A CIA Hand in an American ‘Coup’?

August 26, 2013

Special Report: The U.S. government decries leaks, but the other side of the story is that key chapters of American history are hidden from the public for decades and maybe forever. The CIA has just admitted its 1953 Iran coup and may never acknowledge a role in ousting Jimmy Carter in 1980, Robert Parry reports.

By Robert Parry

It has taken six decades for the CIA to formally acknowledge that it undertook a coup against Iran’s elected government in 1953, but the spy agency might never concede that some of its officers joined in a political strike against a sitting U.S. president in 1980, yet that is what the evidence now indicates.

As with the ouster of Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, the motive for sabotaging the reelection of President Jimmy Carter in 1980 appears to have flowed from fears about the direction of the Cold War, with American hardliners justifying their actions based on an assessment that Carter, like Mossadegh, was a dangerous idealist.