RICHER BY ASIA

Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Very Good in Good dust jacket. 1947. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. Autograph; x, 432 pages; Inscribed on ffep "For MLR from KR / March 29, 1948 / Washington" with a couple pencil notes and page numbers. Contents generally clean and secure in original tan cloth binding with red lettering and decoration in quite chipped, worn dustjacket now in protective mylar cover. Presented from Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. to his wife Mary Lowe [Gaddis] Roosevelt on her birthday March 29. Written by one of Roosevelt's fellow OSS officers, this work by Edmond Taylor reflects his experiences and researches in India and Southeast Asia particularly informed by his work in black propaganda and winning "hearts and minds" through soft intelligence operations in tandem with military operations. A plea for deeper understanding of the culture and philosophy of the East. Between 1942 and 1944, Wild Bill Donovan of the OSS worked to convince General Stilwell of the effectiveness of Special Ops. Stilwell was finally convinced when Donovan offered Maj. Carl F. Eifler to command the operation. Stilwell had served with Eifler and highly respected him. When Stilwell finally wet into to Burma in 1944, Lord Mountbatten was a major proponent of the operation with Edmond Taylor as OSS Deputy in charge of black propaganda ops to support their military efforts. 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 .