1953: Iran
After America created the CIA in 1947, it started using the agency to overthrow different foreign governments in a more subtle manner. Before WWII, the United States didn’t even try to hide its interventions in other countries.
But as the Cold War initiated, the United States became extremely concerned about hiding its decisions and actions from the Soviet Union. What really mattered in the 1950s for then-president Eisenhower and Allen Dulles (Director of Central Intelligence), was to make sure that America always had plausible deniability.
Eisenhower strongly believed (and he was the last one to do so) that you could still do this kind of thing and nobody would find out. Back in 1953, the CIA planned to overthrow Iran’s democratically chosen prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, so they can consolidate power with Iran’s shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Declassified CIA documents show that the coup, which is known as Operation Ajax, was made to prevent unwanted “Soviet aggression” in Iran, but Iranian-American historian Ervand Abrahamian believed that the real motive was securing U.S. oil interests.
1954: Guatemala
In 1954, the CIA planned another coup of a democratically elected leader: Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz. The CIA coup was called Operation PBSuccess, and it was meant to replace the president with military dictator Carlos Castillo Armas, “for the sake of stopping the spread of communism”.
Even so, the CIA’s main reasons for ousting Árbenz was that they feared his reforms might interfere with the interests of the American-owned United Fruit Company, which had 42% of the nation’s land and paid 0 taxes.
Many officials in the Eisenhower administration were deeply involved in the company’s business: Secretary of State John Foster Dulles worked for United Fruit’s U.S. law firm, and his brother, CIA director Alan Dulles, was on its board.
The CIA kept toppling Latin American governments, and it was even behind an assassination in the Dominican Republic. Also, under Lyndon B. Johnson, it executed a 1964 coup in Brazil.
If you enjoyed reading this article, we also recommend reading: 6 SHOCKING Covert Operations the U.S. Government Secretly Executed
