Hugh Wilford - Americas Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East

More Advance Praise for

Americas Great Game

Americas Great Game is an epic story of how the American search for adventure and idealism contributed to coups and counter-revolutions in the Middle East. Drawing on extensive research, Wilford explains the rise of the CIA, the tortured American relationship with Arabs and Jews, and Washingtons Cold War complicity with British imperial interests. What makes this book most enthralling is that the author builds the story around the grandsons of Theodore Roosevelt. This is a valuable history and a fascinating reada true page-turner.

Jeremi Suri, Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, and author of Libertys Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama

This is a great book: well written with compelling details, good stories, and impressive use of primary evidence. It is tied together by a first-rate thesis that will make people think again about the Middle East.

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, author of In Spies We Trust: The Story of Western Intelligence

Copyright 2013 by Hugh Wilford

Published by Basic Books,

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wilford, Hugh, 1965

Americas Greatest Game: the CIAs Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East / Hugh Wilford.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-465-06982-8 (ebook) 1. Middle EastRelationsUnited StatesHistory. 2. United StatesRelationsMiddle EastHistory. 3. Arab countriesRelationsUnited StatesHistory. 4. United StatesRelationsArab countriesHistory. 5. United States. Central Intelligence Agency I. Title.

DS63.2.U5W49 2013

327.73056dc23

2013029982

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For
JONATHAN

I meant to make a new nation, to restore a lost influence, to give twenty millions of Semites the foundations on which to build an inspired dream-palace of their national thoughts.

T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)

I had formed a beautiful and gracious image and I saw it melting before my eyes. Before every noble outline had been obliterated, I preferred to go; in spite of my love for the Arab nation and my sense of responsibility for its future, I did not think I could bear to see the evaporation of the dream which had guided me.

Gertrude Bell to King Faisal of Iraq (1922)

Contents

THE PLAYERS

The CIA Arabists

KERMIT KIM ROOSEVELT JR.: Chief of CIA covert operations in the Middle East. Grandson of Theodore Roosevelt (TR), son of the businessman and explorer Kermit Roosevelt Sr. and Belle Willard Roosevelt, and husband of Mary Polly Gaddis.

ARCHIBALD B. ROOSEVELT JR.: Another grandson of TR and CIA officer; expert on the Middle East but beaten out to the role of covert operations chief by his cousin Kim. Married first to Katherine Winthrop KW Tweed, then Selwa Lucky Showker.

MILES A. COPELAND JR.: Alabaman friend of the Roosevelt cousins, Kims lieutenant in CIA, and later author of controversial books about intelligence. Married Lorraine Adie.

Their Predecessors, the OSS Arabists

WILLIAM A. EDDY: Lebanon-born Arabist, marine, scholar, intelligence officer, and American minister to Saudi Arabia, he blazed the CIAs trail in the Arab world.

HAROLD B. HOSKINS: Eddys cousin; a businessman and diplomat who also pioneered American intelligence in the Middle East during World War II.

STEPHEN B. L. PENROSE JR.: Educator and chief of the OSS station in Cairo.

Other Americans

OSS/CIA

WILLIAM J. DONOVAN: Head of the OSS and Roosevelt family friend.

ALLEN DULLES: Donovans European deputy in the OSS; later deputy director of the CIA and then director between 1953 and 1961; a keen advocate of covert operations.