PRECIOUS BANE by Webb, Mary ; [Kermit Roosevelt Jr. Bookplate] - 1937

London: Jonathan Cape. Very Good. 1937. Hardcover. 287, (24) pages; Contents clean and secure in original wheat colored cloth binding. Owner's name signed on ffep "Polly and Kim Roosevelt" and the Roosevelt heraldic bookplate on front pastedown endpaper "Qui Plantavit Curabit // M - K - R" Mary Lowe Gaddis "Polly" Roosevelt . It is noteworthy that Kermit Roosevelt Jr.'s parents [Kermit Roosevelt senior [1889-1943] and Belle Wyatt Willard (m. 1914) had also used a joint bookplate, with the couple's names combined -- (as in the "M - K - R" bookplate in the present volume) -- in a small number of their many books at the beginning of their marriage]. "Qui Plantavit Curabit" -- He who has planted will preserve. Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt, Jr. (1916 - 2000) was the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt. He was a career intelligence officer who served in the Office of Strategic Services and operated throughout the Near and Middle East for the CIA in the 1950s and 1960s. In Egypt under Allen Dulles, Kim Roosevelt supervised the CIA's operation to undermine the popular General Neguib and encourage the rise to power of Gamul Abdul Nasser. Even before his decisive victory, Nasser was communicating through Roosevelt to make a settlement with Great Britain. These back-channel negotiations eventually produced the treaty signed in October 1954. Nasser ascended and for the next decade Egypt's relations with the West moved along a sometimes rocky road. By 1965 relations had significantly deteriorated and Nasser was quite worried the CIA was plotting to assassinate him. After the Odell-Amin case broke, the CIA began to look for "more West friendly" Egyptian elements. Their attention landed on the Muslim Brotherhood, which according to Talcott Seelye, "We thought of Islam as a counterweight to communism. We saw it as a moderate force, and a positive one." In fact the CIA was spending millions of dollars on anti-Nasser operations, including an extensive propaganda campaign. Roosevelt was also the mastermind of the Central Intelligence Agency's Operation Ajax, which orchestrated the coup against Iran's democratically-elected Mohammed Mossadegh administration, which installed General Fazlollah Zahedi in power and and returned Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, to Iran's Peacock Throne in August 1953 for the purpose of returning Western control of Middle Eastern oil supplies. ; Signed by Notable Personage, Unrelated .