THE ASHES OF LODA

New York: Harper & Row. Very Good in Very Good- dust jacket. 1965. Hardcover. 175 pages; Former owner's name signed to titlepage in red ink -- "Kim Roosevelt / 1965 / Washington" ; two titles in list of author's books underlined, otherwise clean and secure in original binding in very edgeworn dustjacket. Interesting Cold War espionage novel. PROVENANCE: 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, 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 .