They saw it coming. Twenty years before the Iranian revolution overthrew the Shah, Luther Gulick and the Governmental Affairs Institute guiding Iran’s ambitious seven-year development plan read the handwriting on the wall, foreseeing doom for the Peacock Throne. (You do remember your Bible, don’t you?)

Wilson F. Harwood, an international development consultant with the G.A.I., a private non-profit which had links to the U.S. government (and, inevitably, the C.I.A.) gave voice to these concerns in 1959. The mission to Iran continued several more years. But we know how the story ended.