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From the 911 attacks to waterboarding to drone strikes, relations between the United States and the Middle East seem caught in a downward spiral. And all too often, the Central Intelligence Agency has made the situation worse. But this crisis was not a historical inevitabilityfar from it. Indeed, the earliest generation of CIA operatives was actually the regions staunchest western ally. In Americas Great Game, celebrated intelligence historian Hugh Wilford reveals the surprising history of the CIAs pro-Arab operations in the 1940s and 50s by tracing the work of the agencys three most influentialand colorfulofficers in the Middle East. Kermit Kim Roosevelt was the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and the first head of CIA covert action in the region his cousin, Archie Roosevelt, was a Middle East scholar and chief of the Beirut station.