Countercoup: the struggle for the control of Iran

New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1979. Hardcover. x, 217p., photo insert section, first edition, boards and top and bottom edges of textblock foxed, else good condition in a price-clipped dj which is foxed on the verso. An in-your-face cock-crow, celebrating the Company coup against Mossadegh --such openness due in part to Kermit's patent love of crowing, and partly to his disapproval of CIA nowadays (their "now" v. his "then"). He revels in his relationship with the Shah, wallows nostalgically in his own repeatedly-mentioned two-hour briefing of Churchill, and his briefings of British intelligence honchos, and the Dulleses and Ike and Loy Henderson and the rest of the cold war diplomats and generals who kicked left of center tush. (This impression of openness could also be mere occasion to insert falsehood in the record, we can't know; the Shah had just gone into exile as Kermit wrote.) Further thought, the book was published in the relative openness of the 1970s, and the current scarcity of this title may reflect current discretions; even a few years ago it was not so uncommon, despite the lawsuit by --was it British Petroleum?-- when Scribners deposed, how disingenuously in mitigation, that it had only sold three hundred copies--.. Relevant to a consideration of the odd tone of this book is Kermit's's aforementioned disapproval of later CIA "successes." --In a lightning bolt closing paragraph, that he does not at all prepare the reader for, he goes on record thus: "But Foster Dulles did not want to hear what I was saying" [that the Iranian coup had popular --Kermit's notion of popular-- support]. "He was still leaning back in his chair with a catlike grin on his face. Within weeks I was offered command of a Guatemalan undertaking already in preparation. A quick check suggested that my requirements" ['that people and army want what we want'] "were not likely to be met. I declined the offer. Later, I resigned from the CIA --before the Bay of Pigs disaster underlined the validity of my warning." FINIS. Apparently intelligence work was taking a turn past and beyond his ability to self-deceive. (Inventory #: 80714)