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Kermit Roosevelt Jr.
Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt Jr. (February 16, 1916 – June 8, 2000) was an American intelligence officer who served in the Office of Strategic Services during and following World War II. A grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, Roosevelt went on to establish American Friends of the Middle East and then played a lead role in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)'s efforts to overthrow Mohammad Mosaddegh, the democratically elected Majlis-appointed prime minister of Iran, in August 1953.
Kermit Roosevelt Jr. (called "Kim," as was standard for alternating generations of Kermits in the Roosevelt family)[citation needed] was born to Kermit Roosevelt Sr., son of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, and Belle Wyatt Roosevelt (née Willard) in Buenos Aires in 1916. At the time, Kermit Roosevelt Sr. was an official for a shipping line and then a manager of the Buenos Aires branch of the National City Bank. The Roosevelt family returned to the US, and Kim, his two brothers, Joseph Willard and Dirck, and his sister, Belle Wyatt, grew up in Oyster Bay, New York, a homestead near Sagamore Hill, the Long Island home of the Roosevelt clan.
Kim attended Groton School as a young man. He graduated from Harvard University in 1937, a year ahead of his class. After graduating from Harvard, Roosevelt taught history at Caltech.
With the outbreak of World War II, Roosevelt joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner to the CIA. On June 4, 1943, when Kim was 27, his father, Kermit Sr., committed suicide at Fort Richardson in Alaska where he was posted. Roosevelt Jr. remained with the OSS after the war and wrote and edited its history.
Roosevelt went on to serve on the advisory board of a largely Arab organization, the Institute of Arab American Affairs, a New York City-based organization, and Roosevelt wrote an essay in 1948 about his views on American Zionism and the partition of Palestine. In February 1948 Roosevelt joined more than 100 like-minded individuals to form a "Christian group" to aid the fight of the largely rabbinical American Council for Judaism to reverse the ongoing partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. The Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land (CJP) was founded on March 2, 1948, with Dean emeritus Gildersleeve serving as CJP chair, former Union Theological Seminary president Henry Sloane Coffin as vice-chair, and Roosevelt as executive director.
In 1951, Roosevelt, Virginia Gildersleeve; Dorothy Thompson; and a further group of 24 American educators, theologians, and writers (including Harry Emerson Fosdick) founded the American Friends of the Middle East (AFME), a pro-Arab organization often critical of US support for Israel. The CJP, which Roosevelt had helped form in 1948, was subsumed into the AFME in 1951, and Roosevelt served for a time as the AFME executive secretary for the group of intellectuals and spokespersons.[when?] The historians Robert Moats Miller, Hugh Wilford, and others have stated that from its early years, AFME was a part of an Arabist propaganda effort within the US that was "secretly funded and to some extent managed" by the CIA, with further funding from the oil consortium ARAMCO.
Roosevelt was recruited to the CIA's Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) in 1950 by its chief, Frank Wisner. 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.
The historian Hugh Wilford attempts to describe Roosevelt's motivations and views underpinning his intelligence efforts and states:
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Kermit Roosevelt Jr.
Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt Jr. (February 16, 1916 – June 8, 2000) was an American intelligence officer who served in the Office of Strategic Services during and following World War II. A grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, Roosevelt went on to establish American Friends of the Middle East and then played a lead role in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)'s efforts to overthrow Mohammad Mosaddegh, the democratically elected Majlis-appointed prime minister of Iran, in August 1953.
Kermit Roosevelt Jr. (called "Kim," as was standard for alternating generations of Kermits in the Roosevelt family)[citation needed] was born to Kermit Roosevelt Sr., son of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, and Belle Wyatt Roosevelt (née Willard) in Buenos Aires in 1916. At the time, Kermit Roosevelt Sr. was an official for a shipping line and then a manager of the Buenos Aires branch of the National City Bank. The Roosevelt family returned to the US, and Kim, his two brothers, Joseph Willard and Dirck, and his sister, Belle Wyatt, grew up in Oyster Bay, New York, a homestead near Sagamore Hill, the Long Island home of the Roosevelt clan.
Kim attended Groton School as a young man. He graduated from Harvard University in 1937, a year ahead of his class. After graduating from Harvard, Roosevelt taught history at Caltech.
With the outbreak of World War II, Roosevelt joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner to the CIA. On June 4, 1943, when Kim was 27, his father, Kermit Sr., committed suicide at Fort Richardson in Alaska where he was posted. Roosevelt Jr. remained with the OSS after the war and wrote and edited its history.
Roosevelt went on to serve on the advisory board of a largely Arab organization, the Institute of Arab American Affairs, a New York City-based organization, and Roosevelt wrote an essay in 1948 about his views on American Zionism and the partition of Palestine. In February 1948 Roosevelt joined more than 100 like-minded individuals to form a "Christian group" to aid the fight of the largely rabbinical American Council for Judaism to reverse the ongoing partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. The Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land (CJP) was founded on March 2, 1948, with Dean emeritus Gildersleeve serving as CJP chair, former Union Theological Seminary president Henry Sloane Coffin as vice-chair, and Roosevelt as executive director.
In 1951, Roosevelt, Virginia Gildersleeve; Dorothy Thompson; and a further group of 24 American educators, theologians, and writers (including Harry Emerson Fosdick) founded the American Friends of the Middle East (AFME), a pro-Arab organization often critical of US support for Israel. The CJP, which Roosevelt had helped form in 1948, was subsumed into the AFME in 1951, and Roosevelt served for a time as the AFME executive secretary for the group of intellectuals and spokespersons.[when?] The historians Robert Moats Miller, Hugh Wilford, and others have stated that from its early years, AFME was a part of an Arabist propaganda effort within the US that was "secretly funded and to some extent managed" by the CIA, with further funding from the oil consortium ARAMCO.
Roosevelt was recruited to the CIA's Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) in 1950 by its chief, Frank Wisner. 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.
The historian Hugh Wilford attempts to describe Roosevelt's motivations and views underpinning his intelligence efforts and states: