<P> In 1953 the CIA, working with the British government, initiated Operation Ajax against the Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mossadegh who had attempted to nationalize Iran's oil, threatening the interests of the Anglo - Persian Oil Company . This had the effect of restoring and strengthening the authoritarian monarchical reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi . In 1957, the CIA and Israeli Mossad aided the Iranian government in establishing its intelligence service, SAVAK, later blamed for the torture and execution of the regime's opponents . </P> <P> A year later, in Operation PBSUCCESS, the CIA assisted the local military in toppling the democratically elected left - wing government of Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala and installing the military dictator Carlos Castillo Armas . The United Fruit Company lobbied for Árbenz overthrow as his land reforms jeopardized their land holdings in Guatemala, and painted these reforms as a communist threat . The coup triggered a decades long civil war which claimed the lives of an estimated 200,000 people (42,275 individual cases have been documented), mostly through 626 massacres against the Maya population perpetrated by the U.S. - backed Guatemalan military . An independent Historical Clarification Commission found that U.S. corporations and government officials "exercised pressure to maintain the country's archaic and unjust socio - economic structure," and that the CIA backed illegal counterinsurgency operations . </P> <P> During the massacre of at least 500,000 alleged communists in 1960s Indonesia, U.S. government officials encouraged and applauded the mass killings while providing covert assistance to the Indonesian military which helped facilitate them . This included the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta supplying Indonesian forces with lists of up to 5,000 names of suspected members of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), who were subsequently killed in the massacres . In 2001, the CIA attempted to prevent the publication of the State Department volume Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964--1968, which documents the U.S. role in providing covert assistance to the Indonesian military for the express purpose of the extirpation of the PKI . In July 2016, an international panel of judges ruled the killings constitute crimes against humanity, and that the US, along with other Western governments, were complicit in these crimes . </P> <P> In 1970, the CIA worked with coup - plotters in Chile in the attempted kidnapping of General René Schneider, who was targeted for refusing to participate in a military coup upon the election of Salvador Allende . Schneider was shot in the botched attempt and died three days later . The CIA later paid the group $35,000 for the failed kidnapping . </P>

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