[custom_adv]
SAVAK had the power to censor the media, screen applicants for government jobs, and “according to reliable Western source, use all means necessary, including torture, to hunt down dissidents”. After 1963, the Shah expanded his security organizations, including SAVAK, which grew to over 5,300 full-time agents and a large but unknown number of part-time informers.In 1961 the Persian authorities dismissed the agency’s first director, General Teymur Bakhtiar, and he later became a political dissident. In 1970, SAVAK agents assassinated him, disguising the deed as an accident.
