Author Description

This monograph analyzes Operation Ajax as a historical case study of the inherent challenges of estimative intelligence and analyst-policymaker tensions. In 1953, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) led a coup that overthrew Iran's elected prime minister, Dr. Mohammed Mossadeq. The coup, titled Operation Ajax, coincided with the early Cold War years and the development of the nascent interagency intelligence community. Historians frequently study Operation Ajax as an example of the US government's early attempts to employ covert action as a foreign policy tool. A less studied aspect of the coup is the intelligence estimates that informed and influenced the Truman and Eisenhower administrations' policy decisions during the Anglo-Iranian Oil Crisis. A careful analysis of the Iranian estimates produced by the Office of National Estimates (ONE) between 1950-1953 reveals that ONE effectively informed and influenced the Truman administration, but that influence was lost during the Eisenhower administration. Structural and organizational impediments within the CIA, coupled with flawed processes and procedures introduced by the Dulles brothers, mitigated efforts by leading CIA analysts to coordinate intelligence analysis, remove bias, and accurately inform and influence policymakers. Unlike the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Iranian Revolution, and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Operation Ajax is not commonly referred to as an example of an intelligence failure, largely because it did not involve strategic surprise.4 Historians continue to debate the merits of the operation and whether it was a clandestine success or failure. As Richard Russell argued in Sharpening Strategic Intelligence, "the CIA's covert action that returned the Shah of Iran to power is still heralded as a high water mark for the agency's myth of covert action capabilities." Others, such as historian Shiva Balaghi, have referred to the coup as a representation of the "height of US imperial foll