"

Skywriter: I have tried to be civil with you.  I would ask that you return the favor.  Remember, I didn't even write the old lede; I picked that as merely being most likely to be non-controversial.  Also note that on every single edit page, there's a big statement saying ""If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed for profit by others, do not submit it.""  Part of the ""edited mercilessly"" part is that people will criticize your writing.  It's nothing personal.

""If you see no evidence that Kinzer's book brought about a massive reassessment of the 1953 coup in Iran, then you did not read the book or the reviews.""

Amazon reviews are worthless for determining how important a book is, merely how good one is.  But whatever, you didn't include a direct mention in the most recent version, so let's just drop this.  (And for about the billionth time, since you mention in my edit summary that I'm ""criticizing"" Kinzer....  I'm doing no such thing.  I'm sure the book is very good, judging from the review given by the CIA history fellow.  But ""very good"" is not the same as ""an element of crowning importance in the coup itself.""  People knew after 1979 that something had gone horribly wrong, so this was not a new revelation.

""Aggression aside, SnowFire, the underlying flaw in your windy analysis is the absence of credible sourcing"" 

You said earlier that ""Your other comments are too general to address. If you would like to suggest specific changes to the wording, feel free to bring it here for comment.""  I decided to expand on the many problems with the lede, and now it's a ""windy"" analysis.  Got it.  But aside from sniping, you still fail to understand that my biggest problems with your version of the lede have nothing to do with sourcing.  It has to do with what information is appropriate for the lede.  There are a million and one possible, sourced facts that can be mentioned in the lede; we have to pick which ones.  I have no doubt that your text was sourced; it doesn't mean it's automatically appropriate for the lede.

Yes, and it shows just how careful were your mad rush of reverts last night. Fast and loose with facts,

Let me say it again: Are you denying that Cold War paranoia had anything to do with the coup?  Do you realize what references are for?  It's to confirm facts.  This fact is obvious and supported by every source, including your own, so it doesn't particularly matter what it was referenced to.  If you want to source it better have a blast, but this is not even close to ""fast and loose with the facts.""

Albright's ""apology""

You've got a point that the linked NYTimes article doesn't call it apology.  Remember, I didn't write the old lede!  Fair enough if we want to remove that due to being murkier than we'd like.

The CIA does cite vague fear of the Soviet Union in its most recent justification for the coup. However, the CIA's accounting, published in 2007, three years after the publication of Kinzer's path-breaking book (2003), must be weighed against the CIA's destruction of most of its documents related to this coup

Wait, the CIA destroyed the documents, so therefore the Soviet Union had nothing to do with it?  That logic doesn't flow.  More to the point, the idea that Cold War machinations were behind the US involvement is in literally every source.  I haven't read All the Shah's Men, but from your linked book review (the one by a notable person, not from Amazon reviewers), it seems to be in that, too!  I quote..

Eisenhower and his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, were dedicated to rolling back communism and defending democratic governments threatened by Moscow's machinations.

Kinzer depicts him as beguiled by a moralistic John Foster and a cynical Allen.

By ignoring the anticommunist basis of US policy, he wrenched the dispute with the AIOC out of its Cold War context and saw it only from his parochial nationalist viewpoint. Lastly, Mossadeq's naïvete about communist tactics led him to ignore the Tudeh Party's efforts to penetrate and control Iranian institutions. He seemed almost blithely unaware that pro-Soviet communists had taken advantage of democratic systems to seize power in parts of Eastern Europe. By not reining in Iran's communists, he fell on Washington's enemies list. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol48no2/article10.html

....yeah.  As a reminder this is from a review of your favored source.  (Also note that Dulles is described as ""moralistic,"" i.e. interested in stopping the communists, not greedy / interested in oil.  Squares with what I know of Dulles anyway.)

The overwhelming consensus is that the US was invol