Kermit Roosevelt, Jr.
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Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt, Jr. (February 16, 1916 – June 8, 2000) was a member of the Roosevelt family of the United States, notable as the CIA agent in charge of Operation Ajax, which overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran and Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. Twenty-six years later, Kermit Roosevelt took the unusual step of writing a book about how he and the CIA carried out the operation. He called his book Countercoup to press home the idea that the CIA coup was staged only to prevent a takeover of power by the Iranian Communist Party (The Tudeh) closely backed by the Soviet Union. Roosevelt was thus arguing that Mossadegh had to be removed to prevent a communist 'takeover,' whereas the Truman administration had felt that Mossadegh had to be kept in power to prevent one.
He was born in Buenos Aires, eldest son of Kermit Roosevelt, the son of President Theodore Roosevelt.
There is some speculation that Kim Roosevelt may have been part of a British plot to maintain an anglophile alliance with the United States. Roosevelt was strongly pro-England and pro oil industry.
Books
- Arabs, Oil, and History: The Story of the Middle East (1949, reprint(?) Kennikat Press, 1969) ISBN 0804605327
- Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran (McGraw-Hill, 1979) ISBN 0070535906