Documents from the US Espionage Den 26: The Moderates (2)

Original illustrated wraps titled in Farsi and English 15x22cm. 115pp official US classified documents in facsimile; (3), 141pp translations and commentaries in Farsi. Wraps and interiors near fine. Undated c1986 (based on Vols 8 and 54). Numbered Volume 26 in the overall series of 77, this is also Volume 2 in a sub-series of 6 on politically moderate individuals and groups in Iran. It contains highly sensitive descriptions of numerous political figures, their attitudes to Communism, affiliations and loyalties, relations with the Shah, strengths and weaknesses, reliability etc. Some were approached by the CIA for information about revolutionary tendencies in Iran. These documents were translated and arranged by the Muslim Students Following the Line of the Imam, a pro-Khomeini group drawn from Tehran's major universities. At Khomeini's urging, they occupied the US Embassy on 4 November 1979 taking over 50 hostages to be exchanged for the Shah, then in the US. The US Press Attache recalled one of the students telling him "I'm a part of the Students Following the Line of the Imam. You’re in the nest of spies. You are part of US imperialism, and you're the corruptors of the Earth. You are our prisoner". The Students acquired a huge stack of classified material that Embassy staff were in the process of shredding, and reconstituted them with the help of local carpet weavers. To embarrass the US and its allies, many were published c1979-95 in a 77 volume series called "Documents from the US Espionage Den", and sold in a shop in front of the former Embassy. At least half covered Iran in sub-series relating to US interventions, the Shah, military support, political parties, key figures, useful contacts, the Kurds etc. The rest covered other countries, groupings or topics (Afghanistan, Egypt, Kuwait, Pakistan, Turkey, Palestine, Israel / Qods, Arabian Peninsula, OPEC, USSR, Communist countries, Non-Aligned countries, US agents in Paris, US policy, etc). The Federation of American Scientists assessed their significance as follows: "Along with voluminous embassy cable traffic, CIA intelligence assessments and estimates that remain classified in the US, some of the documents in the Iranian collection are of a sort that would never be released by the CIA, since they contain detailed information on sensitive sources. Indeed, at least one execution of a CIA source is directly attributable to the capture of these records. The collection offers a unique window on diplomatic and intelligence activity that is completely unobscured by classification constraints. The Iranian records cannot replace the CIA records of the 1953 coup in Iran that have been destroyed, since they originate overwhelmingly from the late 1970s. But they could add considerably to the history of that later period" (FAS Secrecy & Government Bulletin, n70, Sept 1997). Rare in commerce.…