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 na vete 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 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