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After the Iranian Revolution, Samghabadi was arrested by the Mullahs, accused of being a CIA spy and a Tudeh Party member. |
Raji Samghabadi was an Iranian-born journalist who worked as a Middle East correspondent for Time magazine. He was initially hired as a stringer for Time by Bruce van Voorst, who had been a Central Intelligence Agency officer. Prior to this, in the early 1970s, Samghabadi worked for Keyhan International, an English-language daily newspaper in Tehran, and was secretly a member of the pro-Soviet Tudeh Party.1
After the Iranian Revolution, Samghabadi was arrested by the Mullahs, accused of being a Central Intelligence Agency spy and a Tudeh Party member. He was later released and sought political asylum in the United States, eventually becoming an United States citizen and a Middle East correspondent for Time.1
In May 1986, Ari Ben-Menashe provided Raji Samghabadi with detailed information about the Oliver North-Amiram Nir operation, which became known as the Iran-Contra Affair. Samghabadi considered it a major scoop, but Time magazine ultimately refused to print the story, a decision attributed to the editor-in-chief, Henry Grunwald.1
Raji Samghabadi was later a witness for Ari Ben-Menashe in his trial for arms dealing. Despite suffering from frayed nerves, he testified, confirming that Ari Ben-Menashe had informed him about the Iran-Contra Affair prior to its public exposure. He also made a memorable, if excitable, statement during his testimony, highlighting the human cost of the conflict.1
Footnotes
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Ben-Menashe, Ari. Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network. TrineDay, 1992. ↩︎