Legerdemain: The President's Secret Plan, The Bomb, And What The French Never Knew - Softcover

James J. Heaphey

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9781933909363: Legerdemain: The President's Secret Plan, The Bomb, And What The French Never Knew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1933909366 ISBN 13: 9781933909363

Publisher: History Publishing Co LLC, 2008

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Legerdemain is the true story of a young undercover operative for the U.S. Air Force during the Truman-Eisenhower Administrations who was sent on a mission to wrest French Morocco from the French colonial system and bring it into the American sphere of influence. The purpose was toinsure Moroccan air bases for the Strategic Air Command which was vital for a retaliatory strikeagainst the Soviet Union. The story underlinesPresident Truman's disregard for French friendship and is willing to risk it for the sake of U.S.security. The disregard is further illustrated by the secret storage of atom bombs in French Morocco which was completely unknown to Charles DeGaulle, President of France. The story unveils the working of undercover operatives of Britains MI6, Israel's Mossad, America's CIA, France's Security Services, the Soviet Union's KGB as well as the FrenchForeign Legion set against the exotic backdrop of the alleyways, coffee houses and bathhouses of Casablanca, the exotic fairs of Marrakech, the settings of privilege in Cairo and the mountainside villages of Cypress. The author's experience also takes him through Berber villages in the Atlas Mountains and Foreign Legion outposts on the apronof the Sahara. Through it all, the author unfolds Islamic thinking of that period and sets it as a prelude to the affairs of the Twenty First Century.

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About the Author:

James Heaphey is professor emeritus,Graduate School of Public Affairs, State University of New York. In addition to teaching and writing he directed political development programs in Brazil, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Egypt, Lebanon and South Korea from 1961 to 1992, and gave seminars on the politics of developing countries for American military officers stationed in Europe and the Far East from 1968 to 2003. He has a B.A., summa cum laude, from Western Reserve University, and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Berkeley. He served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force from 1951 to 1954.

I had heard a little about Qutb, who was considered to be the father of modern Islamist Fundamentalism and the most famous personality of the contemporary Muslim world. His ideology had spread throughout the Muslim world, particularly to Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. When I studied Russian at Syracuse University, as a new recruit in the U.S.A.F. Security Service, one of my instructors, going at that time by the name of Grishko Baguta, told us that the West would prevail over the Soviet Union, but would not see what was coming next, a conflict with Islamists that would defy our mindset and confuse our military strategies and tactics. I didn't remember his warning because it made sense to me at the time. I remembered it because of the way he phrased it. "You will be an Alice in Wonderland. You will try to understand in the way you have learned to understand. And that will not work." Pg. 184

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