Archibald Roosevelt Jr., CIA Agent

WASHINGTON - Archibald Roosevelt Jr., a grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt and a retired CIA officer who headed the agency's stations in Istanbul, Madrid and Lisbon, died Thursday of congestive heart failure at his home.

Roosevelt, 72, was born in Boston, graduated from Harvard College in 1940 and won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University that he was unable to take because of World War II.

An Army intelligence officer in the war, he joined the Central Intelligence Group, the immediate predecessor of the CIA, in 1947 and served until his retirement in 1974, always under diplomatic cover.

Though sometimes linked to various coups of the early 1950s, notably the overthrow of King Farouk in Egypt and of the nationalist Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, Roosevelt was the soul of discretion in his 1988 memoirs, ``For Lust of Knowing: Memoirs of an Intelligence Officer.'' He did not even list his duty stations in the book.

Roosevelt confessed a fascination with the Middle East and languages, learning about 20, including Uzbek.

The intelligence officer ``must not only know whose side he is on, but have a deep conviction that he is on the right side. He should not imitate the cynical protagonists of John LeCarre's novels, essentially craftsmen who find their side no less amoral than the other,'' Roosevelt once wrote.

After his retirement, he became a vice president of Chase Manhattan Bank, based in Washington.

He is survived by his wife, Selwa Roosevelt, who was chief of protocol at the State Department during the Reagan administration; a son by a first marriage that ended in divorce; and two grandchildren.