`The A.P. News Trust's Special Influence: A 1990s Look At The Associated Press'--Part 5

(The following article originally appeared in the July 7, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly, Downtown).

As Downtown (6/24/92) has previously noted, former Watergate Scandal investigative reporter Carl Bernstein, in an unpublicized 1977 Rolling Stone magazine article entitled “The C.I.A. And The Media,” wrote that: “Other organizations which cooperated with the C.I.A. include the American Broadcasting Company [ABC], the National Broadcasting Company [NBC], the Associated Press…”

Like other Big Media organizations, A.P. also has a long history of discrimination against women. A study by Lucy Komisar, cited in Women And The Mass Media by Matilda Butler and William Paisley, revealed that in 1970 at A.P. there were “no women in management positions and no women heading any of the 38 domestic or 6 foreign bureaus” and at A.P.’s Mid-town Manhattan office there were only “7 women out of 52 editors and reporters” in 1970. Women And The Mass Media also noted that in 1972 Time magazine reported that U.S. women were only “11 percent of Associated Press’s nationwide news staff of 1050.”

The same book also revealed that “in 1973, the Wire Services Guild charged the Associated Press [A.P.] with discriminating against its female and minority members” and that “In May 1978, the EEOC found that A.P. did discriminate by not recruiting, hiring and promoting women” and “did not hire minorities as newspeople.” Women And The Mass Media also noted that “EEOC data for the end of 1977” showed that “males are 100 percent of the assistant bureau chiefs, 98 percent of the bureau chiefs, 97 percent of the correspondents, 90 percent of the news editors, and 85 percent of the newspeople.”

In the early 1990s, about 88 percent of A.P.’s U.S. bureau chiefs were still male, as were 75 percent of A.P.’s U.S. correspondents. All but two of the seats on A.P.’s board of directors were also still filled by men. And A.P.’s chairman, vice-chairman, president and general manager, as well as its six vice-presidents, were still all men in the early 1990s. (end of part 5)

(Downtown 7/7/93)

Next: The A.P. News Trust’s Special Influence: A 1990s Look At The Associated Press—Part 6

`The A.P. News Trust's Special Influence: A 1990s Look At The Associated Press'--Part 4

(The following article originally appeared in the July 7, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly, Downtown).

The historical origins of A.P. go back to 1848 when six Downtown Manhattan daily newspaper publishers, led by New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett, decided to share the telegraph costs of news-gathering and, thus, reduce their individual newspaper news-gathering costs. As then-Boston Globe publisher General Taylor said in 1900:

“Mr. Bennett called the other newspaper proprietors together and proposed that they take a [telegraph] report of two hours and divide the expenses. That was the origin of The Associated Press.”

But Bennett, like A.P., was never too famous for either the quality of his journalism work or for using the special influence he possessed in the world of Downtown Manhattan journalism to promote equal rights for African-American people and the radical democratization of U.S. society. As The Early Black Press In America, 1827 to 1860 by Frankie Hutton recalled:

“In particular, the New York Herald founded by James Gordon Bennett in 1835, said to be one of the most profitable newspapers of its time, was criticized as being such poor journalism as to `vitiate all correct tastes, corrupt all the social and moral habits, and morally degrade human beings.’ Bennett had no qualms about using violent and sensational news to sell his newspaper…”

And, in his Bennett’s `New York Herald’ and The Rise Of The Popular Press book, James Crouthamel asserts that “Bennett was consistent in defending the rights of the South and its institutions of slavery,, in his belief in Negro inferiority and in his view that the antislavery movement was the major threat” and “consistent with his belief in Negro inferiority Bennett opposed extension of the franchise to blacks and integrated education in the North.”

By the 1870s, around 200 U.S. newspapers were utilizing the A.P. wire service to secure international news and national news by telegraph for their readers, without having to hire their own national and foreign correspondents. As a result, according to Development of American Journalism by Sidney Kobre, by the 1870s “control of the wire service meant that someone might shape the thinking of newspaper readers everywhere.” And, in fact, during this period “a handful of men in charge of the monopoly” apparently fabricated A.P. news on occasion whenever it dealt with politics, economics or other controversial issues, according to A.P., The Story Of News by Oliver Gramling.

Around this time, the original Downtown Manhattan newspaper publishers-dominated A.P. began calling itself “United Press.” Later in the 19th-century, a competing news-gathering wire service organization—the Associated Press [A.P.] of Illinois—was established by rival Midwestern newspaper publishers which came to replace the original A.P./”United Press” organization. As a result, in 1893 the Associated Press [A.P.] of Illinois was reorganized as a national press association, with the name of “Associated Press [A.P.],” under a revised set of rules. Following an adverse Illinois court decision, the A.P. was again reorganized as a New York-chartered non-profit cooperative in 1900.

Between 1900 and the early 1940s, “nearly all newspapers which took membership in it were guaranteed that no newspaper that might later be established in their respective cities would be permitted to join the national Associated Press without the consent of The Associated Press members in those cities” and “the promise of exclusivity was considered by all members to be a `franchise’ and that is what they called it…,” according to Kent Cooper And The Associated Press: An Autobiography. Led by newspaper publisher E.W. Scripps, however, those newspaper publishers who were denied the right to print A.P. news because a local A.P.-affiliated competing newspaper already held the A.P. “franchise” in their cities organized a competing news agency wire service in the U.S.—United Press—in the early 20th century.

But after the A.P. board of directors refused to allow the Chicago Sun to join the A.P. and publish A.P.-furnished news in Chicago in the early 1940s, the Department of Justice finally prosecuted the A.P. for violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. A federal court then found A.P. guilty and the A.P. News Trust’s board of directors was forced to discontinue its policy of allowing A.P.-affiliated newspapers to monopolize the printing of A.P.-furnished news items in each U.S. city. In the early 1940s, the A.P. also began to furnish its regular news report to radio stations, instead of just to newspaper subscribers.

The Ochs-Sulzberger Dynasty’s New York Times apparently relied heavily on its A.P.-provided copy during the early part of the 20th century, before it became as lucrative a media operation as it was in the 1990s. According to former A.P. Executive Director Kent Cooper, New York Times publisher Sulzberger’s great-grandfather—Adolph Ochs—once said the following with regard to A.P.:

“I owe more loyalty to the Associated Press than I can express. For when I bought the New York Times, with its Associated Press membership, I had no money left with which to buy special correspondence. So the New York Times reached prosperity practically on The Associated Press news service alone. Though we now spend a great deal for our own specials, The Associated Press still remains our prime reliance. Therefore, for the property value the New York Times has now become, I owe most to the Associated Press."

In the late 1950s, A.P.’s United Press competitor in the U.S. took over the Hearst media empire’s International News Service to form United Press International [U.P.I.]. But by 1985, U.P.I. was facing financial bankruptcy, in part “because the A.P. reaped so much more revenue from newspapers it could engage in never-ending price wars to woo away U.P.I. broadcast clients,” according to Down To The Wire: U.P.I.’s Fight For Survival by Gergory Gordon and Ronald Cohen. The same book also noted that “as U.P.I. had shriveled A.P. had grown, its budget soaring toward $300 million a year.” And as the New York Times (8/26/91) also noted, in 1991 U.P.I. was again on the verge of bankruptcy due, in part, to the “competition from A.P.” which had “squeezed U.P.I.’s revenues”—until the Saudi royal family decided to purchase U.P.I. in 1992. (end of part 4)

(Downtown 7/7/93)

Next: The A.P. News Trust’s Special Influence: A 1990s Look At The Associated Press—Part 5

`The A.P. News Trust's Special Influence: A 1990s Look At The Associated Press--Part 3

(The following article originally appeared in the July 7, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly, Downtown. )

In the 1990s, among the Big Media representatives who sat next to each other on the A.P. board of directors to discuss how A.P. could best serve as a tool of their supposedly competing Big Media enterprises were the following super-rich people:

New York Times Company Director and Chattanooga Times Publisher Ruth Sulzberger Holberg;

Newhouse Media Conglomerate Advance Publications/Newark Star-Ledger/Parade magazine/Vogue/Conde’ Nast/New Yorker Owner Donald Newhouse;

Times-Mirror/Newsday Vice-Chairman and Los Angeles Times Publisher W.Thomas Johnson;

Knight-Ridder/Philadelphia Inquirer Chairman of the Board James Batten;

Cincinnati Enquirer Chairman of the Board and Fifth Third Bancorp director William Keating;

WJTV Broadcasters of Mississippi Chairman and United Missouri Bancorp Director David Bradley;

Providence Journal President and Director Stephen Hamblett; and

Hibernia Corp./Hibernia National Bank of New Orleans and South Central Bell-Birmingham Director Joe Dorsey Smith. Jr.

[In 2007, the A.P. board of directors now includes the following wealthy folks:

MediaNews Group Vice-Chairman and CEO William Dean Singleton;

McClatchy Company Chairman, President and CEO Gary Pruitt;

Chicago Tribune Company Chairman, President and CEO Dennis FitzSimons;

Hearst Corporation President and CEO Victor Ganzi;

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Publisher Walter Hussman Jr.;

New York Times Regional Media Group President and CEO Mary Jacobus;

Washington Post Publisher and CEO “Bo” Jones;

Lee Enterprises Inc. President and CEO Mary Junck;

E.W. Scripps Company President and CEO Kenneth Lowe;

Gannett Company Retired Chairman Douglas McCorkindale;

Newhouse Media Conglomerate/AdvanceNet Chairman Steven Newhouse;

ABC News President David Westin; and

Cox Newspapers President Jay Smith. ]

Although the Washington Post-Los Angeles Times News Service and the New York Times Service were supposedly set up to compete with A.P. for media outlet subscribers and readers, representatives of the parent companies of both the Washington Post-Los Angeles Times News Service and the New York Times Service also sit on the A.P. board of directors, ironically. And, coincidentally, neither the Washington Post-Los Angeles Times News Service nor the New York Times Service has apparently been too eager to provide their subscribers with news that is too critical of the A.P. News Trust’s special influence. (end of part 3)

(Downtown 7/7/93)

Next: The A.P. News Trust’s Special Influence: A 1990s Look At The Associated Press—Part 4

The A.P. News Trust's Special Influence: A 1990s Look At The Associated Press--Part 2

(The following article originally appeared in the July 7, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly, Downtown.)

The son of Ohio Democratic Congressional Representative George Cooper—Ken Cooper—was A.P.’s general manager and executive director for much of the first half of the 20th Century. In his 1959 autobiography, Kent Cooper And The Associated Press, A.P.’s former executive director also referred to A.P.’s special influence by observing that “there is no other organization on earth whose product touches the daily lives of so many people as does that of the Associated Press” and that A.P. news was being distributed by “several thousand newspapers, radio and television stations” by the late 1950s.

By the 1980s, The International News Services by Jonathan Fenby estimated that “1500 newspapers and 5700 broadcasting stations” distributed A.P. news in the United States and about 8850 foreign media organizations also were the recipients of A.P.-provided news. The same book also noted that “The A.P.’s radio and television members get two services: a special news wire edited and written for broadcasters and an audio service of voice reports and sound recordings.” In 1988, Introduction To Mass Communications also revealed that “The Associated Press…collects and distributes news in 108 countries” and “more than 1500 news staff members serve A.P. around the world in 222 news bureaus.”

In 1991, the World Book Encyclopedia estimated that A.P. was collecting and distributing news in six languages to media outlets in 115 countries. To supply A.P. news rapidly to its affiliated newspapers and broadcasters, A.P. “uses an extensive network of leased satellite circuits, submarine cables and radio transmissions,” according to The World News Prism by William Hachten.

One reason why A.P. doesn’t often send news that is too critical of either Big Media institutions or the people who own Big Media outlets over its wires is that A.P. is controlled by Big Media owners—not by A.P. employees, newspaper readers, radio listeners or TV viewers. A.P.-affiliated newspaper owners and broadcasters in the U.S. elect a board of 18 directors from among Big Media owners and this A.P. board of directors appoints A.P.’s chief executives. In 1937, Fortune magazine also noted that “in corporate matters—the allotment of assessments, the hours that members shall be allowed to publish editions containing A.P. news, the quarrels between members—the board’s decision is final” and “It acts as both judge and jury.”

The A.P. board of directors “has summary authority to cut off the news report, or recommend expulsion, or impose fines” on A.P. members and “In past years the board’s fines have totaled as much as $2,000 at a single meeting, ranging from $10 to $15 against small papers and up to $1,000 against the rich ones,” according to Fortune. The same magazine also revealed that by 1937 “at least half of the A.P.’s membership has thus been disciplined at one time or another.”

Fortune described how A.P.’s board of directors functioned in the 1930s:

“The Directors meet in a paneled room on the seventh floor of the A.P. headquarters in New York City, soundproofed from the quarter of an acre of chattering printers on the floor below. Eighteen chairs are ranged around three sides of a long rectangular oak table and in front of each is a heavy brass ash tray. Nine months a year the chairs stand empty; but for two or three days in January, April and October they are occupied by the directors—the most imposing group of men in U.S. journalism…No cabinet or council anywhere sits with more gravity or with a deeper consciousness of authority.”

In the early 20th Century, a researcher named Kittle “made a study of the members of the A.P.’s board of directors and found that 14 of them were `conservative or ultra-conservative’” publishers whose papers were “huge commercial ventures, connected by advertising and in other ways with banks, trusts, companies, railways and city utility companies, department stores and manufacturing enterprises” and which “reflect the system which supports them,” according to The Brass Check by Upton Sinclair. And in his 1959 autobiography, former A.P. executive director Kent Cooper wrote that “some newspapers are indeed owned by copper mining companies, by railroad companies, newsprint and a wide variety of other manufacturers, by bankers, politicians, oil companies, church organizations and men of great wealth who have wanted to own newspapers to satisfy their ego or just for the fun of it” and “such diversified interests are joined into one group under the name of The Associated Press.”

Among the Big Media owners who sat on the A.P. board of directors together during the first half of the 20th Century were the publishers of the supposedly competing New York Times, Atlanta Constitution, Washington Star, Baltimore Sun, Philadelphia Bulletin, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Spokane Spokesman, Minneapolis Tribune, Cleveland Plain-Dealer, Chicago Tribune, and Des Moines Register & Tribune. (end of part 2)

(Downtown 7/7/93)

Next: The A.P. News Trust’s Special Influence: A 1990s Look At The Associated Press—Part 3

The A.P. News Trust's Special Influence: A 1990s Look At The Associated Press--Part 1

(The following article originally appeared in the July 7, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly, Downtown)

“The dominant and largest institution in the world news system is A.P., a cooperative owned mainly by American newspapers…A.P.’s central role is undisputed. By the agency’s count, more than a billion people have daily access to A.P. news…”

The World News Prism by William Hachten in 1987

“While having an abundance of numbers and giving an appearance of diversity, the mass media actually are highly centralized outlets that proffer a remarkably homogenized fare.”

Inventing Reality by Michael Parenti in 1986

“If there is in this country a strictly capitalist class institution it is the Associated Press.”

Eugene Debs in 1912

Although the Big Media newspapers, radio news departments and television stations are supposed to be competing with each other, the same news headlines and major news items usually appear in every U.S. Establishment newspaper, radio newscast or TV news show each day. One reason it often appears that one organization, alone, decides which items are most newsworthy is that one organization—the Associated Press [A.P.] sends over its wire service much of the copy which Big Media newspapers re-print and U.S. radio and TV announcers read over the airwaves. Since every Big Media member of the A.P. News Trust receives the same copy of news headlines and news items from the A.P.’s wire service, news junkies who wish to receive some variety in their daily news coverage are not likely to find too much variety (unless they surf around alternative media blogs and web sites on the internet)—no matter which A.P.-affiliated daily newspaper they pick up or which A.P.-affiliated radio or TV station they switch on.

The special influence of A.P. has long been recognized by alternative U.S. journalists. As the early 20th-century muckraking writer Upton Sinclair wrote in his 1991 book, The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism:

“There is the problem of the Associated Press, the most powerful and most sinister monopoly in America. Certainly there will be no freedom in America, neither journalistic freedom nor political freedom until the monopoly of the Associated Press is broken; until the distribution of the news to American newspapers is declared a public utility under public control…"

Sinclair also observed that when the bohemian radical Downtown Manhattan magazine Masses “published a cartoon representing the president of the Associated Press as pouring a bottle labeled `Poison’ into a reservoir entitled `Public Opinion’ in the early 20th Century, “The Associated Press caused the arrest of Max Eastman and Art Young on a charge of criminal libel” and A.P. then “issued an elaborate statement attacking the Masses and defending their own attitude toward the news, which statement was published in practically every paper in New York.”

Victor Rosewater also noted in his 1930 book, History of Cooperative News-Gathering In The United States, that “the accusation most obstinately pursuing the Associated Press has been that it was a gigantic news monopoly, immunizing members against competition even while ruling them with a high hand…”

In a 1937 article, Fortune magazine characterized A.P. as “a cooperative for the transfer of news, some which it gathers itself, a little of which comes from the outside by exchanging arrangements, but the great bulk of which it draws directly from the 1,300 dailies…that make up its membership." Fortune also noted that “after sorting, rewriting and editing, the A.P. parcels this news supply back among the 1,300 members (of whom fully 1,000 are wholly dependent on it for outside news) which then display it to some 35,000,000 people…of the 38,000,000 in the U.S. who buy daily newspapers” and “thus the A.P. might be called a clearinghouse.” The sorted, rewritten and edited news supply which A.P. wires back to its affiliated newspapers is then usually re-printed “under familiar (A.P.) logotype in the date lines,” according to Fortune.
(end of part 1)

(Downtown 7/7/93)

Next: The A.P. News Trust’s Special Influence: A 1990s Look At The Associated Press—Part 2

Why The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Likes The Clintons

Even before she became a 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate, former Wal-Mart corporate board member Hillary Clinton lived in the White House during her husband Bill Clinton’s first two terms as U.S. president in the 1990s. And in a June 13, 2003 essay, “American Enterprise Institute (AEI)—Out of Touch,” that appears in his 2004 book The Pursuit of Justice, U.S. consumer activist Ralph Nader indicated how the first Clinton administration served the special interests of U.S. corporations:

“…One high official of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told me that they loved the Clinton government. Why not? Under Clinton they got corporate-managed trade called NAFTA and WTO, laws furthering media, telecommunications, agribusiness, banking, brokerage and insurance industry concentration, weak-to-nonexistent regulation, a chronic softness on corporate crimes against pensioners and small investors, and a pathetically indifferent consumer and labor policy—to name a few surrenders…”

In a May 2, 2003 essay, “Wall Street Accountability,” that is also contained in his The Pursuit of Justice, Nader also observed:

“The only way to end the corruption on Wall Street is to send a message that securities firms engaged in defrauding small investors will be punished to the full extent of the law and those culpable top executives will be convicted and sent to jail.

“It is also time to break up the behemoth Wall Street financial powerhouses. The Republicans and Democrats spent the last decade repealing Depression-era protection for investors and allowing financial institutions to combine in unprecedented ways. Firms should never be allowed to combine stock research, investment banking (selling shares to the public) and brokerage (buying shares for customers). Firms now have an ongoing incentive to provide rosy research and have their brokerage firms push stocks on individuals that benefit not the individuals, but the Wall Street firms’ corporate clients.

“Congress and state regulators need to bring back the Glass-Steagal Act…”

Next: The A.P. News Trust’s Special Influence: A 1990's Look At The Associated Press—Part 1

Columbia University Gave Honorary Degree To Shah of Iran After CIA Coup

After the elected president of Iran was invited by Columbia University to speak on its campus, Columbia University President and Washington Post Company/Newsweek media conglomerate board member Lee Bollinger (http://youtube.com/watch?v=g0JpF07SOo4 ) impolitely attempted to insult his guest by calling him a “petty dictator’ --before Columbia’s invited guest was even given a chance to deliver his speech.

Ironically, the “great dictator” of Iran who was installed by the CIA’s 1953 coup, the Shah of Iran, was awarded an honorary “Doctor of Laws” degree by former Columbia University President (and former member of the Mobil oil company board of directors) Grayson Kirk in February, 1955. The CIA then apparently helped Columbia University’s “Doctor of Laws” honorary degree recipient set up a police state in Iran prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution. In addition, in July, 1977, former Columbia University President (and former member of the Texaco oil company board of directors) William McGill gave the Shah of Iran’s wife, Empress Farah Pahlavi (http://www.charlierose.com/guests/farah-pahlavi ), a Columbia University presidential citation. So if you’re a Columbia University student who wasn’t able to find an Iranian people’s history course offering in Columbia’s catalogue, following is a capsule people’s history of what happened in Iran between 1953 and 1979 that might interest you:

A CIA employee named Robert Lessard apparently “trained the Shah’s secret police in the techniques of subversion and torture, after the CIA’s overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953,” according to the 1985 book Washington’s Secret War Against Afghanistan by Phillip Bonosky. Four different underground political tendencies, however, still emerged in Iran to oppose the Shah of Iran’s dictatorial regime following the 1953 CIA coup: the traditional Islamic groups; the constitutionalist and liberal groups; the independent left groups; and the Tudeh Party. The constitutionalist and liberal groups drew their support mainly from Iran’s secular middle-class and Iranian government employees. Although anti-communist, the Iranian constitutionalist and liberal groups were anti-imperialist in their politics and advocated semi-socialist economic democratization reforms and the democratic political secularization of Iranian society. Together with the independent left groups and the Tudeh Party, the constitutionalist and liberal groups formed a new underground National Front in the late 1950s.

1960s and 1970s Resistance to Shah’s Regime

The traditional Islamic groups that opposed the Shah of Iran’s dictatorial regime were led by Iranian politicians from the religious Iranian Bazaar merchant class and the Iranian clerical hierarchy. Although they were opposed to the Shah of Iran’s regime and advocated Islamic unity against Anglo-American imperialism in the Middle East, the Islamic religious politicians were strongly anti-communist in their politics and generally hostile to the secular Tudeh Party. In addition to establishing an Iranian government which would more effectively protect Iranian businesspeople from the economic competition of foreign corporations in Iran, the leaders of the traditional Islamic groups in Iran also wanted to create a society in Iran that was governed by the principles of the Islamic religion.

In the Spring of 1960, the Shah of Iran finally agreed to allow a limited amount of political freedom for certain opposition Iranian groups prior to a scheduled Summer 1960 election of a new Majlis/Iranian parliament. As a result, between 1960 and 1963 the National Front opposition group was allowed to be openly active, while the Tudeh Party was still banned from aboveground political activity in Iran. From exile, however, the Tudeh Party’s Central Committee in August 1960 called for a broad united front to be formed to replace the pro-U.S. imperialist regime of the Shah with an anti-imperialist, nationalist democratic regime that eliminated all remnants of feudalism within Iranian society.

The Summer 1960 Iranian parliamentary election of the Shah’s regime turned out to be a fraudulent one. So by May 1961 there were public student-teacher demonstrations against the Shah’s regime in Tehran; and the first public meeting of the National Front in Iran since the CIA’s 1953 coup was held that same month which attracted a crowd of 80,000 Iranians who demanded immediate, honest, democratic elections in Iran. In response to these demonstrations, however, the Shah of Iran’s regime began withdrawing the post-1960 political concessions it had made to the non-left, non-communist and non-Tudeh Party-affiliated groups by the summer of 1961.

To try to decrease the growing popular support for both the legal National Front and the illegal Tudeh Party among Iranian’s landless peasants in the early 1960s, the Shah of Iran’s regime finally instituted a limited land redistribution program. The Shah of Iran’s regime also finally proposed in the early 1960s that Iranian women be allowed to vote in Iranian elections.

In response to both the Shah’s land reform program and the proposal that Iranian women be allowed to vote, as well as to the dictatorial and pro-imperialist nature of the Shah’s regime, however, a widespread religious uprising against the Shah’s regime, led by the traditional Islamic opposition groups who were influenced most by Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini broke out in June 1963. After three days of rioting, this 1963 religious uprising in Iran was crushed by the Shah of Iran’s military in a brutal way, with 600 protesting Iranians killed and 2,000 Iranian demonstrators injured by the Shah’s troops.

Following this June 1963 religious uprising, Khomeini was arrested and then exiled in 1964, first to Turkey and then to Iraq. In addition, the National Front opposition group was again banned by the Shah of Iran’s regime between 1963 and 1978. At the same time, the repression of the underground Tudeh Party activists in Iran continued. As Sepehr Zabith observed in his 1986 book The Left in Contemporary Iran:

“The Pahlavi regime’s suppression of the Tudeh Party was more severe than that of the National Front. While the latter’s activists received short-term imprisonment or were forced into exile (with the exception of Hossein Fatem, who was executed), the regime showed no mercy for Tudeh Party activists or those affiliated with their organization. Forty-two of its prominent leaders—mostly officers—were shot, 14 were tortured to death, and another 200 were sentenced to life imprisonment. Moreover, SAVAK continued to bear down mercilessly on the Tudeh members even after the party ceased to be a major threat.”

Iranian dissidents in the 1970s estimated that between 25,000 and 100,000 Iranians were held as political prisoners in Iran between 1963 and 1978 during the Shah of Iran’s police-state regime.

After 1965, an Iranian New Left of younger Iranian activists also developed which worked for the overthrow of the Shah of Iran’s U.S.-backed dictatorship. Influenced by the Cuban Revolution, the Chinese Revolution and the Vietnamese Revolution, two New Left groups were formed in Iran which waged guerrilla warfare against the Shah of Iran’s regime between 1966 and 1978: The People’s Fedayeen and the People’s Mojahadeen.

Formed by defectors from the outlawed Tudeh Party’s youth group, in 1963 the People’s Fedayeen group was secular and Marxist-Leninist in its political orientation. Its founder, Bijan Jazani and three other former Tudeh Party Youth organization activists, had met while in prison in 1955. In 1966, Bijan Jazani and other People’s Fedayeen leaders concluded that the Shah of Iran regime’s limited land reform program had changed Iranian society internally from one dominated by feudalist Iranian landlords to one dominated by pro-imperialist Iranian businesspeople.

In 1968, the original New Left leaders of the People’s Fedayeen were arrested by the Shah of Iran’s secret police, the CIA-trained SAVAK, and sentenced to a long period of imprisonment. During the 1970s, Bijan Jazani was, subsequently, executed in Iran’s Evin Prison by the Shah of Iran’s regime. Other People’s Fedayeen leaders like Hassan Zarif and Aziz Sarmedi were also murdered while in prison by the Shah of Iran’s regime in the 1970s. Despite the imprisonment and repression of its leaders, however, between 1971 and 1978 membership in the People’s Fedayeen guerrilla group grew to around 2,175. And prior to the early 1979 overthrow of the Shah’s regime, the People’s Fedayeen organized politically effective strike committees in Iran.

The founders of the religiously-oriented People’s Mojahedeen guerrilla group were former members of the non-communist National Front. Its leaders concluded in a 1969 position paper that under the Shah of Iran’s regime:

“Iran was essentially a police state where the armed forces constituted the ultimate power base. The strength and political stability of the regime was based on the effective functioning of its security bases, which were directed by the American Central Intelligence Agency.”

Given this 1969 political analysis’ conclusion, the People’s Mojahadeen group, not surprisingly, decided that the only way to establish a democratic, Islamic-oriented society in Iran was to begin urban guerrilla warfare against the Shah of Iran’s regime in 1970.

Unlike the People’s Mojahadeen, the People’s Fedayeen generally waged guerrilla warfare in rural areas of Iran, not in Iran’s cities. But both the People’s Fedayeen and the People’s Mojahadeen guerrilla groups held U.S. imperialist government policies responsible for the political repression and mass poverty that existed in Iran under the Shah’s regime.

Aboard, during the late 1960s and 1970s Iranian students who were members of the Confederation of Iranian Students, which has been founded in the mid-1960s, also organized protests against the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran’s dictatorial regime. When the Shah of Iran’s wife, Empress Farah Pahlavi (http://www.charlierose.com/guests/farah-pahlavi ), was given the Columbia University presidential citation award by former Columbia University President McGill in 1977, for instance, a large anti-Shah protest in Manhattan led by foreign students from Iran who wore masks (to avoid being identified by SAVAK agents) was organized by the Confederation of Iranian Students’ local members.

Mass opposition in Iran to the Shah of Iran’s dictatorial regime grew rapidly during the late 1970s. Yet the Democratic Carter Administration continued to provide support for the Shah of Iran’s regime during 1978, when the Shah of Iran tried to retain political power in Iran by ordering his troops to shoot down unarmed Iranian civilian demonstrators who dared to protest against his pro-imperialist Iranian police state. Over 60,000 Iranian civilian demonstrators were killed and about 100,000 Iranian civilian demonstrators were wounded and disabled in 1978 by the Shah of Iran’s troops before the people of Iran were finally able to overthrow the Shah of Iran’s regime on February 12, 1979.

The preamble to the October 24, 1979 Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran described how the people of Iran were able to create the 1979 Iranian Revolution:

“….The employees of all government establishments took an active part in the effort to overthrow the tyrannical regime by calling a general strike and participating in street demonstrations. The wide-spread solidarity of men and women of all segments of society and of all political and religious factions, played a clearly determining role in the struggle. Especially the women were actively and massively present in the most conspicuous manner at all stages of this great struggle. The common sight of mothers with infants in their arms rushing towards the scene of battle and in front of the barrels of machineguns indicated the essential and decisive role played by this major segment of society in the struggle.”

In response to the large pro-democratization demonstrations in Iran in 1978, the Shah of Iran’s regime also agreed to release some of its Iranian political prisoners before it finally collapsed on February 12, 1979. About 200 members of the People’s Mojahadeen group, for instance, were released from prison in the summer of 1978.

Next: Why The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Likes The Clintons