Word: tehran
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...existence of CIA officers in the embassy would be no surprise. Indeed, intelligence experts were puzzled that the U.S. apparently had so few. The Soviet embassy in Tehran has a far larger complement of KGB operatives. The U.S. reduced its CIA staff in Tehran after the revolution to lessen the chances of antagonizing the new government. In any event, the accepted practice is to expel foreign diplomats suspected of being spies, not put them on trial...
Khomeini also reacted cautiously, pleading that Iranians cease fighting among themselves and concentrate "on the confrontation with the U.S." But he acted quickly to forestall trouble in the province of Kurdistan, to the south of Azerbaijan. The 4 million Kurds, who revolted unsuccessfully against Tehran's rule last summer, had boycotted the referendum too. Late last week Khomeini's revolutionary guards that were supposed to pull out of Kurdistan stayed on. The Ayatullah also faces potential trouble among Iran's other minorities, particularly the Baluchi tribesmen in the southeast, Turkomans in the northeast and the Arabs...
...Tehran, none of these procedures seems to have been carried out. Security may simply have become lax, one well-informed observer charges, and top-secret cables may have been widely distributed among the embassy staff. Says an intelligence expert: "The problem is that everyone squirrels away in his office some of the stuff they invariably have to have on a day-to-day basis. As long as a project is active, the tendency is to keep a copy for yourself...
...sensitive files. The locked filing cabinets were designed to withstand only a ten-minute attempt at forced entry or 20 minutes of lock picking. By the time the documents were released, the invaders had had three weeks to work on the locks. Says a former CIA man of the Tehran employees: "They got caught with their pants down...
...Shah writes that he was astonished when he learned last January that U.S. Air Force General Robert Huyser, then Deputy Commander in Chief of American forces in Europe, had been in Tehran for several days. "General Huyser's movements were normally laid down in advance. But this time nothing ... I questioned my generals. They, too, knew nothing. What, then, was this American general doing in Iran...