 Recorded and edited on videotape, the standard statements by prisoners included not only confessions to subversion and treason, but praise of the Islamic Revolution and denunciation or recantation of their former beliefs, former organization, former co-members, i.e.their life.These recantations served as powerful propaganda for both the Iranian public at large who by the 1980s almost all had access to television and could watch prime time programs devoted to the taped confessions and the recanters' former colleagues, for whom the denunciations were demoralizing and confusing.