A Zero Hedge Premium Preview: The Dionysian Rites of Henry Kissinger's CIA and the Iranian Revolution of 2010

As you may or may not know, Zero Hedge is in the process of developing a number of premium offerings for 2010.  One of these is "Cf., The Journal of Irreverent Attacks on Conventional Wisdom, Entrenched Dogma and Sacred Cows."  For your reading pleasure, and to act as a preview of premium things to come, we attach Volume I, Issue I entitled "The Dionysian Rites of Henry Kissinger's CIA and the Iranian Revolution of 2010."

Abstract:

Failing to foresee the Iranian Revolution of 1979 is, rightly or wrongly, often cited as one of the most significant and dramatic of Western intelligence failures. After enduring a superlatively ignominious electoral defeat in the history of the United States (Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter with 89.7% of votes in the Electoral College in 1980) and in what may have been the record holder for rapidly published post-presidential memoirs up to that point, Jimmy Carter's 1982 book "Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President" pointed an accusing finger at the Intelligence Community's Iranian performance.  His recollections lamented the work of the Central Intelligence Agency in particular, citing an analyst report on Iran from August of 1978 indicating that the country "…is not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation."  By January of 1979 the Shah had fled. As might be imagined, what followed was a full court press, prompted by constant policy-maker pressure as well as the personal intervention of Henry Kissinger, who was badly embarrassed by the failure, to develop an organic revolution early warning system capability within the various appendages of United States intelligence.  We review one such system outlined in the Central Intelligence Agency report "Warnings of Revolution," dated March 1980 and apply the methodology to present-day Iran.  We find generally that the methodology's results are consistent with a finding of probable revolution (as it is defined in the report) in present-day Iran. Our open source version of this tool with general application to a wide span of national targets is available for public use courtesy of Zero Hedge.

 

- Marla Singer and Geoffrey Batt

You can read the entire piece here.

Original source material is available here:

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/CIA on Revolutionary Indicators.pdf
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/CIA on Revolutionary Indicators II.pdf

The first version of the online tool developed as part of this work can be accessed here.

Enjoy!