thumbnail  donald newton wilber (november 14, 1907, wisconsinunited states department of state, biographic register (u.s. govt. print. off., 1951), p. 135.-february 2, 1997, princeton, new jersey"donald newton wilber '29 *49," princeton alumni weekly, mar. 19, 1997.), american writer and spy. wilber was a principal architect of the cia project "operation ajax", a successful plot to overthrow the government of iranian prime minister mohammad mossadeq. the plot replaced iran's first democratically elected prime minister with general fazlollah zahedi; the government fell back into the hands of its disempowered mohammad reza shah pahlavi, who had supported the coup. he later ordered the deaths of thousands of iranians through savak, the shah's tightly controlled secret police, in his following regime. wilber served as a united states intelligence officer with the office of strategic services (oss), and was an active participant in the power struggles of nations, especially during the rivalry between the united states and the soviet union in iran after world war ii. in addition to orchestrating the coup in iran to benefit oil barons in britain and the united states, in his spare time, wilber wrote histories, travelogues and commentaries on iran, afghanistan and sri lanka. he is considered an authority on ancient persia. ==background== wilber studied the ancient and modern middle east. he received his a.b. (1929), m.f.a., and ph.d. (1949) from princeton university, where he was the first student to receive a doctorate in architectural history. in 1939 wilber married margaret patterson surre; they had two daughters, sara wilber cohen and margaret newton wilber. his book iran past and present, was published in nine editions. wilber collected oriental rugs, and was president of the princeton rug society for many years. he spent forty years in the middle east. his memoir, which partially recounts his role in the coup, is adventures in the middle east and iran, past and present and iran past. ===cia plot=== in august 2003, california state university economics professor sasan fayazmanesh, an iranian expatriate, wrote: on april 16, 2000, the new york times broke what its writer, james risen, called the us's "stony silence" by devoting a number of pages to publishing parts of a still classified document on the "secret history" of the 1953 coup. the history was written by one donald n. wilbur, an expert in persian architecture and one of the "leading planners" of the operation "tp-ajax." the report chronicled gruesome details of the events in 1953: how, by spending a meager sum of $1 million, the cia "stirred up considerable unrest in iran, g
1907_births 1997_deaths American_spies American_writers Princeton_University_alumni