Kermit Roosevelt, Jr.
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- For other persons with the same name, see Kermit Roosevelt (disambiguation).
Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt, Jr. (February 16, 1916 – June 8, 2000), was an American intelligence officer who coordinated the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Operation Ajax, which orchestrated the coup d’état against Iran's Mohammed Mossadegh and returned Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, to Iran's Peacock Throne in August 1953. He was also the grandson of American president Theodore Roosevelt.
Biography
Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. was born in Buenos Aires in 1916, the eldest son of Kermit Roosevelt and Belle Wyatt Roosevelt. His father was assistant manager for Buenos Aires' National City. He had two brothers, Joseph Willard Roosevelt and Dirck Roosevelt, and a sister, Belle (Clochette). Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. graduated from Harvard University.
When Kermit, Jr. was twenty seven, his father, a chronic alcoholic, committed suicide in Alaska where he had been stationed as an intelligence officer with the U.S. Army.
Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. married Mary Lowe "Polly" Gaddis in 1937. They had three sons and a daughter. One of his sons, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. (II) graduated from Groton School in the class of 1956 and is a Washington D.C. attorney. Another son, Mark Roosevelt is superintendent of the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania public school district. His third son is Jonathan Roosevelt and his daughter is Anne Mason of Bethesda.[1]
In the late 1940s he was on the board of directors of an anti-zionist organization called the Institute of Arab American Affairs. This organization republished an article by him in Foreign Affairs in pamphlet form opposing the creation of the State of Israel. [2]
Head of Operation Ajax
By the early 1950s, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. was a senior officer in the CIA's Middle Eastern division. At that time, there was a political crisis centered in Iran that commanded the focused attention of British and American intelligence outfits. In 1951, the Iranian parliament, under the leadership of the nationalist movement of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, voted unanimously to nationalize the oil industry. This shut out the immensely profitable Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), which was a pillar of Britain's economy and political clout. A month after that vote, Mossadegh was elected prime minister of Iran.[3] In response to nationalization, Britain placed an embargo on Iranian oil exports, which worsened the already fragile economy. Neither the AIOC nor Mossadegh was open to compromise in this period, with Britain insisting on a restoration of the AIOC and Mossadegh willing only to negotiate the terms of its compensation for lost assets. U.S. President Harry S. Truman ruled out joining Britain in a coup against Mossadegh, and Britain felt unable to act without American cooperation, particularly since Mossadegh had shut down their embassy in 1952.[3] Truman's successor, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was persuaded by anti-communist arguments that there was potential for Iran's Communist Tudeh Party to capitalize on political instability and assume power, aligning Iran and its immense oil resources with the Soviet bloc. Coup plans which had stalled under Truman were revived by an eager intelligence corps, with powerful aid from the brothers John Foster Dulles (Secretary of State) and Allen Welsh Dulles (Director of Central Intelligence), after Eisenhower's inauguration in 1953.[3]
On June 19 1953, Roosevelt slipped across the border under his CIA cover as "James Lockridge." He was put up in the capital, Tehran, in a place rented by British intelligence. As Mr. Lockridge, he became a regular at the Turkish Embassy where he played tennis. No one suspected that "Mr. Lockridge" was the grandson of the 26th US President but he came close to blowing his cover. When playing tennis and making some frustrating mistake he would cry out, "Oh Roosevelt!" Puzzled by this, his friends asked him about this interesting way of expressing his annoyance with his game. He explained that as loyal member of the Republican Party back in the states, that every Republican had nothing but scorn and hatred for Franklin D. Roosevelt and that he despised the man so much that he took to using FDR's name as a curse.{cite:Roosevelt, Jr. Kermit Countercoup, the Struggle for Control of Iran McGraw Hill/New York, 1979}
Under the direction of Kermit Roosevelt Jr., the CIA and British intelligence funded and led a coup d'etat to overthrow Prime Minister with the help of military forces loyal to the Shah through Operation Ajax. [4] The plot hinged on orders signed by the Shah to dismiss Mossadegh as prime minister and replace him with General Fazlollah Zahedi, a choice agreed on by the British and Americans. Despite the high-level coordination and planning, the coup initially failed and the Shah fled Iran. After a brief exile in Italy, however, the Shah was brought back again, this time through a second coup which was successful.
In his book All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, The New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer reported[3] that the CIA ordered Roosevelt to leave Iran. Roosevelt ignored the order and, instead organized a second coup, this one successful. The deposed Mossadegh was arrested, given a show trial, and placed in solitary confinement for three years in military prison, followed by house arrest for life. Zahedi was installed to succeed prime minister Mossadegh.
After that coup, Kinzer reported that the Shah said to Roosevelt, "I owe my throne to God, my people, my army - and to you."[3] The CIA-backed coup remains controversial. It had overthrown Iran's immensely popular, independent-minded and democratically-elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and his democratically elected government. On the other hand, the coup's defenders often argue that Communism in Iran was permanently destroyed and the country was stable and friendly to the West for years.[citation needed]
In the long term, the Shah's rule became despotic and would prove to fire the movement of Iranian religious exiles that led to the Shah's overthrow by the Shi'a Muslim cleric, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 in the Iranian Revolution. After the deposed Shah was reluctantly granted admission to the U.S., Iranian militants held 66 American diplomats hostage in what would become known as the Iran Hostage Crisis.
Roosevelt tells his story
Twenty-six years later, Kim 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 (Tudeh) closely backed by the Soviet Union. He also may have meant to imply that the exile of the Shah constituted the initial coup, and that he was merely restoring the rightful leader to power.
Roosevelt was certainly arguing that Mossadegh had to be removed to prevent a communist takeover of Iran because of his seizure of the oil industry and his other Socialist reforms as well as his cooperation with the Tudeh Party.[citation needed] This view was shared by many in the Intelligence community, although most notably the head of the CIA station in Iran resigned rather than participate in the coup. Many outside the intelligence community, including some in the Truman administration, had felt that Mossadegh should be kept in power to prevent a Communist takeover.[citation needed]
Books
- Meyer, Karl and Shareen Blair Brysac, Kingmakers: the Invention of the Modern Middle East, W.W. Norton, 2008. ISBN 978-0-393-06199-4.
- Arabs, Oil, and History: The Story of the Middle East (1949, reprint(?) Kennikat Press, 1969) ISBN 0-8046-0532-7.
- Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran (McGraw-Hill, 1979) ISBN 0-07-053590-6.
- Kinzer, Stephen (2004). All The Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-26517-9.
- Kapuściński, Ryszard (1982). Shah of Shahs. Vinage. ISBN 0-679-73801-0
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- ↑ Kermit Roosevelt, 84, TR's grandson. Mark Ribbing and Jacques Kelly. Baltimore Sun. Local ,4B. June 10, 2000.
- ↑ Partition of Palestine: A Lesson in Pressure Politics
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 How to Overthrow A Government Pt. 1: The 1953 U.S. Coup in Iran, Democracynow.org, March 5, 2004
- ↑ New York Times Library. Iran/CIA Index.
See also
External links
- The Secret CIA History of the Iran Coup - The National Security Archive
- What Kermit Roosevelt Jr. Didn't Say - In Memory of August 19, 1953
- 50 Years After the CIA’s First Overthrow of a Democratically Elected Foreign Government
- Partition of Palestine: A Lesson in Pressure Politics an anti-Zionist pamphlet written by Kermit Roosevelt
- Time Obituary from 2000
- Video of Roosevelt, talking about the operation
- NNDB profile
Listening
- Interview with Stephen Kinzer about Iran coup, from NPR Fresh Air program
de:Kermit Roosevelt junior
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