By John
The recent mis-statements by our Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, about his war record made him sound like a blumen idiot. I found his behavior very distasteful and troubling especially because I thought he was a good candidate for the Senate. Why do I feel strongly about this?
I did not serve in the military and would never suggest that I did … nor would I ever want to suggest that I did. In the fall of 1966, I entered graduate school in the School of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh to earn a Ph.D. in Biochemistry. I had entertained some thoughts of enlisting in the air force but the more I got into the course work, the more I started to appreciate where I was headed.
I learned that I was fairly high on the draft list and I had already taken the physical. Many may not recall that the Selective Service offered a test for students which, if passed, would allow them to finish their education with a II-S deferment. So I took the test in December 1966 and passed. At that time I was not a dissenter against the war in Vietnam but by two years later I was adamant against the war and Nixon/Kissinger’s expansion of the war. Their later “Peace with Honor” slogan was an insult to everyone’s intelligence.
Members of my family have had illustrious records in foreign service which I admire greatly. My father was born in Constantinople in 1913 because my grandfather was stationed at the embassy and also taught languages at Roberts College there. Grampa was a linguist who was literate in many languages including Latin, Greek, Turkish, French, and Dutch. As WWI progressed (Turkey was on the other side, the Axis) my father’s family had to leave Turkey. The Turkish military arranged to take over their house near the Bosporus on the European side for officers’ quarters. When the family moved back in 1919 after the war, nothing in the house had been disturbed.
In 1918, Grampa was commissioned as an officer in the US Army so that he could attend the Paris Peace Conference. His job was to escort T. E. Laurence (e.g. Lawrence of Arabia) to the conference. Years later in the late 40s my uncle John (also John Leavitt) was walking down the main hall of the Central Intelligence Agency at Langley when who should come the other way but Grampa. John said “What are you doing here?” and Grampa responded “Why son, I work here!”
John with Grampa at John’s graduation from Brown in 1938. Click to enlarge
Uncle John was the real hero in our family. In 1941, while teaching at Roberts College in Istanbul, John became frustrated with the US for not entering the war (against the Nazis). So he went to the British Consulate and enlisted in the British Royal Air Force. After 18 months of training in Southern Rhodesia, he became a bombardier pilot and was shipped off to England. He later flew one of the planes that destroyed the German battleship Turpitz in Tromso Fiord (Norway). In a later mission his was one of the planes that destroyed Lutzow docked in Swinemunde (northern Germany; “ship was badly damaged by three six-ton Tallboy bombs dropped by the RAF in April 1945” Wikipedia). John’s final mission was to destroy Hitler’s “Eagle’s Nest” chalet, but the bomb would not release. Later he was able to release the bomb on a bridge west of Berchtesgaden.
John’s heroics were never discussed among the family. Only in the 1980s did we begin to talk about his later experiences as station chief in Tehran and in other Mediterranean and middle-eastern capitals. Now that CIA documents can be found on the Internet, one can learn that it was he and Kermit Roosevelt who engineered the overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh (Iran) in 1953 to preserve western oil interests for more than a quarter of a century (“Mosaddegh was removed from power in a coup on 19 August 1953, organized and carried out by the United States CIA at the request of the British MI6” Wikipedia).
John died at the age of 92 on December 31, 2009.
Addendum: In the fall of 1972 while I was a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins, I would drive down to play doubles at the Mclean Racket Club with John and two of his fellow agents. We were constantly ducking tennis balls from Art Buckwald and Ethyl Kennedy on the next court. After one match I brought up the articles that had begun appearing in the Washington Post about a break-in that had occurred at the Watergate. I was flabbergasted when John and the others informed me that Nixon would be out by June (only two months off).
Being instrumental in the installation of the Shah of Iran is not something to be proud of.
I am certainly familiar with how things turned out 27 years later and the stuff that the Shah was accused of doing in the 1970′s. The context in 1953 was completely different than today or 1980. If anything was mishandled later on, then you would have to look elsewhere to lay blame. I think that fundamentalism was always an undercurrent in the middle east and perhaps the Shah was dealing with that problem. In other words, I think the situation was more complicated than either you or I understand.
Perhaps he thought meddling in Iran was a good idea at the time (they always do), but which of the USA’s efforts to remove leaders of other countries have turned out well for us?
I’ll accept your take as a valid concern, doubtful.