SHADOW WARRIORS - O.S.S. and the Origins of the C.I.A.

New York: Basic Books. Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. 1983. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. Autograph; xvi, 507 pages; Contents clean and secure in original black cloth binding in very good dustjacket with closed tear at top edge of front panel (now in protective mylar cover); some minor rippling of last few leaves near inner bottom. Former owner's signature and address on ffep -- "Kermit Roosevelt .... Nov. 7, 1983" with a couple page numbers and notes in his writing including "a very opinionated, pretentious and misleading 'history' !" He also comments on Smith's dismissal of effectiveness of covert ops (what about Iran 1953). Roosevelt would have been intimately familiar with many of the operations and organizational developments described in this survey of the nation's first intelligence agency. 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 was the mastermind of the Central Intelligence Agency's Operation Ajax, which orchestrated the coup against Iran's democratically-elected Mohammed Mossadegh administration, 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. Assigned to Egypt, Roosevelt impressed his colleagues with Project FF, which encouraged the Free Officers Movement to carry out a coup d'état in 1952, and Roosevelt developed close CIA links to the new leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser. 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. Hugh Wilford: "[Roosevelt Jr.] had this notion of America forming an alliance with the Arab countries as they emerged from under the sway of Britain and France. He was very concerned with backing Arab nationalists in the region. He saw that as the best way of keeping it within the American orbit, as the Cold War was gathering momentum...." The Eisenhower administration, including Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, was initially quite sympathetic towards the Arabist agenda of Roosevelt's and his colleagues and willing to oppose Middle Eastern regimes seen "as backing the Soviet Union rather than the U.S." In discussing Roosevelt's role, Wilford describes him as being among "the most important intelligence officers of their generation in the Middle East." ; Signed by Notable Personage, Related .