THE FAILURE OF U.S.

TECHNICAL
ASSISTANCE IN PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION:
THE IRANIAN CASE
John L. Seitz
INTRODUCTION
One of the causes of the Iranian revolution of 19781979 was that the
Iranian government had serious administrative deciencies. Amir Taheri, a
well-known Iranian journalist, wrote in the mid-1978 that public disturbances were due to an accumulation of discontent with tight control,
over-centralization, lack of sufcient open debate and a general feeling
that corruption and inefciency together with arrogance have struck the
bureaucracy.1 These administrative problems were not new. An important
scholarly examination of the Iranian political system in the early1970s concluded that the problems of governance in Iran are profound. Inefciency
is their hallmark y .2
It is likely that the Iranian revolution will force some Americans involved
in providing technical assistance to Third World nations to confront the fact
that one of their largest technical assistance efforts in Iran had failed. For
fteen years from 1953 to 1968, when AID,3 the American foreign aid
agency, ended its activities in Iran the U.S. government had provided
technical assistance to the Iranian government in public administration.4

Comparative Public Administration: The Essential Readings

Research in Public Policy Analysis and Management, Volume 15, 321334
Copyright r 2006 by Elsevier Ltd.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 0732-1317/doi:10.1016/S0732-1317(06)15012-5

321

322

JOHN L. SEITZ

TWO PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION PROJECTS

Aid to Iranian Ministries
The largest public administration project in Iran (in terms of the number
of Americans working in it) lasted from 1956 to 1961, cost approximately
$2.3 million, and involved about 26 American advisers. The project
provided one general public administration adviser to each of the Iranian
ministries except foreign affairs and war, and advisers in budgeting, accounting, taxation, auditing, customs, personnel administration, statistics,
and organization and methods (O&M). The principal accomplishment of
the project was considered to be, for many years, the establishment in the
Iranian government of a High Council of Administrative Undersecretaries,
a body which was to concern itself with administrative reform on a continuing basis. But 5 years after the end of the project the High Council no
longer existed, nor [were] the remaining administrative undersecretaries,
as an AID case history of the project admitted, the force for reform that
was planned. The AID report goes on to say that Ministries have O&M
ofces, but the ofces are not staffed with vigorous trained personnel and
many produce little results. Accounting is still archaic and slow. The volume
of tax delinquencies in the Ministry of Finance is again substantial.5
Even with these admitted failures, the AID mission rated the project as
successful. Its judgment in 1967 was that although an evaluation of Iranian
public administration would uncover many deciencies and the need for
major reform, the general level of performance is unquestionably much
better today than it was in 1956. That change has been this rapid can be
attributed in part to this project.6 But the AID mission did not give
any evidence about improvements in the governments general level of
performance nor did it offer any evidence of why improvements in Iranian
performance, if they did exist, were the result of this project.
Aid to the Iranian National Police
In 1953 a project was begun to assist the Iranian police. The long-range
object of the project was to produce a suitable climate of internal security
and public stability conducive to economic and social development.7
American advisers provided assistance to the National Police Administration in developing an improved organization and procedures, training facilities, a national communications system, narcotics control, motor vehicle

The Failure of U.S. Technical Assistance in Public Administration

323

trafc control, and improved criminal investigative techniques. The project

was also designed to advise the National Police Administration on antisubversive methods, civil disturbance control, and other matters pertaining
to internal security.8 It was this last-mentioned function that led to the
creation of SAVAK, the feared Iranian secret police. In 1957 a report on
accomplishments in public administration assistance in Iran, under a section
on civil police administration, mentions that Responsibility for all civilian
counter-intelligence activities has been concentrated in a new internal security agency (SAVAK) which is attached to the Prime Ministers Ofce.9
By 1963 the work of SAVAK and assistance to it appeared to be so sensitive
that there was no mention of the agency in the case history of the internal
security project administered by AIDs Public Safety Division.10
From 1955 through 1963 the U.S. spent about $3 million on this project.
Included in this total was $500,000 which was approved for civil disturbance
control equipment in scal year 1963. The supplying of riot control equipment to Iran was eventually criticized by some members of the U.S. Congress and AID became more sensitive about giving such assistance.
During most of the 1950s the assistance to the Iranian police was managed by the Public Safety Branch of the Public Administration Division of
AID. In 1959 public safety became a separate division in the AID mission in
Iran, partly because of the connection of the public safety program with the
CIA. One of the chief supervisors of the public administration program in
the AID headquarters in Washington, DC, in the 1950s has stated that he
worked to get the public safety program removed from the public administration division because public safety was too involved with the CIA.11 At
least one CIA agent, who was undoubtedly working with SAVAK, had a
cover in the Iranian police project when it was a part of the public administration program.

POLITICAL SUPPORT FOR

ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM
The two public administration projects described in the previous section
received different levels of support from the Iranian government. Strong
political support went to the project to assist the police as the Shah recognized the need for an effective police in order to safeguard his throne. The
project to improve the administrative structures of the Iranian ministries did
not receive strong support from the Iranian government. It is this lack of
support, which will be examined in detail in this section.

324

JOHN L. SEITZ

A former public administration adviser to one of the Iranian ministries in

the late l950s described the lack of political support:
They rushed us over there and then there was nothing to do. The Iranians were very
willing to accept the American advisers as well as the dollars which they wanted to get in
other areas. They especially wanted to get military aid. The Iranians werent geared to
reorganize their government. There were many people on the governments payroll who
did no work, but the Shah had no intention of reducing the governments payroll
because he didnt want to disenchant any large group. y Once I realized that the host
government was only going to go so far and had accepted the advisers because they were
part of a bigger package, this realization diminished my horizons. I was able to eliminate
sonic duplication of activities in the Iranian ministry in which I worked, but my accomplishments were limited.12

During the period of the major American effort to aid the Iranian ministries,
political pressures forced the government to hire freely and to ignore the
regular retirement laws. According to Binder, the consequences of these
arrangements and pressures have been a great over-stafng of the service.13
The practice of lling the bureaucracy with personnel for political reasons
continued into the 1970s. The Shah used co-optation as one of the means to
silence his critics and this cooptative means of recruitment, according to
Zonis, bred cynicism among the political elite. The qualities of cynicism,
mistrust, insecurity, and interpersonal exploitation are the central character
variables that explicate that which is peculiar to Iranian politics.14 What
effect did this situation have on the administrative performance of the government? Zonis believed that such a system could not lead to administrative
reform: The system is highly conducive to the avoidance of assuming responsibility for any bureaucratic act. Conicts are pushed ever higher in the
bureaucracy for resolution. Still more committees and groups are created
for decision making. This was caused in large part, according to Zonis,
because of the fear of coming to the attention of the monarch.15
The Shah often spoke about the need for administrative reform in Iran. In
1963 he announced a six-point program for the country, the so-called White
Revolution. One of these points was an educational and administrative
revolution. According to Bill, all indications are y that this revolution is
to exist on paper only.16 In the 1960s, the United Nations sent public
administration advisers to Iran. In 1975, the Shah again spoke of the need
for administrative reform in his country and selected an American company
headed by David E. Lilienthal, former chairman of the Tennessee Valley
Authority, to study this subject.17
One of the main reasons why the American-sponsored administrative
reforms did not win high-level political support in Iran was that, as will be

The Failure of U.S. Technical Assistance in Public Administration

325

shown below, the American public administration advisers were generally

ignorant of the political implications of their work. As an analysis of administrative problems in Pakistan states, Administrative reform y is ordinarily fraught with political implications. y It is doomed to failure when
undertaken for its own sake, for the traditional rationale of efciency or
economy.18
If high-level political support for administrative reform did not exist in
Iran at the time of the large American effort in the Iranian ministries, why
did the Americans undertake this assistance? I think the basic reason
was given by a former supervisor of the public administration assistance
program who worked in the AID headquarters in Washington for about
10 years from the mid-l950s to the mid-1960s. He said that this was something we felt they needed and something we wanted to do. Nowhere around
the world did the foreign aid agency make a serious attempt to answer the
question, Would they support such assistance? We talked with people who
told us what we wanted to hear, he said, and not with those elements in the
country, such as the political opposition, who might have given us different
answers to the question of support. This was, in part, because it would have
been politically difcult to talk with the opposition.19 But, in the authors
opinion, this is only a partial answer. Not uncommon in the foreign aid
agency, especially in the 1950s, was a belief that the Americans could introduce reforms in spite of the indifference of political leaders to these
reforms. The belief was that these reforms would eventually be accepted.

AMERICAN LEVERAGE
If political support for certain administrative reforms did not exist in the
Iranian government in the late 1950s and early 1960s, could the U.S. have
applied pressure on Iran to obtain this support? The answer is, probably
not. In countries, which receive large amounts of U.S. aid, such as Iran, one
cannot be sure whether the donor or the recipient has greater leverage. A
large aid program may mean that the U.S. is totally committed to the regime
in power. This fact can be as important as the fact that the country needs the
American aid. Such a situation existed in Iran; the U.S. was committed to
the Shah. As a former foreign aid ofcial who held high administrative
positions in the foreign aid mission to Iran in the late I950s and early 1960s
put it, the aid missions objective was to secure the Shah on his throne and
to broaden his support.20 In 1967, Cottam wrote that American capabilities for persuading the regime to alter its course are at best limited. As

326

JOHN L. SEITZ

long as American policy calls for a stable and noncommunist Iran and
American policy makers are convinced that only the Shah can provide such
an Iran, the American leverage position will remain a weak one.21
Another important facet of the subject of leverage concerns the following question: Can the foreign aid adviser be certain that the reform he or
she is proposing is suitable for the foreign country? The question is not only
whether the reform is needed and is efcacious, but also whether it could
have unintended harmful consequences. The adviser might not be able to
answer these questions or he or she might feel certain of the answers but
actually be mistaken. If either situation exists, there is no justication for
trying to apply leverage on the foreign government in order to get it to
support the proposed reforms. In the Iranian case the Americans thought
they could answer the above questions pertaining to suitability but actually
could not, because nearly all advisers in the public administration program
arrived in Iran with no knowledge of the language and with a very supercial knowledge of Iranian culture, its history, and its social, economic, and
political systems.

ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE

It was recognized by AID that political support by the foreign government
was essential if administrative reforms were to be carried out and that the
U.S. did not have the leverage to persuade the foreign government to support such reforms.22 Given this, why were the Americans so ignorant of the
lack of political support by the Iranian government? Part of the reason for
the ignorance of foreign aid personnel on this subject was the explicit AID
assumption that technical assistance was nonpolitical.23 Potentially sensitive assistance such as public administration, which could be attacked by
critics of the U.S. as being interference by the U.S. in the internal operations of the foreign government, was defended as being totally unconcerned with local politics of the aid-receiving country. As Cleveland, et al.
have written: If the overseas Americans have been slow in developing
political awareness, it is in part because the organizations for which they
work do not want their eld people to be accused of interfering, and
therefore do not encourage them to talk or even think in political terms.24
The active involvement in the internal political affairs of the aid-receiving
countries by other agencies of the U.S. government, such as the CIA, was
another matter. For most AID personnel the standing instruction was to
stay out of internal politics.

The Failure of U.S. Technical Assistance in Public Administration

327

One way the organization could make sure that its personnel would keep
out of the politics of the foreign country was to give no encouragement to
the acquiring of political information. Evidence that AIDs socialization was
fairly effective is indicated by the authors of The Overseas Americans. This
study of Americans, both governmental and private, abroad in the late
1950s, rated foreign aid personnel fairly low on a sense for politics.25 AID
did not have difculty, especially in the l950s, in including the value of being
nonpolitical in the advisers socialization. The conclusion of the study was
that To attune an American to the internal politics of a strange country
requires radical shifting of his habits and attitudes. Most Americans are not
deeply immersed even in [U.S.] politics.26
Also pertinent was the assumption of AID public administration ofcials
at this time that policy and administration were separate spheres.27 Public
administration advisers were instructed to stay away form policy matters,
and this instruction contributed to their tendency to be ignorant of the
political systems in which they worked. For public administration advisers
the lack of political knowledge of the foreign countries was especially detrimental. This lack caused the advisers to be ignorant of the political implications of their work, implications, which made it inevitable that many of
the reforms they recommended would not be implemented by the foreign
governments. In Iran during the late l950s proposed administrative reform,
such as tax reform and the reduction of surplus government employees,
threatened the interests of various groups upon whose support the Iranian
government depended.

ADAPT NOT ADOPT

Public administration advisers were instructed to adapt and not adopt
American administrative procedures and principles for use in the developing
countries. The difculty was that most public administration advisers did
not have enough knowledge of the local environment to develop solutions,
which might be appropriate for the country. A majority of foreign aid advisers surveyed in the late 1960s recognized that there was a need to adapt
American practices to the local culture, but they believed AID advisers
often try to change local practices without really understanding why they
exist.28 There was one exception to the generally recognized need to
adapt American practices. Interestingly, and perhaps ominously, foreign aid
police advisers found that their techniques could be easily transferred across
cultural boundaries.29

328

JOHN L. SEITZ

Major American public administration activities in Iran did not indicate

knowledge of the political and administrative situations which existed in
that country at the time. The idea of setting up permanent30 administrative undersecretaries in Iran came from an American who had worked in
a U.S. federal government department, which had an assistant secretary of
administration, a relatively permanent ofcial. The American thought that
the Iranian ministries would benet from having similar ofcials since there
was a frequent turnover of the heads of the ministries.31 As had been shown
above, the attempt to make these ofcials the locus of administrative reform
and permanent was not successful. This was because, as Binder shows,32
the effort did not indicate an understanding of how power was actually
exercised in the Iranian bureaucracy at that time.
The idea of appointing permanent administrative undersecretaries runs
counter to the entire [bureaucratic] system, in which all positions are uid
and only grades and pay rates xed. Fixing personnel in positions of relatively high authority is not to rationalize the administration but to legitimize for long periods the inuence of power structures built upon
nonrational hierarchical bases, the systemic function of which depends
upon their exercising only temporary authority.
The instruction adapt not adopt was often not followed and, in fact,
could not be followed, given the low level of the Americans knowledge of the
aid-receiving countries. The conclusion of Esman and Montgomery is that
adapt not adopt is more a slogan than a set of tested practices in AID.33

THE SUCCESSFUL PROJECT

Most of what I have written so far concerns the project to promote administrative reform in the Iranian ministries. But what about the project
which provided aid to the Iranian police? For many years this assistance was
considered to be a success.34 The projects objective of internal security and
public stability (which meant political stability) had obviously been accomplished. Until the Iranian revolution of 19781979 the Shah seemed
secure on this throne, and SAVAK had a world-wide reputation for efciency. What went wrong with this assistance?
American assistance to the police in developing nations in the 1950s and
l960s had been based on the assumption that political stability was a necessary prerequisite for economic development. A former police advisor who
worked in the Iranian project, expressed this reasoning:
Development is an unsettling experience. It creates sonic harm and the process of development is irrational. For example, one pump can put a lot of people out of work, as

The Failure of U.S. Technical Assistance in Public Administration

329

can a tractor or a road. Iran was in an upheaval caused by development during part of
the l950s and l960s. Our health programs led to a big population increase and there was
a large movement into the cities. Tehran grew very fast. Many of these people who came
to Tehran were without education or skills needed to get work. So there was potential
discontent growing. Law enforcement was needed to help the country get through this
time. Thus, it was a necessary part of development. Iraq is an example of a country
which has moved backward and forward and is now way behind Iran in development.
But the question of how the police would be used was a key one. We couldnt do
anything about this.35

Some of the reasons for this successful project turning into a failure
were the same reasons as the project to aid the Iranian ministries failed. The
two main features of the police project which were not shared with the
Iranian ministries project strong Iranian political support and no cultural
barriers which prevented the transfer of technology were offset by two
features which were common to both projects the mistaken assumption
that policy and administration can be kept separate and the ignorance of
Iran by the American advisers. While it is true that the U.S. could not
control how the police would be used in a country to which the U.S. gave
public safety assistance, not much knowledge of Iran is needed to know that
throughout Iranian history the police have been used by the rulers to suppress dissent. And while it seems reasonable that assistance to the Iranian
police, as the adviser said above, was buying time for the country so it could
get through the transitional period between underdevelopment and development, why should the U.S. have assumed this was only a temporary period
and that the police would not become a repressive instrument for the ruler?
No matter how efcient police control had become in Iran, the police
could not assure the stability of a government that had grown to be out of
touch with its own people. And, as Cottam states, Any regime considered
by its attentive public to be an American creation, or at least dependency,
will be fundamentally fragile.36
American foreign aid policy makers in the 1950s and 1960s believed that
all good things go together, that economic development, social reforms,
political stability, and democracy were interrelated.37 The experience of
many developing countries such as South Korea, Brazil, and Iran have
shown that this assumption was incorrect.

CONCLUSIONS
Why study failure? The answer, of course, is to prevent repeating in the
future the mistakes one made in the past.

330

JOHN L. SEITZ

Although one must be cautions about generalizing from a single case, or a

few cases, there is a strong suggestion from the Iranian case and others38
that we do not know how to help developing nations reform their administrative structures. The large American effort in Iran to help the Iranian
ministries become effective so they would aid the development effort instead
of hindering it was not successful. The American effort to aid the Iranian
police so that public order could be maintained led to the creation of a secret
police force known for its brutality.
With hindsight it is now clear that the Americans general ignorance of
Iran when they initiated major assistance in public administration, made it
most likely that the assistance would not be successful. Also, there was a
strong political motive behind the American aid program to strengthen a
pro-American and anti-communist government in Iran. This political objective undermined other objectives of American foreign aid. The value of
the technical assistance advisers as visible evidence of U.S. support for the
anti-communist Shah conicted with their value as agents to help Iran
achieve economic development, The anti-communist task was best served by
getting the advisers to Iran as quickly as possible, while the economic development task would have been best served if the public administration
advisers had been able to receive adequate training in Iranian culture, language, history, economics, and politics before coming to Iran. In fact,
however, it is doubtful that the American public administration advisers
could have obtained enough knowledge about Iran to make the advisers
effective. The U.S. knew very little about Iran in the 1950s when the American assistance began and, 30 years later, it still knows very little about the
country.39
Even if adequate knowledge about Iran had been available to make the
advisers effective, is it realistic to assume that economic development objectives could take precedence over political objectives? Is it realistic to
expect a nation which gives foreign aid to another not to be dominated by
political objectives which reect its fears and needs, however narrowly and
short-sighted? Undoubtedly not.
What can be learned from the Iranian case and other failures of foreign
aid? One lesson could be that the time is here to substitute technical cooperation (something the U.S. foreign aid program said it was doing but
never actually did) for technical assistance. The industrial and non-industrial nations of the world should focus on developing training programs for
foreign nationals. A nation which has a desire to learn how something is
done in another country could send people to the other country to study
that activity.

The Failure of U.S. Technical Assistance in Public Administration

331

There would be obvious advantages accruing to nations participating in

this exchange. On the one hand, the nation providing the training opportunity (on-the-job, observational, or academic) would nd this a natural
way to show off its best features and maybe even to inuence foreign opinion leaders (a common foreign policy goal). On the other hand, the nation
requesting training in a foreign country would obtain information and skills
which could help it accomplish its own objectives. Some non-industrial nations will want to learn ways to become industrialized and to raise living
standards. Some industrial nations will want to learn how non-industrial
nations have dealt with some crucial problems, problems which threaten the
industrialized nations very survival such as energy use, depletion of resources, destruction of the environment, and materialistic values.
One of the advantages of this approach over the present form of foreign
aid is that a large part of the foreign aid bureaucracy could be dismantled
and replaced by a relatively small training ofce. The U.S. would need a
presidential directive prohibiting the CIA from using the American and
foreign participants for its own purposes, a decree which would be similar to
the present CIA directive which pertains to scholars, teachers, and students
receiving Fulbright grants.40
Freed of the unjustiable task of interfering in the internal affairs of
another nation and of the impossible task of giving advice to a foreign
country one does not understand, the technical cooperation participants
would help promote the ow of ideas in the world.

NOTES
1. As quoted in James A. Bill, Iran and the Crisis of 78, Foreign Affairs, v. 57,
Winter 1978/79, p. 331.
2. Marvin Zonis, The Political Elite of Iran (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1971), p. 337.
3. The Agency for International Development (AID) has only existed since 1961,
but for the sake of simplicity the term AID is used throughout this article to refer
to the present foreign aid organization as well as its predecessors: the Economic
Cooperation Administration (19481951), the Mutual Security Agency (19511953),
the Foreign Operations Administration (19531955), and the International Cooperation Administration (19551961).
4. Although public administration is a small part of AIDs total technical
assistance program receiving about 7 percent or 8 percent of the funds
approved for technical assistance in the past it was one of the largest technical
assistance activities in Iran. Only assistance in agriculture, health and sanitation, and
education were larger. Public administration is out of favor in AID at present, both
with regard to the amount of funds allocated to it and with regard to the term itself.

332

JOHN L. SEITZ

Development administration is the preferred phrase, although some of AIDs

reports and the foreign aid legislation continue to use the term public administration. For a discussion of the differences between public and development
administration as they apply to AID see Milton 3. Esman and John D. Montgomery,
Systems Approaches to Technical Cooperation: The Role of Development Administration, Public Administration Review, v. 29, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1969),
pp. 507539.
5. Agency for International Development-Tehran. Technical Assistance Project
History and Analysis Report, Project No. 265-11-790-110, GUI Public Administration, Department of State AIRGRAM, TOAID A-733, unclassied, date sent
April 8, 1967, p. 23.
6. Ibid.
7. Agency for International Development-Tehran. Development Grant Program
Evaluation Case History, Department of State AIRGRAM, TOAID A-1341,
unclassied, date sent January 29, 1963, p. 2.
8. Ibid., p. 3.
9. Robert W. Herder, Report on Public Administration Assistance in Iran,
mimeograph, March 1, 1957, p. 10. Herder was chief of the Public Administration
Division in Iran.
10. AID-Tehran, 1963.
11. Personal interview by author on October 23, 1974. As part of a foreign aid
research project, in-depth, condential interviews were held with 54 present and
former employees of AID who had been associated with the public administration
technical assistance program. These interviews were conducted over three months in
1974 in Washington, DC and surrounding areas.
12. Personal interview by author on November 1, 1974. The remarks cited in this
paragraph are paraphrased statements based on extensive notes taken during the
interview. An Iranian study of the American technical assistance program agrees, in
part, with the former advisers analysis. In this study, which is fairly critical of the
American effort, Amuzegar found that while Point IV was braced to offer plenty of
advice and not much money, the Iranians felt that they needed a considerable
amount of the latter and a minimum of the former. Amuzegars conclusion was that
the purpose, role, and limitations [of the U.S. technical assistance program] received
little sympathetic understanding from the host country. Even to the end, the
Mission was still expected to act as another dispenser of U.S. nancial aid. Jahangir
Amuzegar, Technical Assistance in Theory and Practice: The Case of Iran
(New York: Praeger, 1966), pp. 124, 255.
13. Leonard Binder, Iran: Political Development in a Changing Society (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1962), p. 135.
14. Zonis, pp. 16, 333.
15. Ibid., p. 334.
16. James A. Bill, The Politics of Iran: Groups, Classes, and Modernization (Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill, 1972) p. 141.
17. The failure of administrative reform efforts by Lilienthals Development and
Resources Corporation is described in Public Administration Times, May 15, 1979,
pp. 1, 45, 7, and June 1, 1979, pp. 3, 7, by some American consultants who worked
in Iran.

The Failure of U.S. Technical Assistance in Public Administration

333

18. Albert Gorvine, Administrative Reform: Function of Political and Economic

Change, In: Guthrie S. Birkhead (Ed.), Administrative Problems in Pakistan (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1966), p. 186.
19. Personal interview by author on October 29, 1974.
20. Personal interview by author on October 4, 1974.
21. Richard W. Cottam, Competitive Interference and Twentieth Century Diplomacy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967), pp. 176177.
22. For a statement on the need of political support for administrative reform see
International Cooperation Administration, ICA Work in Public Administration
(Washington, DC: International Cooperation Administration, 1960), p. 4. For a
statement by a high AID ofcial on the limits of American leverage, see David
S. Brown, Strategies and Tactics of Public Administration Technical Assistance:
19451963, in: John D. Montgomery and William J. Sifn (Eds), Approaches to
Development: Politics, Administration and Change (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966),
p. 218.
23. As Benveniste shows, experts and advisers to governments are involved in
politics whether they like it or not. Guy Benveniste, The Politics of Expertise (Berkeley: Glendessary Press, 1972), p. 21.
24. Harlan Cleveland, Gerard J. Mangone, and John C. Adams, The Overseas
Americans (New York: McGraw-HiIl, 1960), p. 146.
25. Ibid., p. 127.
26. Ibid., p. 149.
27. Esman and Montgomery, p. 512.
28. James R. Brady, Problems of Implementing American Foreign Assistance
Projects: Perceptions of the US AID Advisor. Ph.D. dissertation (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan, 1971), p. 158.
29. Ibid., p. 145.
30. The administrative undersecretaries were supposed to be permanent, that is,
to be appointed for ve years and not subject to change by incoming ministers. But
this also did not turn out as planned, as none of the permanent undersecretaries
appointed in 1958 was in ofce by 1960. See Amuzegar, p. 25.
31. Personal interview by author on October 14, 1974.
32. Binder, p. 141.
33. Esman and Montgomery, p. 509.
34. Congress eventually came to have serious doubts about aiding police in developing nations; in 1973 it instructed AID to phase out all police assistance, that is, to
give no new assistance in this area. See Public Law 93189, 93rd Congress, Dec. 17, 1973.
35. Personal interview by author on October 3, 1974. The remarks cited in this
paragraph are paraphrased statements based on extensive notes taken during the
interview.
36. Richard Cottam, Goodbye to Americas Shah, Foreign Policy, No. 34
(Spring 1979), p. 14.
37. Robert A. Packenham, Liberal America and the Third World: Political Development Ideas in Foreign Aid and Social Science (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1973), pp. 123129.
38. Another very large public administration assistance program was set up in the
late l950s and early 1960s and also failed. This project, in Brazil, was to aid DASP,

334

JOHN L. SEITZ

the Brazilian central management agency. See John L. Seitz, The Gap Between
Expectations and Performance: An Exploration of American Foreign Aid to Brazil,
Iran, and Pakistan, 195070. Ph.D. dissertation (Madison: University of Wisconsin,
1976), pp. 195200.
39. See Bill, 1978/79, pp. 323324.
40. Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with
Respect to Intelligence Activities. U.S. Senate, 94th Cong., 2nd Sess., April 26, 1976,
Book I, p. 190.