America's Great Game: the CIA's secret Arabists and the shaping of the modern Middle East
Law and crime, Espionage
Human-narrated audio
Summary
Wilford reveals the surprising history of the CIA's pro-Arab operations in the 1940s and 50s by tracing the work of the agency's three most influential officers in the Middle East. Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt was the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and… the first head of CIA covert action in the region; his cousin, Archie Roosevelt, was a Middle East scholar and chief of the Beirut station ; Miles Copeland was a maverick covert operations specialist who had joined the American intelligence establishment during World War II. These "Arabists" propped up authoritarian regimes, attempted secretly to sway public opinion in America against support for the new state of Israel, and staged coups that irrevocably destabilized the nations with which they empathized. 2013.