or Congress more exible; it
gives them more power because the general public can remove themselves from the idea
of bombs going off in other countries. The United States lost the war in Laos in the short
term, but in the long term it gained a new, though ineffective, tool to wage war and kill
people without Americans getting upset.
90 America’s secret war in Laos, 1955-75, Alfred McCoy. IN: Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buz-
zanco (eds.), A companion to the Vietnam War , (Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2002). McCoy, Alfred W.
Pg. 284
91 Ibid 296
92 Ibid 311
93 Rhode, David. “ Afghan Rebels Courted by U.S. and Russia to Defy Taliban; Hoping to bolster
a weak opposition that could step in if the U.S. strikes. THE OPPOSITION Long-Ignored Afghan Rebels
Courted by U.S. and Russia Ex-Rebel to Join Fray.” New York Times 25 Sept. 2001. B1. This article docu-
ments the United States contacting the Northern Alliance to ght on the side of the United States against the
Taliban in the upcoming War in Afghanistan while the United States will launch and air bombing campaign.
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The Spectacle of Rebellion: British Minor Theatres and the Pre-Revolution in
France
Amanda Detry
In 1789, Britain’s eyes were xed on France’s turbulent political arena. In just
a few decades, France’s once-formidable divine-right monarchy had been reduced to
a state of relative powerlessness by frequent warfare, burgeoning social unrest, and a
pressing nancial crisis from the nation’s incessant militarism and the court’s lavish
expenditures. The country’s somewhat surreal transformation from superpower to victim
1
under Louis XV and his successor Louis XVI captivated Britain, France’s longtime
enemy. As France’s sociopolitical scene intensied, noteworthy events quickly found
their way onto London stages with a ourish of historicity, drama, and hyperbole. These
plays, consequently, provide a revealing lens for examining Britain’s response to and
interpretation of the initial events of the French Revolution. In particular, John Dent’s
The Triumph of Liberty, performed in 1790, and The Royal Fugitives, staged in 1791,
offer intriguing samples of British sentiment surrounding the Storming of the Bastille
and Louis XVI’s ight to Varennes. Despite their decidedly French subject matter, the
plays’ intense professions of British nationalism and their inclusion of Englishmen in
leading roles suggest that Britain celebrated the rise of liberty and democracy in France,
but refused to honor the role of French citizens in promoting these virtues. Instead, the
plays seem to interpret French radicalism as the product of an undercurrent of democratic
sentiment initiated by Britain, thereby allowing Britain to take credit for such favorable
circumstances as the fall of the Bastille and Louis XVI’s recapture.
Before examining the two plays, it is useful to briey consider how British
theatrical legislation, rather than French politics, may have impacted the works’
content. After all, both pieces were staged in minor or non-patented theatre houses,
where performances were legally restricted to “illegitimate” theatrical forms in order
to encourage patronage of the patented theatres. Such forms prohibited dramatic prose
and, in its stead, prompted a rhyming, burlesque style, often comically riddled with
brief songs. This format manifests itself in both The Triumph of Liberty and The Royal
Fugitives;
2
1 Philip Anthony Brown, The French Revolution in English History (New York: Barnes & Noble,
1965), 28-29.
2 Phyllis T. Dircks, The Eighteenth-Century English Burletta (Victoria: University of Victoria Press,
1999), 14-17.
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hence, based on legislation alone, it appears as though censorship and patent restricts
granted limited agency to the playwrights and largely dened the style and content of
their works. Researchers have noted, however, that playwrights grew more creative over
time as they wrote for minor theatres. Not only did playwrights sneak prose rhetoric into
their performances, but they circumvented theatrical legislation by directing their actors
to hold signs and designing elaborate scenery and special effects to convey particular
messages.
3
Because of these techniques, considerable expressive and thematic variation
existed among minor house performances, allowing the plays to be examined as reliable
indicators of public opinion. The popularity of these plays suggests that artisans, the
upper-reaches of the working class, and the wealthier public –the typical patrons of
minor theatres
4
– may have aligned themselves with the performances’ political rhetoric.
One of the era’s most well-received political plays was John Dent’s The
Triumph of Liberty, or The Destruction of the Bastille. The play staged approximately
ninety showings and seemed to be “laid aside” rather unwillingly.
5
According to one
vague newspaper account, it was abandoned only “at the particular request of several
foreigners of distinction,” suggesting the reluctance of the Royal Circus theatre to halt
the performance’s run.
6
Such popularity afrms British interest in and engagement with
the events unfolding in France; thus, the play’s profound patriotic rhetoric can serve as
a promising indicator of public sentiment, particularly that of minor theatre audiences.
The play’s very title, The Triumph of Liberty, coupled with the opening lines, “May
gracious Heav’n aid great Freedom’s cause, / And make us happy in our country’s laws”
not only sets a democratic tone for the play, but implies that Dent’s audience would have
understood such patriotic fervor instantly, without introduction or justication.
7
3 Jane Moody, Illegitimate Theatre in London, 1770-1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), 25-28.
4 Marc Brodie, “Free trade and cheap theatre: sources of politics for the nineteenth-cen-
tury London poor,” Social History 28, no. 3 (October 2003): 349. http://pdfserve.informaworld.
com/681977_731567687_714042817.pdf (accessed March 21, 2010).
5 “Royal Circus,” World (1787), April 23, 1790, under “Classied ads,” http://nd.galegroup.com.
ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/ (accessed November 28, 2009).
6 “Royal Circus,” World (1787), July 3, 1790, under “Classied ads,” http://nd.galegroup.com.
ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/ (accessed November 28, 2009).7 John Dent, The Bastille: a musical en-
tertainment of one act, (London, 1790), 1. http://nd.galegroup.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/ (accessed
November 28, 2009).
7 John Dent, The Bastille: a musical entertainment of one act, (London, 1790), 1. http://nd.gale-
group.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/ (accessed November 28, 2009).
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This sense of preliminary understanding can be explained by Britain’s role in the
Enlightenment, the rhetoric of which resonates strongly throughout the play and identies
the Bastille’s fall not as a distinctly French movement, but as a consequence of the
decades-old spirit of British Enlightenment in action.
“Reason” – a key element of Enlightenment discourse – is mentioned three times
in The Triumph of Liberty as a principal characteristic of an ideal nation, implying an
association between French political sentiment and the British Enlightenment. “The
patriotism of France is no longer prejudice, it is now founded in reason, it is now xed on
truth”, Dent’s protagonist, Henry, asserts in his dramatic nal speech
8
— a translation of
the actual words of Moreau de Saint-Méry, a French revolutionary leader, to his troops.
9
Reason is also called upon to “rule each part” of France and to “spread around the
Gallic [French] name”, as though Enlightenment principles, not citizens, are the nation’s
lifeblood.
10
In Henry’s oration, Enlightenment reason asserts itself as an independent
force, rising up in France to overthrow a symbol of despotism – the Bastille – while
promising reform to the rest of Europe. The fact that Henry’s words are based on the
actual words of a French revolutionary only adds support to the British perspective
that the French did not storm the Bastille per se, but that the prison fell to men infused
with Enlightenment fervor. In all likelihood, the play’s audience would not have heard
Saint-Mery’s speech prior to seeing The Triumph of Liberty. The play, therefore, delivers
authentic history to its audience, yet places French rhetoric in an Englishman’s mouth. In
this manner, Britain was able to downplay French citizens’ roles in revolutionary activity
and assert itself as the true leader of the attack on the Bastille due to its self-proclaimed
leadership in the advancement of Enlightenment ideals.
Britain’s specic claim to the Enlightenment springs from Englishmen like
Horace Walpole, who according to historian Philip Anthony Brown, viewed the Bastille
incident as something close to a century-late imitation of Britain’s own Glorious
Revolution, which was thought to be a precursor to the European Enlightenment.
11
In the
words of John Locke, the Revolution of 1688 saw “the people of England, [with] love
of their just and natural rights, [and] their resolution to preserve them, [save] the nation
when it was on the very
8 Ibid., 21.
9 Jeffrey N. Cox, “The French Revolution in the English Theater,” in History & Myth: Essays on
English Romantic Literature, ed. Stephen C. Behrendt (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990), 35.
10 Dent, 23.
11 Brown, 37.
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brink of slavery and ruin.”
12
Based on this Enlightenment evocation of “just and natural
rights,” Britain could very well perceive itself as a forerunner of the Enlightenment and,
consequently, the nation responsible for France’s victory. Moreover, William Pitt himself
identied France’s political fervor as “an approximation … to those sentiments which are
the characteristic features of every British subject,” thus afrming the revolution’s roots
in English history.
13
The title of Dent’s play also lends support to Britain’s interpretation of the
revolution as an extension of English values. The title appearing on the printed version
of the work is historic rather than celebratory: The Bastille. For marketing purposes,
however, newspapers removed titular references to France, naming the play The Triumph
of Liberty in an attempt to attract theatre-goers. This switch suggests that the play
had a conscious agenda of celebrating a transcendent concept of Liberty rather than a
specically French political and social movement.
With respect to the performance itself, this trend is most evident in the
prominence of British citizens in the play. Both Matilda (Henry’s love interest) and her
father identify England as the land of their birth, and both characters play a critical role
in Henry’s decision to lead the attack on the Bastille. Once Matilda informs Henry of
the “ten thousand volunteers … resolv’d to raze the Bastille to the ground.”
14
Henry
decides to join them and rescue Matilda’s father, imprisoned in the prison’s dungeons.
The Englishman’s incarceration in the Bastille can be read as an afrmation of British
supremacy: Henry must ght French despotism, embodied by the Bastille, which
endangers Britain’s efforts to spread purity and Enlightenment across Europe. Britain,
therefore, becomes an embodiment of virtue in the play, a damsel-in-distress threatened
by the corrupt morals of France. Henry’s cry upon seeing the Bastille’s ruins promotes
this theme as he champions the glory of Britain in light of French tyranny:
O! Happy England, be thy courts rever’d,
Where no man’s punish’d till he rst is heard:
Where Magna Charta checks despotic fury,
12 John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (London, 1772), 1. http://books.google.com/books/ (ac-
cessed March 22, 2010).
13 Brown, 38.
14 Dent, 3.
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And every crime’s determin’d by a jury.
Such were the laws which God rst taught to men,
And such the laws which France shall have again.
…
Down let us trample on these Hell-born laws,
And rise like England in great Freedom’s cause.
15
This soliloquy declares that French despotism threatens liberty across Europe and that
Britain’s example ought to lead France’s transformation; thus, it seems to offer an
adequate explanation for Britain’s celebration of the Bastille’s fall, despite the nation’s
longtime rivalry with France. The play’s nal scene, however, offers the most compelling
evidence for Britain’s interpretation of the Bastille incident as France’s rst baby steps
towards English glory.
The scene begins with Henry’s rallying speech to French citizens, which
adopts a prose structure strikingly uncharacteristic of – and illegal in – minor theatres.
Consequently, it begs to be taken seriously: “Electors of Paris, Citizens, Frenchmen!
The glorious event is now arrived, when France quits her chains, emerges from her
darkness, and is warmed to animation, by the bright beams of the Sun of Liberty.”
16
This
glorication of France, though referential to the spirit of the event, seems out-of-place
in a British play, and it is hard to imagine its rallying quality affecting English citizens.
However, as the speech unfolds, it becomes evident that its nationalistic language
prepares British theatergoers for a lavish rhetorical and visual display of English, rather
than French, patriotic frenzy, beginning with a rapid – indeed, unexpected – dissolution
of French loyalty into British glory at the conclusion of Henry’s speech: “We [the French]
shall hence-forth share the palm of glory, and the blessings of liberty with the immortal
sons of freedom—Englishmen!”
17
This remarkable rhetorical shift precedes the descent of
Britannia, the female personication of Britain, onto the stage, clutching the “transparent
portraits of the King and Queen of Britain.” Her speech, moreover, effectively
overshadows Henry’s prose celebration of France:
Amidst the thousand joys that inward glow,
Your freedom to yourselves and me you owe.
From Britannia you caught the Patriot ame,
15 Ibid., 16.
16 Ibid., 20.
17 Ibid., 22.
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On Britain’s plan then build your future fame.
Let liberty and reason rule each part,
And form the Magna Charta of the heart.
Nor had your city e’er with blood been stain’d,
Had virtues like our George and Charlotte’s reign’d.
18
The scene culminates with French citizens hailing Britannia, to whom they “owe
[their] liberty,” asking her to “ever hold control, / And bless us from pole to pole.”
19
This
hyperbolic rhetorical and visual display clearly emphasizes Britain’s superiority.
Although it has been explained as an overeager cover for the anti-monarchical, and
therefore seditious, mindset the play’s action may have evoked in the public conscience,
the passage could also be read without reference to the monarchy as a heartfelt
afrmation of Britain as a global superpower.
20
In either case, the Bastille seems almost
forgotten in light of the newfound nationalistic fervor, indicating that Britain’s fascination
with the Bastille has little to do with the prison itself, or even with France. Rather, the
revolutionary spectacle is rooted in a spirit of liberty and Enlightenment thought to be
uniquely promoted and cultivated by the British.
In The Triumph of Liberty, the Bastille becomes a metaphor for despotism and the
halt of democracy, and the play’s language suggests that its fall did not prove the valor
of the French people, but represented the dissolution of tyranny and the rise of liberty
and honest, fervent patriotism throughout Europe. These values, in turn, were claimed
by Britain, who saw itself as an embodiment of Enlightenment ideals and a worthy
role-model for still-developing nations, including France. Thus, British citizens could
celebrate the Bastille as their as their victory: a spreading of the Enlightenment values the
English had embodied and perhaps initiated in the Glorious Revolution.
The same trends of British nationalism, leadership, and Enlightenment
dissemination continue, though to a lesser degree, in The Royal Fugitives, a somewhat
less-popular, yet still well-received performance. The anonymous play, based on Louis
XVI’s ight to Varennes, differs strikingly from the grandeur of The Triumph of Liberty
by adhering rmly to the whimsical, and highly exaggerated, burletta format. Such
18 Ibid., 22-23
19 Ibid., 24.
20 George Taylor, The French Revolution and the London Stage, 1789-1805 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000), 45
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orthodoxy provides an intriguingly different, albeit increasedly complex view of British
attitudes towards France in the beginnings of the Revolution.
Newspaper advertisements for The Royal Fugitives emphasize the play’s
historicity, as though an honest reenactment of the event was itself sufcient to draw
British theatergoers. Newspapers published a list of thirteen topics related to the king’s
ight that patrons could expect to witness in the play, ranging from “Preparations for the
Escape” to minute details regarding “The Passport demanded by the Governor.”
21
These
details illustrate British fascination with the wholly unexpected ight of the royal family,
yet the play is far more intricate than a simple word-for-word translation of “facts” from
British newspaper reports into the rhymed recitative of burletta. Marked by ceaseless
ridicule of Louis XVI’s actions, a giddy English narrator, and an arguably valiant
portrayal of French citizens and the National Assembly, the performance offers a complex
view of late eighteenth-century France which ultimately asserts Britain’s political and
moral supremacy while casting doubt on France’s competency as a nation.
Like The Triumph of Liberty, The Royal Fugitives begins with an English citizen
taking the stage, this time as a narrator-like gure who witnesses the spectacle of the
king’s ight in his travels to France. He opens the play with his reasons for visiting the
country, arranging them to the tune of a popular tavern song for comic effect:
I’m Master Smart, an Englishman,
Who teach the folks to dance;
To learn what fashions here I can,
Am I come o’er to France:
For now to caper all begin,
As prov’d here ev’ry day;
The difference is, we gure in
While others hop away.
22
Although seemingly irrelevant to the king’s ight, this song in fact forms the
framework for the play. “We gure in” refers to the success and effectiveness of the
British monarchy compared to that of France under Louis XVI, who “hop[ped] away” or
ed the country. This language manifests itself even more explicitly later in the play:
21 “France in an Uproar,” World (1787), July 18, 1791, under “Classied ads” http://nd.galegroup.
com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/ (accessed November 28, 2009).
22 The Royal Fugitives, or France in an Uproar, Third ed. (London, 1791), 3. http://nd.galegroup.
com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/ (accessed November 28, 2009).2
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“The royal folks who jig’d away you know, / Are now obliged to gure in.”
23
Smart’s
direct response to the news of the monarch’s escape also extends the comparison: “Poo,
[the king’s ight,] ‘tis a Country dance.—In Summer weather, / Great folks dance to the
country all together.”
24
The reduction of the king’s ight to a dance step, coupled with
its original description in the context of a drinking song, grossly trivializes the event,
as though a dumbfounded Britain cannot fathom such irresponsible royal behavior—
especially in light of their own, functional monarchy. Indeed, the play’s characterization
of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette is downright childish and strips any hint of
monarchical dignity from their persons:
King. Now while they change our Horses—let us, pray,
Have some refreshments.
Queen. But this delay
May bafe all our hopes—
King. Cost what it will!
I’ll stop four hours at least—
Queen. Oh stubborn still—
Had it not been for you—ve days ago
We’d have eloped—but you were faint and slow.
25
This less-than-gracious bickering of the king and queen unabashedly indicates Britain’s
disapproval of the monarchs; however, it cannot be automatically extended to a full-edged
criticism of France as a nation due to the play’s slightly more ambiguous depiction of the
National Assembly. Hence, this text alone cannot support the notion that Britain laid claim
to the roots of the French Revolution and marked itself as morally superior to France, as
Dent’s Triumph of Liberty suggests.
In light of Louis XVI’s unsympathetic portrayal, the portraits of the National
Assembly and the people of France are fairly positive. Monsieur Drouet, a key historical
player in the recapture of Louis XVI, speaks for the French people as he declares, “We’re
23 Ibid., 17.
24 Ibid., 5.
25 Ibid., 10.
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friends to liberty as you shall see, / And are resolv’d to die or to live free.”
26
One scene
later, the Assembly supports this fervent patriotism by thanking “those brave men, who by
the aid of heaven, / The Royal Fugitives have stop’d.” Furthermore, the performance ends
with a rallying song in the Assembly, calling on “Parisians [to] rejoice, / With unanimous
voice” at the end of “terror” in the country.
27
The National Assembly’s democratic voice,
however, is complicated by Smart’s one-line melodic commentary, occurring immediately
prior to the aforementioned incident. Parodying a comic opera tune, Smart sings, “Then
let’s with the Assembly unite, &c. / For I hear their new steps will delight, &c. / But if, do
you see, there’s a rout, &c. / Why, as we danc’d in, we’ll dance out. &c.”
28
His lyrics seem
to question the stability of the Assembly, as though Britain, having watched French politics
undergo sensational transformation, would be unsurprised by the institution’s failure.
Not only are the performance’s musical numbers explicitly critical of the French
regime, but they serve a more subtle satirical purpose by parodying period songs, none
of which (with one exception) are appropriate to the play’s subject matter. The song prior
to the king’s capture, for example, already humorous due to its childlike treatment of a
climactic situation, becomes far more inappropriate when examined against its original
lyrics. As a mob gathers around the king’s carriage, Dupont, a defender of the king, reacts
to the revolutionary crowd with a plebian ditty: “They’re here, sir,--they’re here, sir, / All
full of grief and fear, sir, / Come let us see / What it can be, / They’re here, sir—here!”
29
However, once this song is juxtaposed with its original version – a version which the
audience would have known – all credibility is stripped from Dupont and his beloved
monarch: “Twas you sir, ‘twas you sir, / I tell you nothing new, sir, / ‘Twas you that kiss’d
the pretty girl, / ‘Twas you, sir, you.”
30
In light of this seemingly inappropriate association
between dedication to the monarchy and the playful kissing of a young woman, it appears
the playwright must have favored the Assembly over the monarch and his supporters.
Furthermore, the only “appropriate” song in the performance – a call-to-arms tune that is
slightly adapted to better describe the peoples’ pursuit of the king – operates in favor of the
National Assembly
26 Ibid., 16.
27 Ibid., 19.
28 Ibid., 18.
29 Ibid., 9.
30 Lord Mornington, “’Twas You, Sir,” in Grigg’s Southern and Western Songster: Being a Choice
Collection of the Most Fashionable Songs Many of Which are Original (Philadelphia: Grigg & Elliot,
1836), 180. http://books.google.com/books/ (accessed March 21, 2010).
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by linking the revolutionaries’ cause with a traditional militaristic melody.
31
Thus,
the playwright and his audience appear to be celebrating the Assembly’s democratic
principles, yet simultaneously questioning the institution’s legitimacy and, in turn,
France’s competency as a nation.
From this analysis, it appears that The Royal Fugitives and The Triumph of Liberty
have similar agendas: namely, that both plays maintain Britain’s moral superiority to
France. The Royal Fugitives’ unattering portrayal of Louis XVI can be likened to
The Triumph of Liberty’s lavish nale in that both bring glory to the British monarchy.
Moreover, both performances explicitly praise England’s king and queen. In The Royal
Fugitives, a minor character compares England’s monarchs to their runaway French
counterparts, thereby asserting the British crown’s honorable character: “Long life
say I, to our King and Queen / And family! – they’re always to be seen.”
32
In similar
fashion, Henry’s concluding speech in Dent’s play speaks of Britain’s “virtue” as the
“ame” France must catch.
33
In each case, the events of the French Revolution are used
to champion British values as supreme and celebrate the appearance of these values on
French soil.
While the plays are similar in many respects, The Royal Fugitives’ ambiguous
portrayal of the National Assembly lends itself to a more complicated picture of Britain’s
perception of France. Because the Assembly is responsible for halting the activities of
the grossly negligent French monarch, it admits applause: a nal, patriotic hymn rings
through the Assembly at the play’s conclusion, championing liberty and valor, peace
and tranquility.
34
Nevertheless, the performance’s overall mocking tone – and, more
specically, Smart’s one-line stab at the Assembly – does not allow the French institution
to escape ridicule. The fact that an Englishman delivers the only suggestive line against
the Assembly is especially telling, as Smart’s dialogue seems to scorn the institution
simply because it is French. Based on Britain’s longstanding militaristic rivalry with
France, it only seems appropriate for the British to favor the democratic qualities arising
in France, yet condemn French institutions themselves.
This highly political reading of the play nds additional support when read
against newspaper accounts of the king’s ight. Because The Royal Fugitives markets
itself as historically accurate and contains an impressive scope of details found in the
31 The Royal Fugitives, 15.
32 Ibid., 6.
33 Ibid., 23.
34 Ibid., 19.
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the press, it is important to note signicant differences between newspaper accounts of
the spectacle and its reenactment on stage. According to historian Ann Dean, newspapers
like the London Chronicle were highly conscious of England’s active public sphere; as
a result, stories often assumed a gossipy tone by publishing information obtained from
both the British court and circles of political conversation and conjecture.
35
In light of the
newspapers’ encouragement of and contribution to political discussion, the burlettas can
be seen as direct and calculated responses to late eighteenth-century periodicals. This, in
turn, lends credence to the idea that playwrights and their audiences were conscious that
their writings and patronage endorsed a particular form of political rhetoric. In this light,
it follows that the plays’ propagation of Britannic nationalism was not incidental, but a
conscious political act.
The Royal Fugitives’ unapologetic ridicule of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette,
for example, departs strikingly from the London Chronicle’s favorable interpretation
of the monarchs. The newspaper account reads, “In the history of events and causes,
there never has happened … so wonderful and well planned an escape, as the silent and
unperceived departure of their Christian majesties and their family, from those vigilant
vigilant guards placed around them.”
36
Such language portrays the king and queen as
spectacular, heroic gures escaping the “threat” of the National Assembly—not as
bickering, incompetent runaways. Similarly, Lloyd’s Evening Post remarked that:
The King, Queen, and Dauphin of France, who had had the good Fortune to escape
from the Castle of the Tuileries on Tuesday last, and to reach St. Menouil in Champagne
without being discovered, were suspected however by the Post-Master there, who
furnished them with horses to proceed farther on their journey; but the instant after their
departure, the recollection of the King’s gure, and an ill-timed scruple of conscience,
struck his restless imagination.
37
Once again, this excerpt paints a highly favorable image of the king that is grossly
contradicted in The Royal Fugitives. The play’s inconsistency with the press, however,
35 Ann C. Dean, “Court Culture and Political News in London’s Eighteenth-Century Newspapers,”
ELH 73, no. 3 (Fall 2006). http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/elh/summary/v073/73.3dean.html (accessed March
22, 2010).
36 “Postscript,” London Chronicle, June 25, 1791. http://nd.galegroup.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.
edu/ (accessed November 28, 2009).
37 “Retaking of the Royal Family of France,” Lloyd’s Evening Post, June 24, 1791, under “News.”
http://nd.galegroup.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/ (accessed November 28, 2009).
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illustrates the consciousness with which it was produced. Though The Royal Fugitives
asserts itself as historically accurate, it does not hesitate to adopt a radically different
tone in its presentation of the newspaper’s facts and omit noteworthy details, such as the
King’s letter justifying his departure, which might have given credibility to the French
crown. These inconsistencies suggest that the play consciously entered the sphere of
public discourse that periodicals encouraged, and in doing so, both popularized and
dramatized political discussion. Moreover, its nationalistic rhetoric dened Britain’s
culture of socialization, and particularly its theatre-goers, as innately patriotic; thus, it
lavished additional praise upon the public discussion of newspapers in coffeehouses,
theatres, and similar social circles throughout London.
The Triumph of Liberty and The Royal Fugitives both reveal Britain’s fascination
with France’s suspenseful, spectacular politics in the late eighteenth century. More
interestingly, they indicate that a segment of Britain’s population – particularly working
and upper-class minor theatre patrons – saw such events as manifestations of British
morality abroad rather than representations of French achievement. In portraying Britain,
the mother of Enlightenment, as the leader of France’s ideological movement, the works
identied themselves as propaganda that had consciously adapted newspaper reports for
their own purposes and could therefore enter the discourse of the public sphere with a
distinct political and patriotic message. The plays are also useful in an apolitical sense
in that they reveal the great fascination and curiosity the French Revolution provoked in
Britain’s public sphere. While English patriotism and mockery of France were certainly
noteworthy elements of the performances, eighteenth-century audiences were rst
drawn to theatres by newspapers that claimed the plays would reenact historical truths.
The British stage, then, became a means of deciphering what had become a wholly
unpredictable state of affairs in France. English theatres had no answer to the looming
questions posed by the revolution; nevertheless, they used their performances to keep
the present state of France – and the glorious state of Britain – alive and vivid for their
audiences.
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Citing Thanatology: An Ethical Response to the Medical Data of Nazi Doctors
Brett Bernsteen
Case I of the Nuremburg Trials, which prosecuted members of the Nazi medical
community involved in unethical experimentation during the Third Reich, demonstrated
to the world the inhumane exploitation of concentration camp prisoners in the name of
science. However, data acquired from these experiments continues to be published in
medical journals over half a century after the end of World War II. The modern use of
Nazi experimental data is both unethical and socially irresponsible; as Dr. Leonard J.
Hoenig, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Southern Florida, argues,
“To do so would, in my opinion, lend a measure of dignity to these wicked studies and at
the same time insult the memory of the victims by seeming to justify their murder.”
1
It is important to note that inhumane experiments are not unique to Nazi
Germany; among the earliest known human tests was Richard P. Strong’s injection of
Filipino prisoners with cholera in 1906; Strong was Professor of Tropical Medicine at
Harvard Medical School.
2
Scientists in Tuskegee, Alabama, directed a long-term study
of syphilis starting in 1932, infamously injecting 400 black patients with the disease and
studying the effects of the untreated infection until 1972.
3
The United States thus has a
history of inhumane experimentation targeting the same groups as the Nazis – that is,
prisoners and racial minorities.
At the outbreak of World War II, eugenics and racial hygiene were academic
subjects at elite institutions like Cambridge, Harvard, Columbia, and the University of
Virginia, which have before and since then trail blazed the path to modern medicine.
4
German racial science gained an outspoken advocate in Adolf Hitler,
1 Freedman, Monroe H., Leonard J. Hoenig, F. Barbara Orlans, and Howard M. Shapiro. “Nazi
Research:
Too Evil to Cite.” Hastings Center Report. 15.4 (1985): 31
2 “They Were Cheap and Available: Prisoners as Research Subjects in Twentieth Century America.”
British Medical Journal 315:1437
3 Lombardo, Paul. “Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Virginia, Eugenics, and Buck v. Bell.” Claude
Moore Health Sciences Library. University of Virginia.
4 Seidelman, William E. “Nuremburg Lamentation: For the Forgotten Victims of Medical Science.”
BMJ:
British Medical Journal. 313.7070 (1996): 1463.
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49
whose sweeping declarations in Mein Kampf justied exactly what the Nuremburg
defendants would be on trial for years later: “Without this possibility of using lower
human beings, the Aryan would never have been able to take his rst steps toward his
future culture… he would not have arrived at a technology which is now gradually
permitting him to do without these beasts.”
5
Dr. Ernst Rudin, a German physician internationally recognized in the elds
of psychiatric genetics and schizophrenia and the author of The Law of Hereditarily
Diseased Offspring, designed the Nazi sterilization programs, a rst step towards
the controlled reproduction of undesirable races.
6
Acting as “selectors”, Nazi doctors
annually targeted and sterilized approximately 50,000 Jews, Poles, and Sinti and
Roma gypsies in order to ensure the racial health of the nation.
7
Other “asocials” like
communists and homosexuals experienced the same kind of persecution. Through
this kind of work, Rudin and other leaders of the medical profession legitimized the
devaluation of human life and helped establish the legal and operational framework of the
Holocaust. Concentration camps, lled with thousands of potential test subjects, provided
the doctors with unique laboratories for their research.
8
Although the vast majority of
prisoners died during the experiments and most of the records were destroyed during the
last days of the war, enough evidence survived to eventually bring several defendants to
court at Nuremburg.
9
Who were the criminals?
At the center of the experiments in Auschwitz was Josef Mengele, a renowned
specialist in oral embryology, cleft palate, and harelip. Known to victims as the “Angel
of Death”, he stood at the entrance to Auschwitz and hand-selected each victim, usually
Sinti and Roma twins. Under the supervision of eugenicist Dr. Otmar von Verschuer,
Mengele analyzed the twins’ response to injected pathogens; one twin was infected, the
other kept as a control.
10
5 Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. Cambridge: Houghton Mifin Company, 1943: 294.
6 Seidelman, William E. “Mengele Medicus: Medicine’s Nazi Heritage.” Milbank Quarterly. 66.2
(1988): 222.
7 Seidelman, “Nuremburg Lamentation” 1463
8 Seidelman, “Mengele Medicus” 226
9 Mellanby, Kenneth. “Medical Experiments on Human Beings in Concentration Camps in Nazi
Germany.”
BMJ: British Medical Journal. 1.4490 (1947): 149.
10 Koenig, Robert. “Reopening the Darkest Chapter in German Science.” Science. 288.5471 (2000):
1576.
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Mengele’s further experiments included dyes intended to change eye color (often causing
blindness) and, perhaps most diabolical of all, the creation of articial Siamese twins by
sewing children together. Immediately following a procedure, Mengele executed his child
subjects with a lethal injection and compared their autopsies to examine post-mortem
differences in the internal organs.
11
Dr. Sigmund Rascher supervised further experiments at Dachau, where
researchers explored the physiological trauma of marine and air warfare.
12
Prisoners,
often coerced under the false pretense of release, were stripped and exposed to freezing
temperatures, locked in low-pressure chambers and deprived of oxygen (recreating
atmospheric conditions of up to 68,000 feet), and forced into water basins that lowered
their body temperature to as little as 25º Celsius. Most victims were killed as a result of
the experiments, and the few who did survive never knew what exactly they had been
exposed to, making the diagnosis of future ailments extremely difcult.
The experiments at Auschwitz and Dachau only scratch the surface of the
atrocities committed by Nazi doctors in concentration camps throughout Europe. Further
studies exposed prisoners to malaria, mustard gas, sulfanilamide, seawater, typhus,
bombs, and countless toxic chemicals. As early as 1942, the Nazis presented their
ndings in a seminar entitled “Medical Questions on Marine and Winter Emergencies”,
attended by close to 100 leading scientists and physicians.
13
Experiments continued up
until the last days of the war, the doctors rmly believing in the value of their research to
the Nazi cause.
The world’s rst international criminal trials were held at Nuremburg between
November 1945 and April 1949; Case I of the trials persecuted Nazi crimes in the
medical eld. An American military tribunal charged twenty doctors and three
administrators with the following crimes: Common Design or Conspiracy, War Crimes,
Crimes Against Humanity, and, in ten cases, Membership of a Criminal Organization.
14
Prosecutors used the term thanatology to describe the science of producing death, and
argued that “a profound humanity had presaged” by the Nazi doctors.
11 Goliszek, Andrew. In the Name of Science: A History of Secret Programs, Medical Research, and
Human Experimentation. 1st ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003: 97.
12 Spitz, Vivien. Doctors From Hell: The Horric Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans. 1st ed.
Boulder: Sentient Publications, 2005: 65, 85
13 Seidelman, “Mengele Medicus” 229
14 Mellanby 149
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51
They warned against “the alchemy of the modern age, the transmogrication of subject
into object, of man into a thing against which the destructive urge may wreak its fury
without constraint”.
15
The Nuremburg Trials succeeded in establishing preventative
regulations against medical crimes; in their defense, the doctors had pointed to the lack
of explicit rules governing medical research in Nazi Europe. The Nuremburg Code of
1947 introduced ethical standards in the eld of human experimentation, including a ban
on minors and “incompetent” subjects.
16
Most importantly, the Code stipulated that any
experimental procedure required the informed consent of the patient.
17
Justice for the victims, however, was hardly served. Of the 23 defendants in
Case I, only fteen were convicted and seven hanged.
18
Many of the doctors claimed to
have been mere pawns of the Nazi regime and thus escaped punishment. The American
tribunal accepted this excuse in far too many cases, explaining, “The fact that a person
commits a crime pursuant to the order of his government or of a superior, while not
freezing him from responsibility for the crime, may be considered mitigation”.
19
This policy provided a loophole for the Nazi doctors to jump through, whereas later
Nuremburg defendants were not afforded this luxury.
The tribunal also failed to prosecute the rest of the German medical community
involved in the experiments; the only renowned scientists brought to trial were Gerhard
Rose (sentenced to life in prison) and Paul Rostock (acquitted).
20
The vast majority of
culpable academics evaded conviction and recognition of their crimes, and have since
been honored with bronze busts and eponymous lecture halls on college campuses
throughout Germany.
21
Dr. Otto von Verschuer, who provided Mengele with a grant from
the German Research Council and directly supervised his experiments at Auschwitz, was
appointed Chair of Genetics at the University of Münster in 1951.
22
15 Boozer, Jack S. “Children of Hippocrates: Doctors in Nazi Germany.” Annals of the American
Academy
of Political and Social Science. 450. (1980): 94.
16 Vollmann, Jochen, and Rolf Winau. “Informed Consent in Human Experimentation Before the
Nuremburg Code.” BMJ: British Medical Journal. 313.7070 (1996): 1446.
17 Vollmann and Winau 1445
18 Koenig 1577
19 Boozer 85
20 Seidelman, “Nuremburg Lamentation” 1463
21 Ibid., 1464
22 Seidelman, “Mengele Medicus” 228
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Mengele himself evaded prosecution, eeing to South America while his legacy as a
pioneer in the eld of embryology survived for several decades. The United States played
a controversial role in the escape of Nazi doctors from punishment; through a program
called “Project Paperclip” political amnesty was given to more than 800 doctors and sci-
entists whose medical expertise was considered crucial to Western defense against the So-
viet Union in the early days of the Cold War. The United States was determined to “take
full advantage of those signicant developments which are deemed vital to our national
security”.
23
The failure of the Nuremburg Trials to prosecute these criminals was underlined
by the failure of the Nuremburg Code; doctors across the world rejected the new regula-
tions, and some at Harvard Medical School “found, and still nd, the stringency of the
NC’s rst principle all too odious”.
24
The World Medical Association, known for its high
number of members with direct ties to the Nazi party,
25
issued a revision to the Code
called the Declaration of Helsinki in 1964.
26
Doctors were no longer required to obtain
consent, but rather asked to do so “if at all possible”. This meant to imply that mentally
handicapped patients could not give consent, but the ambiguous phrasing made it signi-
cantly easier for doctors to avoid obtaining consent in future experiments.
Furthermore, the judges at Nuremburg never addressed the issue of surviving
Nazi data. Despite the unethical way in which it was obtained, there are no established
restrictions on the publication and distribution of medical information accumulated by
doctors in concentration camps. More than 45 medical articles published since 1945
have been based on this questionable data, especially research concerning hypothermia,
malaria, and typhus.
27
None so much as mention the inhumane nature of the experiments
upon which they are founded:
28
“I’m chagrined that someone would refer to those experi-
ments without mentioning something about the way the information was gained,” laments
Ronald Banner of the Jewish Medical Study Group. “It shows a lack of conscience. There
are times that something, morally, stinks so bad that you have to hold
23 Goliszek 99
24 Goliszek 121
25 Seidelman, “Nuremburg Lamentation” 1466
26 Goliszek 326
27 Moe, Kristin. “Should Nazi Research Data Be Cited?” Hastings Center Report. 14.6 (1984): 5.
28 Post, Stephen G. “Nazi Data and the Rights of Jews.” Journal of Law and Religion. 6.2 (1988):
431.
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your nose even while you refer to it.”
29
The continued publication of Nazi medical data
also compromises the integrity of science itself; cruel experiments on sick, emaciated
prisoners hardly apply to a healthy population, and tests performed in Dachau by Hans
Eppiger yielded the same results as his own previous experiments on animals.
30
So the question remains, what should be done with this corrupt information?
A popular suggestion has been the practice of non-use as a method of memorializing
the victims of Nazi doctors. Howard M. Shapiro of Yale University believes we need
to “express our revulsion at some activities, even if that revulsion means the loss of
something irreplaceable”.
31
Others have argued that the data belongs solely to the
victims of the experiments; in 2000 there were over one hundred members of Children
of Auschwitz: Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments (CANDLES).
32
Eva Mozes Kor, a survivor
of Mengele’s twin experiments, has suggested that the Nazi lab books be shred and put
on display at the camps, for all to see but not to use.
33
This form of memorial prevents
the exploitation of unethical information but ensures that evidence of the Nazi atrocities
will be preserved. A further step in rectifying this tragedy is a formal apology from
the German medical community, which survivors believe to be “building on top of
Auschwitz”.
34
However, the Max Planck Society, Germany’s most renowned research
institution, has refused to issue what it calls a “hollow gesture”, claiming, “You need to
know what you are apologizing for”.
35
Survivors hope for a sincere apology issued within
their lifetimes, although the chance of this occurring seems bleak at the present time.
29 Moe 7.
30 Freedman, Hoenig, Orlans, & Shapiro 32.
31 Ibid.,31.
32 Koenig 1577
33 Mastow 415
34 Ibid.,404.
35 Koenig 1577
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How Night Baseball Brightened America During the Great Depression
Ryan Panzer
Throughout the Great Depression, Americans struggled with unemployment, a
failing stock market, and an absence of hope. The crisis affected individuals as well as the
most ingrained American institutions. Professional baseball, both at the minor and Major
League levels, faced severe nancial troubles during the Depression. With a fan base
largely unable to sacrice the prospect of a day’s wages for nine innings and a hot dog,
baseball was succumbing in popularity to sports more aware of their fan bases’ needs.
Feeding one’s family and staving off unemployment became the new “pastimes” for
many. Baseball, like many American institutions, faced an abrupt ending. In desperation,
National League club owners unanimously agreed to introduce night baseball on an
exploratory basis, hoping to bring fans back to the park and raise revenues. Modeled
after the widespread use of oodlights in many of America’s minor leagues, the novelty
of night baseball saved the game from the Depression. By adapting to the needs of the
American people, attendance at every Major League game increased by the thousands,
providing a daily escape for people in desperate times.
The crisis confronting professional baseball in the early 1930s stemmed
from two signicant problems: an inability to draw fans to the ballpark, and a decline in
the game’s popularity. The lack of fans was simply a result of afternoon game times. In
the midst of a desperate search for a day’s wages, few Americans could afford to get to
the ballpark in the middle of the day. In 1930, as the Depression was still in its infancy,
the average attendance at Major League games was 8,211 fans.
1
From 1931 until 1933,
total attendance fell from 8.4 million to only 6 million in 1933, the lowest attendance
in 16 years.
2
By 1935, the average attendance just before Major League Baseball’s rst
night game, was a mere 5,982 attendees.
3
This problem affected both elite and struggling
ball clubs. The New York Yankees, champions of the 1932 World Series and perennial
pennant
1 Historical Attendance Figures for Major League Baseball. Sports Reference LLC. 7 Apr. 2009
<www.baseball-reference.com>.
2 Voigt, David Q. “Counting, Courting, and Controlling Ball Park Fans.” Baseball History. Vol. 2.
Westport: Meckler Books, 1989. 98-99.
3 Ibid.
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55
contenders, saw their average attendance drop from 12,337 in 1932 to only 8,826 during
1935.
4
saw their average attendance drop from 12,337 in 1932 to only 8,826 during
1935.
5
Even the home-run heroics of Babe Ruth were not enough to lure fans to Yankee
Stadium in the middle of the afternoon.
The crisis was also caused by a steady decline in the sport’s popularity. As
Americans reexamined discretionary expenditures, many completely eliminated baseball
from both family and institutional budgets. Other sports, including rowing and boxing,
were more affordable to watch, play, and nance. At the collegiate level, many colleges
cut their baseball teams to increase budget room for other sports.
6
The funding allotted
for baseball was then redistributed to sports that were becoming more popular among
college students.
7
sports were not the only sports to surpass baseball in popularity. As
attendance at baseball games waned, Dale Gear, president of the Des Moines Baseball
Club, expressed frustration over golf’s growing popularity, especially among the upper
class.
8
Gear also mentioned that “mediocre college football games” consistently drew
thousands, but only for contests under the lights. With these observations, Gear would be
instrumental in bringing night baseball to the minor leagues and making baseball in Iowa
popular once again.
The teams with the most losses had the lowest attendances during the
Depression. The Washington Senators, despite making the World Series and drawing
437,533 fans in the 1933 season, nished in 7th place in 1934.
9
In the same year,
Washington posted one of the league’s worst attendances, drawing a total of only 330,074
fans to the park.
10
4 New York Yankees Attendance Data. Baseball Almanac. 8 April 2009. <www.baseball-almanac.
com/teams/yankatte.shtml>
5 Ibid.
6 “Colleges in East To Push Programs: Will Fight to Retain Remaining Sports...” 14 January 1933.
New York Times, 1857-Current File. ProQuest. State Historical Society Library, Madison. 25 Mar. 2009
<http://www.proquest.com>.
7 Ibid
8 “Night Ball May Provide Better Days for Minors.” The Sporting News [St. Louis, MO] 22 May,
1930.
9 1933 Washington Senators… Statistics. Sports Reference LLC. 10 Apr. 2009 <www.baseball-
reference.com>.
10 Ibid.
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This pattern did not apply to minor league baseball. Unlike in the Majors, the minor
leagues had already gured out how to keep fans coming to support their teams
throughout losing seasons. The Buffalo Bison were among the rst franchises to play
exclusively under the lights.
11
Despite their losing record of 74-91 in 1933, the Buffalo Bison drew 13,500
fans to the rst night game in New York history.
12
Similar crowds would pack the stands
throughout the rest of the season, drawing 249,439 fans the following season, rivaling
many Major League teams in total attendance.
13
Fans did not come to watch the Bison
win, because clearly the Bison were a struggling team. Rather, fans came for the novelty
and accessibility of the night game.
14
The discrepancy in attendance patterns between the
Major and minor leagues cannot be explained by ticket prices alone. The Bison charged
$1.10 for every ticket, which was more than most Major League teams, who charged
an average of $1 per seat.
15
Fans in minor league stadiums were paying more money
to see inferior baseball. Clearly, an overall decrease in popularity was not completely
responsible for the lack of attendance at games. Nor were fans uninterested in inferior
play. Simply, fans were more likely to pay to see games that were accessible and novel.
The casual fan prioritized during the Depression. Making money during the day was the
top priority, yet fans still clamored for America’s pastime once the labor was nished.
Despite falling revenues around the league, some ball clubs prospered in
the early 1930s. Among the fortunate were the Montreal Royals. The Canadian based
team turned a prot of over $40,000 in the 1929 season, placing their net worth at
approximately $1,500,000.
16
The prots, revealed at the annual shareholders meeting,
were the envy of Major League Baseball, and would serve as the basis for league-wide
changes throughout the Depression. The Royals were able to turn record prots by
offering fans some new luxuries at the ballpark.
11 “Bison Triumph, 3 to 1.” 26 July 1933. New York Times, 1857-Current File. ProQuest. State
Historical Society Library, Madison. 25 Mar. 2009 <http://www.proquest.com>.
12 Bison History: The 1930s. Buffalo Bison Baseball. 10 April 2009. <http://buffalo.bisons.milb.
com>
13 Ibid.
14 “Bison Triumph, 3 to 1.” 26 July 1933. New York Times, 1857-Current File. ProQuest. State His-
torical Society Library, Madison. 25 Mar. 2009 <http://www.proquest.com>.
15 “EH.Net Encyclopedia: The Economic History of Major League Baseball.” EH.Net | Economic
History Services. 05 May 2009 <http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/haupert.mlb>.
16 “Montreal Club Makes Money, Even in Winter.” The Sporting News [St. Louis, MO] 20 Mar.
1930: 3.
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57
One of these was the sale of soft drinks, which became very popular among the fans.
Another innovation was the sale of team scorecards at the gate. Finally, a newly
renovated stadium attracted thousands of casual fans to Montreal to root for the
Royals.
17
No major changes were made in the way the game was played, in team
management or roster structure, or even in contracts. By making small changes that
introduced an
element of novelty to baseball, the game became more appealing to the average fan.
Montreal reduced the effects of the Depression and became the standard of marketability
and prot in the early 1930s. The Royals showed the rest of Major League Baseball that
simple adaptability and slight game innovations could bring fans to the stadium despite
an overall shortage of discretionary income. This model of innovation demonstrated
the need to explore all possible solutions to the economic crisis. The success of these
ballpark gimmicks encouraged owners to explore other ways to enhance the novelty of
baseball, including the possibility of the night game.
That night baseball did not begin in the Majors until 1935 was not because of a
league wide policy. Though previously banned by league rules, night baseball was avail-
able in the 1930s to any interested clubs. In April of 1931, ve National League owners:
Stoneham, Breadon, Nugent, Wrigley, and Weil lifted the ban at an annual rules meet-
ing.
18
Baseball was clearly seeking innovative ideas in response to attendance problems.
Among the rejected ideas at the 1931 owners’ meeting was a revenue-generating tax on
ticket sales.
19
The debate on the tax lasted a day, the debate on night baseball would last
four more years.
Beyond the minor league ballparks of rural Iowa, night baseball was promoted
at a national level through persistent advertising. These advertisements would have been
the casual fan’s rst exposure to the prospect of night baseball. In The Sporting News,
the nation’s most popular baseball periodical, advertisements for eld lighting systems
were featured on a weekly basis. Companies like Giant Manufacturing and Fasnacht Inc.
attempted to sway public opinion towards night baseball with slogans like “90% of the
minors will play baseball with a GIANT lighting system this season!”
20
17 Ibid.
18 “Revised Rules Lift Major’s Ban on Night Games.” The Sporting News [St. Louis, MO] 15 April
1931.
19 Ibid.
20 Pietrusza, David. Lights On! Lanham: Scarecrow P, Inc., 1997.
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Since The Sporting News featured these ads, they put a de facto seal of approval on night
baseball. By running these ads on a weekly basis, the newspaper teamed up with light
manufacturers to enmeshed night baseball in to the mindset of the American fan. Un-
doubtedly, club owners eventually noticed an increase in public interest in night games.
Countless arguments against the night game were offered up throughout the 1930s
from players, managers, and owners. Many of these arguments involved the quality of
play, and stemmed from players’ concerns
seeing and hitting the ball. This argument was the result of a disastrous game widely
covered by the national media. In a nighttime exhibition game staged by the New York
Baseball Giants, a 13,500-watt system failed to light New York’s Polo Grounds.
21
.
According to the New York Times, only 3,000 fans turned out for the 9 pm start, and
two-thirds were gone by the end.
22
The Times went on to report that “the outeld was in
semidarkness and the players as well as the spectators had difculty seeing the ball.”
23
“Shanty” Hogan, a catcher, griped that the lights prohibited him from catching pop-
y foul balls through squinting eyes.
24
This particular exhibition was a asco for night
baseball. However, minor league clubs in cities like Des Moines and Independence found
no problems playing under proven, high quality lighting systems like those advertised in
The Sporting News. Reporters like Clifford Bloodgood of Baseball Magazine, remarked:
“Once baseball has been permanently established in the smaller cities under the glaring
lights will the major leagues still voice their displeasure? Undoubtedly, but just as surely,
in time, they will install articial lighting systems in their own major league parks.”
25
Though night baseball was effective with quality lighting systems, many
argued that cost prohibited night baseball in the Majors. To install high quality lighting
systems would have cost between $14,000 and $25,000. At rst, these gures appeared
prohibitive, given the Depression’s negative effects on club revenues.
26
Proponents of
night baseball noted this concern but were quick to point out that minor league clubs
21 Pietrusza, David. Lights On! Lanham: Scarecrow P, Inc., 1997.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Bloodgood, Clifford. “The Shape of Things to Come: Night Baseball.” The Baseball Anthology.
New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1994. 167-68.
26 Pietrusza, David. Lights On! Lanham: Scarecrow P, Inc., 1997.
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playing under the lights routinely made prots upwards of $9,273 per game while selling
tickets priced around one dollar.
27
Night baseball, at least in the minors, had paid for itself
in a matter of weeks. A nal practical criticism was from promoters of the game, who
worried that night games would only encourage fans to sit at home with their families and
listen to radio broadcasts
28
. Promoters would later rescind these complaints after signing
revenue-sharing deals with major radio stations.
29
Though there were indeed many practi-
cal concerns about night baseball, the example of the minor leagues showed that lights
were a solid investment from both a nancial and athletic vantage point.
Throughout the early 1930s, the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox
leveled another charge against night baseball. These clubs argued that night baseball
would compromise the game’s dignity by masking the natural beauty of ballpark
architecture and landscaping.
30
Philip K. Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, was
adamant that Wrigley Field, with its ivy walls and lush grass, was designed and
landscaped for daytime baseball.
31
As he saw the situation, it would be “sinful” to deprive
fans of Wrigley Field’s daytime essence. Chicago would become the last team to ever
install lights at their ballpark, clinging to this argument for nearly a half-century.
32
Joe
McCarthy, manager of the Yankees, and Joe Cronin of the Red Sox, were also critics of
night baseball, but for different reasons than Wrigley.
33
New York and Boston were two
of the largest markets in the league. Both of these perennial pennant contenders boasted
well-paid, star-studded line-ups that were capable of competing for the World Series in
any given season.
34
Though their attendances were indeed suffering in the 1930s, they
were still faring far better than clubs like Washington and Cincinnati. Their opposition
to night baseball thus may have been caused by a desire to ensure that their competition
wouldn’t make enough money to compete for the big-salary players like Babe Ruth.
27 Ibid.
28 Voigt, David Q. “Counting, Courting, and Controlling Ball Park Fans.” Baseball History. Vol. 2.
Westport: Meckler Books, 1989. 112-113
29 Ibid.
30 “McCarthy Opposed to Night Baseball…” 17 February 1935. New York Times, 1857-Current File.
ProQuest. State Historical Society Library, Madison. 25 Mar. 2009 <http://www.proquest.com>.
31 Pietrusza, David. Lights On! Lanham: Scarecrow P, Inc., 1997.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.
34 “McCarthy Opposed to Night Baseball…” 17 February 1935. New York Times, 1857-Current File.
ProQuest. State Historical Society Library, Madison. 25 Mar. 2009 <http://www.proquest.com>.
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Cronin and McCarthy would bolster the opposition to night baseball for over four years.
Finally, some opponents of night baseball lacked a rational reason for their stance
altogether. These holdouts disguised their opposition as benevolence to non-traditional
fan bases. Though unconcerned with the amusement of the homeless, Will Wedge of The
New York Sun expressed that transients would lose their ability to sneak in to afternoon
games.
35
Furthermore, by prohibiting kids from sneaking in to the ballpark, Wedge
proclaimed that baseball would “lose its youngest fan base”.
36
Though these arguments
were for comic purposes, they reect the perhaps unfounded hesitance that many
longtime baseball fans had to such a substantial change in tradition.
Though there were many practical arguments that came from owners and manag-
ers, players made many impractical, jocular arguments that reected a broader curiosity
about playing ball under the lights. Accompanying all these statements were expressed
desires to at least watch a night contest.
37
These statements were often made in dug-
outs and clubhouses through a rather jocular manner. Dazzy Vance of the minor league
Brooklyn Robins remarked that baseball would throw off the sleep cycles of players, who
would be forced to play all night and sleep all day, especially in the event of double head-
ers.
38
It would thus be necessary, according to Vance, to open up an all night steak house
across from the stadium just for the players. Rube Bressler jokingly exclaimed that he
would bring a ashlight to the outeld during all night games, while Babe Herman was
excited to employ a new excuse for dropping y balls in the outeld.
39
All joking aside,
the players were generally curious about night baseball and the prospect of increasing
both prots and payouts.
While the Major League owners debated, night baseball in the minor leagues
was successful from its inception. In May of 1930, Des Moines, Iowa was among the rst
towns to install oodlights at their stadium. They soon became one of the only ball clubs
in America to consistently play at night.
40
While rain and cold kept most fans away, 2,309
fans witnessed this rst night game. However, in other Iowa cities, such as Decateur,
single-game attendance had reached 4,430 and continued climbing as night baseball grew
35 Pietrusza, David. Lights On! Lanham: Scarecrow P, Inc., 1997.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid
39 Ibid.
40 “Average Night Crowd at Des Moines is 2,309...” The Sporting News [St. Louis, MO] 22 May,
1930
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61
increasingly popular.
41
Furthermore, players and managers at these games were
responding enthusiastically to playing conditions at night, casting aside doubts players
would be unable to see the ball well enough to bat and play defense.
42
Dale Gear,
the leading advocate of night baseball in Iowa summarized the initial success of the
innovation: “There is a period from eight o’clock and ten o’clock at night that the
average man has nothing to do, and I believe that the baseball parks will be the place to
nd him this summer!”
43
According to the owners of minor league clubs, night baseball
provided an adequate solution and a way to bring the workingman back to the ballpark,
and by 1931, the minor leagues held over 80% of their contests under the lights.
44
As Ed
O’Malley, president of a Phoenix, Arizona ball club remarked: “I am safe in saying that
where we took in a dollar in the day time last year, we are taking four at night this year.”
45
Rising attendance bolstered the condence of struggling owners who came to see night
baseball as a practical solution to a deep nancial struggle.
With all of these concerns, a man from Cincinnati nally broke the “night barrier.”
Larry MacPhail, the owner of the Cincinnati Reds, watched throughout the early 1930s
as the Reds lost more than any other team. MacPhail, a World War I veteran, entered in
to baseball administration upon his return to the United States.
46
A very successful owner
and administrator, MacPhail promoted night baseball for the minor league Columbus Red
Birds. In 1931, he helped bring 310,000 fans to Neil Park, a larger attendance than their
major league afliate St. Louis Cardinals, who averaged only 279,219 fans in 1931.
47
When MacPhail bought the Cincinnati Reds, he inherited a team that had emphatically
supported the National League’s night baseball resolution of 1931.
48
The reason for this
support was simple: Cincinnati was desperate.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 “Night Ball May Provide Better Days for Minors.” The Sporting News [St. Louis, MO] 22 May,
1930
44 “Manufacturers Anticipate that Over 80% of Minors Will Play at Night this Year.” The Sporting
News [St. Louis, MO] 15 April 1931
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid.
48 Drebinger, John. “Night Baseball on Limited Scale Adopted Unanimously by National League.”
13 Dec. 1934. New York Times: 1857-Current File. ProQuest. State Historical Society Library, Madison. 25
Mar. 2009 <http://www.proquest.com>.
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Having nished in last place every year since 1931, when they nished 66-88, until
1934, when they nished 52-99, the Reds watched their attendance dip to only 206,773
fans.
49
Furthermore, 70% of this attendance came from just 15 home games, including the
home opener.
50
MacPhail clearly saw the connection between attendance and his team’s
success. If Cincinnati was to sign some Major League caliber talent, they needed to
generate more revenue.
An enthusiastic MacPhail ordered lights for Crosley Field, the home of
the Reds. At a cost of $62,000, the 1 million watt eld would be the most advanced
oodlight system in baseball, operating at a cost of nearly $300 a game.
51
This grand
expense was clearly a gamble for the Reds. Stanley Frank of The New York Post criticized
MacPhail for spending such great amounts on an attendance gimmick rather than “bona
de ballplayers.”
52
Nevertheless, the executive board voted to install the lights, despite
budgetary concerns voiced by his fellow board members.
53
The game time was set for
May 24th, 1935 at 7 pm. Major League night baseball was about to become a reality.
The contest between the Cincinnati Reds and the Philadelphia Phillies was as
much of a theatrical production as it was a baseball game. President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, in Washington, pressed the button that illuminated Crosley Field for the
25,000 fans in attendance.
54
Heightening the spectacle of night Major League baseball,
many other celebrities and baseball dignitaries were in attendance. These included
Ford Frick, president of the National League, and Prexy Will Harridge, president of the
American League.
55
The fans came despite bitter cold temperatures below 50 degrees.
Even Cincinnati’s mascot was too cold to remain outside for the duration of the game.
56
More remarkable than the 25,000-fan attendance was the rest of the season for Cincinnati.
This celebration of baseball was only the third largest crowd of the season in Cincinnati.
57
49 Pietrusza, David. Lights On! Lanham: Scarecrow P, Inc., 1997.
50 Drebinger, John. “Night Baseball on Limited Scale Adopted Unanimously by National League.”
13 Dec. 1934. New York Times: 1857-Current File. ProQuest. 25 Mar. 2009 <http://www.proquest.com>.
51 Pietrusza, David. Lights On! Lanham: Scarecrow P, Inc., 1997.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid.
54 “Reds’ Night Game Draws 25,000 Fans.” 25 May 1935. New York Times, 1857-Current File. Pro-
Quest. State Historical Society Library, Madison. 25 Mar. 2009 <http://www.proquest.com>.
55 Ibid.
56 Pietrusza, David. Lights On! Lanham: Scarecrow P, Inc., 1997.
57 Ibid.
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63
By the end of the year, 448,247 fans (the fth largest attendance in the National League)
turned out to see the losing Cincinnati Reds.
58
For three of the next four seasons,
Cincinnati’s attendance would systematically climb, peaking in 1939. When the Reds
fell just short of a World Series victory, the Reds boasted Baseball’s second highest
attendance with 981,443 fans.
59
The club’s turnaround would not have been possible
without the substantial prot increase that night baseball brought to a mediocre ball club.
As night baseball spread throughout the Majors, overall attendance increased,
proving that attendance was not simply due to a team improving or becoming more
competitive with the rest of the league. Though attendance would not surpass pre-
Depression levels until after World War II, the ve years immediately following the rst
night game saw an average increase of 1,966 fans per every Major League game.
60
Night
baseball successfully reversed the trend of shrinking attendance and falling revenues, and
kept Major League Baseball aoat until the Depression came to an end.
Like many businesses, professional baseball struggled with nances during the
Great Depression. To survive, baseball depended on new innovations like redesigned
stadiums and game day giveaways to bolster both attendance and the popularity of the
sport. Given the success of night baseball in the minor leagues, it is surprising that the
Majors took nearly ve years to start playing at night. This delay was ultimately caused
by nancial and moral arguments against baseball under the lights, though these concerns
were eventually disproved. In 1935, when the lights went on in Cincinnati on a chilly
spring evening, Major League Baseball began to see the practicality and value of night
baseball. By playing games at a time that was accessible to the average American, both
struggling teams and championship teams saw its attendance increase throughout the
latter half of the 1930s. By turning on the lights, baseball escaped from its own nancial
difculties, while capitalizing on fans’ desires for an affordable, accessible escape from
the Depression’s harsh realities. A mutual solution between the clubs and the fans,
night baseball began as a novel spectacle and ended up preserving the game’s place in
American society.
58 “1935 Cincinnati Reds Batting, Fielding, and Pitching Statistics.” Sports Reference, LLC. 22 Apr.
2009.
59 Ibid.
60 Historical Attendance Figures for Major League Baseball. Sports Reference LLC. 7 Apr. 2009
<www.baseball-reference.com>.
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Waging a Propaganda War Against Iran: The American Effort to Oust Mohammad
Mosaddeq
Arthur Zarate
Introduction
In mid August of 1953 the CIA, with the support of the British government
and Iranian collaborators, successfully staged a coup against Mohammad Mosaddeq,
Iran’s democratically chosen prime minister. A little more than two months after the
August coup, John H. Stutesman Jr. of the US State Department wrote to the American
Ambassador of Iran, Loy Henderson, expressing the Department’s wish to reassess its
propaganda campaign in Iran. The State Department’s request is interesting for its frank
description of American efforts to shape public opinion in and about Iran. Stutesman
takes pains at the beginning of the letter to dene those efforts as “propaganda,” as
opposed to what he calls “public relations” or “information.” Although Americans
“generally distrust” the word propaganda, he says, “it seems to be the only one which
encompasses all the U.S. Government efforts to put across a particular point of view at
home and abroad.”
1
Prior to the coup it is clear that the American embassy in Tehran, the State
Department, and the CIA were, in fact, engaged in an extensive anti-communist
propaganda campaign in Iran. A series of several important declassied documents,
including two telegrams between the State Department and the American embassy in
Iran and the CIA’s ofcial history of the coup against Mossadeq, suggest that by 1953
this propaganda campaign may have included the manipulation of the New York Times.
Carl Bernstein has written extensively on the manipulation of powerful American media
outlets by the CIA.
2
According to Bernstein, American news publications were often
willing to employ their resources in service of the US national security apparatus during
the Cold War. He goes on to specify the New York Times as one publication that had a
particularly close relationship with the CIA. In light of the aforementioned declassied
documents, Iran seems to be a perfect case study of Bernstein’s thesis.
1 Department of State Letter from John H. Stutesman, Jr. to Loy Henderson. [Propaganda Situation
following Coup], October 28, 1953.
2 Carl Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media,” Rolling Stone. October 20, 1977.
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Indeed, an analysis of the New York Times’ coverage of the events in Iran from
1951 to 1953 reveals that this publication’s ‘point of view’ was strikingly similar to that
of the American government. In this essay I will argue that this similarity was too close
to be a coincidence. Rather, I contend it was a manifestation of a successful propaganda
campaign waged by embassy, the State Department, and the CIA. The propaganda
effort was primarily aimed at portraying Mosaddeq as a fanatic and dangerous dictator,
driving his country to a communist collapse. Because the New York Times held extensive
inuence in Iran, I will also argue that the coup itself was, in part, the result of the
American propaganda campaign against Mosaddeq. This campaign and the CIA’s
Operation AJAX effectively imbued Iranians with the fear that Mosaddeq was leading
their country to a communist demise. It was only after Iranians became imbued with this
fear that Mosaddeq lost his once broad based mass support and was suddenly ousted by
popular forces.
Historical Context
The historical context in which American policymakers arrived at the decision to
oust Mosaddeq can be divided into be two main themes. The rst can be characterized as
a period of vibrant Iranian nationalism during the 1940s, which opposed foreign control
of Iranian resources. With Mosaddeq at the forefront, this nationalist movement’s efforts
culminated with the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry in 1951. The second can
be described as the interjection of American Cold War strategic concerns upon Iran.
This interjection culminated with a coup against Mosaddeq and the destruction of the
Iranian nationalist movement. The Iranian nationalist activity of the 1940s actually had
its roots in two mass protests that occurred at the turn of the century. The rst began
in early 1890 when the Qajar shah, Nasser ad-Din, granted a British citizen monopoly
rights “over the production, sale, and export” of Iran’s tobacco.
3
As tobacco was a widely
cultivated product in Iran, this concession sparked widespread civil unrest and eventually
led to a countrywide boycott on the purchase and consumption of tobacco.
4
According to
the historian Nikkie R. Keddie, this period marked the “rst successful mass protest in
modern Iran, combining ulama [religious leaders], modernist, merchants and ordinary
3 Nikkie R. Keddie, Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (New Haven: Yale University
Press 2003), 61.
4 Ibid.
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townspeople in a coordinated move against government policy.”
5
In the early 1900s, a
second mass protest was sparked by Iran’s increasing indebtedness to foreign lenders
because of Mozaffar ad-Din Shah’s excessive borrowing from Russian sources.
6
Grow-
ing opposition gradually coalesced and came to a head in 1905 with widespread protests
demanding creation of a parliament like institution.
7
By October of 1906, a constitution
and representative assembly, or majlis, were established. The constitution’s “intent,”
says Keddie, “was to set up a true constitutional monarchy in which majles approval was
required on all important matters, including foreign loans and treaties.”
The constitution and majlis developed out of mass outrage to foreign interference
in Iranian affairs and, as such, were both efforts to exert inuence over the nation’s
foreign relations so as to preserve the interests of Iranians. Despite these efforts, however,
Iran’s assertion of sovereignty was short lived and quickly overwhelmed by outside
interference. In 1907 Britain and Russia negotiated an entente, which divided Iran into
two foreign controlled areas. This entente, of course, was negotiated without Iranian
consent. Northern Iran became Russian controlled, while the southeast became British
controlled. In 1908, the new Qajar shah, Mohammed Ali, successfully staged a coup with
Russian assistance. This coup led to the closing of the majlis and the exiling or execution
of many of the nationalist leaders.
8
The period thereafter marked the steady decline,
but not disappearance, of the Iranian nationalist movement. This decline was fueled by
a steady increase of British inuence over Iran and the rise of Reza Pahlavi Shah, who
came to power after ousting the Qajar family in 1921. It was not until WWII, after the
Allied powers forced Reza Shah to abdicate to his weak and inefcient son, that Iranian
nationalism again had the opportunity to ourish.
Another important factor in the subsequent course of Iranian nationalism was the
British navy’s use of oil, as opposed to coal, after 1908. According to the historian Rashid
Khalidi, “Oil therefore overnight became crucial to Britain’s global hegemony, intensify-
ing its attention to Iranian oil and vastly enhancing” the strategic signicance of both Iran
and the Middle East.
9
In 1901 a British businessman obtained a sixty-year concession
from the Iranian government giving Britain the sole right to produce and sell Iranian oil.
5 Ibid., 62.
6 Ibid.,65.
7 Ibid.,67.
8 Ibid.,70.
9 Rashid Khalidi, Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the
Middle East (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004), 85.
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The production of oil began in 1908 and led to the establishment of the Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company (AIOC) in 1909. As oil rapidly became strategically valuable to the British,
their interference in Iranian affairs became particularly intense.
10
Britain’s entente with
Russia allowed it to militarily occupy Iran’s oil-rich southern coast. Later, in 1913, the
British government purchased 51 percent AIOC. With these actions, Britain now ensured
a lasting oil supply—controlling both the region and the company that produced Iranian
oil.
11
In 1941 Iran suffered another joint British and Russian occupation, which again
divided the country into a British occupied south and a Russian occupied north. This
joint occupation was primarily motivated by concern over Reza Shah’s sympathetic
attitude towards Germany during WWII,
12
yet it also contributed to the growth of Iranian
nationalism. After the German invasion of the USSR, the Allies sought to establish a
supply route from Iran to the Soviet Union.
13
The Allies demanded that the shah expel
the Germans from Iran, however the shah delayed. Consequently, the USSR and Great
Britain occupied Iran and forced Reza Shah to abdicate to his weaker and more pliant
son, Mohammad Reza.
As Khalidi argues, the power and activities of the majlis increased proportionately
to the decline of the authority of the monarchy’s ruling gure.
14
Importantly, this allowed
the nationalists in the majlis to assert Iran’s sovereignty more effectively. In a rebuff to
the Soviets, the new Iranian government rejected the USSR’s 1944 requests for oil con-
cessions in the northern regions of Iran, which were occupied by the Soviet army. Partly
in response to this rebuff and partly out of the Soviet’s desire to secure a buffer region to
its south, the USSR sponsored two separatist revolts in Iran’s Kurdish and Azeri re-
gions.
15
The Soviet military occupation of these regions prevented the Iranian army from
putting down these revolts. After the USSR’s withdrawal in late 1946, however, Mosad-
deq, with the support of the majlis, squashed these revolts.
16
10 Ibid., 87.
11 Ibid.
12 Keddie, 105.
13 Ibid.
14 Rashid Khalidi, Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East (Bos-
ton: Beacon Press, 2009), 169.
15 Ibid., 51-53
16 Ibid., 169.
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In that same year, the majlis once again rejected another Soviet request for oil conces-
sions. As Khalidi notes, the removal of all foreign armies from Iran and the relative weak-
ness of the Iranian monarch created a “uid situation,” in which Muhammad Reza Shah
was incapable of asserting his authority.
17
This not only empowered the nationalists in the
majlis, but also allowed them to confront another interfering foreign power in Iran—the
British.
18
By 1949, a broad nationalist coalition known as the Nation Front emerged. With
Mosaddeq at the lead of this coalition, Iran reclaimed its oil from the British by national-
izing its oil industry in 1951.
Importantly, this increase of Iranian nationalist activity coincided with the
beginnings of the Cold War. Iran, in fact, played a center stage in the nascent Soviet-
American rivalry. Indeed, George Kennan’s extremely inuential “Long Telegram” of
February 1946, posited “Northern Iran” as a primary arena in which immediate Soviet
“efforts will be made to advance the ofcial limits of Soviet power.”
19
A presidential
memorandum dated two months later illustrates that the Truman administration, like
Kennan, was quite alarmed by Soviet actions in Iran. The USSR’s support for Azeri
separatists and its refusal to allow the Iranian army to “quell the uprising” are described
as hostile Soviet “efforts to form a security zone…along its borders.”
20
Despite the
USSR’s gradual withdraw of its troops from Iran in late 1946, the unstable situation in
Azerbaijan, as well as the Soviet’s attempt to extract oil concessions from the Iranian
government, continued to alarm American policymakers. Indeed, in 1947 the Central
Intelligence Group, the CIA’s predecessor, issued a report warning that the “loss of
Azerbaijan” to Soviet control “would threaten Iran’s independence.” The USSR’s
“ultimate objective,” it says, is “controlling Azerbaijan, and eventually all of Iran.”
While the report acknowledges that the Iranian government will probably resist Soviet
encroachments, particularly in Azerbaijan, it ominously concludes that it is “doubtful
whether the Iranian Government can take effective steps to counter such Soviet
subversive activities.”
21
As is apparent from the preceding, the US became increasingly apprehensive
about Soviet machinations in Iran precisely at a time when Iranian nationalists were at-
tempting to assert Iran’s sovereignty.
17 Ibid., 170.
18 Ibid.
19 George Kennan, “Long Telegram” February 1946.
20 “Soviet Foreign Policy in the Middle East”, April 1946.
21 Central Intelligence Group “Developments in the Azerbaijan Situation” June 1947.
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In the events that would follow, both American policymakers and media outlets would
seemed completely incapable of objectively discerning between manifestations of Iranian
nationalism and Soviet subversion in Iran. This lack of discernment became particularly
acute after Mosaddeq nationalized Iranian oil in 1951. The instable domestic situation in
Iran in the immediate post-nationalization period escalated American fears of a looming
communist coup. This domestic turmoil, however, was largely the product of sustained
British efforts to destroy Mosaddeq’s leadership position through an embargo of Iranian
oil and a covert campaign to divide his political base.
22
While this effort was success-
ful in destabilizing Iran, it failed in its ultimate aim of ousting Moseddeq. Nonetheless,
the nationalization, subsequent political instability, and intense American fear of Soviet
intentions drove the US policymakers to take an increasingly hostile attitude towards
Mosaddeq. Once American policymakers concluded Mosaddeq was driving Iran towards
a collapse to communism, they moved to oust him.
The American Propaganda War
According to Frances Saunders’ extensive study on the CIA’s effort to manipu-
late public opinion in Europe, the CIA believed the best type of propaganda was “the
kind where ‘the subject moves in the direction you desire for reasons which he believes
to be his own.’”
23
In September of 1949, the Iranian government decreed that no foreign
embassy had the right to “distribute any publication” that openly supported or opposed
“certain denite groups.”
24
That is to say, US propaganda could not directly attack the
USSR nor directly support American interests. According to the US embassy in Tehran,
the American propaganda campaign was “designed to appear as an Iranian Government
program,” even though it would be apparent to observers outside Iran that it was “subsi-
dized and more or less controlled by Americans.”
25
22 Mark J. Gasiorowski, “The 1953 Coup d’Etat in Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Stud-
ies 19, No. 3 (August 1987), 263.
23 Frances Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York:
New Press, 2001), 4.
24 United States Embassy, Iran Dispatch from Loy Henderson to the Department of State. “Attach-
ing Memorandum Entitled ‘Report on the Use of Anti-Soviet Material within Iran during Period Covered
by Last Two Years’,” May 29, 1953
25 United States Embassy, Iran Cable from Edward C. Wells to the Department of State. “Notes on
Expanded Program for Iran” [Includes Memorandum], January 12, 1951.
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In other words, the American effort to manipulate public opinion in Iran was designed to
direct Iranians towards supporting American objectives for reasons they would perceive
to be their own.
Throughout the early 1950s, American propaganda held enormous sway over
the Iranian press. According to an embassy telegram to the State Department, the “USIE
continues to be the largest single source of foreign news published in the Iranian press.”
Indeed, “USIE material,” it says, “accounts for 45% of all the news published in the
Iranian press.” The telegram goes on to dene the purpose of its propaganda campaign as
the maintaining of “economic and political stability in Iran,” enhancing “the prestige the
U.S.” and demonstrating “the weaknesses and fallacies of the communist system.”
26
An-
other dispatch offers a similar description of the purposes of the propaganda, while add-
ing a concise description of the propaganda campaign’s target audience. With the primary
aim being “the orientation of Iran towards the free nations,” the embassy held that its
program “should be in the main directed to the Tehran audience (the Court, government,
intellectuals, wealthy landowners etc.) who actually control the destiny of the country.”
27
The embassy took its role as an instrument of propaganda warfare in Iran quite
seriously. Indeed, in May of 1953 Ambassador Henderson sent a telegram to the State
Department responding to what he called “unfair and distorted criticism” of the embas-
sy’s effort “to combat communism” in Iran. In response to this charge, Henderson sought
to clarify that the Iranian government’s ban on open propaganda meant that the embassy’s
“struggle against communism” had to be waged “discreetly.” Nonetheless, he says, since
May of 1951 the embassy has been “unobtrusively, yet persistently and continuously, tak-
ing advantage of every oppurtunity to expose the fallacies of communism and to warn…
of the dangers to Iran from international communism.” In this dispatch Henderson in-
cludes a description of “nine exhibits relating to the efforts of the USIS [United States
Information Services] section of the Embassy to combat communism.” Only two warrant
mention here: The rst exhibit is described as “the distribution of anti-Soviet leaets,
brochures, etc. originated and produced outside of Tehran,” the number of which “ap-
proximates 570,000 per year.” The second exhibit is described as “260 articles, features,
editorials and commentaries which have been placed in the local Tehran papers, as well
as provincial papers, on anti-communist subjects.”
26 United States Embassy, Iran Cable from Edward C. Wells to the Department of State. “Priority
Aims and Objectives of the USIE Program in Iran Calls for Enhancing U.S. Prestige and Demonstrating
Communist Fallacies,” June 5, 1950.
27 “Notes on Expanded Program for Iran”
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To illustrate the effectiveness of the embassy’s efforts, the dispatch includes a letter from
an Iranian newspaper editor thanking the USIS for “two stories” that were printed in an
Iranian paper to “ght communism.”
28
The effort to shape public opinion in Iran not only included the embassy’s anti-
communist propaganda campaign, but also an apparent attempt to manipulate the Ameri-
can press. Indeed, on June 26, 1953, less than two months before Mosaddeq was ousted,
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles wrote to Ambassador Henderson to inform him
that the State Department could, if the Ambassador wished, plant stories in American
news publications to help shape public opinion. According to the chopped up language
of Dulles’ cable dispatch, the State Department can, from time to time, “inspire editorials
or articles in U.S. publications which can be useful in case Embassy should desire certain
points of view brought out for benet [of the] American public or particular emphasis laid
upon points which have not received full understanding and publicity.” Dulles concludes
by conrming, “[w]hen Embassy thinks such measures required, Department will seek to
place appropriate stories,” yet only if they relate to “problems of substantial policy inter-
est.”
29
A post-coup dispatch from November 7, 1953 indicates that Ambassador Hen-
derson may have accepted Dulles’ offer. In this dispatch Henderson requests that State
Department use an embassy-drafted “statement” to serve “as the basis for an editorial
or article in either one of the three American publications having most inuence in Iran;
namely New York Times, Time Magazine, and Newsweek.” At this time the embassy was
apparently concerned with stabilizing Iran under the new leadership of General Zahedi.
According to Henderson’s ispatch, the embassy deemed it “vital” for Zahedi’s Govern-
ment “to adopt a planned program of public information” regarding the state of Iran’s
oil industry and its relations with Great Britain and the US. Henderson goes on to state
that “the Embassy believes it would be extremely useful for a publication well known in
Iran to carry” the embassy-drafted statement in the form of an editorial. Henderson even
species a preferred location, writing that given the “article’s length, it might possibly be
most advantageously used in the Sunday Editorial supplement of the New York Times.”
30
28 ‘Report on the Use of Anti-Soviet Material within Iran during Period Covered by Last Two Years.’
29 Department of State Airgram from John Foster Dulles to the United States Embassy, Iran. [Place-
ment of Stories in U.S. Media], June 26, 1953.
30 United States Embassy, Iran Dispatch from Loy Henderson to the Department of State. “Use of
Material in American Publications concerning Iranian Situation” November 7, 1953.
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Ambassador Henderson’s dispatch is informative for it not only posits the
American press as a useful tool in manipulating Iranian public opinion, but the
accompanying statement also illustrates the type of propaganda the embassy wanted to
convey to the Iranian and American publics. According to the statement Iran has been
a source of “headaches” for American policymakers. The “Wily Dr. Mosadeq [sic],”
has engaged “in a policy of open blackmail against the free world.” The substance
of this blackmail is described as Mosaddeq’s threat that Iran would eventually fall to
communism if not nancially supported by the US. “When the representatives of the free
world would point out to Dr. Mosadeq [sic] that he was leading Iran in the direction of
communism,” continues the statement, “he was accustomed to reply, ‘so much the worse
for you.’” It goes on to say:
Like politicians in other countries who bear great responsibility for the loss of the
independence of their people, Mosadeq [sic] seemed to believe that he could cooperate
with the communists to his own advantage…He permitted the communist elements in
Iran considerable latitude in stimulating the hatreds between various groups of Iranians
and in stirring up hostility against the countries of the free world. In the latter days of
Mosadeq’s [sic] regime it would appear that it was being transformed into a vehicle in
which the communists would be able to hitch hike to power.
When “the Iranian people nally realized the situation,” it continues, they rose up and
ousted Mosaddeq.
31
Thereafter the embassy’s statement focuses on Iran’s current nancial instability and its
relations with Great Britain and the US, stressing that the American government is doing
all it can to help Iran in this unstable situation.
Whether or not the embassy’s request was actually distributed to the publishers
specied by Henderson is impossible to verify. Nonetheless, a careful review of the
New York Times’ editorial section during November of 1953 yields two editorials that
resemble the embassy’s statement in certain key respects. The rst editorial describes
Mosaddeq not only as deranged, but also as having led Iran close to a communist
coup. The editorial further characterizes the Iranian leader as the “darling” of “both the
nationalist fanatics and the Communist plotters” in Iran. It goes on to thank the Shah of
Iran, General Zahedi, and the Iranian people for defeating Mosaddeq and placing him on
trial on the charge that he “brought his country to the verge of ruin and exposed it to the
31 Ibid.
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danger of Communist subjugation.”
32
This charge is curiously similar to that which Am-
bassador Henderson’s aforementioned statement makes.
Another more extensive editorial, dating from Sunday, November 15, 1953—a
little more than a week after Henderson’s request to place the embassy’s statement in
the Sunday editorial section of the New York Times—reveals a closer similarity to the
embassy-drafted statement. The editorial describes the post-coup situation in Iran during
Mosaddeq’s trial. According to the author:
Emotion and reason waged war in the minds of most Iranians this week as Dr. Moham-
med Mossadegh, the aged invalid who outraged reason but deeply stirred the nation’s
emotions…went on trial for rebellion. Reason told them that in most respects the regime
of the stubborn, egocentric old man had brought Iran close to disaster. Bankruptcy and
Communist domination were imminent when he was toppled form power by supporters
of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and the Present Premier, Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi last
August.
33
Just as the embassy-drafted statement asserts that Mosaddeq fanatically drove his coun-
try towards a communist collapse before he was ousted by popular forces, so too does
this editorial. It would be difcult to dismiss as coincidence the similarity between this
editorial and what the embassy wanted the Times to say. While it is not clear that the em-
bassy and the State Department were manipulating American media outlets prior 1953, it
certainly is possible. It would be helpful here to reiterate that throughout the early 1950s,
the embassy, with the State Department’s knowledge, had been waging an extensive anti-
communist propaganda war in Iran. As the above illustrates this war not only included
embassy provided propaganda to the Iranian press, but also seems to have included the
manipulation of American media outlets in 1953. According to Ambassador Henderson
these media outlets—the New York Times in particular—held extensive inuence in Iran.
Parallel to the embassy’s and the State Department’s propaganda campaign, the
CIA was also engaged in covert operations in Iran. According to the historian Mark
Gasiorowski, the CIA was engaged in covert operations in Iran since the late 1940s at the
direction Truman Administration.
32 “Mossadegh on Trial,” New York Times, November 10 1953.
33 Robert C. Dowty, “Mossadegh as Prisoner Still Stirs the Masses,” New York Times, November 15,
1953.
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The CIA’s operation BEDAMN was “a propaganda and political action program”
that began in 1948 and extended until Mosaddeq’s ouster.
34
Under BEDAMN, “anti-
communist articles and cartoons were planted in Iranian newspapers, books and leaets
critical of the Soviet Union and the Tudeh party [Iran’s communist party] were written
and distributed, rumors were started, etc.”
35
Gasiorowski describes the political action
aspects of this operation as covert attempts to divide Mosaddeq’s political base in the
majlis and undermine the unity of the National Front. This was achieved mainly through
the extensive bribery of Iranian politicians. Given that the Truman Administration did not
actively seek to oust Mosaddeq, this political action program seems out of place. Thus,
Gasiorowski concludes, it “appears that the decision to undermine Mosaddeq through
BEDAMN was taken within the CIA itself.”
36
Two factors suggest that the CIA’s propaganda war may have included the
manipulation of American media outlets. First, during this period there was an
exceptionally close relationship between the State Department and the CIA. In 1951
Allen Dulles became the CIA’s Deputy Director of Plans and in August 1952 he became
the agency’s Deputy Director. When Eisenhower became President in 1953, Allen Dulles
was appointed Director of the CIA and his older brother, John Foster Dulles, became the
Secretary of State. As the above telegram illustrates, the latter believed it was possible for
the State Department to plant stories in American media outlets. Given the close familial
relationship between the heads of the State Department andand the CIA, it is likely that
this ability also extended to the CIA.
Second, as the CIA’s declassied history of the coup illustrates, the CIA certainly
believed it had the ability to plant stories in American media outlets in relation to Iran.
According to the author of this history, in late July 1953 CIA agents in Iran requested
“that US papers reect the Iranian press campaign against Mossadeq [sic] and that
inspired articles be placed in the US press.”
37
This request, however, remains shrouded
in mystery because the author does not specify who made it or to whom it was made.
It nonetheless illustrates that at least some CIA agents believed it was possible for the
agency to manipulate American media outlets.
34 Gasiorowski, 268.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.,269
37 CIA Clandestine Service History, “Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952 - Au-
gust 1953,” March 1954, 29.
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During the early 1950s, therefore, it seems likely that the CIA, like the embassy
and State Department, had both the ability and incentive to manipulate American media
outlets. Indeed, as Carl Bernstein has persuasively argued in his essay outlining the CIA’s
dubious relations with powerful American news publications, “American publishers,”
more often than not, “were willing to commit the resources of their companies to the
struggle against ‘global Communism.’” According to Bernstein, the CIA’s “relationship
with the [New York Times] was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according
to CIA ofcials.”
38
Two other valuable relationships, he says, were those between the
agency and both Time and Newsweek.
There are at least two instances in which it seems that the CIA manipulated the
New York Times’ coverage of Iran. The rst occurred in July 1952. By March of that
year, Britian’s covert operations to sow tension between Mosaddeq and other members of
the National Front began to take effect.
39
The British sought to destroy Mosaddeq’s base
of support within the majlis so that an individual more sympathetic to Britain’s oil interest
could replace him as prime minister. In March of that year, Ahmad Qavam, the British
candidate, met with English representatives in Paris. While the US government did not
openly support these efforts, Ambassador Henderson did approve of the British choice of
prime minister.
40
On July 16, Mosaddeq, having. become aware of the plot against him,
resigned in retaliation. This allowed Qavam to assume power. Yet as Gasiorowski writes,
“Massive demonstrations calling for Mosaddeq’s return were organized by the National
Front.”
41
By July 21, “Mosaddeq was triumphantly swept back into ofce.”
42
According
to Gasiorowski, Qavam’s efforts to assume power collapsed because he did not have
widespread support. Mosaddeq, on the other hand, was able to reassume his post because
large numbers of pro-Mosaddeq supporters enveloped the streets of Tehran.
Curiously, the CIA and the New York Times presented these events of July as
victory for Iran’s communist party and evidence of a looming communist coup. In reality,
however, as Gasiorowski makes clear, it was a demonstration of Mosaddeq’s broad based
support among the Iranian public. Nonetheless, a CIA assessment from July 31 describes
the principal result of the July riots as “bringing into sharp focus the major issue in Iran
38 Carl Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media,” Rolling Stone. October 20, 1977.
39 Gasiorowski, 265.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
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today: whether or not Iran will fall behind the Iron Curtain.” The CIA’s report goes on
to claim that Tudeh was prepared to “seize power” in July, yet refrained from doing so
because of “Mossadegh’s [sic] tremendous popularity.” Although the report cedes that the
communists would not take the government immediately, “the riots of 21 July,” it says,
“accelerated immeasurably the Tudeh programs.”
43
The New York Times had a similar
ominous conception of the events of July. Like the CIA, the Times portrayed the situa-
tion in Iran as communist subversion. According to a July 23 Times editorial, the “grave”
situation in Iran “must cause rejoice in the Kremlin.”
44
Mosaddeq’s return as prime
minister, it claims, “can only lead to national suicide, with the Soviets as the heirs to what
remains.”
45
While it is not certain that the CIA manipulated the New York Times’ cover-
age during July 1952, the close resemblance between their conceptions of the events of
that month makes it conceivable.
The second instance of possible CIA manipulation of the New York Times oc-
curred in August 1953, during the CIA’s actual coup against Mossadeq. By June and
July of 1953 public opinion in Iran was gradually turning against Mosaddeq. The CIA’s
Operation AJAX, aimed at toppling the Iranian leader, was in full swing. On August 13
the CIA obtained two rmans, or royal decrees, from the Shah. One dismissed Mosaddeq,
while the other appointing General Fazollah Zahedi as prime minister. Mossadeq, how-
ever, caught wind of what was occurring and moved to preempt the coup. The Shah ed
Iran, while Zahedi was safely hidden in a CIA hideout. According to the CIA’s declassi-
ed history of the coup, the agency quickly recognized that “strong effort must be made
to convince the Iranian public that Zahedi was the legal head of government and that
Mossadeq was the usurper who has staged a coup.”
46
this end, the CIA sought to utilize
the New York Times to publicize the rmans and elaborate upon Zahedi’s position.
Consequently, on the morning of August 16 “two correspondents of the New
York Times were taken to Shimran, by [CIA] station arrangement, to see Zahedi.”
47
On
this day, however, the Times’ correspondents were only able to meet with Zahedi’s son.
Nonetheless, on August 17, after General Zahedi was safely in CIA hands, the Times ran
an article quoting him from a “secret hideout” saying “he was the rightful Premier”
43 CIA, “Assessment of Current Situation,” July 31 1952.
44 “A Grave Turn in Iran,” New York Times, July 23 1952
45 Ibid.
46 “Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran,” 45.
47 Ibid. 47- 48.
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and that the situation in Iran was stable.
48
This ‘secret hideout’ was, in fact, a CIA
hideout in Tehran. The story goes on to quote the very information the CIA wanted
to publicize—namely Zahedi’s charge that it was Mossadeq who, in fact, staged a
“coup.”
49
A Times article from the following day repeats verbatim the CIA’s propaganda:
Zahedi was the rightful ruler of Iran and it was Mosaddeq who had sought to topple the
government. According to this article, the situation began when the Shah “wrote out two
decrees, one dismissing Dr. Mossadegh [sic] as Premier and the other appointing General
Zahedi.”
50
Thus, in both instances the New York Times’ interpretation of events in Iran is
strikingly similar to the CIA’s view of the situation there. It is plausible, therefore, that
the agency used its close relationship Times to manipulate the publication’s coverage of
Iran in both July 1952 and August 1953. Given that the CIA was actively attempting to
undermine Mosaddeq throughout the early 1950s, it is also conceivable that the agency
had been utilizing the Times in a propaganda war against Mosaddeq well before July
1952. While it is impossible to verify whether or not the CIA did manipulate the Times
before this year, it is clear that between the 1951 and 1953 this publication consistently
presented Mosaddeq as a fanatic extremist, leading his country to a communist col-
lapse. In doing so the Times helped ingrain a fear of an imminent Soviet takeover into
the American public mind by continually repeating it in its daily coverage. As the Times
was one of the three most inuential publications in Iran, its coverage also shaped Iranian
minds, making the atmosphere ripe for a coup. Indeed, as will become apparent shortly, a
key component of the CIA’s coup against Mosaddeq was inducing Iranians to believe that
Mosaddeq was communist stooge.
The New York Times’ Coverage of Mosaddeq
fter Mosaddeq announced his intention to nationalize the Iranian oil industry in
1951 a Times’ story introduced him as the “aged leader of the extremist National Front.”
It goes on to describe him as “[o]ne of the country’s most successful demagogues” who
“frequently breaks into tears in the course of his perorations before parliament.”
51
48 Kennet, Love. “Shah Flees Iran After Move to Dismiss Mossadegh Fails,” New York Times, Au-
gust 17 1953.
49 Ibid.
50 Kennet, Love. “Statues of Shah Torn Down in Iran, ” New York Times, August 18 1953.
51 Michael Clark, “Premier Pledges Reform in Iran,” New York Times, May 4, 1951.
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Such a characterization, however, serves little informative purpose. Besides implying
that Mosaddeq is emotionally unt to lead his country, the story offers no real insight
into the accuracy of his orations. A few days later the Times ran another story repeating
a near identical characterization of the Iranian leader. According to the author, “[t]he
tidal wave of nationalist fervor that engulfed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company…has now
unexpectedly cast one of Iran’s most redoubtable demagogues, the aged Mohammed
Mossadegh, upon the pinnacle of power.”
52
Thus, on the eve of a momentous event in
the history of Iranian nationalism, the nationalist movement’s leader was presented to
American readers as little more than an extremist demagogue.
As the situation in Iran deteriorated in the post-nationalization period as a result of
Britain’s oil embargo and its covert campaign to divide Mosaddeq’s political base in the
National Front, the Times continued its demonization of the Iranian leader, characterizing
him as a dictator. In July 1952 Mosaddeq requested “emergency powers” from the Majlis
in order assert control overt the deteriorating situation.
53
After bringing Iran “to the verge
of bankruptcy,” claims one editorial, Mosaddeq “is now trying to take [Iran] further
along the road to ruin by demanding dictatorial powers for six months, on the plea that
he needs these powers to pull Iran out of the crisis into which he has plunged it.” This
request, concludes the author, “is in effect a legalized coup d’état that smacks of Hitler’s
technique.”
54
Later that year, the Times began warning its readers of a possible communist coup
in Iran. One story described the fears of American policymakers regarding Iran. Their
“primary concern,” writes the author, “is the possibility of a Communist coup in Iran that
would end all ties with the West and carry the country directly into the Soviet camp.”
55
An editorial from the following day likewise warns of the communist threat. After
quoting the perceptions of Winston Churchill and Dwight D. Eisenhower on the strategic
importance of Iran, the editorial asserts that “[t]he really vital thing is to save Iran from
the Communists.” This can be achieved, it says, through certain American actions,
including, among other things, “encouragement for the right men and policies” in Iran
51 Michael Clark, “Premier Pledges Reform in Iran,” New York Times, May 4, 1951.
52 Michael Clark, “Premier of Iran: New Iran Premier Foe of Foreigners,” New York Times, May 7,
1951.
53 Gasiorowski, 266
54 “A Bid For Dictatorship” New York Times, July 15, 1952.
55 “Iranian Situation Disturbs Acheson,” New York Times, August 10, 1952.
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and “a rm pursuit of the anti-Communist containment policy, which should help to deter
the Russians.”
56
An interesting report on US public opinion on Iran, circa November 1952, reveals
that Americans by this time were, in fact, imbued by an intense fear of a looming com-
munist takeover in Iran. As the report writes, “the possibility of Soviet control of Iran
has been the major element present in practically all public discussions concerning that
country.” According to the report, “U.S. commentators” perceived the instability in Iran
following the nationalization of the oil industry as a prelude to “an economic and politi-
cal upheaval,” and eventually, “a communist-orientated regime coming to power.” While
these commentators did not foresee a Soviet invasion of Iran, they foresaw the “possi-
bility of an internal communist coup which would result in Iran becoming a satellite of
Moscow.”
57
In addition to attacking Mosaddeq’s character and warning of a looming commu-
nist coup, the New York Times depicted the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry as a
hostile affront to the civilized world. Because a communist-free Iran was often described
as integral to maintaining the “democratic world,” editorialists characterized the nation-
alization as little more than a reckless action deriving from “an orgy nationalist feel-
ing.”
57
Others described it as an “emotional landside [that] has threatened to overwhelm
the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.”
58
The Times’ coverage rarely dealt with the legitimate
grievances and aspirations of Iranian nationalists, but instead focused near exclusively on
Iran’s geopolitical importance to the West. As one article writes, “The actual conduct of
the company [AIOC] is of little importance, for in the context of Iranian affairs, myth is
far more important than reality.”
59
Not only would the West lose a supply of oil as a result
of the nationalization, went one story, but Iran’s eventual collapse would “undermine the
commercial, political and military position of the Western power in the Middle East.”
60
Nationalism in the Middle East, as a whole, was an anathema to American objec-
tives. As a NSC staff study from April 1952 illustrates, policymakers viewed political
54 “A Bid For Dictatorship” New York Times, July 15, 1952.
55 “Iranian Situation Disturbs Acheson,” New York Times, August 10, 1952.
56 “Crisis in the Middle East,” New York Times, August 11, 1952.
57 Department of State, Division of Public Studies Report. “U.S. Public Opinion on Iran,” November
10, 1952.
57 “Emotion Versus Common Sense,” New York Times, May 3 1951.
58 Michael Clark, “Course of Events Forces Premiers Hand,” New York Times, June 3 1951.
59 Ibid.
60 Clifton Daniel, “Crisis Over Iran’s Oil Affects Whole Mid-East” New York Times, May 20, 1951.
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change in the Middle East as a “basic threat” to American interests in the region’s oil and
strategic waterways, such as the Suez Canal, because “internal political change may lead
to disorder and…to a situation in which regimes orientated to the Soviet Union could
come to power.” Thus, the overall American objective “should be to guide this process of
political change…into channels that will effect the least compromise of Western interests
and will offer the maximum promise of developing stable non-communist regimes.”
61
The US Government viewed Iranian nationalism, specically, with intense suspicion. In
the Truman administration’s last policy statement on Iran, the situation was described as
“unfavorable to the maintenance of control by a non-communist regime for an extended
period of time.” According to the statement, losing Iran to the Soviet Union would not
only remove Iranian oil from the “free world,” but also damage the American position in
the entire Middle East. American policy towards Iranian nationalism, it says, should be to
“try to direct it into constructive channels.”
62
Therefore, by 1952 the US government was deeply apprehensive about
nationalism in the Middle East. Given the American government’s longstanding suspicion
of Iranian nationalism and the fact that both the CIA and the embassy were engaged
in extensive propaganda warfare in Iran, the similarity between the US government’s
conception of Iranian nationalism and that of the New York Times makes it plausible
that the latter was being manipulated. Indeed, as Bernstein writes, during the Cold War
struggle against communism “the traditional line separating the American press corps
and government was often indistinguishable,” as publishers willingly employed their
resources to further American objectives.
63
The CIA’s Coup D’état
With the change in American administrations in 1953, the CIA was given
permission to oust Mosaddeq through Operation AJAX. Perhaps the most important
aspect in this operation was its effective manipulation of public opinion in Iran. Indeed,
the opinion of the masses had become a central aspect of Iranian politics by July of 1952.
61 National Security Council. “United States Objectives and Policies with Respect to the Arab States
and Israel” [Annex to NSC 129], April 7, 1952.
62 National Security Council, NSC 136/1, “United States Policy regarding the Present Situation in
Iran,” Top Secret Report, November 20, 1952.
63 Bernstein.
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In that month Mosaddeq was swept back into power by mass public demonstrations.
A little more than a year later, however, with the CIA’s encouragement, mass
demonstrations once again changed the course of Iranian politics by removing him from
ofce.
Mossadeq’s ouster by popular forces was largely the result of the CIA’s efforts to
paint him as a communist stooge. To do so the CIA engaged in extensive psychological
warfare that reached its pinnacle in August 1953.
64
This campaign included large amounts
of anti-Mosaddeq propaganda that was produced and distributed by the agency.
65
It also
utilized extensive bribing of Iranian politicians to organize anti-Mossadeq protests.
66
According to the CIA’s declassied history, another aspect of this campaign was the
agency’s “black propaganda in the name of the Tudeh party, threatening [religious]
leaders with savage punishment if they opposed Mossadeq.”
67
As mentioned above, the CIA believed it extremely important to portray August
coup against Mosaddeq as the reverse. In other words, the agency sought to portray
coup as one by Mosaddeq against the shah. To do so the CIA needed to publicize
Mosaddeq’s alleged coup attempt and the shah’s rmans dismissing him. By the morning
of August 19 both the rmans and alleged coup attempt received mass publicity in
Iranian newspapers.
68
The pro-Shah crowds that eventually ousted Mosaddeq began
gathering later that morning. In the perspective of the CIA, the members of these crowds
made a “personal choice between Mosaddeq and the Shah” and were “stirred up by the
Tudeh activity.”
69
Interestingly, two days earlier CIA agents paid off large crowds to
pose as Tudeh protestors. According to Gasiorowski, “[t]his ‘fake’ Tudeh crowd…was
designed to provoke fears of a Tudeh takeover and thus rally support to Zahedi.”
70
As
Mosaddeq’s subsequent ouster illustrates, the CIA was quite successful in provoking fear
of communist coup.
64 CIA Clandestine Service History, “Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952-Au-
gust 1953,” March 1954. 36
65 Ibid.,20.
66 Gasiorowski, 274.
67 “Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran,” 36.
68 “Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran,” 65.
69 Ibid.
70 Gasiorowski, 274.
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Conclusion and Consequences
The irony of this situation is immediately apparent to the critical observer. The
CIA, the embassy, and the State Department had long believed Mosaddeq was the
vehicle through which communists would eventually seize power. Yet, in the absence
of concrete evidence to support this claim, the CIA had to manufacture the ction of
communist strength. The CIA achieved this by issuing black propaganda against the
country’s religious leaders in Tudeh’s name and by organizing fake Tudeh rallies. In
the US, on the other hand, it is likely that the CIA used its close relationship to the New
York Times to inspire articles stressing the likelihood of a communist takeover of Iran.
The New York Times’ coverage of the events of July 1952 and August1953 stand out as
possible examples of CIA manipulation, as the paper’s coverage is nearly identical to the
CIA’s perceptions of the Iranian situation. Given the absence of evidence substantiating
a looming communist takeover, one can reasonably conclude that the CIA’s coup against
Mosaddeq was not motivated by an objective analysis of the actual political situation in
Iran, but rather by the an intense fear and uncertainty of Soviet intentions in Iran.
Indeed, Iran’s long history of nationalism and opposition to foreign interference
renders American fears suspect. Since the late 1800s, nationalists fought to assert Iranian
control of their nation’s natural resources. The nationalization of Iran’s greatest resource
in 1951 represented the culmination of these efforts. Considering that Iranian nationalists
had fought so long to assert their sovereignty from foreign powers, it makes little sense
that they would allow their country to be gobbled up by the Soviet Union. The 1940s, as
I have illustrated, was actually a period in which the majlis consistently rebuffed Soviet
machinations. The atmosphere of the Cold War, however, was not always conducive to a
rational assessment of Third World nationalism.
The problem with such ill-conceived policies is that they hold lasting
repercussions. For Iranians the coup effectively suppressed their democratic aspirations
and inaugurated the twenty-eight year brutal dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah.
During this period the shah served as a faithful Cold War ally to the US. For American
policymakers the shah represented ‘stability’ in the region, as his regime was a seemingly
strong anti-communist force. It was for this reason, in part, that the Nixon administration
consistently provided the shah with high-tech, expensive weapons.
71
Throughout the
1970s the US viewed the shah “as the policeman of the Gulf.”
72
71 Keddie, 163.
72 Ibid.
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The Islamic Revolution of 1979, however, shattered American illusions about the
shah’s ‘stability.’ It also illustrated that the 1953 coup did not completely destroy Iran’s
democratic experiment. Indeed, the revolution represented its continuation in albeit a
different, Islamic form. The new regime brought to power by the revolution, however,
was decidedly hostile to the US. Thus, while the coup against Mosaddeq offered short-
term gains to American objectives, in the long it was disastrous to them.
According to Rashid Khalidi, one of the most signicant factors shaping the
Middle East today is “[t]he growth in power of an independent Iran completely outside
the orbit of any state.”
73
This power, he says, has been furthered by the American
decimation of Iran’s two most formidable regional foes: Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, Iran
has been largely free to extend its inuence throughout the region. Whether this extended
inuence is for the better or worse of the peoples of the Middle East is difcult to tell.
Had the coup against Mosaddeq and the subsequent American support for the hated shah
not occurred, tensions between the US and Iran today might not have been so extreme. In
the absence of American-Iranian tensions a large barrier to regional cooperation would
have been removed.
Yet largely as a result of the deep suspicion engendered by the coup, coopera-
tion of any sort is difcult. Indeed, as numerous commentators have noted, Iran today
has consistently accused both the US and Great Britain of meddling in its internal af-
fairs.
74
These accusations were particularly intense during the summer of 2009, when Iran
witnessed mass protest over the country’s disputed elections. The Iranian regime even
detained several staff members of the British embassy on charge that they were “incit-
ing protests.”
75
Although the protests in Iran were certainly genuine expressions of mass
discontent, the Iranian regime has good reason to suspect outside manipulation. In an ab-
surd twist of history, it appears that the CIA, at least under the Bush administration, was
engaging in covert operations to destabilize the Iranian regime.
76
73 Khalidi, Sowing Crisis, 228.
74 See, for instance, Chip Cummis, “Iran Says West Encouraged Protests,” Wall Street Jounal,
December 30, 2009 and John F. Burns, “Ayatollah, Calling Britain Enemy No. 1, Taps Into Deep Distrust
Rooted in History,” New York Times, July 4, 2009.
75 John F. Burns “Iran Threatens Trial for Detained British Embassy Employees,” New York Times,
July 4, 2009.
76 Seymour Hersh, “Preparing the Battle Field: the Bush Administration steps up its secret moves
against Iran,” The New Yorker, 7 July 2008.
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According to Seymour Hersh’s extensive article on the subject, these operations may
have included nancial aid for US designated terrorist organizations, such as the Muja-
hideen-e-Khalq.
77
The US today is deeply concerned with Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Diplomatic
relations between the two countries are extremely tense. In such a situation, ill-conceived
policies, such as CIA covert operations to destabilize the regime, are particularly danger-
ous to both Iranians and Americans. They not only give the regime an excuse to crack
down hard on opposition movements, but they serve as a barrier to mutual cooperation in
the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The US should seek to constructively engage the Iranian regime instead of issuing
bellicose statements. Two steps towards that process would be to end efforts to foment in-
stability in Iran and an American recognition of the past trauma the US has inicted upon
that country. As this paper has argued, CIA covert operations in Iran have been disastrous
to the people of the country and have not promoted the region’s ‘stability.’ Bearing this in
mind, Americans should learn from history and avoid the mistakes of the past.
77 Ibid.
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