News

CSULB professor publishes book on CIA [VIDEO]

Cal State Long Beach has its own CIA expert, and his name is Hugh Wilford.

In his new book, “America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East,” Wilford tracks the efforts of post-World War II Americans who helped transform the Middle East in social and political ways.

The central focus of his book revolves around the CIA and some of its operatives in the 1940s and ‘50s. Three of the CIA operatives that Wilford writes about are Kermit Roosevelt Jr., Archie Roosevelt and Miles Copeland Jr.

“The main CIA officer involved in the [1953 Iranian] coup, Kermit Roosevelt Jr., … is really the main character in the book,” he said. “The British actually came up with the coup operation … and they felt like they needed American support to carry it out.”

Wilford, who was born in England and has been teaching at CSULB since 2006, said that before he set his focus on the CIA, he studied political groups like the New York Intellectuals, a group of American writers and critics, and the American Left, which consisted of left-leaning political groups.

“My background was in American history,” he said. “I went from intellectuals to the CIA, and I guess I’ve kind of stayed with the CIA since … but with this interest in the influence of culture.”

One chapter of Wilford’s book is devoted to the Iranian coup of 1953, which was supported by the U.S. and U.K. and eventually led to the overthrow of the former democratically-elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, according to the U.S. Department of State website.

“The way into the book was through a history of the American Friends of the Middle East [an American intellectual group from the 1950s,]” he said. “That opened to this wider picture of the CIA and the operations it carried out in the Middle East.”

In addition to discussing how Americans shaped the Middle East, the book also looks at cultural influences that have affected the region, Wilford said.

“I argue in the book that people like Kermit Roosevelt Jr. and their upbringings … were kind of steeped in the culture of the British Empire,” he said.

The book, however, is not Wilford’s first publication about the CIA. In 2008 he wrote “The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America,” a book on how the CIA funded several private U.S. groups during the Cold War, according to the CSULB history website.

Wilford said “America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East,” which he began working on in 2008, took almost five years to complete.

“That was a sweet moment [when I finished writing],” he said. “When I saw [it], I was very pleased with its appearance.”

Wilford said he hopes to write several scholarly articles about the book and its findings over the course of the next year.

“America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East” is available for purchase at Barnes & Noble.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published.

Daily 49er newsletter

Instagram