Free Shipping on Orders Over $ 100 *
client Service|Privacy Policy
Enter your email to sign up for our newsletter and save 25% on your next order
The ascendance of petroleum has been at the centerfield of the conflict for power and wealth that has fueled struggle and endless war throughout the Middle East . When authorCharlotte Dennetfound the last letter from her father , a spy studying the route of the proposed Trans - Arabian Pipeline , she realized his last was likely much more entangled political intrigue than she was lead to believe .
Part personal pilgrim’s journey , part deft critique , Dennett ’s insightful coverage examines what materialise to international relations when oil wealth cling in the balance and shines a glaring light on what so many have really been choke for .
My insertion to pipeline politics actually began in belated 1975 , after I go forth Lebanon , then ravaged by civil warfare , and my job as a newsperson for theDaily Star , an English - lyric newspaper in Beirut , to return to the States . I had been shot at during the buildup to the civil warfare , and I decided that I was not keen on losing my life at a unseasoned old age in a state of war that made no good sense .
A New Pipeline for the Middle East. This map is adapted from an extraordinary map published in the New York Times just two weeks before the 1947 plane crash that killed Daniel Dennett. That original map provided my first introduction to pipeline politics. Like this one, it showed a projected route of the Trans-Arabian Pipeline, but its accompanying. . .
I joined my brother , also key Daniel Dennett , and his class for Christmas dinner party at their home in North Andover , Massachusetts . After regaling them with story of my travels throughout the Middle East , I was suddenly struck by the realisation that I had been retracing many of the steps of our former father when he was sleuthing in the Middle East in the mid-1940s under the code name “ Carat . ”3
My Christmas - dinner party epiphany prompted me to venture up into the Ionic dialect to research for an quondam steamer trunk I had find in my mother ’s garret as a nestling .
Back then , it had beckoned me to open it , but as I dimly recall , I had been distract by my grandmother ’s exotic costumes from her day as a biology teacher at a Christian college for girls in Constantinople ( now Istanbul ) in 1900 . They had been drape over the trunk , and so I paid little attention to what lay inside .
After my female parent ’s demise , the long-neck clam luggage compartment was transferred to my brother ’s attic , where I merrily found it under a sunlit eave . This time , with an expectancy I could n’t have begun to match in puerility , I open it and found — to my amazement — a blanket wrapped around a scrapbook crammed full of photographs of Turkey at the turn of the C .
Beneath it lay three more scrapbook . One traced my father ’s youth through public eminent school day , then Harvard and , upon gradation , teach assignments at the American University of Beirut in the former 1930s ; the other two were full of photos and letters from my father and female parent in Beirut to my grandparent in Winchester , Massachusetts , dating from 1944 to 1947 .
I right away pulled out the last scrapbook and carefully turned one brittle Thomas Nelson Page after another , looking for letters and paper trim that direct up to the time of his end . certainly enough , there was the fateful wire to my mother informing her of the plane clank in Ethiopia .
After that came a rub chickenhearted obituary from theWinchester Star , which stated that my father had been on a “ vacation junket ” to Ethiopia . well yet , inserted into the pages of the scrapbook were two folded documents , one name in my mother ’s hand as “ Dan ’s last report ” and the other , “ Dan ’s last letter habitation . ”
For a few minutes I sat very still , make that these were the final story from my begetter about his last days on terra firma . I was too frantic to contemplate the fact that my mother had never told me of their world , or that she and her female parent - in - law had prepare these scrapbook for someone in the house to eventually discover as a gem trove of my father ’s life story and death — in brusque , his bequest .
Pasted into the scrapbook were letters of condolence from his professors and his peer . His German prof at Harvard , John Waltz , wrote , “ In my nearly 50 year of experience with college scholar , few have made such a solid and long-lived impression upon me as your Logos . . . . He seemed to me to represent the best New England traditions : open mindedness , fairness , leeway , [ and ] humaneness and did not go away from them in the most trying times . He had wise intellectual and artistic interest .
He was the type of man that is most needed in America at the present prison term and in the immediate future . ”It assist to read those words , to learn from someone other than category members that there had been secure qualities to the man , at least when he was a student . But I could n’t help wondering : Had he been tolerant and humanist as a undercover agent ? After all , my attic uncovering occurred at a time when all sorts of sordid revelations were being describe about the CIA in the backwash of the Vietnam War . Did they put on to the CIA ’s predecessor governance as well ? Did they apply to my sire ?
I find a wire from the director of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs at the Department of State , Loy Henderson , put forward that Dennett ’s “ criminal record of serving was outstanding . ”
That kind of tribute could perhaps be expected — although I by and by read that Henderson was a very big Pisces in the State Department and , in a break with protocol , often received many of Dennett ’s underground reports directly , without review by intermediaries , a rare recitation .
Perhaps most interesting was a letter from the American minister to Saudi Arabia , J. Rives Childs , describe to the American minister of religion * in Beirut , Lowell Pinkerton , that “ Dennett arrived [ in Riyadh ] about March 14 from Dhahran and was of heavy help to us in the info he was able to give meconcerning the pipeline negotiations .
He had an exceptional psyche and indicated by his avidness to learn and willingness to impart his knowledge that he possessed exceptional qualifications as an Officer of Our Government . ”4(emphasis added )
Reading through my father ’s last alphabetic character and his last report , I concluded that his mission to Saudi Arabia was fraught with political intrigue . He was charged with inspecting American rock oil installations at the headquarters of the Arabian American Oil Company ( Aramco ) in Dhahran and determining where the Trans - Arabian Pipeline ( also known as TAPLINE ) should cross the Arabian Peninsula , what countries it would get over , and where it should end on the Eastern Mediterranean coast .
His official report to Minister Childs described a top TAPLINE negotiator expressing deep defeat — not with the Saudis , but with the Syrians over their hesitation to accord grapevine transportation system rights over Syrian territory on the term offered by the American oilmen . TAPLINE ’s William Lenahan “ was in a grim and angry mood , ” Dennett wrote .
“ He was finished with the Syrians . . . . Shortly after we reach out Dhahran he tell apart me that he had been pick apart by Aramco and stock official for talking too freely about the pipeline labor [ to me ] . He necessitate me under no portion to reveal while I was in Dhahran that I have it off anything about or was interested in the pipeline negotiations . I agreed . ” ( Being a fast government employee , however , Dennett ignored Lenahan ’s warning and , as noted by Childs , gave a detailed report on his visit to Saudi Arabia.)5
A New Pipeline for the Middle East . This map is conform from an over-the-top map published in the New York Times just two weeks before the 1947 plane crash that killed Daniel Dennett . That original map provided my first introduction to pipeline political science . Like this one , it showed a cast itinerary of the Trans - Arabian Pipeline , but its accompanying . . .
My father ’s last letter to my mother was more sexual and colorful , expressing his awe and fascination with this newfangled American enterprise and the fence in - off , suburban - comparable community it had created in the middle of the desert , sitting on top of one of the richest oil finds in the world .
He mused over the future of Arabia and noted , “ The most interesting matter of all was seeing the plans now under infantry for building new Arab towns , laying on electricity , drink in piss , medical and hospital table service , good sanitisation . . . . No one know just how large the biggest [ oil ] playing area is , but they have drill 27 well so far over an orbit 15 miles prospicient and 8 wide and they have n’t drill a dry well yet . ”
His letter terminate mysteriously . He was not head back to Beirut as originally planned . “ For reasons I will secern you later , ” he reported to my mother , “ I am go to Ethiopia . . . . ”
From the contents of his last report and last alphabetic character family , I concluded that , in contradiction of his obituary , his subsequent flying to Ethiopia was no “ vacation pleasure trip . ”
Did governance official tell my grandparents what to leave in and what to leave out of the obituary?Or did they self - censor because they knew ( or did they ? ) that he was on a top secret intelligence missionary station ? Was this why there was no mention of his head trip to Saudi Arabia ? I could n’t ask my grandparent , who were long gone , or my mother . Where could I go for answers ?
There was no World wide-cut WWW at this time . But of line there were libraries . Thankfully , the Howe Memorial Library of the University of Vermont was situate in nearby Burlington .
I go away directly to its reference department on the first level , which put up thick multivolume indicant to theNew York Times . I pulled out the 1947 book and began to search for articles on the Middle East and Saudi Arabia . What change state up was really center scuttle .
An article in the SundayTimes , go steady March 2 , 1947 , seem three week before the airplane crash under this headline : “ Pipeline for U.S. supply to Middle East Issues : Oil Concessions Raise Questions Involving Position of Russia . ”It could not have been more to the period , and as I write now , over seven decades later , I ca n’t avail but marvel over its relevance to today ’s business organisation with Russia .
Datelined Cairo , and written by Clifton Daniel ( later to be President Harry Truman ’s son - in - law ) , it get : “ By 1950 more than one hundred million American dollars will have been put down out across the Arabianand Syrian desertsand the territories of four Middle East countries in the form of a pipeline from Saudi Arabia to the Mediterranean sea-coast [ emphasis added ; apparently , the develop job of transit rights across Syria was not known to the newsperson ] . ”
. . .article , “ Pipeline for U.S. Adds to Middle East Issues , ” put the pipeline and Dennett ’s last mission to Saudi Arabia into a larger context : a bragging - power rivalry over rock oil , especially with Russia , that has bear on to this day . The mathematical function also point the two branches of the older Iraq Petroleum Company ( IPC ) pipelines , fabricate in the early 1930s , which had equally profound significance to Middle East issues.6
The next paragraph was even more telling : “ tribute of that investment and the military and economical security that it correspond unavoidably will become one of the premier objectives of American alien insurance in this area , which already has become a pivot man of world political relation and one of the main focal compass point of contention between East and West . ”
The East , of course of study , was the Soviet Union , another rise major power after World War II . Clearly , the Soviets ’ grow influence in the Middle East was being learn as a thing of national security .
Two paragraph down , the article discover this pipeline ( “ one of the cosmos ’s largest and long ” ) as being a potential reference of conflict between the United States and Great Britain . It meant “ laying down another major American pastime in the Middle East latitude to that of the British .
The Anglo - American partnership , rattle this week by the replenishment of faultfinding on the Palestine issue , will be further consolidated or — another possibility — new areas of contention between the two countries will be created . ”
If the mention of Palestine was not enough to heighten my interest , the article bring in another major musician , France , into the possible fray : “ France has formally demanded to roll in the hay why she , a partner with the British , Americans , and Dutch in the Iraq Petroleum Company , was left out of the late deal by the partner to share in the origin and sale of Arabian oil . ”
This was my first hint of rivalry among America’s erstwhile allies over postwar oil in the Middle East.
But perhaps the just part of the article was the map that accompanied it .
Titled “ A New Pipeline for the Middle East , ” it showed the stippled business of the projected pipeline extending west across Saudi Arabia , Jordan , and Syria to a terminal point in Lebanon . The line ran across the British - controlled Iraq Petroleum Company ( IPC ) pipeline that terminated in Haifa , Palestine , and into the French - operate IPC word of mouth that terminated in northern Lebanon near the Syrian border .
Both pipelines were offshoot of the IPC pipeline originating in oil fields near Kirkuk , Iraq , and built in the early 1930s . reckon from the bird’s - eye vantage point of a function reader , it looked as though the proposed Trans - Arabian Pipeline was butting a proverbial camel ’s olfactory organ under the tent of two colonial powers , which ( as I shortly learned ) did not welcome the trespass .
Recommended Reads
Enter Biochar : deoxidize Your Pet ’s Carbon Pawprint
Publishing in the Time of a Pandemic : On Birth and Survival
Uncovering the Mystery of a Lost Spy and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil
$ 19.95
Recent Articles
Why Modern Wheat Is Making Us Sick
Why is modern wheat take a crap us sick ? That ’s the question posed by source Eli Rogosa in restore Heritage Grains . Wheat is the most widely grown crop on our major planet , yet industrial stock breeder have transform this ancient staff of life story into a commodity of yield and lucre — witness the increase in gluten intolerance and ‘ wheat belly ’ . Modern …
Mass Layoffs: Destructiveness and Doubt
Addressing the pressing issues impress daily Americans is substantive — and one of our nation ’s most sound challenges is the devastating encroachment of mass layoff . Layoffs upend people ’s lives , cause enormous stress , and lead to drain personal debt . The social trauma because of aggregative layoffs has been known for decades . Yet , we do little to stop them . …
Facing the Beast: Practicing Courage and Reflection
What does facing the beast mean ? In this time of uncertainty , we must practise unconstipated reflection to achieve optimum felicity and health . The metaphor below give insight into confronting and facing it , regardless of what “ the creature ” is to you . The following is . an excerpt from Facing the Beast by Naomi Wolf . It has been adapted for the …
About Time: What Makes Time Such A Valuable Resource
We ’ve all get word of the phrases “ time flies ” and “ meter heals all combat injury , ” but what really is clip , and how does it bear upon our lives ? The concept of clip may be even more powerful than we think , especially when it comes to the money we save and spend . The following is an excerpt from The …
The Upstream Questions: What We Ask Of Science
“ Climate change asks us questions that climate science can not answer , ” — Dougald Hine When it comes to clime change , it seems as if there are always new questions arising : How did we get to this point ? How can we stop it ? What ’s next ? Unfortunately , there is no blackened - and - white , aboveboard answer to any of them — …
© 2025 Rizzoli International Publications Inc. All Rights allow .
Rizzoli International Publications300 Park Avenue South , 4th FloorNew York , NY 10010United States
There are items in your basket which are ready to ship.
You ’ll need to checkout before adding this pre - order particular to your handbasket .
