DIPLOMATIC DEBACLE: WHAT WENT WRONG IN IRAN?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100210015-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 20, 2011
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: December 13, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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APPEARED THE WASHINGTON POST
QN PAGE
BOOK WORLD
13 December 1981
diplomatic Debacle: What Went Wrong !
in Iran?
MISSION TO IRAN. By William H. Sullivan. Norton. 296
pp. $14.95.
INSIDE THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION. By John D. Stempel.
Indiana University Press. 348 pp. $17.50
ROOTS OF REVOLUTION: An Interpretive History of
Modern Iran. By Nikki-R. Keddie, with a section by Yann
Richard. Yale University Press. 321 pp. Paperback, $5.95
'AMERICA HELD HOSTAGE: The Secret Negotiations. By
.Pierre Salinger. Doubleday. 359 pp. $16.95
IRAN: The Untold Story. By Mohamed Heikal. Pantheon.
U.S. publication forthcoming in February.
INSIDE AND OUT: Hostage to Iran, Hostage to Myself.
By Richard Queen, with Patricia Hass. Putnam. 286 pp.
$13.95
NO HIDING PLACE The New York Times Inside Report
on the Hostage Crisis. By Robert D. McFadden, Joseph B.
Treaster, Maurice Carroll et al. Times Books. 341 pp. $15.50
By SCOTT ARMSTRONG
A S AMERICANS, we have learned to appreciate the
delicate balances of a complicated world. We are often
reminded that Europe, the Pacific, and the Persian Gulf are
so frighteningly interdependent that no crisis can be dealt
with in isolation. We understand, for example, how even a
temporary disruption in the flow of oil to the United States
or its allies can escalate rapidly into the most global, and the
most final, of wars. . .
Intimidated by these new dimensions, we are ever more
willing to cede to our government broad authority to con-
duct foreign policy. We accept that much of the information
on which its deliberations are based, along with portions of
the deliberations themselves, must remain secret. for the
time being.
Yet an Islamic revolution halfway around the world has
uprooted our confidence in the government's ability to con-
duct foreign policy. Critics from both the right and the left
have replaced Vietnam with Iran as the contemporary para-
digm of American diplomatic arrogance, ignorance and im-
potence. The public has the right to demand more than a
new president; it is time for an explanation of what went
wrong in Iran.
We must halt the assembly line of conspiracy theories
that continue to undermine our confidence in the way for-
eign policy is made. Did America covertly plot a military
coup to prop up the shah before he fell? Did Jimmy Carter
entice him to leave Iran with a secret deal, only to admit
him to this country for medical treatment as a pretext for
returning him to power? Did the Carter administration at-
tempt to subvert the new revolutionary government during
the summer of 1979 by seeding the clouds of tribal unrest in
Baluchistan, Kurdistan and Azerbaijan? Did White House
concern about the presidential election make the American
negotiating posture so rigid that 52 Americans spent many
months needlessly imprisoned? Was the plan for a rescue
mission so seriously flawed that, had its failure not resulted
in the deaths of eight servicemen (and uncounted secret
agents), its success would have resulted in hundreds or
thousands of deaths from the initial assault and its after-
math? And have the Carter and Reagan administrations
provided secret aid to Iraq in its war with Iran?
Most such speci lations are ridiculous, if not irresponsible. i
But some are so well-clothed in tailored facts that they must
be authoritatively confirmed or discredited.
Surely we deserve reassurance that our government has
learned some basic lessons from our experience in Iran. Who
lost Iran is no longer the most pressing question. First we
need to answer lingering questions about the epistemology
of American national security and foreign policy. How does!
America go about perceiving change in the world? Who
gathers the raw data? With whom is it, shared? How is it
analyzed? Who suggests-and who decides-what actions
should be taken?
Although these seven books on the Iranian revolution and
hostage negotiations raise more questions than they put to
rest, each touches at least obliquely on more fundamental
points. While they do not agree on many of the whys and
wherefores, the authors seem to agree that:: _ :. ':.... " . .
? When the shah insisted on gorging his appetite for so-
phisticated U.S. military hardware in spite of a severe
shortage in trained Iranian technicians, he had to increase
drastically the number of Americans working in Iran. This
in turn gave the Islamic leadership the palpable proof they
needed to show their followers that the shah must be.
purged before Western values totally corrupted the soci-
ety.
? By early 1977, nearly a year before Jimmy Carter
toasted "the great leadership of the shah" that had made
Iran "an island of stability," the shah and his regime were
immensely unpopular with all segments of Iranian society
except the most affluent reaches of the upper class and the
military hierarchy.
? Although this was recognized by the lower and occa-
sionally even the middle ranks of the U.S. foreign policy
establishment, our ambassador, his ranking staff and offi-
cial Washington all felt the shah's problems were manage-
able and failed to recognize that the shah's regime was
crumbling until well after the shah and virtually every
other Iranian had begun to come to grips with it. _ -':_ .1..1
c0NTII'U W
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? Once the U.S. ambassador had granted the inevitabil-
ity of the shah's decline, he was unable to convince Wash-
ington how completely identified the U.S. presence in Iran
had become with the shah.
? Even after November 4, 1979, when our diplomats
were taken hostage, the United States government was
still unable to develop any direct access to the clerical elite
in the new revolutionary government.
? During and after the revolution, everyone-the shah,
the opposition, the Iranian generals, the United States-
believed that the Iranian army would be crucial to any
lasting hold on power, yet the United States was unable to
utilize contacts cultivated over 20 years to help replace the
discredited command structure with one acceptable to the
new government.
? Zbigniew Bizezinskii consistently alternated between
incorrectly appraising events in Iran and recklessly recom-
mending dramatic steps that would have accomplished no-
thing but to reintensify- Iranian hatred of the United
States.
? Jimmy Carter lurched from one plan to the next, ap-
parently without appreciating that his every effort to bol-
ster the shah seared itself into the consciousness of the
Iranian people, reintensifying their hatred for the United
States.
Even these few nodes of agreement vanish when one
turns to precisely how or why the shah fell and whether he
could have been saved by some prompt and firm American .
action. The spectrum of opinion reappears, but with some
surprising patterns.
The Last Ambassador
WILLIAM H. SULLIVAN-who during the final two and
a half years of the shah's reign presided over our embassy
as America's last ambassador to Iran until his abrupt
departure and resignation in April 1979--offers a remark-
ably candid assessment of his role in events in Mission to
Iran. He presents a workmanlike portrait of his embas-
sy, the shah (the most'sensible and objective rendering,
I've read) and the procession of prime ministers desig-
nated by the shah to accommodate the opposition or
hold the line against-them. The most interesting details
come from the closing sequences as Sullivan, unable to
get approval from Washington to initiate official contact
with the opposition and to facilitate meaningful contact
between an outgoing and an incoming regime, is repeat-
edly frustrated in his attempts to fmd a common ground
for negotiation.
Sullivan's greatest triumph may be the quiet and per-
suasive manner in which he presents the evidence that
he was not as villainous or thickheaded as. some critics
have-maintained. I describes his own-earlydoubts that'
the shah's economic and military expansion programs
would ever work, his staff's early contacts with members
of the moderate opposition (at a time when most critics
of the State Department have charged there were no
such contacts) and his fierce bureaucratic battles with
Washington. The book's most important observations,
first published in a magazine article last year, seem to
have been accepted by most other commentators, in-
cluding those considered here, as the authoritative ac-
count of American indecisiveness in Iran.
In one respect, Sullivan: misleads his readers. Despite
his warning in the preface that the book is not strictly
chronological, he uses ' the format of an ambassador's
journal to describe the, day-to-day. developments of his
tour of dutyl:1'6~..~.:s;a~.:.:~ =:.~++
But at crucial points he casually slips away from the
strict chronology of a journal and telescopes the elapsed
time between his initial observations and his eventual
follow-up action. This makes it seem as if he were regis-
tering with Washington as he went along his concerns
about the stability of the shah's regime, his skepticism
about its ambitious economic plans, and his objections
to the shah's arms acquisitions lists. But, in fact, Sulli-
van did not share his private concerns and doubts with
either Washington or his junior staff in Tehran until
considerably later. Sullivan's blurred chronology recon-
ciles his sometimes tardy actions with what in hindsight
appears to be the obvious turning points in the revolu-
tion and entices the reader into accepting his point of
view.
Sullivan suggests that he disguised his pessimism
about the shah's future from his staff until the very end
to avoid creating a panic that might accelerate the
shah's downfall. This does not, however, account for
Sullivan's extraordinarily vigorous campaign to sell the
shah's weapons wishlist in Washington, nor does it ex-
plain. complaints of junior officers who served under
Sullivan that he did not forward to the State Depart-
ment their earliest observations of growing Iranian dis-
satisfaction with the regime. - -
Generally, however, Sullivan's version of events is
candid. At one point, Sullivan says he recommended.
that the president send a personal letter to the shah
reiterating his support. This occurred when, or just be-
fore, the shah's troops massacred several hundred
peaceful Iranian protestors at Jaleh Square-an action {
widely perceived to be the turning point in the revolu- I
tion. Instead of writing the suggested letter, Carter ap-
parently chose to telephone the shah instead. This well.
I
publicized call was noted thereafter by the opposition as
am example - of ? United States support for bloodthirsty
n'.. ?_4J: JI i t
As the already falling shah- comes, crashing to the-(
ground, Sullivan describes with evident bitterness his',
inability to focus the attention of senior officials such as
Secretary of State Cyrus Vance or National Security'
Adviser Brzezinski on the imminent succession of:
revolutionary regime.
Sullivan never departs from his perspective as a pticipant. He devotes little discussion to the points of
view either of those in the U.S. government who urged a t
move away from the shah even earlier (he tends to dis- I
miss them as mindless human rights fanatics) or of his
superiors in Washington. His soliloquies deprive the
reader of the broader context in which-American policy
was being formulated. But when his personal frustration
boils over, for example when his communiques home
disappear into a bottomless, bureaucratic abyss, Sulli-
van reaches a vivid and dramatic tone absent from all
the other books reviewed here except Pierre Salinger's.
Other participants will quarrel with certain of Sulli-
van's assertions, and I would love to dictate a list of still
unanswered questions. But, in general, public officials
would do well to emulate the clarity and detail of his ac-
count.
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The Lessons of Hindsight
JOHN STEIVIPEL, the deputy chief of the embassy politi-
cal section under Sullivan, takes in Inside the Iranian
Revolution a more analytical look at much of the same
material. Although general readers may find it too long
and detailed, it is written in a readable, almost chatty
style. Stempel, like Sullivan, paints a somewhat differ-
ent picture of the period than he did in his cable traffic
from the embassy. But it is a picture based on good old-
fashioned hindsight, tempered with a persuasive ac-
count of how U.S. diplomacy often misses the point.
For certain details, Stempel relies on his contacts as
an embassy officer with Iranian officials and opposition
members; for other details, particularly those dealing
with stateside decision-malting, he relies on public ac-
counts. Although Stempel distinguishes among some of
these in his occasional footnotes, readers may puzzle at
the origins of certain crucial details.
In an apparent effort to respond to.: severe criticism
that the embassy was totally out of touch with reality in
Iran, Stempel goes into far greater detail than Sullivan
on early contacts with the opposition. Stempel's sense of
chronology is more scrupulous than Sullivan's, and he
makes extensiv a use of the omniscient perspective and
interconnections that hindsight makes possible. This
can again leave the reader with the impression that the
embassy was considerably more prescient than its aq-
tions at the-time would indicate
Stempel provides the most comprehensive and organ-
izedTendering of events from April 1977 to the release of
the hostages, almost four years later. His reflections on
the foreign policy establishment's failure to resolve the
Iranian crisis, though not fully persuasive, will make
this book useful to students of the subject for years to
-come.
Both Sullivan and Stempel are critical of the effects of
the Carter human ri is policy. Sullivan un acknow ges
the -CIA's extensive assistance to SAVAKbut denies any
"offical United States complicity" in SAVAK's brutal- I
ity. Stempel laments that this relationship, which had
grown in response to "the common threat of the Soviet {
Union," declined as a result of these human rights con-
cerns and that "the discreet tempering presence of U.S.
personnel working closely with [SAVAKI was not there l
to press for restrained alternatives to the brutal tortures
inflicted upon many captured terrorists." Stempel also
says SAVAK and the intelligence agencies of two other
countries (neither of which was the United States) en-
couraged the shah to have the Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini assassinated.
Other matters touched upon by both are left unre-
solved. For example, Stempel says that U.S. officials
were not aware of the shah's cancer until October 1978
when they learned of it from French intelligence. Sulli-
van fudges when they first knew the shah was ill and
when they first knew he had cancer, but points out that
failure to learn of it until late in the game left the shah's
often listless behavior unexplained.
Yet Richard Helms, who had served as director of the
CIA and ambassador to Iran, learned about the cancer
and its debilitating treatment during his visits there in
the first half of 1978 (according to Cynthia Helms' book,
An Ambassador's Wife in Iran). And intelligence offi-
cials here acknowledge that the CIA learned of the can-
cer much earlier-certainly before 1978. It is not un-
heard of for the CIA to fail to tell an ambassador such
vital information, but it is unlikely that they would
know of it and not make use of Sullivan's frequent visits
with the shah for feedback on his mannerisms and
behavior. Surely someone would have alerted Sullivan to
watch for certain symptoms. If not, why not?
Historical Context
NIKKI KEDDIE's Roots of Revolution is essentially an
economic history of Iran. Its discussion of the U.S. reac-
tion to the revolution and the hostage negotiations is,
safe, condensed, readable and almost wholly derived
from previously published accounts, much of it from the
exceptional work of Le Monde's Eric Rouleau.
The book's strong suit is the authority with which a
scholar of contemporary Ian can .speak about the. his-,
tory of clerical and dissident ferment up to the point of
the revolution. The book's real gem is a sturdy discus-
sion of contemporary political Shiite Islam, written by!
Yann Richard, which puts into immediate perspective,
much of what we have read and will read elsewhere.
At several points, Keddie fails to give any benefit of
doubt to American players in the final days of the shah;
For example, in discussing Sullivan's frustrated at
tempts to get permission from Washington to meet with,,
the opposition, Keddie concludes that Sullivan would l
have failed anyway to moderate the effects of the new
regime. But Sullivan's purpose at the time-as he es-
poused it in Tehran and to Washington-was simply to~
open a line of official communication with the Khomeini
camp.
Overall Keddie has managed, without a loss of schol-
arship, to bring to life much of what we puzzled over
each evening as we watched angry young men, their
faces contorted in hatred of America, the Great Satan. If
one has only limited time to gain an appreciation of the
revolutionary force of Islam in Iran, it should be spent
here.
Negotiations
Based on his remarkable television reporting, first broad-
cast on the evening of the hostage's return, Pierre Salin-
ger's America Held Hostage is an entertaining, neatly
packaged account of the Carter administration's at
tempts to negotiate the release of the hostages.
Regrettably Salinger spends too much time answering
the classic question: What if Abraham Lincoln's doctor's
dog had bitten its master's patient during the 'afternoon.,
of April 14, 1865... ? So, although the most readable of
the seven, Salinger's book centers far too much on the
the thin, and ultimately abandoned, negotiating strand
of two Paris-based middlemen, one an Argentine entre-
preneur and the other a leftist lawyer, who try to sustain
a line of communications with the most moderate ele-
ments of the Khomeini regime in Iran.
CoN11N Ur'D
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But this flaw, while fatal to the book's historical bal-
ance, does nothing to reduce Salinger's interesting use of
the information uniquely available to him. The mere
fact that the White House had no better line of commu-
nication than two such obscure but dedicated souls is a
testament simultaneously to the difficulty of the negoti-
ations and the enduring American ignorance of Iranian
power politics. An important and sympathetic portrait
of Hamilton Jordan emerges, no doubt partially from
Jordan's own account, and through it an insight into the
Carter administration's isolation and desperation.
Although Salinger fails to touch on certain negotiating
sequences at all and often misses the context in which
they are occurring, he does a very credible job with the
ultimately successful negotiations begun under German
auspices. Overall, the book is fast paced and well writ-
ten, interrupted only by Salinger's regular interjections
of his own rather trivial contacts with the principals.
Embassy Spy?
N10HAMED HEIKAL, the prominent Egyptian journal-
ist, former Nasser confidant and one-time Egyptian for-
eign minister, has written his own intriguing, if chaotic, ac-
count of events behind the scenes. As much a participant
as a journalist, Heikal brings a Middle Eastern politician's
firm grasp of the intricacies of Islam into a mixture of fact
and interpretation that is intermittently authoritative and
excessively usual. Heikal captures the wider regional
political context of the Persian Gulf, Southwest Asia and
the Horn of Africa better than any of the other books re-
viewed here.
Heikal offers up the most astounding new information
with the slimmest of sourcing. Early in the book, he says
that the shah's secret police, SAVAK, had a non-Iranian,
non-American spy planted inside the American embassy.
This spy was able; according to Heikal, to latch onto
copies of top secret cables between Washington and Teh-
ran which told the shah's government of virtually every
move-or non-move--of the U.S. government.
When the shah fell, General Nematollah Nassiri, the
head of SAVAK, was arrested and tortured. In an effort to
save his life, Nassiri revealed the existence and the iden-
tity of this spy inside the U.S. embassy. Rather than seize
and execute the spy, the new revolutionary government
extended his tenure and asked him to continue on behalf
of the new government
The new arrangement did not last long, but before de-
parting for France, the informant passed on crucial cables.
At least one told the new government that the United
States was planning to admit the shah before there was
even a pretext of illness. Others provided details of U.S.
attempts to destabilize the revolutionary government by
providing aid to rebels in Baluchistan, Kurdistan and
Azerbaijan. It was this information, Heikal implies, which
led the revolutionary government to interpret the shah's
arrival in New York as the first step in a plan to overthrow
the new regime. It was on the basis of these secret docu-
ments that Khomeini charged the United States with i
meddling in Iranian affairs. And it was these documents
that provided the rationale for taking over the U.S. em-
bassy and holding its occupants hostage..: ,r~..: .
If Heikal's account is true, the entire equation of re-
sponsibility for the hostage crisis changes and makes a liar
out of Jimmy Carter and every other administration
spokesman who has claimed the attack on our embassy
was unprovoked. A less prominent journalist would be dis-
missed out of hand for repeating such a sensitive and
sensational tale without nailing down the details or
providing specific attribution. But Heikal has a track
record for gaining access to the right people and returning
with the seed of an important story that others missed. .
Hostages
RICHARD QUEEN's book is the least ambitious effort of,
the group. In his dry, homespun manner, Queen helps the 1
reader share the dull, repetitive routines of hostage life.
Obviously hamstrung by, his .sensitivity to the longer cap- j
tivity of the colleagues he left when he was
released for medical reasons, Queen's account is
more pedestrian than anyone might expect
Yet Queen's book brings home for even the
most cynical of. observers the terrifying frustra-
tion and rage that the hostages must have fglt
believing that ? the world was ignoring their
plight for so long. The reader absorbs, bit by bit,
page by page, months of tedious and fruitless
waiting for some action by the United States or
her traditional allies to seek their freedom-
From his narrow perspective as a junior diplo-
mat just arrived _in. Iran, Queen demonstrates,
the reciprocal ignorance of U.S. diplomats to-
ward a revolution-they could not comprehend
and of Iranian militants who saw in every Amer-
ican another. embodiment of the Great Satan
-which sustained-their despised shah and nur-
tured his.-hated -SAVAK- Queen's humanity.
"comes,through, most dearly as he describes the,
comparative compassion and decency of Akbar,
the most humane of the guards.
- Along the soup. to nuts continuum of the Iran
?boo1 banquet table; The New York Times has
contributed an indigestible after-dinner mint,
a sort of Chiclet in the junk food genre of the
-instant book.. (A far better example of the
genre is the Los Angeles Tunes' earlier entry
Doyle McManus' Free At Last', which
covers the same ground, often with the same.
;_quotes from hostages, muclzmore coherently.)
The.firstsection of No Hiding Place is a re-=
print of The -Times' articles on the hostage's
lives in ` captivity, which was published two
weeks after their . return. Organized by topic
rather than chronologically, its repetitions of
silly detail - and sophomoric - reflections on
man's ignoble nature make it nearly as tedious
as Queen's book.
The second part of the book, with a some.
'what lower ratio of obvious space filler to in-'
formation, is a reprint of the May 17, 1981
issue of The New York Times Magazine. With ;
two exceptions-well crafted and informative
articles by Terence Smith and Drew Middle-
ton-4t ton-it is devoid of information that was even
new or meaningftdwhen it fast appeared- -
CO
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Missing Perspectives
~-i
THESE BOOKS suggest that the eyes and can
of the U.S. foreign policy apparatus work about
as well or better than we have any right to ex-
pect. Lower-level personnel seem to make ap-
propriate observations-provided, of course,_-,
they are prepared to translate the meaning
of events from one culture to another. For exam
ple, with rare exception (the insights of Keddie
and The New York Times' Smith providing
them), these seven accounts depict a foreign
policy bureaucracy without any appreciation`
for the intricacies of nonviolent revolutionary
activity, regardless of the culture. American
observers, in hindsight, give great credit to the
Islamic opposition for exercising remarkable
subtlety and restraint in the period just before
the shah's departure from Iran. But anyone
who watched antiwar and civil rights protests
in America and their nonviolent oonfronta--
tions with armed authorities should have-'
recognized the same tactics when they were.
used to sway public opinion in Iran. Whether.
or not Iranian student revolutionaries honed
their organizing skills in the States is beside
the point. For whatever reason, U.S. diplomats
failed to understand the catalytic effect the Is-
lamic opposition's strategy would have on the
Iranian people.
The evidence in these books suggest that the
sheer size of the American foreign policy bu-
reaucracy precludes lower-level officers from
direct contact with their superiors and with
the decision-makers back in Washington. But;
more significantly,' the rapid growth of an
American presence in Iran created a backlash
of resentment against American personnel
that forced them to reduce their contact with
the populace.
This increased remoteness, coupled with a
tendency to perceive only what they were
seeking and little more, clouded judgment. In
the growing chaos of the revolution, our diplo-
mats were looking for signs of someone in con-
trol, an authority with whom they could ne-
gotiate. They equated their inability to find a
mechanism of control with a lack of one.
American journalists were in- more direct
touch with the broader constituency of the Ira-
nian opposition and became the best source of
information available to U.S. diplomats. But
they too were looking for a structure that was
not there. Few on the scene were willing to ac-
cept things as they came. Few realized there-
fore that Khomeini intended much of the
chaos and disorder that ensued. It was a revo-
lutionary purge of precisely those Western
processes that had corrupted Iranian culture.
. Diplomats are often willing to leave much of
their chore to others. For example, in the
shah's waning days General Robert "Dutch"
Huyser, the deputy commander of U.S. forces
in Europe, arrived in Tehran ostensibly- to
hold together the Iranian military. There have
since been many journalistic suggestions that
Huyser carried, but was unable to implement,
a more elaborate brief for action. Because
these accounts give no additional details about
Huyser's activities, they ultimately fail either
to put to rest or confirm rumors of secret mili-
tary-coup plots. All this seems to be deemed ir-
relevant to the diplomatic task. Ironically, it
was over precisely the opposite point that
General Alexander Hai;, Huyser's boss, re-
signed his command of NATO. Huyser, Haig
thought. was not the man to send on diplo-
matic business. -
Other. important diplomatic details never I
get fleshed out, again apparently because dip-
lomats do not regard it as their responsibility
to respond for other bureaucracies. America's
repeated messages of encouragement to the
shah-phone calls by Carter and Brzezinski,
visits by American officials, and Rosalynn
Carter's strongly worded and mysterious letter
to the Empress Farah-were later used against
the United States by the revolution as incite-
ments to massive violence, but they are men-
tioned only in passing in these books. The sud-
den emergence of the shah's oldest friend and
most trusted compatriot, General Hossein
Fardust, formerly the deputy director of
SAVAK, as the director of Khomeini's revolu-
tionary equivalent,. SAVAMA, is left unex-
plained, although -Stempel speculates that
Fardust cooperated "with the religious leader-
ship for the good of the country" when he saw
an ailing shah losing his grasp.
A_major problem--only alluded. to in these
seven-.books-is that.the security constraints
imposed.to protect sensitive information end
up preventing meaningful internal debate or '
analysis.: Regulations meant to shield secret
sources can instead stifle debates that could
better shield whole societies. The most knowl-
edgeable analysts are often at levels too low or
:locations too remote to hear about the latest
Washington analysis or to see the important
back channels of information.
Jimmy Carter's presidency is popularly per-
ceived as discredited by events in Iran. But it
is time to find out precisely how fair that as-
sessment is. The causes may lie less with Car-
ter and Brzezinski than with some of the most
deeply ingrained bureaucratic processes of na-
tional security and foreign policy.
These seven books stop short of accounting
for the top level of decision makers. But piec-
ing things together, one begins to suspect that
by the time things reach the top the common ;
denominators' for making bad decisions are
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100210015-5
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100210015-5
seemingly minor distortions of information, skewed em-
phasis and a dearth of detail. But testing this hypothesis
beyond the ambassadorial level requires a view from the
top down, recreating events as they appeared to the
principal participants.
To date, the burgeoning library of Iran profiles sheds
barely a glimmer of new light on the actions of the prin-
cipals in the unfolding drama-the shah, Khomeini,
Carter, Brzezinski, Vance, Harold Brown, Stansfield
Turner, Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr, the late Ayatollah
Behesti. The shah's autobiography, published last year,
was pathetically inadequate, noted primarily for being
in character with the man's legendary and graceless ina-
bility to understand what he had done to his country,
Although none of these seven books is prepared to de-
fend either the analysis or decisions of Jimmy Carter,
and his, closest associates, none presents substantial
enough evidence to safely discard their points of view. If,
we ever have the details that these missing perspectives
could provide, much in these books would become obso-
lete.
..: When Carter, Brzezinski and others at the top sit
"down to explain to an entire country why it had to as-I
sume such- precarious and humiliating postures from
November 1979 until January 1981, they will have an
opportunity-and an obligation-to go beyond the sur-
face answers, to address more than just the truth, but to
take us step by step through the process to explain what
they knew and when they knew it. Only after such a
thorough autopsy can we begin to diagnose the failures
of successive administrations to understand the Third'
World. ^ "
SCOTT ARMSTRONG, a staff writer for The Washington
Post and co-author of. The Brethren, is woiking on a book
about U.S.foreign policy decision-making.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100210015-5