The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames

by Kai Bird

  Cassin told Zein that he wanted to speak to Salameh alone. Zein immediately understood what was up, and before the meeting he took Ali Hassan aside and told him, “He is coming to recruit you. Just be cool. Listen to what he has to say and then politely excuse yourself.” Salameh did as Zein advised. According to Peter Taylor, a British broadcast reporter who interviewed Zein at length, “The meeting did not go well.” Salameh was offered $300,000 a month “to co-ordinate activities between your organization and our organization.” Taylor later wrote in his 1993 book, States of Terror, that there was no proverbial suitcase stuffed with cash—just a verbal offer. After making the pitch, Cassin was pleased by Salameh’s calm demeanor. No theatrics was a good sign. When Salameh rose to leave, Cassin promised they’d meet the next day for a fine meal in one of Rome’s most expensive restaurants.

  The next day the three men met for lunch. When Salameh momentarily excused himself, Zein turned to Cassin and said, “Ali told me everything. He said you were willing to finance the PLO to the tune of $35 million a year—and recognize the PLO. He’s already sent a coded message to Arafat. The Chairman is very pleased.”

  Flabbergasted, Cassin hastily left the restaurant. Salameh and Zein were playing with him. He knew the attempted recruitment had failed; he reported this to Langley, but he also claimed that Salameh had angrily refused to cooperate with the Agency in combating terrorism. This was a lie, but one that conveniently explained the failed recruitment. Cassin painted Salameh as a dogmatic extremist.

  For his part, Salameh was deeply offended by the overture. “It took a while to restore the relationship,” said Waverly.

  Back in Beirut, Ames and Zein tried to put things on an even keel. But Ames was terribly disappointed by the fallout from the Rome fiasco. “We, you and I,” he wrote Mustafa Zein, “really tried to do something which was perhaps ahead of our time.” He was also angry about the “lies and misunderstandings” told by Cassin about Salameh. “Since I have read the files on these matters I can say, unfortunately, that lies were told.” Ames also had cause to worry about Salameh’s safety. Soon after the Rome meeting, Salameh received a package addressed to him in Beirut. “Bob had warned us to watch out for letter bombs,” Zein said. Salameh normally received all his mail through the PLO office. But one day in early 1971 a heavy manila envelope arrived at his Verdun Street apartment. Salameh had it x-rayed. Had he opened it, he would have been maimed or worse. This was almost certainly Mossad’s first attempt to kill Ali Hassan.*2

  Ames saw Salameh intermittently over the next six months, and they met about a month before Ames was posted back to Washington in June 1971. But then Salameh seemed to disappear. “After the Rome meeting,” Zein said, “Ali lost favor inside the PLO. Arafat had put him in charge of Palestinian-American relations, and now this didn’t seem to be going anywhere.” Ames was aware that Salameh’s fortunes had dimmed precisely because of his association with the Agency. “I know he’s suffered some setbacks because of his contact with me,” Ames wrote Zein. “He was also ahead of his time. We really started something good and I believe history will prove that if people had been wiser and more honest much misery could have been avoided.”

  Just two weeks later, Ames wrote Zein again. The tone of the letter made it clear that Ames was trying to keep Zein on board, trying to persuade him that all was not lost in their venture. It was not a letter from a CIA case officer instructing his access agent. It was a letter of persuasion from one friend to another. “It sure was great to hear from you,” Ames wrote in longhand, “and learn you are still in the middle of things. Life back here [Washington, D.C.] is dull by comparison—paper, politics and bureaucracy. Frankly, I miss the action and wish I were out doing something again.”

  Zein was then still working for the ruling sheikh of Abu Dhabi, but he was planning to move back to Lebanon. Ames told Zein that he felt indebted to him and offered to help: “Whatever you choose, I hope you’ll keep in touch and if there is anything I can do to help let me know. I don’t like to owe debts and I do owe a great deal to you.” He said that he was planning a trip to Beirut and Amman in late October and suggested that perhaps they could meet there or in Bahrain. “I have much more to discuss when we get together later,” Ames wrote. “There is much that can’t be put in writing. As I’m sure you realize.”

  Zein was not an agent of the CIA. Ames knew that Mustafa was his own man. But Mustafa was also Bob’s invaluable channel to Ali Hassan. “Regarding our friend,” Ames wrote, “if you see him tell him that we are doing our best to balance things and we have achieved some success. I have a few things for him which I’ll pass along via you. These items will help him regain some of the stature I know he lost because of his contact with us. I have a debt to him too which I want to pay off.”

  Bob signed this letter “Munir”—Arabic for “the Enlightener.” This was Mustafa’s affectionate, Sufi-derived alias for his American friend. Bob used his home for the return address on the envelope, but instead of his name he used the initials RCA.

  Three weeks later, on September 14, 1971, Ames wrote Mustafa again about possibly setting up a meeting with Salameh. Ames was anxious to resume his conversations with Salameh, but he knew any such meeting, if leaked, could jeopardize Salameh’s standing in the PLO. “Regarding our friend,” Ames wrote Zein, “I believe it is imperative that you and I discuss any meeting with him prior to any firm commitment being made, if indeed we decide such a meeting should even take place. I, of course feel, personally, such a meeting would be extremely useful but what we want to avoid is any misunderstanding, such as existed in the past, and which caused all the parties concerned, especially you, so many problems. Now that he is back in his proper position, we do not want to repeat past mistakes.”

  Salameh’s standing in the PLO had indeed suffered a setback in the spring and summer of 1971. Ali Hassan had his rivals, and Abu Iyad (Salah Khalaf) was one of them. The PLO’s number-two leader had once been a mentor of Ali Hassan’s. But after the disastrous outcome of the Jordanian civil war, some blamed Abu Iyad for poor intelligence on King Hussein’s intentions and capabilities. Ali Hassan had once worked directly under Abu Iyad, but after September 1970 Salameh became Arafat’s shadow. Abu Iyad resented Salameh’s growing influence and access to the Chairman. By the spring of 1971, Abu Iyad was looking for any excuse to discredit Salameh. The perception that Salameh had somehow mishandled the back channel to the CIA had hurt his standing. But Abu Iyad also seized upon an incident in Europe on February 6, 1972, where a shoot-out involving some of Salameh’s Force 17 commandos had resulted in the deaths of five men. Abu Iyad went to Arafat and complained that Salameh was out of control. Arafat placed Salameh on a three-month leave while an internal PLO investigation probed the incident. Salameh used the time to visit London and other European cities, traveling on an Algerian diplomatic passport. Upon his return to Beirut, Salameh was vindicated. Arafat’s investigation concluded that the five men killed by Salameh’s Force 17 operatives had been Mossad informants. As Ames had heard through his own sources, by the autumn of 1971 Salameh had been restored to his position as chief of Force 17.

  The incident later became an important piece of Salameh’s résumé, because in his absence Abu Iyad had created a rival organization within the PLO that became known as Black September. Salameh was not there when this happened. He thus had an alibi for not being present at the creation of Black September.

  In the aftermath of the Jordanian civil war, the PLO found itself at a difficult crossroads. The defeat in Jordan had demoralized Arafat’s Fatah Fedayeen and had simultaneously increased the political appeal of radicals to Arafat’s left. The spectacular airline hijackings carried out by George Habash’s PFLP had turned the Palestinian cause into a global issue. But now Arafat’s younger cadres demanded that the “Old Man” come up with a new strategy. Arafat needed some victories lest he find himself pushed aside. His ranking deputy, Abu Iyad, urged Arafat to escalate the violence. Arafat was torn. A sharp deba
te took place. Khalid al-Hassan, the PLO’s virtual foreign minister at the time, later explained to the British journalist Alan Hart, “I was opposed to the playing of the terror card. But I have to tell you something else. Those of our Fatah colleagues who did turn to terror were not mindless criminals. They were fiercely dedicated nationalists who were doing their duty as they saw it. I have to say they were wrong, and did so at the time, but I have also to understand them. In their view, and in this they were right, the world was saying to us Palestinians, ‘We don’t give a damn about you, and we won’t care at least until you are a threat to our interests.’ In reply those in Fatah who turned to terror were saying, ‘Okay, world. We’ll play the game by your rules. We’ll make you care!’ ”

  Arafat quietly authorized Abu Iyad to organize a clandestine force to bring the war to the West—and to take his revenge against the Hashemites. Abu Iyad was Arafat’s oldest friend. With Arafat’s blessing, he now created a covert arm of Fatah called Black September, named obviously after the bloody events of September 1970. Abu Iyad was thought to be its “spiritual godfather and chief.” Black September was said to be “more a state of mind than an organization as such,” but the shadowy group drew on Fatah communications and financial resources.

  Arafat may have thought he could turn on terror operations—and then just as easily turn them off. But it was more complicated than that. Alan Hart later interviewed a member of Black September whose nom de guerre was Ben Bella. Hart asked him about Arafat’s attitude toward its activities. “At the time,” said Bella, “Arafat could not afford to speak against us in public because he knew what we were doing had the support of the majority in the rank and file of our movement. Our way was the popular way. But in private meetings he took every opportunity to tell us we were wrong. I remember an occasion when he said to some of us, ‘You are crazy to take our fight to Europe.’ I was angry and I said, ‘Abu Amar, maybe you are right, maybe we are crazy—but tell me this: is it not also crazy for us to sit here in Lebanon, just waiting to be hit every day by Israeli fighter planes, and knowing that we will lose some ten or more fighters every day without advancing our cause. Is that not crazy too?”

  Ali Hassan Salameh no doubt understood these sentiments. As the head of Force 17, Salameh supervised the men who served as Arafat’s personal bodyguards. But Force 17 was also Fatah’s nascent intelligence service. As such, Salameh reported to Abu Iyad—though he had his own special relationship with Arafat. If Abu Iyad served as Black September’s spiritual inspiration, another senior PLO chieftain, Abu Daoud, was its tactical and operational commander. But the chain of command was murky. As head of Force 17, Salameh could hardly be unaware of the existence of this shadowy group. But according to Mustafa Zein, Salameh was not responsible for Abu Iyad’s operations: “I told Ali that under no circumstances should he involve himself in spilling civilian blood.”

  Salameh was clearly a rival of Abu Iyad’s. Both men were in competition for Arafat’s affections. Citing Jordanian authorities, the New York Times reported that “Ali Hassan Salameh, the hard-living Fatah intelligence expert, who they say oversees Black September activities, has become a pawn in a rivalry between veteran commando chiefs.” The Times published a photograph with this story “said to depict Ali Hassan Salameh”—but it was a mistake. The photograph was clearly not Salameh.

  Black September’s first target was Jordan’s prime minister, Wasfi al-Tal. Salameh personally chose the assassins and organized the operation. According to Yezid Sayigh, the author of the definitive history of the PLO, Salameh was the “mastermind.” On November 28, 1971, as the Jordanian prime minister was walking into Cairo’s Sheraton Hotel, four Palestinians attacked him. Before his bodyguards could do anything, a young man named Izzat Ahmad Rabah fired four shots at close range. As Al-Tal’s wife and bystanders watched in horror, one of the assassins, Monsa Khalifa, crouched next to the dying prime minister and licked some of his blood off the floor. As they were arrested, the assassins cried out, “We are Black September.… We have taken our revenge on a traitor.”

  Bob Ames happened to arrive in Amman that Sunday, just a few hours after the prime minister’s assassination in Cairo. “The Jordanians were in an ugly mood,” Ames wrote, “and you can bet that there was not a Palestinian to be seen on the streets.” What he had planned as a brief informal fact-finding trip now became something more official. Two days after the assassination, Ames drove up with some other American diplomats to Irbid, where they paid a condolence call on Wasfi al-Tal’s family. “It was a pleasant trip and I enjoyed the good bedu coffee,” Ames wrote, “even though the occasion was solemn.… It was kind of fun to be in the middle of things again.”

  Later that week, Ames drove to Allenby Bridge on the River Jordan and crossed into the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It had been only a little more than four years since the Israelis had conquered the West Bank, but they were already intent on taking every opportunity to demonstrate that their presence was permanent. When Ames arrived at Allenby Bridge—the only crossing point from Jordan into the occupied territories—the Israelis wanted to stamp Ames’s diplomatic passport with an Israeli visa stamp. Normally, as a courtesy, and to encourage tourism, the Israelis routinely gave visitors an Israeli visa on a separate piece of paper so that their passports would still be valid for travel in Arab countries. But on this occasion, the Israeli officials at Allenby Bridge made a point of trying to stamp Ames’s diplomatic passport. When he refused to permit this, they delayed his passage. “They really put me through the mill,” Ames wrote. “They completely took apart my suitcases, emptied my toothpaste tube, dug into my shoe polish, exposed the film in my camera … and they were not going to let any of my aerosol cans in—deodorant, shaving cream—they could be bombs you know.”

  And then someone intervened. Ames saw an Israeli army major inspecting his passport and wallet. Upon finding some Yemeni money stuffed into the wallet, the Israeli army major turned to Ames and explained that he’d emigrated from Yemen in 1948. They’d found common ground. Ames charmed the man. “We talked about Yemen (my common language with the Israelis is Arabic) and he put all the aerosol cans back in my suitcase and let me go through.”

  Arriving in Jerusalem, Ames checked in to the American Colony, a quaint boutique hotel in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. Built in the late nineteenth century out of Jerusalem’s beautiful white stone, the American Colony had served as an integral part of Jerusalem’s social and political life for decades. It was a genteel expatriate haven in the midst of Arab Jerusalem. At the end of World War I another spy, T. E. Lawrence, had taken lodgings in the American Colony. Lowell Thomas, Gertrude Bell, and John D. Rockefeller were among the Colony’s notable list of visitors. Even after the June 1967 war, its bar and grand dining hall served as a cosmopolitan salon for Jerusalem’s diplomats, journalists, and intellectuals. In the evenings, dozens of expatriates and Palestinian intellectuals mingled in the “big salon,” sitting in overstuffed armchairs under an elaborate Damascene ceiling hand-painted with gold leaf. Ames loved the hotel’s old-world, Orientalist charm. He liked the convenience of its location, just a few blocks from the American consulate. Also nearby was St. George’s Cathedral, where Ames’s old friend from Dhahran, the newly ordained Ronald Metz, was now an aide to the Anglican bishop of Jerusalem. Metz had left both the CIA and Aramco for the Church. But his political work for the bishop focused on aiding the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem in coping with all the difficulties they faced living under the Israeli occupation. (The Israelis had annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, but neither the Palestinians nor the international community regarded the annexation as legal.)

  Despite all his sympathies for the Palestinians, Ames could sometimes empathize with the other side. In Jerusalem he visited the Old City, entering through Jaffa Gate in the Jewish Quarter. He walked to the Wailing Wall. “Today is the Jewish Sabbath,” he wrote home, “so there was a large turnout at the Wall, and I must say this was impressive. M
ost of the visitors to the Wall were Oriental/Orthodox Jews dressed in their traditional garb. One goes away with the feeling that these people should not be denied access to the Wall no matter what the final solution is.”

  Ames could see that the Israelis had imposed some modernity on the Old City. Hebrew signs adorned every street. The garbage was picked up routinely, and the city was just better organized than when the Jordanians had ruled it. But Ames was a bit of a romantic, and he “missed the oriental dignity that was Jerusalem.” He wrote Yvonne that he “kind of liked the old chaos—it made you feel a little closer to the time of Christ.”

  Ames also disapproved of what the Israelis were doing to encircle East Jerusalem with Jewish neighborhoods. “I can look out my window [from the American Colony] and see all the high rise apartments the Israelis are building on the hills that surround Jerusalem. Somehow that doesn’t seem right.… You certainly get the impression that the Israelis are here to stay.”

  After seeing a few contacts, both Israeli and Palestinian, Ames returned to Washington in time for the Christmas holidays.