Page:Documents from the Den of Espionage.djvu/1

 EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

OFFICIAL-INFORMAL September 2,1979 CONFIDENTIAL

L. Paul Bremer III, Esquire Deputy Executive Secretary Department of State Washington, D.C.

Dear Jerry:

I have been very busy and I'm a bit behind on my correspondence. You've been having your hands full moving into a new job, too, I suppose. I hope Francie and the kids are settling in all right. Sharon, I gather from her letters, is beginning to pace a bit in Michigan; if she can't come out here fairly soon, she will move to Washington when school is out next year. Don't say it: you told me so.

Things are quite exciting in Tehran. Not surprisingly. I am spending 85% of my time helping American businessmen distinquish between revolutionary rhetorical form and back-to-business substance. The Khomeini crowd really seem to want to get the people back to work and they are willing to take the necessary steps (and make the necessary compromises in revolutionary terms) to do it if Americans will modify contracts to reflect the changes wrought by the revolution. I've had some successes, and my problem most often is to convince some of the American players that if they come out here to talk, they won't go up against a wall.

This brings me to goings on in Iran politically. Frankly, I disgree with our position that there is a dual government, i.e. Bazargan and Khomeini. I suspect the dual government analytical construct is popular because it implies we can influence at least part of the policy machinery; to contend that Khomeini is the only real source of power means we then have to explain how we can protect our interests here by only indirect communication through a third party obviously not in sympathy with us on many questions (and itself not all t[missing] plugged in to the people that matter)