It is often difficult to trace the history of the United States’ involvement with—and responsibility for—the evolution of radical Islamism around the world; many of the CIA’s activities in support of Islamist groups were often covert, and a great deal of misinformation exists. Robert Dreyfuss’ new book, Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, is an attempt at a comprehensive overview of this story, recounting how the CIA, guided by the belief that radical Islamist forces could act as a bulwark against communism, helped fuel the rise of political Islam and militant fundamentalism in the Middle East and Central Asia. Below is a timeline of major events in the U.S. government’s 70-year flirtation with and support for the militant forces that would, in the late 1990s and on September 11, 2001, come back to haunt the United States. 1933 – Saudi Arabia grants oil exploration rights to the United States, and the two countries enter into a profit-sharing ownership of the Arabian-American Oil Company, which discovers the first commercial oil well in Saudi Arabia in 1938…