The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran (104 page)

21.
“Tehran TV Details Covert Operations of Spies, Top Secret Program,” episode titled “Covert Operations,” Tehran Television Service, May 4, 1989, FBIS, May 8, 1989.

22.
Kahlili interview.

23.
“CIA Declassifies Oldest Documents in U.S. Government Collection,” April 11, 2011,
www.foia.cia.gov
, accessed May 12, 2011.

24.
Giraldi interview; Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton,
Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA’s Spytechs from Communism to Al-Qaeda
(New York: Dutton, 2008), electronic version.

25.
“More on Sermon on Spies,” Tehran Domestic Service in Persian, April 21, 1989, FBIS, NES-89-076; Kahlili interview.

26.
Kahlili interview.

27.
CIA message to U.S. Embassy Tehran (102330Z), August 1979.

28.
As early as August 1979, the CIA took interest in efforts by former Iranian military officers to organize opposition to the clerics in Tehran, with one of the first gatherings occurring in a London hotel room led by former Iranian air force general Hassan Toufanian. The Iranian government learned of the meeting after the embassy takeover, when students painstakingly pieced together the strips of the shredded message describing Toufanian’s gathering. CIA message to U.S. Embassy Tehran (102330Z), August 1979.

29.
Kenneth Timmerman,
Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran
(New York: Crown Forum, 2005), p. 215.

30.
Prados,
Safe for Democracy
, p. 500; Richelson,
U.S. Intelligence Community
, pp. 355–56.

31.
The 2001 American invasion of Afghanistan was a perfect example of this symbiotic relationship. CIA paramilitary operatives went in first, building upon their twenty-year ties with Afghan tribes, followed a few weeks later by soldiers from the 5th Special Forces Group, backed by the air force’s own special operations forces and airpower. These special operations forces were then layering over the CIA effort, and the U.S. military succeeded in overthrowing al-Qaeda and its Taliban hosts weeks before the generals in the Pentagon thought possible. The Reagan administration came to Washington determined to strengthen America’s military, including the elite special operations forces (SOF). The army’s special forces—never popular with the conventional-minded armor and infantry generals—had atrophied after Vietnam. Their numbers were cut in half, their units ignominiously relegated to the national guard and reserves, where officers could receive the coveted “Special Forces” tab on their uniform not by passing a demanding screening process but by simply taking a correspondence course.

After the failed Iranian rescue mission in 1980 and new civilian leadership, both Congress and the Defense Department forced the army as well as the navy and air force to renew these forgotten but choice men. The Joint Chiefs tried to placate the SOF supporters by forming the Joint Special Operations Agency within the Joint Staff. Intended to coordinate special ops training and operations across the military, it was largely inconsequential and purposely made so. Congress eventually forced the issue in 1987 with the establishment of Special Forces Command, which effectively took away training and funding for SOF from these three services. The marine corps opted not to participate in Special Operations Command until Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld directed it in 2005. Department of Defense, Defense Resources Board–Directed Special Operations Review, “Special Operations Forces (SOF): Roles, Missions, and Organization,” June 3, 1982.

32.
This was a similar plan to what was employed in 2001 in Afghanistan. While that worked well, the CIA’s record of success in these paramilitary operations has been mixed. “It is extraordinarily hard to foster antigovernment insurgencies in a totalitarian state,” a retired CIA operations officer noted. “You need to develop a network of indigenous supporters, and trying to do that from outside a denied country using CIA resources or exiles rarely works.” Under Casey in the 1980s, the CIA succeeded in fostering the anti-Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua and built a major resistance movement against the Soviets in Afghanistan. But going back to the 1950s, the CIA failed to organize any credible resistance to Soviet occupation in Ukraine and the Baltic states. The agency’s most notable failure was in North Vietnam, where every CIA-led team of South Vietnamese was killed or captured, likely compromised by South Vietnamese double agents working for the communists.

33.
“Spy Outlines Recruitment, Training, U.S. Plans,”
Tehran Times
in English, September 14, 1989, FBIS, September 21, 1989.

34.
Control of the critical location was very important to CENTCOM, which assigned one entire special forces battalion to the mission.

35.
“CIA Spy Comments Further on Activities,” Tehran Television Service, November 6, 1989, FBIS, NES-89-215, November 8, 1989, p. 57.

36.
Hart interview.

37.
Sazegara interview.

38.
“Adventures with the CIA in Turkey: Interview with Philip Giraldi,”
Balkanalysis.com
, July 30, 2006,
www.balkanalysis.com/blog/2006/07/30/adventures-with-the-cia-in-turkey-interview-with-philip-giraldi
, accessed July 5, 2007.

39.
“CIA Spies,” News Conference with Minister of Intelligence and Security Hojjat ol-Eslam Reyshahri, Tehran Television Service, April 26, 1989, FBIS, NES-89-080, April 27, 1989.

40.
Kahlili interview.

C
HAPTER 5
A F
IG
L
EAF OF
N
EUTRALITY

1.
Kevin Woods, Michael Pease, Mark Stout, Williamson Murray, and James Lacey,
Iraqi Perspectives Project: A View of Operation Iraqi Freedom from Saddam Hussein’s Senior Leadership
, Department of Defense, Joint Forces Command, 2006, p. 7.

2.
Saddam Hussein grew alarmed at reports of young Shia officers sabotaging aircraft and tanks in support of the Iranian Revolution. “Interview with Lieutenant General Raad Hamdani,” in Kevin Woods, Williamson Murray, and Thomas Holaday,
Saddam’s War: An Iraqi Military Perspective of the Iran-Iraq War
, McNair Paper 70 (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University, March 2009), p. 28.

3.
Joint Staff, Contingency Planning Group, “Opportunities for U.S. Policy in the Wake of the Iranian Crisis,” January 1980, p. 18.

4.
Comments by George Cave, “Toward an International History of the Iran-Iraq War, 1980–1988: A Critical Oral History Workshop,” Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Cold War International History Project, July 19, 2004; Cave interview.

5.
Mohsen Sazegara, “Engaging Iran: Lessons from the Past,” Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Policy Watch Focus 93, May 2009, p. 6.

6.
Gary Sick e-mail to author, March 22, 2010.

7.
Zbigniew Brzezinski memorandum for President Jimmy Carter, “NSC Weekly Report #122,” December 21, 1979.

8.
Rumors still persisted that Washington had secretly encouraged the Iraqi attack. In 1981 the new secretary of state, Alexander Haig, reported to President Ronald Reagan in a memo in April 1981 that Saudi foreign minister Crown Prince Fahd had confirmed that Carter had relayed a message through Fahd to Saddam Hussein giving the “green light to launch the war against Iran.” While it’s hard to completely discount Fahd’s statement, it runs counter to the substantial catalog of declassified, once sensitive documents regarding Carter’s views of the Iran-Iraq War. In hindsight, Haig’s motive in the memo was self-conceit, intended to impress Reagan following his first trip as secretary of state to the Middle East. On the same trip, Haig also proclaimed that he had reached an agreement with Israel and the pro-Western Arabs on forging a common front to counter the Soviet Union. “It didn’t happen,” said Nicholas Veliotes, then assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. “So I cast great doubts on almost everything in this memo.” Comments by Nicholas Veliotes, “Toward an International History of the Iran-Iraq War, 1980–1988: A Critical Oral History Workshop,” Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Cold War International History Project, July 19, 2004.

9.
Ward,
Immortal
, p. 242.

10.
Ibid., pp. 253–54.

11.
Sazegara interview.

12.
Ward,
Immortal
, p. 226.

13.
Ibid., p. 256.

14.
Bing West memorandum to Caspar Weinberger, “Opening to Iraq,” February 3, 1982, Weinberger Papers, Box I:683, Folder Iraq.

15.
U.S. Interests Section Baghdad message to Secretary of State, “Meeting with Tariq Aziz” (231255Y), May 1981.

16.
Lieutenant Colonel R. L. Hatchett memorandum for Director for Plans and Policy, Joint Staff, “Senior Interagency Group Meeting on Iran-Iraq,” July 25, 1982.

17.
L. Paul Bremer memorandum, “Discussion Paper for SIG Meeting, Interagency Group No. 2,” July 23, 1982.

18.
Sworn Statement by Howard Teicher, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida, case number 93-241-CRHIGHSMITH, January 31, 1995; Richard Murphy message to Donald Rumsfeld, “Follow-up Steps on Iraq-Iran” (120318Z), January 1984.

19.
Philip Wilcox, Foreign Affairs Oral History Program, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, interviewed by Stuart Kennedy, April 27, 1988.

20.
Robert Oakley, interview with author, December 12, 1994; William Taft IV, interview with author, August 16, 1996.

21.
Richard Armitage, interviews with author, December 14, 1994, February 15, 2007, and March 4, 2008.

22.
Zbigniew Brzezinski memorandum for President Jimmy Carter, “NSC Weekly Report #157,” October 10, 1980.

23.
In 1985, two KC-10 tankers were added to the three KC-135s, bringing a total of five air refuelers supporting the AWACS mission.

24.
Brigadier General Wayne Schramm, USAF (Ret.), interview with author, May 26, 1995; Memorandum for General George Crist, “ELF-One Transition,” November 1988. Also Colonel George Williams, USAF (Ret.), interview with author, December 13, 1994. The AWACS initially were under European Command, which in 1980 had responsibility for Saudi Arabia. It continued to be referred to by its initial name, European Liaison Force-One even after EUCOM relinquished control of the operation to CENTCOM. Six crews were on hand for the four AWACS, with each crew flying a mission every two days to provide continuous surveillance.

25.
“ELF-One Fact Sheet,” United States Air Force, February 1983, Operational Archives, Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C., JTF/MEF records, Series 3, Box 10, Folder 5, ELF Exchange, p. 2.

26.
Secretary of State message to U.S. Interests Section Baghdad, “De-Designation of Iraq as Supporter of International Terrorism” (272235Z), February 1982.

27.
Kenneth Pollack,
The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict between Iran and America
(New York: Random House, 2004), p. 207.

28.
Secretary of State message to U.S. Interests Section Baghdad, “U.S. Credit Possibilities with Iraq: Follow-up to February 14, 1983, Secretary Hamadi Meeting” (161515Z), March 1983; Secretary of State memorandum to Donald Gregg, “Eximbank Financing for Iraqi Export Pipeline,” June 12, 1984.

29.
Donald Rumsfeld message, “Rumsfeld One-on-One Meeting with Iraq Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz” (211795Z), December 1983.

30.
American Embassy London message to Secretary of State, “Rumsfeld Mission: December 20 Meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein” (21165Z), December 1983.

31.
Bruce Jentleson,
With Friends Like These: Reagan, Bush, and Saddam, 1982–1990
(New York: Norton, 1994), p. 45.

32.
Robert McFarlane memorandum, “Iraqi Military Needs,” May 7, 1984; Colonel John Stanford memorandum to Robert McFarlane, “Actions Taken in Response to Interagency Recommendations on Iraqi Military Needs,” June 15, 1984; Walter Patrick Lang, interview with author, April 5, 2010.

33.
Jordan became one of the prime conduits for military hardware heading to Iraq. In one deal alone, thirty-two thousand South Korean artillery shells arrived in Iraq by way of the Jordanian port of al-Aqabah. From 1984 to 1985, huge shipments of Soviet-built armored personnel carriers and French armored cars arrived destined for Iraq. A multilane highway was constructed from al-Aqabah to western Iraq, and eight thousand trucks traveled back and forth delivering their deadly cargo for the Iraqi war machine. King Hussein quietly allowed Iraqi aircraft to base out of western Jordan.