Final_Judgment

[292] Final Judgment 353
"Chaim Herzog [president of Israel] who had many dealings with the
Iranian monarch while head of [Israel's] Military Intelligence, later said that
[the Shah of Iran] saw every Israeli as a link to Washington." 775
SAVAK'S ISRAELI ORIGINS
Mansur Rafizadeh, the former SAVAK chief, who later broke with the
Shah, has also provided us additional light on the close relationship between
SAVAK, the CIA and the Mossad. Writing in his memoirs, Rafizadeh
reveals that SAVAK was set up at the joint urging of Israel, the United
States and Britain. 776
The initial contacts between SAVAK and Mossad appear to have been
established in the fall of 1957 at a meeting between General Taimour
Bakhtiar and Mossad chief Isser Harel in Rome. They agreed upon mutual
interests. 777
ISRAEL TRAINS SAVAK
Not only did Israel provide training for the new SAVAK recruits, but so did
the CIA. In charge of the CIA's training of SAVAK operatives was an
operation known as the International Police Academy in Washington. This
academy also played a major part in training operatives of Israel's Mossad.
The academy was run by one Joseph Shimon, a man with additional
interesting connections. 778
Shimon counted among his close friends Chicago Mafia boss Sam
Giancana and the Mafia's roving ambassador, Johnny Rosselli, whose own
roles in the JFK assassination conspiracy we reviewed in detail in Chapter
11.
Shimon, in fact, also testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee in
1975 that he participated in meetings between Giancana, Rosselli and CIA
operatives in Miami in preparation for CIA-Organized Crime assassination
plots against Fidel Castro. 779
A DELIGHTED SHAH
That the Shah of Iran was pleased by the murder of John F. Kennedy (and
certainly that of Robert Kennedy to be sure) is undoubted. According to former
SAVAK chief Rafizadeh: "The assassination of President Kennedy on
November 22, 1963 made the Shah jubilant. Kennedy had put pressure on
him for social reforms. I learned later . . . that the Shah had had a kind of
celebration. When he received the news of Kennedy's death, he asked for a
drink to celebrate. 780
"The Shah had despised Kennedy, who constantly advised him to restore
human rights to his subjects and insisted that such a course of action was
necessary and unavoidable. The Shah viewed that course as a derided threat
to his power and so had refused.