{"id":8903,"date":"2019-12-30T23:27:43","date_gmt":"2019-12-31T07:27:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=8903"},"modified":"2020-01-01T01:23:31","modified_gmt":"2020-01-01T09:23:31","slug":"post2-69","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=8903","title":{"rendered":"“How a Chase Bank Chairman Helped the Deposed Shah of Iran Enter the U.S.”, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

By David D. Kirkpatrick, Dec. 29, 2019<\/span><\/p>\n

The fateful decision in 1979 to admit Mohammed Reza Pahlavi prompted the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran and helped doom the Carter presidency.<\/em><\/p>\n

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One late fall evening 40 years ago, a worn-out white Gulfstream II jet descended over Fort Lauderdale, Fla., carrying a regal but sickly passenger almost no one was expecting.<\/p>\n

Crowded aboard were a Republican political operative, a retinue of Iranian military officers, four smelly and hyperactive dogs and Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the newly deposed shah of Iran.<\/p>\n

Yet as the jet touched down, the only one waiting to receive the deposed monarch was a senior executive of Chase Manhattan Bank, which had not only lobbied the White House to admit the former shah but had arranged visas for his entourage, searched out private schools and mansions for his family and helped arrange the Gulfstream to deliver him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Eagle has landed,\u201d Joseph V. Reed Jr., the chief of staff to the bank\u2019s chairman, David Rockefeller, declared in a celebratory meeting at the bank the next morning.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Less than two weeks later, on Nov. 4, 1979, vowing revenge for the admission of the shah to the United States, revolutionary Iranian students seized the American Embassy in Tehran and then held more than 50 Americans \u2014 and Washington \u2014 hostage for 444 days.<\/p>\n

The shah, Washington\u2019s closest ally in the Persian Gulf, had fled Tehran in January 1979 in the face of a burgeoning uprising against his 38 years of iron-fisted rule. Liberals, leftists and religious conservatives were rallying against him. Strikes and demonstrations had shut down Tehran, and his security forces were losing control.<\/p>\n

The shah sought refuge in America. But President Jimmy Carter, hoping to forge ties to the new government rising out of the chaos and concerned about the security of the United States Embassy in Tehran, refused him entry for the first 10 months of his exile. Even then, the White House only begrudgingly let him in for medical treatment.<\/p>\n

Now, a newly disclosed secret history from the offices of Mr. Rockefeller shows in vivid detail how Chase Manhattan Bank and its well-connected chairman worked behind the scenes to persuade the Carter administration to admit the shah, one of the bank\u2019s most profitable clients.<\/p>\n

\"Protesters<\/picture><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Protesters burning a portrait of the shah in Tehran in 1978.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Abbas\/Magnum Photos<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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For Mr. Carter, for the United States and for the Middle East it was an incendiary decision.<\/p>\n

The ensuing hostage crisis enabled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to consolidate his theocratic rule, started a four-decade conflict between Washington and Tehran that is still roiling the region and helped Ronald Reagan take the White House. To American policymakers, Iran became a parable about the political perils in the fall of a friendly strongman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although Mr. Carter complained publicly at the time about the pressure campaign<\/a>, the full, behind-the-scenes story \u2014 laid out in the recently disclosed documents \u2014 has never been told.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr. Rockefeller\u2019s team called the campaign Project Eagle, after the code name used for the shah. Exploiting clubby networks of power stretching deep into the White House, Mr. Rockefeller mobilized a phalanx of elder statesmen.<\/p>\n

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\"A<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A handwritten letter from the shah to David Rockefeller.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Verner Reed (1937-2016) papers, via Yale<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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They included Henry A. Kissinger, the former secretary of state and the chairman of a Chase advisory board; John J. McCloy<\/a>, the former commissioner of occupied Germany after World War II and an adviser to eight presidents as well as a future Chase chairman; a Chase executive and former C.I.A. agent, Archibald B. Roosevelt Jr.<\/a>, whose cousin, the C.I.A. agent Kermit Roosevelt Jr.<\/a>, had orchestrated a 1953 coup to keep the shah in power; and Richard M. Helms<\/a>, a former director of the C.I.A. and former ambassador to Iran.<\/p>\n

Charles Francis, a veteran of corporate public affairs who worked for Chase at the time, brought the documents to the attention of The Times.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s corporate campaigns are demolition derbies compared to this operation,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was smooth, smooth, smooth and almost entirely invisible.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Records of Project Eagle were donated to Yale by Mr. Reed, the campaign\u2019s director. But he deemed the material so potentially embarrassing to his patron that Mr. Reed, who died in 2016<\/a>, stipulated that the records remain sealed until Mr. Rockefeller\u2019s death. Mr. Rockefeller died in 2017 at the age of 101<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some of the information may embarrass others as well. Hawkish critics<\/a> have often faulted Mr. Carter as worrying too much about human rights and thus failing to prop up the shah.<\/p>\n

But the papers reveal that the president\u2019s special envoy to Iran had actually urged the country\u2019s generals to use as much deadly force as needed to suppress the revolt, advising them about how to carry out a military takeover to keep the shah in power.<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman for Mr. Carter did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Mr. Carter at the time of the crisis was not immediately available.<\/p>\n

After the hostages were taken, the Carter administration worked desperately to try to free the captives, and on April 24, 1980, authorized a rescue mission that collapsed in disaster: A helicopter crash in the desert killed eight service members, whose charred bodies were gleefully exhibited by Iranian officials.<\/p>\n

The hostage crisis doomed Mr. Carter\u2019s presidency. And the team around Mr. Rockefeller, a lifelong Republican with a dim view of Mr. Carter\u2019s dovish foreign policy, collaborated closely with the Reagan campaign in its efforts to pre-empt and discourage what it derisively labeled an \u201cOctober surprise\u201d \u2014 a pre-election release of the American hostages, the papers show.<\/p>\n

The Chase team helped the Reagan campaign gather and spread rumors about possible payoffs to win the release, a propaganda effort that Carter administration officials have said impeded talks to free the captives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had given my all\u201d to thwarting any effort by the Carter officials \u201cto pull off the long-suspected \u2018October surprise,\u2019\u201d Mr. Reed wrote in a letter to his family after the election, apparently referring to the Chase effort to track and discourage a hostage release deal. He was later named Mr. Reagan\u2019s ambassador to Morocco.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr. Rockefeller then personally lobbied the incoming administration to ensure that its Iran policies protected the bank\u2019s financial interests.<\/p>\n

The records indicate that Mr. Rockefeller hoped for the restoration of a version of the deposed government.<\/p>\n

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\"Iranian<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Iranian students climbing the wall of the United States Embassy in Tehran in 1979.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Irna, via Agence France-Presse<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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At the start of the Iranian upheaval, the papers show, Mr. Kissinger advised Mr. Rockefeller that the probable conclusion would be \u201ca sort of Bonapartist counterrevolution that rallies the pro-Western elements together with what was left of the army.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Kissinger, in a recent email, acknowledged that the prediction \u201creflects my thinking at the time\u201d but said \u201cit was a judgment, not a policy proposal.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Mr. Rockefeller evidently continued to advocate for some form of restoration long after the shah fled Tehran.<\/p>\n

As late as December 1980, Mr. Rockefeller personally urged the incoming Reagan administration to encourage a counterrevolution by stopping \u201crug merchant type bargaining\u201d for the hostages and instead taking military action to punish Iran if the hostages were not released. He suggested occupying three Iranian-controlled islands in the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe most likely outcome of this situation is an eventual replacement of the present fanatic Shiite Muslim government, either by a military one or a combination of the military with the civilian democratic leaders,\u201d Mr. Rockefeller argued, according to his talking points for meetings with the Reagan transition team.<\/p>\n

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\"A<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A portrait of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who became Iran\u2019s supreme leader, being hoisted at Tehran University in 1979.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Abbas\/Magnum Photos<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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An heir to his family\u2019s oil fortune, Mr. Rockefeller styled himself a corporate statesman and personally knew many White House officials, including Mr. Carter. He had known the shah since 1962, socializing with him in New York, Tehran and St. Moritz, Switzerland.<\/p>\n

As Tehran\u2019s coffers swelled with oil revenues in the 1970s, Chase formed a joint venture with an Iranian state bank and earned big fees advising the national oil company.<\/p>\n

By 1979, the bank had syndicated more than $1.7 billion in loans for Iranian public projects (the equivalent of about $5.8 billion today). The Chase balance sheet held more than $360 million in loans to Iran and more than $500 million in Iranian deposits.<\/p>\n

Mr. Rockefeller often insisted that his concern for the shah was purely about Washington\u2019s \u201cprestige and credibility.\u201d It was about \u201cthe abandonment of a friend when he needed us most,\u201d he wrote in his memoirs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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His only advocacy for the shah, Mr. Rockefeller wrote, had been in a brief aside to Mr. Carter during an unrelated White House meeting in April 1979.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did nothing more, publicly or privately, to influence the administration\u2019s thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the Project Eagle papers show that Mr. Rockefeller received detailed updates on the risks to Chase\u2019s holdings, and that even his aside to Mr. Carter in April had been planned out the previous day with Mr. Reed, Mr. McCloy and Mr. Kissinger.<\/p>\n

Over lunch at the Knickerbocker Club in New York, Mr. Carter\u2019s special envoy to Tehran, Gen. Robert E. Huyser<\/a>, told the Project Eagle team that he had urged Iran\u2019s top military leaders to kill as many demonstrators as necessary to keep the shah in power.<\/p>\n

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\"President<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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President Carter and his wife,\u00a0 Rosalynn, hosting the shah and empress at a state dinner at the White House in 1977.<\/span>Credit…<\/span> Corbis, via Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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If shooting over the heads of demonstrators failed to disperse them, \u201cmove to focusing on the chests,\u201d General Huyser said he told the Iranian generals, according to minutes of the lunch. \u201cI got stern and noisy with the military,\u201d he added, but in the end, the top general was \u201cgutless.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Rockefeller had his own special envoy to try to help the shah: Robert F. Armao<\/a>, a Republican operative and public relations consultant who had worked for Mr. Rockefeller\u2019s brother Nelson, the former governor of New York and former vice president.<\/p>\n

Mr. Armao became one of the shah\u2019s closest advisers, and after Nelson Rockefeller died at the start of 1979<\/a>, he reported to the Project Eagle team at Chase nearly every day for more than two years.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody had the hope that there would be a repeat of the 1953 events,\u201d Mr. Armao recalled recently, referring to the American-backed coup that restored the shah the first time he fled.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When the shah\u2019s rule became untenable at the start of 1979, the State Department first turned to David Rockefeller for help relocating the Iranian monarch in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot large enough for my very special client,\u201d Mr. Reed wrote to a Greenwich, Conn., broker who had offered two estates priced at around $2 million each \u2014 about $7.4 million today.<\/p>\n

But while the shah tarried in Egypt and Morocco, an Iranian mob briefly seized the American Embassy in February<\/a>. Diplomats warned that admitting the shah risked another assault, and Mr. Carter changed his mind about offering haven.<\/p>\n

Mr. Rockefeller refused to deliver this bad news to the shah, afraid that it would hurt the bank by alienating a prized client.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe risks were too high relating to the CMB position in Iran,\u201d he responded, referring to Chase Manhattan Bank, according to the records.<\/p>\n

Instead, Mr. Rockefeller scrambled to find accommodations elsewhere \u2014 first in the Bahamas, and then in Mexico \u2014 while strategizing with Mr. Kissinger, Mr. McCloy and others about how to persuade the White House to let in the shah.<\/p>\n

During a three-day push in April, Mr. Kissinger made a personal appeal to the national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski<\/a>, and a follow-up phone call to Mr. Carter. Mr. Rockefeller buttonholed the president at the White House.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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And in a speech, Mr. Kissinger publicly accused the Carter administration of forcing a loyal ally to sail the world in search of refuge, \u201clike a flying Dutchman looking for a port of call\u201d \u2014 the seed of what became a \u201cwho lost Iran\u201d campaign theme for the Republicans.<\/p>\n

Mr. McCloy flooded the White House with lengthy letters to senior officials, often arguing about the danger of demoralizing other \u201cfriendly sovereigns.\u201d \u201cDear Zbig,\u201d he addressed his old friend Mr. Brzezinski.<\/p>\n

Finally, in October, Mr. Reed sent his personal doctor to Cuernavaca, Mexico, \u201cto take a \u2018look-see\u2019\u201d at the shah.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/picture><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The deposed shah in the Bahamas with his family in March 1979.\u00a0<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Phil Sandlin\/Associated Press <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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He had been hiding a cancer diagnosis. The doctor, Benjamin H. Kean<\/a>, determined that the shah needed sophisticated treatment within a few weeks \u2014 in Mexico, if necessary, Dr. Kean later said he had concluded.<\/p>\n

But when Mr. Reed put the doctor in touch with State Department officials, they came away with a different prognosis: that the shah was \u201cat the point of death\u201d and that only a New York hospital \u201cwas capable of possibly saving his life,\u201d as Mr. Carter described it at the time to The Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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With that opening, the Chase team began preparing the flight to Fort Lauderdale.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I told the Customs man who the principal was, he almost fainted,\u201d the waiting executive, Eugene Swanzey, reported the next morning.<\/p>\n

The plane\u2019s bathroom was malfunctioning. The shah and his wife hunted in vain for a missing videocassette to finish a movie. And their four dogs \u2014 a poodle, a collie, a cocker spaniel and a Great Dane \u2014 jumped on everyone. The Great Dane \u201chadn\u2019t been washed in weeks,\u201d Mr. Swanzey said. \u201cThe aroma was just terrible.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Mr. Reed met the plane on its final arrival in New York, he recalled the next day, the shah seemed to be thinking, \u201c\u2018At last I am getting into competent hands.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But as he checked the shah into New York Hospital, Mr. Reed was circumspect.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am the unidentified American,\u201d he told the inquisitive staff.<\/p>\n

Mr. Reed, Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Kissinger met again three days after the hostages were taken.<\/p>\n

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\"Henry<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Henry Kissinger publicly accused the Carter administration of forcing the shah, a loyal ally, to sail the world in search of refuge.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>William E. Sauro\/The New York Times <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cNoted was the feeling of indignation as being high and nothing useful to say,\u201d read the minutes.<\/p>\n

The White House said the shah had to depart as soon as possible, but Project Eagle continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ideal place for the Eagle to land,\u201d Mr. Reed wrote to Mr. Armao on Nov. 9, forwarding a brochure for a 350-acre Hudson Valley estate<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A week later, Mr. Rockefeller personally urged Mr. Carter in a phone call to direct the secretary of state to meet with the shah about \u201cthe current situation.\u201d Mr. Carter did not and the shah soon departed, for Panama, then Egypt.<\/p>\n

Only after the death of the shah, on July 27, 1980, nine months after his landing in Fort Lauderdale, did the Project Eagle team shift to new objectives. One was protecting Mr. Rockefeller from blame for the crisis.<\/p>\n

Over roast loin of veal and vintage wine at the exclusive River Club in New York, Mr. Rockefeller and nine others on the team gathered on Aug. 19. Amid discussion of a laudatory biography of the shah by a Berkeley professor that the team had commissioned, some warned that a Rockefeller link to the embassy seizure would be hard to escape.<\/p>\n

Why was the shah admitted? \u201cMedical treatment\/DR recommended,\u201d one said, using Mr. Rockefeller\u2019s initials, according to minutes of the dinner. \u201cThis association cannot be ignored.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Mr. Kissinger was reassuring. Congress would never hold an investigation during an election campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we are in trouble any more, David,\u201d Mr. Kissinger told him.<\/p>\n

The hostages were released on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 1981, and a few days later Mr. Carter\u2019s departing White House counsel called Mr. Rockefeller to inquire about how the release deal affected Chase bank.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorked out very well,\u201d Mr. Rockefeller told him, according to his records. \u201cFar better than we had feared.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Released<\/picture><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Released American hostages being greeted as they arrived in Washington on Jan. 27, 1981.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Associated Press<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u00a0The New York Times<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By David D. Kirkpatrick, Dec. 29, 2019 The fateful decision in 1979 to admit Mohammed Reza Pahlavi prompted the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran and helped doom the Carter presidency. One late fall evening 40 years ago, a worn-out white Gulfstream II jet descended over Fort Lauderdale, Fla., carrying a regal but sickly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8903"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8903"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8928,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8903\/revisions\/8928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}