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Jeffrey Harrison's avatar

Remarkable, sir! I can tell you for free that you have made a sale for your book. I must have it. Several threads resonate very powerfully with me so I want to start with the end which is the most powerful. I lived in Tehran from early 1977 to early 1979, Feb 9th to be exact when I was flown out of Tehran on a USAF C-141. I had been working for, you'll never guess, Lockheed Aircraft Service Corporation who had an FMS contract with the IIAF for logistics support. The whole oil thing was very much buzzing around Tehran at the time I was there. Mossadegh had not been forgotten. I still have a number of Khayyans from when I was there. I may or may not have the one where the editorial cartoon showed somebody lifting up the beard of an imam so you could see the "CIA" written beneath it (obviously this was after Fred had fled the country). That was the one thing that united the country. They wanted the Shah out. I say that because the bus trip home (Lockheed had hired a bus company to provide their employees I suspect "secure" transport in Tehran) was interesting. Our driver had a poster of sorts with a picture of Fred on one side and Fuzz Face on the other (I should say that we were told before we went in country that we should never refer to the Shah-n-Shahi Mohammad Reza Pahlavi directly so those of us in the Lockheed group decided to use the name Fred. So when the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came along, I dubbed him Fuzz Face) depending on where we were in town, Reza would flip that poster one way or the other. It mostly showed Fuzz Face.

The guy that supports your front end is a guy by the name of Smedley Butler. As he said:"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914." Yes, it has been going on for a long time. But I'm interested in another thing that Lt. Gen. Butler reported. Apparently there were a number of obviously patriotic American oligarchs who approached him to perpetrate a coup in the US and depose Roosevelt. Gen. Butler declined but nobody was ever persecuted for that either.

I have a bit more to write which I will do as a response to me, it's past bedtime.

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Jeffrey Harrison's avatar

Well, I'm gonna find out since I just ordered your book. As to the second half of your comment, I can only tell you what I know. There was a huge jump in religious fervor when the Ayatollah arrived. To put this in perspective a bit, I met a couple of men who had no fingernails. The Shah was generally only liked in the big cities. I saw the ballot. It only had two choices - continue with the Shah or his son, or vote for an Islamic state. I kinda suspect that it really was as simple as the Ayatollah delivered us from the Shah, I'm going with the Islamic state. I asked my landlord's son, Mustafa, about it (we were both about 28) and he said, I don't know, Jeff, I think they are good choices. More might be better but I'll just be glad to be rid of the Shah.

If they did as you suggested, they were fools. To quote the late Barry Goldwater:

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."

Trust me. Muslims are no worse then evangelical Christians.

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