TO ASMARA - A Novel of Africa

New York: Time Warner. Near Fine. 1990. First Edition Thus. Paperback. 290 pages; Inscription on verso of front wrapper -- "Merry Christmas, father [Kermit Roosevelt Jr.] / I think you will / enjoy this one. If / I recall correctly / you had some early, / fascinating experiences in / Ethiopia yourself! / Love / Jonathan / and / Jae / Xmas 1990" 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. In the 1961, Kermit Roosevelt Jr. took his two older sons Kermit and Jonathan on a month long safari to Africa. Having studied AFRICAN GAME TRAILS, T.R.'s famous account of that earlier safari in 1910, he and his sons set out to retrace its tracks. Aided by Life magazine, these Roosevelts roughed it in safari camps much as Theodore Roosevelt and his son Kermit had fifty years earlier. Like his namesake, Roosevelt was a great supporter of African wildlife conservation. Jonathan Roosevelt, 73, of Sudbury MA, died peacefully at home after a long illness, on June 21, 2013. His wife, Laine Gifford, was by his side. Jonathan Roosevelt and his first wife, Jae, taught school in Moshi, Tanganyika for a year, between college and his attending Harvard Law School. They moved to Washington in 1966 where their 3 children were born. In 1969, they moved to Kinshasa in the Congo, then to Accra, Ghana where he worked for the US government (CIA), returning to Washington in 1973. A part of his heart was always in East Africa. .