List of CIA Coups: Iran, Guatemala, Chile, and Operation Condor

The Central Intelligence Agency has carried out or backed regime change operations in at least two dozen countries since its founding in 1947. Any honest list of CIA coups includes outright successes that installed decades-long dictatorships, botched invasions, assassination plots against elected leaders, and quieter programs of money, propaganda, and paramilitary support that tipped local forces toward the outcome Washington wanted. What follows are the operations that have been confirmed through declassified U.S. records, congressional investigation, or credible historical documentation.

Syria, 1949

The agency’s first coup came in March 1949, when CIA officers Miles Copeland and Stephen Meade encouraged and assisted Syrian Chief of Staff Colonel Husni al-Za’im in seizing power. Former CIA agent Wilbur Eveland and Deane Hilton, chief aide to the U.S. ambassador, later corroborated the involvement.¹ Za’im’s rule lasted 137 days before he was overthrown and executed. Seventeen more army coups followed in Syria over the next two decades.

Iran, 1953

The Iran operation set the template that would be copied for the rest of the Cold War. Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951, provoking a severe conflict with Britain. President Eisenhower formally authorized the joint CIA-British operation, codenamed TPAJAX, after taking office in January 1953.² Kermit Roosevelt ran it on the ground, working with British SIS officer Norman Darbyshire and CIA operative Donald Wilber.³

The plan used CIA-funded agents to incite street unrest, harass political and religious figures, and run a media disinformation campaign.⁴ On August 19, 1953, pro-Shah forces seized control and assaulted Mosaddegh’s house. He escaped over a garden wall, was later arrested, and was sentenced to three years for treason, spending the rest of his life under house arrest. General Fazlollah Zahedi was installed as prime minister and Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was restored to the throne. Roughly 300 people were killed in the Tehran fighting. A 1954 agreement handed an international consortium control over Iranian oil under a 50-50 revenue split. The CIA formally acknowledged its role in 2013; much of the original operational file had been destroyed in the early 1960s during what was described as routine office cleaning.³ The coup is widely regarded as having planted the seeds of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Guatemala, 1954

Operation PBSUCCESS, authorized by Eisenhower in August 1953 with a $2.7 million budget, targeted President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán over his land reform program and nationalistic economic policies.⁵ The CIA ran clandestine radio stations, distributed propaganda through Honduras, El Salvador, and Mexico, and put a paramilitary force under Carlos Castillo Armas.⁶ The operation also included assassination planning, with hit teams, target lists, and a 19-page “Study of Assassination” manual.

Arbenz resigned on June 27, 1954, and Castillo Armas took the presidency. Hundreds of Guatemalans were rounded up and killed in the aftermath. Between 1954 and 1990, human rights groups estimate that successive U.S.-backed military regimes killed more than 100,000 civilians. Internal CIA records showed the agency had misled Eisenhower about casualties, reporting only one rebel death when its own files indicated at least four dozen were dead.⁵

Albania, 1949–1953

Operation Valuable, a joint CIA-British effort to subvert Enver Hoxha’s communist regime after Yugoslavia’s 1948 expulsion from the Soviet bloc, failed because Kim Philby, a Soviet mole in British intelligence, betrayed the infiltrating teams.⁷

Tibet, 1958–1964

Under a program codenamed ST Circus, the CIA trained at least 259 Tibetan guerrilla fighters at Camp Hale in the Colorado Rockies, with roughly 30 CIA officers as instructors.⁸ Eight teams of radio operators were parachuted back into Tibet, and in 1959 trainees helped relay word of the Dalai Lama’s safe arrival at the Indian border during his escape from Chinese forces.⁹ The fiscal year 1964 budget was $1,735,000, including a $180,000 subsidy for the Dalai Lama and $500,000 for the Nepal-based guerrilla force.¹⁰ The program was shut down in 1964 as U.S. policy shifted toward engagement with China, and the Tibetan resistance was forced to disband by 1974.

Cuba: The Bay of Pigs, 1961

Eisenhower directed the CIA in March 1960 to plan Castro’s overthrow. The Bay of Pigs invasion launched on April 17, 1961: about 1,400 CIA-trained and funded exiles, known as Brigade 2506, sailed from Guatemala.¹¹ CIA officials expected the Cuban population to rise up and Castro’s forces to fold. Neither happened. Cuban forces defeated the invasion within two days.¹² A CIA Inspector General’s report that October blamed “lack of high-level, informed, unwavering scrutiny.”

The Kennedy administration then launched Operation Mongoose in November 1961, a coordinated program of sabotage, propaganda, and assassination attempts overseen by Edward Lansdale. Proposed methods for killing Castro included toxic cigars, exploding seashells, and contaminated scuba suits.¹³ The program was suspended in October 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Congo, 1960–1965

Between 1960 and 1968, the CIA spent nearly $12 million on covert operations in the Republic of the Congo.¹⁴ The first target was Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. On August 27, 1960, CIA Director Allen Dulles cabled the agency’s Leopoldville station that Lumumba’s removal was an “urgent and prime objective.”¹⁵ The deputy director for plans authorized a scientist to prepare biological materials for assassination, and those materials were dispatched to the Congo in September 1960.

The CIA did not directly carry out the killing. But the agency funded army commander Joseph Mobutu to buy the loyalty of military officers, supported parliamentary opposition, organized street demonstrations, and ran propaganda broadcasts. Lumumba was executed on January 17, 1961, by Katangan soldiers and a Belgian officer.¹⁵ The agency then shifted to supporting pro-Western governments, provided aircraft, pilots, and a “pocket navy” on Lake Tanganyika, and backed Operation DRAGON ROUGE in November 1964, an airborne assault with U.S. C-130s and 340 Belgian paracommandos to rescue hostages in Stanleyville. Mobutu staged a bloodless coup in November 1965 and ruled as dictator until 1997.¹⁴

Iraq, 1963

On February 8, 1963, Iraqi Army units and Ba’ath Party members overthrew Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim, who was executed the next day. CIA involvement remains contested. The agency’s own Studies in Intelligence journal argued in 2016 that while the CIA had advance intelligence on coup plotting, “awareness does not equal complicity.”¹⁶ King Hussein of Jordan told Egyptian journalist Muhammad Hasanein Haikal in September 1963 that he knew “for a certainty” the coup had American intelligence support and that a secret radio had beamed names and addresses of communists to the coup-makers.¹⁷ Historians Peter and Marion Sluglett concluded it was “almost certain” that raid teams worked from externally supplied lists, though historian Hanna Batatu noted the Ba’athists had their own means of compiling such information. National Security Council official Robert Komer wrote to President Kennedy on February 8 that the revolution was “almost certainly a net gain for our side.” The U.S. formally recognized the new government three days later.¹⁸

Brazil, 1964

On March 31, 1964, the Brazilian military overthrew President João Goulart with active U.S. support. President Lyndon Johnson instructed aides that day: “I think we ought to take every step that we can, be prepared to do everything that we need to do.” Secretary of State Dean Rusk authorized a naval task force off the Brazilian coast, Navy tankers carrying petroleum from Aruba, and an airlift of 110 tons of ammunition and tear gas.¹⁹ U.S. Ambassador Lincoln Gordon had urged Washington to support coup plotters under General Humberto Castello Branco, warning that Brazil could otherwise become “the China of the 1960s.” CIA covert operations supported anti-communist sentiment in the Brazilian Congress, military, labor, student groups, churches, and business organizations. Goulart fled to Montevideo on April 2. The military ruled Brazil until 1985, receiving more U.S. foreign aid than any other South American country under the dictatorship.²⁰

Indonesia, 1965

After a failed internal power grab on September 30, 1965, the Indonesian military under General Suharto launched a campaign against suspected communists that killed between 500,000 and one million people. Declassified U.S. embassy documents show the United States provided the Indonesian military with money, equipment, and lists of communist officials during this period. U.S. officials had information contradicting the military’s narrative that the Communist Party ordered the September 1965 killing of six army generals; a November 1965 file indicated it may have been an internal government operation.²¹ Officials also knew many confessions were falsified. Embassy cables from early October 1965 characterized it as “now or never” for the army to act and advised spreading “the story of PKI’s guilt, treachery and brutality.”²² The massacre enabled the transition from Sukarno to Suharto’s 32-year military dictatorship.

Chile, 1970–1973

When Salvador Allende won the Chilean presidency in 1970, Nixon ordered the CIA to prevent him from taking power. In a September 15, 1970, meeting, Nixon authorized $10 million for destabilization and told CIA director Richard Helms to “make the economy scream.”²³

The CIA pursued two tracks. Track I involved political efforts to block Allende’s congressional ratification. Track II, kept secret even from the U.S. ambassador, aimed to foment a military coup. Under Project FUBELT, a CIA task force worked to organize military action. On October 16, 1970, CIA Deputy Director of Plans Thomas Karamessines stated the policy plainly: “It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup.” The CIA provided weapons to Chilean officers plotting to kidnap General René Schneider, the army commander who opposed military intervention. Schneider was shot and killed on October 22, 1970.²³

Between 1970 and 1973, the United States spent $8 million on covert action against Allende, including at least $1.5 million funneled to the Santiago newspaper El Mercurio.²⁴ Washington also pressed the World Bank and other international lenders to cut credits to Chile. On September 11, 1973, the Chilean military bombed the La Moneda presidential palace. Allende died during the assault. General Augusto Pinochet took power, dismantled Congress, and outlawed leftist parties. State Department memos documented 320 summary executions within the first 19 days of the new regime. The 1975 Church Committee concluded there was “little evidence” of direct U.S. involvement in the coup itself, but acknowledged that U.S. actions had created the conditions for it.

Operation Condor, 1975–1980

The CIA helped create and train Chile’s secret police, DINA, led by Colonel Manuel Contreras, who reported directly to Pinochet. DINA became a key node in Operation Condor, a multinational intelligence network formally inaugurated in November 1975 among the military regimes of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia to track, kidnap, and assassinate political dissidents across borders. Brazil, Peru, and Ecuador later joined.²⁵

By the summer of 1976, the CIA knew Condor had evolved from intelligence sharing into a transnational assassination program. Internal CIA memos expressed alarm that the agency could be “wrongfully accused of being party” to the killings. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was briefed in August 1976 that the regimes had established the network to kill opponents both domestically and in Europe. On September 21, 1976, agents operating under Pinochet’s orders killed former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and American colleague Ronni Moffitt with a car bomb in Washington, D.C. Investigator John Dinges documented 654 victims of kidnapping, torture, and disappearance attributable to Operation Condor between 1976 and 1980.²⁵

Haiti, 1990s

In Haiti, the CIA maintained a paid relationship with Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, leader of the paramilitary group FRAPH, which terrorized supporters of deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide after the 1991 military coup. Constant was on the CIA payroll as of October 1993. That same month, his group organized a violent demonstration that prevented the USS Harlan County from docking with troops meant to facilitate Aristide’s return. The agency dropped Constant as an informant in the spring of 1994 over concerns his activities could “blow back quite badly.”²⁶

Venezuela, 2002

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez was briefly ousted in April 2002 in a coup that lasted roughly 47 hours. Diplomatic sources and Organization of American States officials alleged that senior U.S. officials, including Otto Reich (Bush’s top Latin America policy official), Elliot Abrams (senior NSC director), and John Negroponte (UN ambassador), knew the coup was coming and had given tacit approval.²⁷ After the coup, Reich summoned Latin American ambassadors to declare U.S. support for the interim government. Chávez was restored to power within two days. An eyewitness account from a U.S. Embassy official described the embassy as having deliberately cut contact with the military in the days before the coup.²⁸

Syria, 2012–2017

Timber Sycamore, the CIA’s classified operation to arm, train, and equip Syrian rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, was the agency’s largest covert action program in decades. It cost approximately $1 billion annually, about one dollar of every fifteen in the CIA’s budget.²⁹ More than 60,000 rebels across at least 42 groups participated over the life of the program, with training centers in Turkey and Jordan alongside Saudi, Qatari, French, and British partners.³⁰

Significant quantities of CIA-supplied weapons, including TOW anti-tank missiles, were diverted to the black market by intermediaries in Jordan’s intelligence service and ended up with adversaries, including ISIS and jihadist groups affiliated with Al Qaeda. In November 2015, an operative from Jordan’s intelligence service used a diverted weapon to kill two U.S. contractors and three Jordanians. The House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously that year to cut funding.³¹ President Trump ended the program in mid-2017 after the rebel force had been hollowed out by more than a year of Russian airstrikes.

The Rest of Latin America

A Harvard analysis of U.S. interventions in Latin America between 1898 and 1994 identified at least 41 instances in which the U.S. government intervened to change governments in the region: 17 direct interventions and 24 indirect ones. Beyond the major operations above, indirect U.S. interventions included coups or political manipulations in Bolivia (1944, 1963, 1971), Honduras (1963), the Dominican Republic (1963), El Salvador (1961, 1979, 1980), Guyana (1953), and Panama (1941, 1949, 1969).³²

A 2023 study in the European Journal of Political Economy examined five CIA-sponsored regime changes (Ecuador 1963, Brazil 1964, Chile 1964, Bolivia 1964, and Panama 1981) and found the targeted countries experienced an average 10 percent reduction in per capita income within five years. Democracy scores dropped nearly 200 percent below projected levels, and measures of freedom of expression, civil liberties, and rule of law fell by 20 to 35 percent. None of the studied countries recovered their democracy scores within six years.³³ The CIA tended to intervene in countries that were, before intervention, more democratic, wealthier, and had higher civil liberties than countries that experienced non-CIA-backed coups.³⁴

What The Law Now Requires

The Church Committee’s 285-page report on assassination plots, released November 20, 1975, confirmed CIA operations to “neutralize” foreign leaders including Castro, Lumumba, and General Schneider, concluding “the evidence establishes that the United States was implicated in several assassination plots.”¹³ It found that only 14 percent of CIA covert projects initiated since 1961 had been reviewed by the oversight bodies supposed to approve them.³⁵

On February 18, 1976, President Ford signed Executive Order 11905, banning U.S. government employees from participating in political assassinations. Executive Order 12333, as amended, continues that prohibition today. Under 50 U.S.C. § 3093, the president must authorize any covert action through a written “presidential finding” that specifies the agencies involved, prohibits actions that violate the Constitution or federal law, and cannot retroactively sanction operations already underway.³⁶ Findings must be reported in writing to the congressional intelligence committees before an operation begins. In extraordinary circumstances, the president may limit notification to the “Gang of Eight”: the chairs and ranking members of both intelligence committees, the Speaker and minority leader of the House, and the Senate majority and minority leaders. Whether these guardrails have fundamentally changed the character of CIA covert operations or merely formalized the process for authorizing them remains a subject of ongoing debate.

1
Taylor & Francis Online. The 1949 Syrian Coup
2
CIA Reading Room. The Battle for Iran
3
National Security Archive. CIA Confirms Role in 1953 Iran Coup
4
Encyclopædia Britannica. 1953 Coup in Iran
5
National Security Archive. CIA and Assassinations: The Guatemala 1954 Documents
6
U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian. Status of PBSUCCESS
7
The New York Times. Kim Philby and the Albanian Mission
8
Radio Free Asia. CIA Secret Training at Camp Hale
9
The Colorado Sun. Camp Hale Tibet CIA Training History
10
U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian. Tibetan Operations Memorandum for the Special Group
11
U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian. The Bay of Pigs Invasion
12
National Security Archive. Bay of Pigs Declassified
13
National Security Archive. CIA Assassination Plots: Church Committee Report 50 Years
14
CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence. CIA’s Covert Operations in the Congo
15
U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian. Editorial Note, FRUS Congo 1960-1968
16
CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence. The 1963 Coup in Iraq
17
Global Policy Forum. CIA Lists of Communists, Iraq 1963
18
U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian. Memorandum on the Iraqi Coup
19
National Security Archive. Brazil Marks 40th Anniversary of Military Coup
20
Library of Congress. Brazil-US Relations: Military Dictatorship
21
National Security Archive. Declassified Files Outline US Support for 1965 Indonesia Massacre
22
U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian. FRUS Indonesia Volume XXVI
23
National Security Archive. Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents
24
NPR. Chile Coup 50 Years
25
National Security Archive. Operation Condor: Network of Transnational Repression, 50 Years
26
The New York Times. A Haitian Leader of Paramilitaries Was Paid by CIA
27
The Guardian. Venezuela Coup Linked to Bush Team
28
Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. The Failed 2002 Venezuelan Coup
29
The New York Times. CIA Syria Rebel Arm Train Trump
30
Modern War Institute at West Point. Timber Sycamore in Syria
31
War on the Rocks. The Logic for Shoddy US Covert Action in Syria
32
Harvard Review of Latin America. United States Interventions
33
ScienceDirect. The Consequences of CIA-Sponsored Regime Change in Latin America
34
Cato Institute. Research Brief: Consequences of CIA-Sponsored Regime Change
35
U.S. Senate. Church Committee
36
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 USC 3093 – Presidential Approval and Reporting of Covert Actions