Mansur Rafizadeh ( fa, منصور رفیع‌زاده; 14 December 1930, Kerman, Iran - 8 February 2018, Middletown, New York)Obituary
@ Legacy.com was an Iranian-born intelligence expert who worked for multiple

intelligence agencies An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy objectives. Means of informatio ...

and, in 1987, wrote an exposé, ''Witness: From the Shah to the Secret Arms Deal, An Insider's Account of U.S. Involvement in Iran'', for which he is best known. He studied at Tehran University law school, then moved to the United States where he studied at Harvard and

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

. He worked for the Iranian Pahlavi dynasty during the 1970s and, possibly, for the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

into the early 1980s. He also worked in New York City at the Iranian Mission to the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...

. After the

Iranian Revolution The Iranian Revolution ( fa, انقلاب ایران, Enqelâb-e Irân, ), also known as the Islamic Revolution ( fa, انقلاب اسلامی, Enqelâb-e Eslâmī), was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dyna ...

in 1979, diplomats with the

Islamic Republic of Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

stated that he was an agent of SAVAK (the Shah's secret police) in the U.S., a claim he denied at the time. Years later, he confirmed the claim. In the above-mentioned book, he claims to have been the U.S. director for SAVAK.Witness: FROM THE SHAH TO THE SECRET ARMS DEAL, AN INSIDER'S ACCOUNT OF U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN IRAN
by Mansur Rafizadeh (Morrow: $18.95; 396 pp., illustrated) July 12, 1987 , LA Times , Nikki R. Keddie , Keddie, who teaches at UCLA, is the author of "Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran" (Yale) and co-editor of "Shi-ism and Social Protest" (Yale) Reviewer Nikki R. Keddie, a scholar at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

, stated that book could not be recommended for a general audience, as it was "too unreliable to be truly informative". In 1992, a woman who also had links to the Shah, Parivash Rafizadeh, was murdered on her front lawn in New Jersey, and ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' reported that Mansur was likely her brother-in-law, though they could not confirm this.Robert Hanley (28 March 1992
Woman With Link to Shah Slain in Her Yard
''The New York Times''. Following the publication of his book, he never returned to Iran, settling in upstate New York, where he and his brother, Mozafar, operated a dairy farm. Later, he opened a water bottling plant in Forestport. He never married and died in 2018, aged 87.

References

{{reflist People of the Central Intelligence Agency People of SAVAK 1930 births 2018 deaths People from Kerman University of Tehran alumni Harvard University alumni New York University alumni Toilers Party of the Iranian Nation politicians Exiles of the Iranian Revolution in the United States