America's Great Game.

• Author: Rugh, William A.
• Position: Book review

Hugh Wilford, America's Great Game: The CIA's Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East by Hugh Wilford, New York: Basic Books, ISBN;13: 978-0465019656, 2013-14, pp.384, $21.45 (Amazon Hardcover), $16.15 (Kindle).

History professor Hugh Wilford has presented the story of U.S. relations with the Middle East, primarily during the Eisenhower administration, by focusing on the role of America's clandestine operations during that period. The basic features of the official relationship and even of some of CIA's covert activities have been well known for some time. But Wilford has uncovered a wealth of detail about what CIA operatives did and how President Eisenhower and Foster and Allen Dulles supported them.

Although Wilford failed to get access to CIA files for this book, he found rich treasures of information on CIA activities in the Middle East in the personal papers of some participants, and even in their own kiss-and-tell books. Wilford's main focus is on three key players, namely Kim and Archie Roosevelt and Miles Copeland, and he and quotes many of their own words, and comments by others about them.

Kim and Archie were cousins and they were grandsons of President Theodore Roosevelt, and that family gave them entry into an elite world. Allen Dulles and other prominent American Republicans were family friends, and the Roosevelt name opened doors in the Middle East. Both wrote about their adventures. The third prominent player in Wilford's narrative was Miles Copeland, who came from a humbler background but he too developed into a senior CIA operative by virtue of his intelligence, charm and ambition. Copeland also wrote and spoke publicly about his CIA activities but Wilford notes that historians must be careful to check his writings against other sources because Copeland was prone to invent stories for dramatic effect and self-promotion. (I had heard about this from CIA friends at the time and was pleased that Wilford picked it up. Those friends also confirmed that Wilford basically got the facts right, with the exception of some details.)

Wilford argues that Kim and Archie Roosevelt were not only inspired by T.R. to a life of active adventure, but that they were also brought up at Groton and Harvard to seek a patriotic role in public service. Kim was inspired, too, by Rudyard Kipling's novel "Kim" (Kipling himself was a friend of his father's), that was set against the background of what was called the "great game", a...