This was the CIA’s very first mission dedicated to regime change and done in collaboration with British intelligence in order to install a government that was sympathetic to western business interests.
The consequences of this action were severe and lasting, casting a long shadow. Join us as we unpack the details that led up to the overthrow, the people who played a role in this operation, and the suffering and death that followed.
SNAFUBAR is hosted by Sara Hart, Chair of the Department of Applied Humanities at Cal Poly Humboldt, and Jeff Crane who is an Environmental Historian and Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cal Poly Humboldt.
Research and writing for the show is done by Liam Salcuni and Roman Sotomayor.
SNAFUBAR is produced by Abigail Smithson and brought to you by the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cal Poly Humboldt.
Works Cited:
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Iran, 1951-1954
Harry S. Truman Presidential Library: The Creation of the CIA
Office of the Historian: National Security Document 68
Office of the Historian: National Security Act of 1947
Office of the Director of National Intelligence: National Security Act of 1947
Steven Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men, 2003
Teaching American History: The Long Telegram
The Mossadegh Project: Biography
The Mossadegh Project: Mossadegh and Truman
Winston Churchill, “The Sinews of Peace Speech, 1947, International Churchill Society
[Music]
>>Dwight Eisenhower (Archival Audio): You are about to embark upon the great crusade.
>>JFK (Archival Audio): The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it.
>>Douglas MacArthur (Archival Audio): Only the dead have seen the end of war.
>>Dwight Eisenhower (Archival Audio): We will accept nothing less than full victory.
[Music]
>>Sarah Hart: You're listening to SNAFUBAR, at Cal Poly Humboldt.
>>Jeff Crane: Welcome back listeners. Thanks for tuning into SNAFUBAR, where we talk about American military history and America's national myth. We like to talk about military mishaps, about errors, otherwise known as snafus, both strategic and moral. And we like to focus on tension points, on those places where our beliefs and our behaviors don't match up. Is the United States a reluctant warrior? Does it seek to avoid military confrontations, but is forced to fight for the sake of freedom? Or is there more to the picture here? I'm Jeff Crane, Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Cal Poly Humboldt, and a peace time army veteran.
>>Sarah Hart: And I'm Sarah Hart, Chair of the Applied Humanities Department and a Religious Studies scholar, also at Cal Poly Humboldt. And so what's on the agenda today, Jeff?
>>Jeff Crane: Today we're going to focus on 1953 Iran. Why, you might ask?
>>Sarah Hart: Yeah, tell me why, Jeff.
>>Jeff Crane: Well, Sarah, because in 1953, the CIA conducted a covert operation to overthrow Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran. This was the CIA's very first mission dedicated to regime change. The overthrow of Mosaddegh, our topic today, led directly to the excesses of the Shah, which then led directly to the Iranian Revolution of 1979 when the Ayatollah Khomeini came into power.
>>Sarah Hart: And since the first Ayatollah, Khomeini, came to power in 1979, Iran has been such a huge part of America's public consciousness, right? Our government policies and the rhetoric of danger and fear that's come largely from the federal government. How, how did they become such a threat? How did Iran become even sometimes such a punching bag for American politicking?
>>Jeff Crane: It really goes back to '53 when the CIA overthrew this democratically elected leader, who himself was a strongly democratizing and nationalist force. And America, following the British lead in picking up their failed plan, ended this process.
>>Sarah Hart: Okay, and so that is what we're going to look at today.
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, that's what we're looking at. The early 1950s, the Eisenhower administration and a covert operation run by the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, with the British Special Intelligence Service, otherwise known as SIS, otherwise known as MI6. The prime mover on the ground was one Kermit Roosevelt.
>>Sarah Hart: Okay, so why am I sensing a giant SNAFUBAR here? And before we get rolling, let me make a few important points here, points that I think we all need to hear. The history we'll cover today we present as in no way a defense of or in support for current regimes in Iran or for their actions in the past. The focus of our show is largely introspective. What we hope to do here is to look at the actions of our country and our government. Our hope is that knowing more about this history might help to guide us toward better decisions in the future that it might contribute to a more informed society.
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, Sarah, that's really helpful. I appreciate that. And to do that, we need to cover some pretty serious ground. We need a quick primer. Yes, quick on American foreign policy in the 1950s. We need some understanding of economics of oil as related to the -- maybe a smidgen about the Dulles brothers. Who knows what else shows up along the way?
>>Sarah Hart: I don't know about quick, Jeff.
>>Jeff Crane: Sarah, I'm going to ask you to do some easy work here. Walk us through containment. National Security Council Document Number 68 and the Domino Theory.
>>Sarah Hart: Oh, that's all?
>>Jeff Crane: 10 words or less.
>>Sarah Hart: Cool. Containment was created as a foreign policy approach in 1946 by President Truman. Much of the motivation behind implementing policies of containment came from a very long telegram, named... The Long Telegram.
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, that's good one.
>>Sarah Hart: That's right. It was sent to Washington, DC, on February 22, 1946 by the foreign ambassador to Moscow, whose name was George Kennan. In this 8,000-word telegram --
>>Jeff Crane: Which I read in grad school. I'm sure most of us have read it
>>Liam Salcuni: It's really long.
>>Jeff Crane: Yes.
>>Sarah Hart: It's a pretty rich --
>>Jeff Crane: I might have skimmed it.
>>Sarah Hart: Kennan -- okay, so in that very long telegram, Kennan describes the Soviet Union as an aggressive, expanding entity. Set on reshaping the balance of global power to weaken the United States and other Western allies. And he writes, I'm going to quote a little bit lengthily here, "Russians will strive energetically to develop Soviet representation in, and official ties with, countries in which they send strong possibilities of opposition to Western centers of power. This applies to such widely separated points as Germany, Argentina, Middle Eastern countries, et cetera." So in other words, the Communist powers are spreading and reshaping the world under a Soviet sphere of influence.
>>Jeff Crane: And so then what our job is to then contain that, right?
>>Sarah Hart: Yes.
>>Jeff Crane: And this feels a little alarmist, maybe?
>>Sarah Hart: Yeah, oh, yeah, it was. This document really set off a red alert back in Washington, do you see that?
>>Jeff Crane: You know how much I hate puns. But yeah, you keep going there, Sarah.
>>Sarah Hart: Just a few weeks later, Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his Sinews of Peace Speech in front of an audience of 1,500 Americans, including President Harry Truman. The message is clear, especially for Truman. The Soviet Union is expanding its influence beyond Moscow, spreading across Europe and across the globe.
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, so Churchill states in his speech that quote, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line, by all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe, Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Sofia, all of these famous cities and the populations around them line what I must call the Soviet sphere. And all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence, but to a very high, and in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow." I mean, and this is true, right? We're not saying that Moscow and Soviet Union wasn't trying to expand its reach. It very much was doing so, right? Yeah. The United States emerging from World War II as a preeminent power of the Western world must prepare to safeguard the world from the Soviet Union. And this is what Churchill is arguing, and we must then therefore stop communist expansion. This is what is asking on the table.
>>Sarah Hart: Contain the communist expansion. Yeah, this is what will more popularly be known as the Iron Curtain speech, right? I mean, he coins the term here. We know it now, and this speech does help to establish the idea of that communist boogie man that America has lived with for so long. In 1946, with the Long Telegram and Churchill speech-these happen within two weeks of each other, listeners-it's clear to Harry Truman that the war was over, World War II, but threats to national security and lasting global peace, those threats were not over. This is where containment comes in. And you might be wondering out there, what are the policies of containment? What does this mean?
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, I'm sure everyone's wondering. And it's also worth remembering that Great Britain was broke at the end of World War II. And they're involved in multiple struggles, Greece in particular, so they're trying to pull the United States into this work. So in very simple terms, the policies of containment mean that the United States will use military state department, economic tools to contain the expansion of communism, even cultural tools, think of like Radio Free Europe, the artists and musicians we supported performing. All that time focused on the Soviet Union, later also include China and other countries that become communist. So we're going to use all these tools to contain the USSR, but try to not fight them directly because they built this very powerful military machine.
>>Sarah Hart: Right. And when China, quote unquote, falls to communism in 1949, and the containment approach is then used in Asia as well. >>Jeff Crane: Dr. Hart, don't you mean when the quote, "democrats lost China?" Unquote.
>>Sarah Hart: Ahhh, the Republicans really clobbered the Democratic Party over that one. And it would influence leaders for decades, really, including JFK and LBJ, Kennedy and Johnson. They didn't want to be the Democrats who lost Vietnam. We can see here one of the negative effects of partisan politics. Of course, is a super overly simple, totally inaccurate and not really the point of today's episode.
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, I mean, if you study Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang Party and Mao Zedong and the Red Army, there was no keeping China, right? Yeah. So first there's containment. We've got that. Before getting to NSC-68, we need to briefly summarize the National Security Act of 1947.
>>Sarah Hart: Oh, National Security Act of 1947. That's a good one. Let's get right into it.
>>Jeff Crane: This act significantly reshapes military departments utilized by the US government, like the Army in the Navy and the United States, approach to form policy more broadly. It created the Department of Defense, which actually at the time was called the National Military Establishment, but people disliked the acronym, NME.
[Laughter]
>>Jeff Crane: It reminds me of Nixon's Committee to Reelect the President, Creep. So it was changed to the Department of Defense in 1949.
>>Sarah Hart: It's been two years.
Yeah, and the DOD manages communications, intelligence, and operations relative to the Army, Navy, and Air Force. And I think we need to notice how quickly we're scaling up, right?
>>Sarah Hart: Yeah.
>>Jeff Crane: When normally after wars, we'd always historically demobilize. We're going the different direction this time.
>>Sarah Hart: Right, and this was done- there were some reasons for this. This was done because in the past, communication on foreign policy matters, sensitive military information and matters of national security were fragmented across like a wide variety of different government agencies, which doesn't make things easy. So the National Security Act of 1947 really tried to address this problem.
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, if the US is going to be taking on the Soviets and thwarting the spread of communism, then centralizing the military and form policy initiatives is really essential.
>>Sarah Hart: Yeah, and then big brother can watch you more easily, too.
>>Jeff Crane: That's true, and he is. This act also creates the National Security Council, a panel of high ranking government officials, the president, vice president, secretary of defense, secretary of state, and the director of the CIA, all serve on the council discussing and addressing pressing national security issues.
>>Sarah Hart: Yeah, did you say the director of the Central Intelligence Agency?
>>Jeff Crane: I said CIA, but it's the same thing, right? Yeah, so this is another department created by this act. The CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, is an arm of the executive branch focused on gathering foreign intelligence and information relating to national security. And their own words, the CIA's mission is to "collect, evaluate, analyze, and disseminate foreign intelligence to assist the president and senior US government policy makers in making decisions relating to national security." The CIA may also engage in covert action at the president's direction in accordance with "applicable law."
>>Sarah Hart: That sounds like a good one. Let's remember that phrase, folks, in accordance with "applicable law." That might come up again. In the midst of rising Cold War tensions, the CIA is born... It's poetic a little bit. This...
>>Jeff Crane: That says you. That's a big one.
>>Sarah Hart: Okay, but this entity did have a forerunner, which was known as the Office of Strategic Services or OSS, which ran during World War II from 1942 to 1945. And its aim was to gather sensitive information on strategy, train resistance movements, and conduct psy-ops, or psychological operations against the Axis power. So the CIA is the successor, and it also runs these types of operations around the world.
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, and they're really successful, and a lot of the people that are going to run the CIA are people that... they earn their stripes on the ground in France and in Asia doing sabotage, training agents, things like that. They're going to pick up where the OSS left off, only in a much larger and more coordinated scale, and of course in a much higher funding level.
[Music]
>>Jeff Crane: Hello there, you're listening SNAFUBAR, I'm Jeff Crane, and I'm here with Sarah Hart. Today we take a deep look at the history behind the United States involvement in Iran. As it turns out, there is a ton of necessary context. Yes, folks, a ton, that provides a bigger picture on the current war between the United States and Iran. Let's listen in on some of the history behind the CIA, an entity that plays a crucial role in United States foreign policy strategies with Iran.
>>Sarah Hart: Yes, okay, thanks Jeff, the NSC document 68 National, Security Council document 68, really ramps up the ideological rhetoric and intent of containment. And this document in SC68 was published in 1950. So right on the tail of Jeff, do you remember what happened in 1949?
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, I think in 1949, otherwise known as the year that scared the bejezzus out of America. Mao Zedong's Red Army, drove Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang Nationalist Party out of China to Formosa, otherwise known as Taiwan. The Soviet Union- so China is then lost to the Communist Party again, the kind of phraseology we use. And then the Soviet Union detonated their first atomic bomb, which was much, much faster than we expected to happen.
>>Sarah Hart: Yeah, it was really scary for Americans. So as far as America is concerned, it's totally time to escalate. Because we're a peace-loving country. And we have peace through strength and nuclear power.
>>Liam Salcuni: To secure peace, you prepare for war.
>>Sarah Hart: Yes, that's right Liam, thank you.
>>Jeff Crane: Thank you.
>>Sarah Hart: Bring out the swords. And NSC 68 does this very well. It plans for escalation, it gives us a logic. The document says this about the Soviet Union. It says that the Soviet Union quote, "Calls for the complete subversion or forcible destruction of the machinery of government and structure of society." "And for their replacement by an apparatus and structure subservient to and controlled from the Kremlin." It's very scary. It goes on to say, "The United States as the principal center of power in the non-Soviet world and the bulwark of opposition to Soviet expansion is the principal enemy whose integrity and vitality must be subverted or destroyed by one means or another if the Kremlin is to achieve its fundamental design."
>>Jeff Crane: Well, if that's not a call to arms, I don't know what is.
>> Sarah Hart: No, it's really heated, it's really dark. And we've got to remember this is the National Security Council document talking about what the Soviet Union thinks about it.
>>Liam Salcuni: Absolutely, and this lands on President Truman's desk. Now it's all been declassified, but this is only his eyes in 1950s saw this. So this is the official report.
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, and at the same time though, in this era, the United States was ratcheting up anti-communist rhetoric, like all the films about how to respond to nuclear bomb. They were creating a real culture of fear. There's no flex language in there for like a country like North Vietnam, like, "Yeah, they're socialist and somewhat communist, but they're mostly nationalist." And can we work with the nationalist element of that? Which will be true in Cuba, true in many countries, as opposed to know they're just communist and we must...
>>Liam Salcuni: Well, we'd be the bullworks.
>>Sarah Hart: Yeah.
>>Jeff Crane: And it's only because they're puppets of the Soviet Union not acknowledging their own histories and their own agency and trying to decolonize and reform, right?All right, so we need to contain them.
>> Sarah Hart: Right.
>>Jeff Crane: But how do you do it, right? How do you stop the Soviet Union? How do you stop communism? And so NSC 68 details this also to, again, to use that word, it's the thought of the spread of communism. Quote, "Requires a buildup of military strength by the United States and its allies to a point in which the combined strength will be superior, both initially and throughout a war to the forces that can be brought to bear by the Soviet Union and its satellites." I present to you the arms race.
>>Sarah Hart: Yeah, I mean, requires a buildup of military strength. Like this is a pre-emptive arming. That's what our ginormous military budget comes from, is this need. What they're telling us here is maintain strong relationships with countries aligned with the United States or establish friendly regimes elsewhere in the world. And this largely applies to what was termed the third world.
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, and we know the third world is pejorative now. We're not using in that sense. So Sarah's going to walk us through where that comes from and why.
>>Sarah Hart: Yeah, third world countries. We don't often think of this. Listeners, you've probably heard of this before, maybe referring to underdeveloped countries around the world. Though that's not what I mean, and that's not the original use of the term. Third world was introduced into the Western lexicon during the Cold War to describe those countries that were not aligned with the first world, Western Democrats who are capitalist, or the second world, Eastern or communist countries? During the Cold War, third world countries like Iran had the potential to become key Western allies. That is, unless the Soviets got to them first. So the first and the second world, bided out for control of third world nations. And NSC 68 also cast the conflicts between communist countries and the US and its allies in very Manichean terms. We've used this phrase before, very black and white, rigidly dualist. For this document, the Soviet Union and all the communists who are aligned with them were godless, anti-capitalists determined to expand by any means.
>>Jeff Crane: And these are the words they use. We're not imposing these words.
>>Sarah Hart: We're not exaggerating. This is how it was set up. And before anything had happened. I mean, this was the setting of the stage. And we can't forget that expansion was part of communist ideology. And Stalin had used a number of strategies ranging from invasion to meddling in politics.
>>Jeff Crane: Assassination.
>>Sarah Hart: Assassination. Like it wasn't all clean. He was trying to expand the Soviet Union sphere of influence west in countries like Poland, Romania, Albania, Turkey, Greece- Jeff, you mentioned earlier.
>>Jeff Crane: Hungary.
>>Sarah Hart: Hungary, like--
>>Jeff Crane: So I want to make sure I have this right. We are the defenders of God, capitalism, freedom, apple pie baseball and all that is good in the world.
>>Sarah Hart: Yes, you've got it. And Jeff, do you have a problem with that?
>>Jeff Crane: No, I'll be good Dr. Hart
>>Sarah Hart: Okay, we are clear on this. So we have containment. Then we have NSC 68. And finally, the last piece of our setup here is domino theory, which is articulated- Which is articulated by Eisenhower in 1954, but is clearly evident in the thinking of the president, the CIA, the Secretary of State and others well before 1954. Domino theory, the idea that if one country falls to communism a bunch more will follow, all knocked down like a row of dominoes. This is where we have to introduce the Dulles brothers. John Foster Dulles served as Secretary of State under Eisenhower. And Alan Dulles, his brother, was the director of the CIA also under Eisenhower. So brothers working together and running American foreign policy on both the overt and covert side of things.
>>Jeff Crane: So Sarah, thanks for the deep policy ideology background. Now I'm going to jump right into the story of what the US did to Iran in Iran in 1953.
>>Sarah Hart: Okay.
>>Jeff Crane: In this era, the British treated Iran like a colonial entity and the Anglo-Iranian oil company from here on out known as AIOC was only Iranian in name. Almost 100% of the revenues flowed back into British coffers while living and working conditions were. frankly, brutal. As opposed to the walled communities and clubs and swimming pools and trees that were where the British managers and technical staff lived.
>>Sarah Hart: Yeah, I mean in two words, right: exploitative capitalism, like kind of of the worst sort. The descriptions of the Iranian workers living conditions from this time are really the thing of something from nightmares.
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, and so you know there's a whole thing happening during the Truman administration where Iran, again is trying to get more revenue from the company and their Britain is trying to pull the Truman administration and he sends folks over. And they observe the conditions and say this is terrible. This is brutal. And then also too the British have a very arrogant colonial attitude. They will not negotiate with the Iranians about this. And this is one of the problems that's going to lead to the next set of things. Iranian political and religious leaders post World War II wanted a larger share of the revenues from AIOC. The company and the British government absolutely refused to play ball and they were patronizing, they were rude, they wouldn't negotiate, they treated them as colonial subjects. And the British government intelligence agencies have a lot of influence over Iranian politicians, over the Shah. It's a monarchy-parliamentary system with a lot of British influence, even over religious leaders. So they're able to push back on these increasingly nationalist demands. And this condescension on the part of the British inflamed Iranian sentiment for increased revenue and finally demanding nationalizing of the company.
>>Sarah Hart: Oh, nationalizing. Oh, dear. That sounds very not free market. Shall we say?
>>Jeff Crane: Well, I mean, and they can look across the Gulf where American oil companies had agreed with Saudi Arabia to split the revenue 50/50, right? So it must have *bleep* the British off and the Americans did that. Seems minimally fair. I mean, it is their oil. Right? But the British were not going to be forced out. They were determined to hold on to the AIOC. And President Truman is refusing to get pulled into this. He is very frustrated with the British approach to this. And he writes a letter to the former ambassador in Tehran, Henry Grady. And he wrote, "we tried to get the block-headed British guys from Missouri..." Right? So he just talks real straight. "We tried to get the block-headed British to have their oil company make a fair deal with Iran. No, no, they could not do that." You love the sarcasm, right? "They know all about how to handle it. We didn't according to them." So you can hear the frustration in his words, his effort to try to navigate a middle path consistent with our policy of containment. Right? He's worried that the British taking a hard line will drive Iran into the Soviet camp. But the British are going to be much more successful than Eisenhower administration. It's a whole new ballgame.
>>Sarah Hart: So listeners, one takeaway here is that the British were primarily concerned with the oil market. While Americans under Truman were primarily concerned with this iron curtain business. America didn't want Iran turning communist. I want to talk about Mohammad Mosaddegh. What an absolutely fascinating figure and national leader. Super interesting guy. He had been involved in Iranian politics for decades at this point. He was a seasoned political operator in an ever shifting and complex parliamentary monarchy and an unstable political system. He's born in 1882, Mosadek is, and from birth, he's no stranger to Iranian politics. A member of the well-connected Qahar dynasty, the ruling family of Iran from 1789 to 1925. That's a long time. Mosadek spent his youth studying political science. So he's related to the longstanding ruling family. He's studying political science. In his late teens, he actively supported the Iranian constitutionalist movement. Broadening democratic representation and checks and balances within Iran's Government. He's pushing for what we might think of as progressive reforms in a democratic context. Like that's pretty clear. And this is sort of a betrayal against his own class, against his own family, who are rooted in a non-democratic dynastic leadership.
>>Jeff Crane: Kind of like what FDR did. They called him class traitor. Right? Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
>>Sarah Hart: Yeah, that's right. So it was a big and bold move for Mosaddegh. So Mosaddegh fought for sovereignty for Iran. From a global history perspective the late 19th and early 20th century is a period and reform and upheaval in world history. So nationalism and ideas of international sovereignty are sweeping around the globe. He is not alone in this, but he is very much an active participant in this history. And this is certainly true from his early days in politics. Even as a young man, Mosaddegh's reputation preceded him. He was celebrated as a just politician committed to bringing a better quality of life to the Iranian people. His mother told him when he was young, "a person's worth is dependent by how much he endures for the will of the people."
>>Jeff Crane: Oh that's a great quote. And it seems like he took that seriously. In 1951, as an elected representative of the National Front Party, Mosaddegh made a proposal to the Majles, the Iranian Parliament, to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. This would topple the British Empire's 150 year stranglehold on Iranian resources and their exploitative labor practices. The bill was approved by the Senate just days after Mosaddegh was elected Prime Minister and it won 90% of the votes from his representatives.
>> Sarah Hart: Uh-oh, messing with the colonial oil powers.
>>Jeff Crane: What could go wrong?
>>Sarah Hart: What could go wrong? While Mosaddegh is making these momentous strides politically the CIA is watching him. In a now declassified CIA document promulgated by the National Intelligence Council, the United States fears over Mosaddegh's rise to power are really clear and those fears mirror a lot of those Cold War politics and containment fear that we touched on earlier. The document opens with this, this is a quote: "The clash of interests between Iran and the UK over Iran's oil resources has reached a critical stage with the elevation of Mohammed Mosaddegh, the leader of the ultra-nationalist National Front Group to the Premiership." The document continues: "Any intensification of the current crisis would give the USSR added opportunities for exploiting the local unrest and might eventually enable the USSR to deny a large part or the whole of the Iranian oil supply to the Western powers."
>>Jeff Crane: The policy of containment, right, this whole Cold War culture really creates a situation where the U.S. and the U.K. have to act quickly so that Iran, which is again, we're using the phrase from that era, "third world entity" in Cold War terms would fall to the Soviet Union, like China fell, right?
>>Sarah Hart: Yeah. Set off a string of dominoes.
[Music]
>>Sarah Hart: Welcome back listeners. You're listening to the SNAFUBAR. I'm Sarah Hart. I'm here with Jeff Crane. And today’s show, we are focusing on the backstory behind the United States involvement in Iran. The United States involvement in Iran. It's the political sabotage, bribery, the CIA. No, this is not Mission: Impossible. This really happens. You have to hear it to believe it.
>>Jeff Crane: Following Iran's nationalization of AIOC in 1951. Wait, wait, what's the AIOC again? The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The British imposing embargo on oil sales. At that time Iran was the fourth largest producer of oil in a world recovering from World War II. And a world that was increasingly dependent on petroleum in order to rebuild. Right? So just like with the Strait of Hormuz closure in 2026, this had a global economic effect. The British used the Royal Navy to shut trade down completely. They freeze Iranian currency in British banks. They stopped trade of needed British goods with Iran. And this is devastating for the Iranian economy. It cost thousands of jobs. They're running low in currency on supplies. There's growing unrest in the country as a result. Also in 1951, an important year for Iran, right? Mosaddegh is elected as Prime Minister against the wishes of the Shah and of the British who had tried to use their influence to try and secure a more reasonable person. Right? One that would let them keep having their oil. We don't have a ton of time to go into it, but Mosaddegh does work to expand the power of the Mejles, the parliament, against- and the Prime Minister against the power of the monarch, the Shah. While also instituting significant reform supporting the poor and the working class. We have here as an example, a slowly democratizing parliamentary monarchy, or constitutional monarchy. I should also add that the British then began working on how to overthrow Mosaddegh, same time they launched the embargo. So it's not just about the nationalizing of oil from the British and US perspective. Prime Minister Mosaddegh is too independent, not easily controlled, and he's committed to an independent nationalism free of colonial control or "spheres of influence manipulation." He constitutes a threat to containment policy in the region, also to financial and strategic interests. So what we're talking about is oil, the Soviet Union, all of that, right? The embargo and resulting tensions radicalizes Iranian leaders such as Mosaddegh and other members of the national front. Even while the Shah who still the ruling monarch is struggling to maintain control over his country and over the parliament.
>>Sarah Hart: Yeah, it's really a lot of mayhem here, and I'm guessing that things changed when Eisenhower entered the White House and brought the Dulles brothers with him.
>>Jeff Crane: That is 100% correct. The British already had a plan to stage a coup. The plan the British built prior to even communicating with the Americans the plan was basically what happened under Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA agent who launches and manages the coup. The British were fortunate in that Eisenhower ran on a strong anti-communist platform and the Dulles brothers were both avid anti-communist hardliners, right? So now they had a receptive audience unlike Truman and his administration.
>>Sarah Hart: The Eisenhower administration is of course the peak of the Red Scare in America. Loyalty oaths for government employees, purges of the State Department and a "pink" communists. And also Senator Joseph McCarthy, like junior senator for- hard drinking, loudmouth, junior senator from Wisconsin.
>>Jeff Crane: Also a Democrat, just for the record.
>>Sarah Hart: Yeah, just for the record. This is a Democrat. So you remember he had his briefcase with a list of names and communists and government and he was ready to blacklist everyone. I mean this was an era where so much damage was done. And what we're looking at here is the earliest stages of it. Eisenhower just entered office. He hasn't found the coffee pot yet.
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, McCarthy's walking around with his briefcase and every time he says how many names he has of communists in the government it's a different number and he never shows anyone the list.
>>Sarah Hart: Perfect.
>>Jeff Crane: Finally gets shut down finally.
>>Sarah Hart: A great story on its own. Back to Eisenhower, back to the Dulles brothers.
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, okay, I'll talk about them. John Foster Dulles made his nut working one of the most significant global capitalist law firms in the world where he very quickly became a managing partner. And this firm had connections to companies with investments and operations in the very same countries where the Dulles brothers would come to use the State Department and CIA to oppose nationalist land reforms labor reforms, all that. And they traveled in elite circles and were deeply embedded with a sense of the rightness of American culture values and capitalism as members of the ruling class.
>>Sarah Hart: Eat the rich! Jeff your colors are showing a little bit.
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, I imagine they're not tasty, right? Maybe we should tax them appropriately. I'll go with tax the rich appropriately.
>>Sarah Hart: "Tax the rich appropriately." It doesn't have the same ring to it.
>>Jeff Crane: And I'll dial it back. I'll try to be a little more nuanced here. The British send a representative over to meet with their CIA counterparts and men taking important posts in the Eisenhower administration before he was even inaugurated.And this British representative was able to gain support for a plan to overthrow Mosaddegh. The operation the American operation was named Operation Ajax. And so the British called theirs Operation Boot.
[Laughing]
And I don't mean, you know, like we're going to put them in the truck and we're going to give Mosaddegh the boot. And again, when you hear us laughing, we don't think this is funny. Usually it's coming from a place of tension and frustration, maybe even some anger. So, don't misunderstand our laughter at these things. It's incredibly messed up. And if I wasn't on the radio, I'd use a different word. And most of the senior State Department CIA folks fell in line, they endorsed this effort to drive Mosaddegh out of power. So who's in charge of Operation Ajax? Kermit Roosevelt.
>> Sarah Hart: Kermit Roosevelt. Just such a great name.
>>Liam [as Kermit the Frog]: Kermit.
>>Jeff Crane: See that's what I'm resisting.
>>Liam [as Kermit the Frog]: That's what I think about. Kermit. We're going to overthrow, stage a coup in Iran. Here we go.
>>Jeff Crane: Dial it back. So he is a member of the Roosevelt family, grandson of President Teddy Roosevelt. While not hunting elephants and tigers in his spare time, Kermit was busy working for the CIA. In fact, he was in charge of the CIA's Near East and Asia Division, making him the desired choice for Operation Ajax. Roosevelt, like many other early CIA operatives came from the upper class. Obviously, Ivy League educated background, traveling in elite circles. He's the key operator for all of this under the leadership of K.R., I'm going to call him K.R. from here on out, and in cooperation with the British, they would use the assets developed (IE agents, for example) developed by Ghoram and other Iranian allies to turn opinion against Mosaddegh. And there was $150,000 budgeted just for this operation and d the goal was to portray Mosaddegh as corrupt anti-Muslim and pro-communist. This is whisper campaigning, bribing journalists, publishing anti-Mosaddegh material, and so on.
>>Sarah Hart: And Mosaddegh did support key reforms, including like labor rights and unemployment benefits, rural health reforms, like housing and clean water.
>>Jeff Crane: So like all the stuff we've done.
>>Sarah Hart: Yes, he really did support that stuff, but he wasn't a communist or a pro-communist. He was a strong nationalist. It's just that for him at the time, Iranian nationalism looked a lot like uplifting and supporting the poor. It involved what we might call public programs. Programs like those that the US and Great Britain had, you know, so in calling Mosaddegh communist and using all the anti-communist rhetoric, the US is sponsoring and supporting lies about the nation's prime minister. Like this is not true.
>>Jeff Crane: Basically, Mosaddegh could either be described as a New-Dealer, like FDR's programs during the Great Depression, or what we might call today a democratic socialist, like Bernie Sanders, right? And certainly he worked with the Tudeh, but that's part of politics is working with all these different parties. So it's going to get worse working through the Rashidian brothers and their network, the US paid criminal elements to attack the religious leaders and portray these attacks as being ordered by Mosaddegh. And these are what we call false-flag operations. If you watch like, Slow Horses that phrase is becoming known again. False flag operations where you make it look like a group is doing something that they're not actually doing. So that group gets blamed for it.
>>Sarah Hart: Okay, that then supports the opinion campaign point that he is anti-Muslim. If he's going to go, if they're going to pay people to attack religious leaders and make it look like it's him, then he looks like an anti-Muslim. And he's going to say, "Oh my God, it clever." But by the way, who are the Rashidian brothers?
>>Jeff Crane: Rashidian brothers, were from a wealthy family with strong ties to the royal family. They'd made their money through shipping, banking, real estate. They thrived under British colonial and Iranian monarchical rule. They had a lot to lose. The families also fervent, anglophiles, and they were paid 10,000 British Pounds a month in 1953. That's $28,000. That's a lot of money then. It's a lot of money now actually. And they were being paid to use their influence and bribes and whatever else to turn people against Mosaddegh in support of the Shah. And this included clerics, street gangs, the military, politicians, the press, and very importantly the armed forces. So they worked for and with the British and the Americans.
>>Sarah Hart: Alright, that's super helpful. And what about Ayatollah Kashani?
>>Jeff Crane: He is integral in the coup planning and his implementation. He hated the British. Had even attempted to assist German agents during World War II. And like Mosaddegh, he also sought Iranian independence from colonial powers. In 1945 he created the Fada'iyan-e Islam, a group that would later play crucial role in the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. Early Kashani allied with Mosaddegh in the effort to secure greater amounts of revenue from that AIOC and then to nationalize it. But their relationship frayed as he believed that Mosaddegh was enlarging his own powers. And then Mosaddegh removed Kashani from his position of Speaker in the Majlis in 1953.
>>Sarah Hart: So there was tension and the Rashidian brothers exacerbated that tension between these two men when they actively recruited Kashani and other clerics into the planned coup to turn opinion against Mosaddegh. And I just have to note that this is a lot of people who are in different sides of different issues coming together for the money and the power.
>>Jeff Crane: Right.
>>Sarah Hart: Because the Rashidians are like Anglophiles, their family has long loved the British. The Ayatollah Kashani, very much not so, but they're going to end up on the same side here to help overturn Mosaddegh.
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, and that's what struck me the first time I read Stephen Kinser's book. I do need to say really quickly that this script is very dependent on Stephen Kinser's book, "All the Shahs Men." There's other sources we pull from but at that time I was like, well, this is crazy because you know the clerics and you know...
>>Sarah Hart: It's like a very confusing spy thriller is the story reads. So like the Rashidian brothers also secured the Shah's approval of the planned coup and helped to move weapons to rebellious tribes and other Ayatollahs. So the Rashidian brothers are kind of movers and shakers and they're moving around and they're handing out money and they're getting money. So working with the Rashidian brothers, the AYATOLA Kashani really helped to turn public opinion against Mosaddegh because he was what we might call a real fire and brimstone speaker.
>>Jeff Crane: Kashani.
>>Sarah Hart: Kashani was he was able to really stir a crowd. He was rhetorically powerful. He was politically influential. He had a great appeal for the people of the street. People on the street those working in the bazaars in the shops, the merchants, the craftsmen. He got the public riled in.
[Music]
>>Jeff Crane: Hi listeners, you're listening to SNAFUBAR. I'm Jeff crane and I'm here with Sarah Hart. We've been discussing the CIA's Operation Ajax. This operation sponsored by the United States and the United Kingdom was designed to overthrow Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh after he nationalized the Anglo Iranian oil company in 1951. The operation was successful, but it created tremendous consequences for the people of Iran and the reverberations of this event can still be felt today. We are in the midst of getting into the granules of this history. So listen on as we describe how this operation unfolds.
>>Sarah Hart: To sum it up so far. This was a complex and well managed campaign to smear Mosaddegh and it was dishonest and it was manipulative and deeply damaging to Iran. And it was all in the name of domino theory and stopping communism.
>>Jeff Crane: It was really spelled out the senior military leaders, police leaders, mulluhs, politicians, newspaper editors and organized crime were paid by the British to participate in this coup effort. Americans also provided funds for these efforts. Kashani himself received $10,000 to organize massive street demonstrations in Tehran in 1953 following a first failed coup attempt. There is evidence that the very young Ayatollah Khomeini, and would rule Iran after the 1979 revolution, evidence that he participated in some of these demonstrations.
>>Sarah Hart: Yeah, it's just mind-boggling.
>>Jeff Crane: Demonstrators funded by the American CIA.
>>Sarah Hart: Yeah, yeah. It's just crazy to hear this story. It sounds like a really intricately tangled spy thriller. American and British cash and Iranian leaders, both religious and political, taking bribes to work with the US and the British to overthrow their own countrymen. It's a lot of intrigue to unseat one old man. To oust him, y'know? And to oust him because he was working for national sovereignty and democratic reforms. It's like you said earlier, Jeff was just not easy enough to predict or control.
>>Jeff Crane: Right.
>>Sarah Hart: Okay, here's a useful quote. This might be this might be helpful. CIA officer, Richard Cottam, said the British "saw the opportunity and sent the people we had under our control into the streets to act as if they were Tudeh. They were more than just provocateurs. They were shock troops who acted as if they were Tudeh people throwing rocks at mosques and priests." So we just we really just have it there clear and plain.
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, and he's saying shock troops, you know, not like a decade after World War II. He knows exactly what he's saying. This is a lot, you know, I feel like I need to go fishing or something purge my soul of this nonsense.
>>Sarah Hart: I mean, it really is like a confusion campaign, so much of it. And if you're feeling that listeners, I'm totally with you. That is how it reads, but let's keep going. Power through Jeff, I believe in you.
>>Jeff Crane: Yes, we can do this back to the first failed coup attempt. There's an initial effort to stage a coup, but Mosaddegh got early word of the plan and he blocked it. He also sought to arrest General Zahedi who was involved, but Zahedi went into hiding. Kermit Roosevelt was told by his CIA bosses to abandon the operation and leave Iran. He ignored them and he doubled down instead. He first surreptitiously gathered up Zahedi, confirmed he was ready to attempt another coup immediately, and then hit him in a secret location. Then KR moved into high gear for this second attempt.
>>Sarah Hart: Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down, Dr. Crane, a little more on General Zahedi. This is a new one. Who's that?
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, yeah, trying to power it through cover all this. General Zahedi's interesting character. He was pro-Germany during World War II. The British actually managed to kidnap him and sock him away somewhere so he couldn't work with the Germans. But he has charisma, he's committed to the Shah, he will do what the British want. And so he has been selected by the British and the Americans and the Shah to replace Mosaddegh when he's overthrown. So he will become the new prime minister.
>>Sarah Hart: Right, so at this point, Krimmer Roosevelt really keeps the coup effort going. I mean, he has a copy machine in the embassy building if I'm remembering right?
>>Jeff Crane: I think it was in the basement. I didn't have time to confirm that, but it's the size of two refrigerators and he's using it and they describe this thing was just running constantly for hours. He's using it primarily to print copies of framāns. These are decrees signed by the Shah. And one of these framāns is to dismiss Mosaddegh and the other is to have General Zahedi replace him. And this is important because there's a long and ancient tradition of monarchical rule in Iran and ancient Persia. And it's one that is respected by Iranians, which is one reason why the process of democratization was slow and careful. And so in K.R.'s mind by leaning on this long tradition, and the CIA is able to gain greater legitimacy for the efforts to overthrow Mosaddegh.
>>Sarah Hart: Okay, so the Shah is in active cahoots with this operation. Where is he in all this?
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, so he's actively cooperating through middlemen. I think he's in Rome at this point. He had he'd fled the country after the first attempted failed coup through Baghdad. He might have flown his own plane out, I can't remember. But at this point Mosaddegh is in charge of the country. The CIA and SIS use their agents and allies to distribute these framāns out around the city. One of the key areas was the rougher southern parts, otherwise also called slums of Tehran, where they were able to recruit mobs. And criminals to participate in protests in organized crime played a critical role in this as well. And the editors who receive bribes made sure they printed these framāns on the front page of their papers.
>>Sarah Hart: Wow, so this is all preparatory to launching street protests and to make it clear to our listeners, because we're just super deep in the trees here and we might not be explaining the forest so well. The intent of the joint US British operation operations Ajax and Boot with Kermit Roosevelt is the central figure is to manufacture a coup to make it appear as if the country is spinning out of control to make it appear that Mosaddegh is a communist in anti-Muslim leader and to create widespread riots and protests that create a simulacrum of total spiraling chaos, which is entirely manufactured to serve US and British interests.
>>Jeff Crane: So over the next two days they launch mobs into protests in the streets, chaos and violence everywhere. Rashidian brothers are key. They'd actually been flown to DC and CIA headquarters to be debriefed, evaluated and briefed on next steps. They are able to secure garrison commanders in the city through bribes and promises of promotion after the coup to commit to supporting the coup when their troops were summoned. K.R. called on two of his key agents. These are Iranian agents. He wanted another false flag protests. They were to rampage to the streets shouting their support in Mosaddegh and their commitment to communism.
>>Sarah Hart: And they were supposed to look dangerous doing it, right? Chaotic, untrustworthy, all that. Like supporters of Mosaddegh, they must all be madmen.
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, and it all plays out in a way that really supports what K.R. is trying to do. This mob hooked changed to a statue of the Reza Shah. Shah's father tore it down. This actually will lead to some executions later. And later Kermit Roosevelt wrote about this. He wrote, "this was the best thing we could have hoped for. The more they shouted against the Shah, the more the army and the people recognized them as the enemy. That they hated the Shah, the army and that the people hated them. And the more they ravaged the city, the more they angered the great bulk of its inhabitants. Nothing could have dramatized the guts of the conflict more effectively or more rapidly. On Sunday, this is just the day after the first failed attempt, there had been some rioting in Palangan, but Monday put the frosting on the cake."
>>Sarah Hart: The frosting on the cake. That's K.R. Roosevelt for us. There's a great deal of glee and hubris in this quote, I think. Sounds like he was pretty proud of himself.
>>Jeff Crane: Back to tension points, what we say about who we are and what we actually do as a country. He's pretty proud of himself. He's getting what he wanted. It's all working. Right? He laid extensive groundwork, had manufactured so many false news headlines and official documents and protests and rampages. He paid the protesters out in the street and it was working. The Iranian people appeared to be turning against Mosaddegh. And many of them fell for the false flag operations and joined the protest. So the chaos created by the CIA and SIS engendered the situation they needed.
>>Sarah Hart: Mosaddegh made some mistakes as well. Being pro democracy and I assume not wanting to play into the royalists accusing him of trying to expand his power. He ordered the police not to interfere with the protests. He believed that the people had a right to congregate and to speak their mind and air their grievances. And this plays into Roosevelt's hands as the streets fill with thousands of protesters who are looting shops and attacking offices, royalist groups, and creating other types of havoc. So even while we're extremely critical of this direct subversion of another country's democratically elected leader, we can still note the audacity and cleverness of Teddy Roosevelt's grandson Kermit here.
>>Jeff Crane: But as important understand in regards to this is one, Iranians at this time really admired and liked Americans. Mosaddegh valued his relationship with the US government and assumed help would be coming from Ike in the form of a loan or aid. There were discussions in place actually, or diplomatic support for his democratizing goals. He had no idea that the CIA was at the heart of the previous coup attempt. He assumed it was the Shah and the SIS. He didn't even know who K.R. was.
>>Sarah Hart: And the thing is the Persian culture over the long duration, the long timeline and in Iran at that time takes the hospitable and generous treatment of guests very seriously. That is true in Islam as well. For Mosaddegh, all of these stories, the bad treatment of the American guests would would have been very distressing information.
>>Jeff Crane: So Mosaddegh then, this is the mistake, he orders the police to crack down a shutdown protest, including protests that are supporting him. It then issues of decree banning all demonstrations. He deploys the police. Many of those police were already secretly committed to the coup and he deploys a military unit led by an officer who'd sworn his loyalty to General Zahedi and was also part of the coup. Things escalate quickly is day two shifts into day three, the final day of the second coup, Kermit Roosevelt gives Ayatollah Kashani and other $10,000 to get more clerics in the protest. And there's a massive protest movement of athletes, criminals, activists, clerics, etc. moving to the center of the city. It's really funny because the athletes are like they're doing exercises and they're juggling and doing things like that. So there's almost like a circus like environment and athletes were very, very respected in Persia, in running culture. K.R. is also trying to get the Shah to come back from Rome. The anti-Mosaddegh protest intensified, mobs control all of the squares in downtown Tehran. There are attacks on government buildings and the press. Some of these buildings are burnt to the ground. There are open gun battles over control these buildings with people dying in the streets.
>>Sarah Hart: Yeah, I'm wondering about the military now their role should be to suppress the violence, but you mentioned they're being bought off and swearing allegiance to General Zahedi.
>>Jeff Crane: Yeah, and so this is the next major escalation moving towards the culmination of the plan, the military and police joined the rioters. And there were some who didn't, who were still trying to support Mosaddegh but then were talked into supporting the rioters by the military police leaders that were part of the coup, right? And so the military police leaders that were part of the coup were mostly mid-level officers had been bought off or promised promotions and must be fair, probably operating off some of their own perspectives and beliefs, right? But they were told they'd be promoted and they were, right? So then the side of troops and tanks and uniforms joining the processions and the chance of death to Mosaddegh-morg bar Mosaddegh is how that would go and Farsi if I remember correctly-lends credibility to the uprising, it looks like a real coup. And then the news arrives at a garrison, an entire garrison is marching on the city from 400 miles away and this elevates the crisis. And an Iranian team had been sent to take control of an important radio station. Kermit Roosevelt is actually having lunch, I think, with a couple and he's listening to the radio and you know, the guy is announcing things and then he slows down a whole bunch and he's talking real slowly and Kermit's like, oh, there must be there. And then bam, they take control and they start announcing that Zahedi was prime minister and most of deck had been disposed, deposed, and Kermit Roosevelt called these pre-truths. Because it hadn't actually happened yet.
>>Sarah Hart: Pre-truths, but he knew it was coming. It reminds me of Colbert's truthiness.
>>Jeff Crane: Truthiness.
>>Sarah Hart: Yeah.
>>Jeff Crane: There was a more innocent time. Now it's just lies all the time. Yeah.
>>Sarah Hart: Yeah. So I'm guessing that Mosaddegh, experienced operator and iron sighted politician that he was did not simply go quietly into that good night.
>>Jeff Crane: He did not. He was not going to flee the military units that had joined the coup, converged on his house, in force. There's a fierce battle between the troops that are there with Mosaddegh. I think it goes for about three hours. And the fighting at Mosaddegh's home, 150, roughly 150 people died and it really came to an end when the tanks arrived. And at the very end, Mosaddegh did flee and later turned himself in. Roughly 300 people died in the fighting on this last day. His home was looted, burnt to the ground as refrigerator was sold for $36. And the Shah comes home and he's gushing about how much the people love him and he's like crying and he's just so happy about how much they love him. The military has purged to pro-Mosaddegh officers. Many of them are executed. Supporters of the coup are elevated politically and militarily. Mosaddegh is tried and sent to prison for three years if I remember correctly and then house arrest for the rest of his life.
>>Jeff Crane: But the guards were SAVAK I think, so you really couldn't go anywhere. That's right. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. There's prosecution, persecution of members of his government. The Shah restored to power by the United States institutes a full monarchy, really a tyranny. And he's able to do this through the billions of dollars in aid and armaments over the next 26 years from the United States. He becomes a total tyrant and a brutal one using torture, assassination and everything else to punish any sort of dissent or critique of his regime. Right. And he's a westernizing power. This is one of reasons we like him is he's liberalizing it, Iran, but this is what gives fuel to the clerics. Just like with someone like Osama Bin Laden. Western influence undermining Islamic culture. So this is what's going to help drive the Islamic response in the revolution in 1979. And there's a great quote from Stephen Kinzer and I'm going to ask Liam with his smooth radio voice to read that since I'm tired of talking.
>> Liam Salcuni: All right. Quote from Kinzer here. "By violently pushing Iran off the path to democracy in 1953 the United States created a whirlpool of instability from which undreamed of threats emerged years later. Few episodes of 20th century history more perfectly epitomized the concept of blowback today as anti-Iran rhetoric in Washington becomes steadily more strident. It is urgent that Americans understand how disastrous the last U.S. attack on Iran turned out to be. They might also ponder the question of what moral responsibility the United States has to Iran and the wake of this painful history."
>>Jeff Crane: And he wrote that in 2008. He wasn't talking about right now when you saw about strident attacks in Iran right? So wrapping up this long half century of conflict and violence with Iran from 1979 revolution on in today and probably into the future most likely into the future. And this is a result it is the blowback from the cynical anti-democratic CIA operation that really is counter to what we believe about ourselves as a country.
>>Sarah Hart: Whew, okay, that's a lot. Now listeners we don't have all the answers and we don't pretend to but we're trying to have some humility in the face of history and in the face of the quickly changing presence which we all just try to understand and navigate. And as we move forward into the future, you know, we want to cultivate a respect for other nation's sovereign rights and want to do our best to act from that respect. Doing this might go a long way to leading us in towards being a more peaceful nation, more like the myth we hold about our nation and our society more like the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. So that's our hope. I'm Sarah Hart. Thanks for joining us once more in the SNAFUBAR.
>>Jeff Crane: And I'm Jeff Crane. It's been a bumpy ride today but we hope you found it worthwhile.
>>Liam: And I'm Liam Salcuni. Thanks for tuning in.
>>Sarah Hart: You've been listening to SNAFUBAR, a Cal Poly Humboldt production brought to you by the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Our team includes me.
>>Jeff Crane: And me.
>>Abigail Smithson: Abigail Smithson, producer.
>> Liam Salcuni: Liam Salcuni, writer, researcher.
>> Roman Sotomayor: Roman Sotomayor, writer researcher.
>>Abigail Smithson: You can find more information about SNAFUBAR on khsu.org.
Produced at Cal Poly Humboldt.