The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames

by Kai Bird

  27 “He could tell stories”: Uri Oppenheim, interview, Tel Aviv, October 14, 2012.

  28 “We wouldn’t be getting moralizing …”: Schmuel Litani, interview, Tel Aviv, October 18, 2012.

  29 “I remember one day …”: John Morris, interview, March 22, 2011.

  30 “Bob had incredible gravitas”: Bill Fisk, interview, March 27, 2011.

  31 “He really didn’t want to give up …”: Lindsay Sherwin, interview, March 22, 2011.

  32 “He was very reluctant …”: Ibid.

  33 he’d flown to see Khomeini: Associated Press, “Arafat Visits Iran’s New Leader,” Observer-Reporter, February 19, 1979.

  34 Arafat had also brokered the initial release: Ambassador John Gunther Dean, interview by Charles Stuart Kennedy, September 6, 2000: “The 13 hostages were released for Thanksgiving 1979 and there is no doubt that this release was linked to Mr. Arafat’s and Abu Jihad’s personal intervention with the Iranian authorities in Tehran.” Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Oral Histories, www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/library/oralhistory/clohproject/Lebanon.pdf.

  35 “This man [Jack Shaw] is slated …”: Zein, “Deceit with Extreme Prejudice,” p. 280.

  36 raising money for the Reagan presidential campaign: Jack Shaw, e-mail to author, May 2, 2013. Shaw wrote that he “got to know Casey tolerably well at [the] end of [the] campaign and in his early tenure at the Agency.” Shaw wrote that he also “had interesting ties to Arafat and met with him several times in Beirut and Tunis.”

  37 “He confirmed to me that Casey knew …”: Mustafa Zein, e-mail to author, May 26, 27, and 28, 2013.

  38 “Palestinian interest lay with a strong president …”: Zein, “Deceit with Extreme Prejudice,” p. 280.

  39 Thirty-three years later, Shaw says he has “no recollection”: Jack Shaw, phone interview, May 25, 2013; also e-mails to author, April 23 and May 14, 16, and 22, 2013.

  40 “Casey was famous …”: Jack Shaw, e-mail to author, July 10, 2013.

  41 “Shaheen confirmed to me”: Shaw says that John Shaheen was a friend. Jack Shaw, e-mail to author, July 10, 2013.

  42 “Double your efforts …”: Zein, “Deceit with Extreme Prejudice,” p. 281. The audiotape of this Zein-Shaw conversation may still exist in the closed archives of the PLO in Tunis.

  43 Two books have been published: Robert Parry, Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1993), and Gary Sick, October Surprise: America’s Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan (New York: Times Books; Toronto: Random House, 1991). See also Abu Sharif, Arafat and the Dream, pp. 65–66. Abu Sharif, an aide to Arafat, writes that an aide to Reagan approached him in Beirut with a similar request to delay the mediation efforts on behalf of the American hostages. Abu Sharif says that this Reagan aide was not Jack Shaw. But Abu Sharif says that he knew Shaw and once took him to see Arafat in Tunis.

  44 “Mr. President, there is something I want to tell you …”: Douglas Brinkley, “The Rising Stock of Jimmy Carter,” Diplomatic History 20, no. 4 (1996): 512.

  45 “chaotic movie set”: John L. Helgerson, CIA Briefings of Presidential Candidates, 1952–1992, Center for the Study of Intelligence, CIA, Washington DC, 1996, p. 129, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/cia-briefings-of-presidential-candidates/cia-1.htm. Helgerson was Ames’s deputy, serving as the assistant national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia.

  46 “The Afghan story had not yet leaked”: Ibid., p. 130.

  47 “We could lose Sadat”: Ibid., p. 133.

  48 “You can’t capture his attention”: Mustafa Zein, interview, Amman, October 8, 2012.

  49 “The problem with Ronald Reagan …”: Peter Dixon Davis, interview by John Helgerson, April 26, 1993, quoted in John Helgerson, CIA Briefings of Presidential Candidates, p. 139.

  Chapter Eleven: Bill Casey and Ronald Reagan

  1 budget of about $6 billion: Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 235.

  2 “With the people fired …”: Persico, Casey, p. 213.

  3 “He was not happy with his career”: Lindsay Sherwin, interview, March 22, 2011.

  4 He hired a financial consultant: Ibid.

  5 “Look, I just want you to know …”: Geoffrey Kemp, interview, March 29, 2011.

  6 “This meant undermining the influence of religion”: Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 98.

  7 “Did you understand a word he said?”: Persico, Casey, p. 228.

  8 “People said he was the one guy …”: George Shultz, interview by James Sterling Young, chair; Stephen Knott; Marc Selverstone, December 18, 2002, Ronald Reagan Oral History Project, Miller Center of Public Affairs, Presidential Oral History Program, University of Virginia and Reagan Presidential Library, p. 27.

  9 worth nearly $10 million: Persico, Casey, p. 210.

  10 “capable of great kindness …”: Ibid., p. 208.

  11 “I liked Casey”: Clair George, interview, March 23, 2011.

  12 “Facts can confuse”: Persico, Casey, pp. 219–20.

  13 “At the end of one meeting …”: Yoral Hessel, interview, Tel Aviv, October 10, 2012.

  14 “Off we went through the streets of Heliopolis”: Charles Englehart, interview, September 20, 2011.

  15 Israeli jets bombed the reactor: Persico, Casey, p. 253.

  16 “One real problem of this trip”: Geoffrey Kemp, diary, April 9, 1981, courtesy of Geoffrey Kemp.

  17 his true employment: Yvonne Ames, e-mail to author, April 9, 2012.

  18 Bob had arranged for Cathy to have a summer internship: Lindsay Sherwin, interview, March 22, 2011.

  19 “Children sense that there is something going on …”: Meir Harel, interview, Tel Aviv, October 18, 2012.

  20 “too intellectual”: Lindsay Sherwin, e-mail to author, April 9, 2012.

  21 “I have a notion …”: Bob Layton, interview, September 20, 2011.

  22 “You have to understand the culture …”: Persico, Casey, pp. 251–52.

  23 Ames called Mustafa Zein: This story is in Zein’s “Deceit with Extreme Prejudice,” p. 286; Mustafa Zein, interview, October 6, 2012. One retired CIA clandestine officer expressed skepticism when told about Zein’s story. John McMahon, the only other living witness to this incident, refused to comment.

  24 Boatner’s firing: Winston Wiley, interview, September 16, 2011.

  25 “an acquired taste”: Lindsay Sherwin, e-mail to author, April 9, 2012.

  26 “I always considered my greatest recruitment …”: Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, p. 651.

  27 “I wanted to work for him …”: Winston Wiley, interview, September 16, 2011.

  28 “Bob was more aware than his critics …”: Bob Layton, interview, September 20, 2011.

  29 “Bob was very comfortable in his skin”: Ibid.

  30 “Ames didn’t talk about his DO contacts”: Ibid.

  31 “Bob was very excited about the NESA job”: Frederick Hutchinson, interview, December 5, 2011.

  32 “Ames clearly had a formidable operational career”: Paul Pillar, interview, September 14, 2011. “To become a national intelligence officer after a clandestine career was not that unusual. David Blee had done it before Ames, and Graham Fuller did it later. But to become the director of analysis for an entire region, well, that was unusual for a DO guy. It was a huge vote of confidence.”

  33 “Bob liked the analytical side”: George Cave, interview, March 14, 2011.

  34 “It is a huge difference”: Lindsay Sherwin, interview, March 22, 2011.

  35 “Ames was very good at interpreting …”: Frederick Hutchinson, interview, December 5, 2011.

  36 “Bob arranged for me to get a green card”: Mustafa Zein, e-mail to author, August 9, 2012. Zein said “Edward” was a very elegant man with a British upper-class demeanor who wore $2,000 suits and occasionally invited him to lunch at the Carlyle Hotel.

  37 “He
lms loved them”: Mustafa Zein, interview, Amman, October 8, 2012.

  38 “Tell Arafat that Bob wants you to see this”: Mustafa Zein, interview, October 6, 2012.

  39 “They’re all PLO …”: Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, p. 514.

  40 “merely the spark that lit the fuse”: Lawrence Joffe, “Obituary: Shlomo Argov, Israeli Diplomat Whose Shooting Triggered the Israeli Invasion of Lebanon,” Guardian, February 25, 2003.

  41 “Israel’s real objective …”: George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), p. 44.

  42 “lobotomy”: Morris, Righteous Victims, pp. 513–14.

  43 “come back to haunt America and Israel”: Mustafa Zein, memo to Ames, “Some Thoughts from a Moderate Lebanese Muslim,” June 25, 1982, courtesy of Mustafa Zein. Also quoted in Zein, “Deceit with Extreme Prejudice,” p. 283.

  44 “To eradicate the Palestinian question”: Zein, memo to Ames, “Some Thoughts from a Moderate Lebanese Muslim.”

  45 “In contrast to ‘pro-Israel’ Haig”: Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 13.

  46 His second phone call was to Bob Ames: Ibid., p. 39.

  47 “Please listen to him”: Woodward, Veil, p. 230.

  48 “the CIA’s top specialist”: George P. Shultz to Brother Patrick Ellis, President, La Salle University, December 4, 1986.

  49 “had been carrying on a dialogue …”: Shultz’s account of his exchanges with Ames on this subject is in his Turmoil and Triumph, pp. 48–49. Earlier that summer, the Los Angeles Times had broken the news that the CIA had been meeting periodically with the PLO’s Ali Hassan Salameh throughout the 1970s. Bob Ames’s name was not mentioned. Doyle McManus, “U.S., PLO: 7 Years of Secret Contacts,” Los Angeles Times, July 5, 1981, p. 1.

  50 “I saw then that Bill Casey and the CIA acted independently”: Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 50.

  51 “He had too much of an agenda”: Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, p. 644.

  52 “Habib talks only about our going”: Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 52.

  53 the “pragmatic” line within the PLO: Rashid Khalidi, Under Siege: PLO Decision-Making During the 1982 War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 104.

  54 “honest broker”: Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari, Israel’s Lebanon War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), p. 287.

  55 “good guys and bad guys …”: John Boykin, Cursed Is the Peacemaker: The American Diplomat Versus the Israeli General (Belmont, CA: Applegate Press, 2002), p. 117.

  56 General Sharon bluntly warned Habib: Ibid., pp. 150–52.

  57 “proximity talks”: Ibid., pp. 224–25.

  58 fifty thousand Israeli artillery shells: Ibid., p. 225.

  59 “Are you losing patience with Israel?”: Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 53.

  60 “Two hundred and fifty thousand men”: Boykin, Cursed Is the Peacemaker, pp. 135–36.

  61 “I was enraged”: Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 70.

  62 “Any premature hint …”: Ibid., p. 85.

  63 “Anything we come up with …”: Ibid., p. 86.

  64 “You find out …”: George Shultz, interview by James Sterling Young, chair; Stephen Knott; Marc Selverstone, December 18, 2002, p. 27, Ronald Reagan Oral History Project, Miller Center of Public Affairs, Presidential Oral History Program, University of Virginia and Reagan Presidential Library.

  65 “It is a tricky business …”: Lindsay Sherwin, interview, March 22, 2011.

  66 “Bob was a passionate believer …”: Bruce Riedel, interview, March 30, 2011.

  67 Arens vigorously disagreed: Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 91.

  68 Four days before Arafat departed: Mustafa Zein, e-mail to author, July 4, 2012.

  69 “US Views Regarding the Future Settlement”: Mustafa Zein, private papers.

  70 “Arafat muffed it”: Quoted in Thomas L. Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1989), p. 152.

  71 “Slaughterhouse Lebanon”: Monday Morning, July 12, 1982; F. Najia, “Janet Lee Stevens: American Arabist in ‘Slaughterhouse Lebanon,’ ” Arab Saga blog, January 28, 2012, http://arabsaga.blogspot.com/2012/01/cost-of-gagging-beirut-part-v.html.

  72 “I thought she was CIA”: Loren Jenkins, interview, April 22, 2011.

  73 “the little drummer girl”: Franklin Lamb, “Letter to Janet,” Intifada Palestine, September 14, 2007, www.intifada-palestine.com/2011/09/a-letter-to-janet-about-sabra-shatilla-%E2%80%93-remembering-a-martyr-for-palestinian-refugees/.

  74 He was introduced to Yasir Arafat: Profile of John le Carré, Monday Morning, April 1983.

  75 “We all loved Janet …”: John le Carré [David Cornwell] to Mrs. Stevens and Jo Ann Stevens, April 29, 1983, courtesy of Kristen Stevens.

  76 “It was Janet’s sensitivity …”: Ibid.

  77 “I think the Israelis have behaved disgracefully”: Profile of John le Carré, Monday Morning, April 1983.

  78 “You must launch a ‘Stalingrad defense’ ”: Franklin Lamb, “The Palestinians of Sabra-Shatila: 26 Years After the Massacre,” September 16, 2008, www.thepeoplesvoice.org.

  79 Reagan delivered the speech: Quoted in Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 97.

  80 “A friend does not weaken his friend”: This and the responses of Shultz and his aide are in ibid., pp. 98–99.

  81 “We covertly supported the election of Bashir”: Ambassador Robert Dillon, civil testimony, Dammarell v. Islamic Republic of Iran, April 7, 2003, p. 102.

  82 “puppet state”: Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 99.

  83 “with the object of keeping things quiet …”: Boykin, Cursed Is the Peacemaker, p. 267.

  84 “Begin told me …”: Ibid., p. 268.

  85 “We went in because of the 2,000–3,000 terrorists …”: Schiff and Ya’ari, Israel’s Lebanon War, pp. 259–60.

  86 “May I say something? …”: Ibid., p. 260.

  87 “pathological killer”: Boykin, Cursed Is the Peacemaker, p. 269.

  88 between 1,000 and 3,000 people: Bayan Nuwayhed al-Hout, Sabra and Shatila: September 1982 (London: Pluto Press, 2004), pp. 288, 296. Al-Hout’s final estimate is that about 3,500 people were killed. Israel’s Kahan Commission 1983 estimated that seven hundred to eight hundred people were massacred. Abba Eban, ed., The Beirut Massacre: The Complete Kahan Commission Report (New York: Karz-Cohl, 1983).

  89 “A large number of flares were sent up”: Anne Dammarell, correspondence, September 27, 1982.

  90 “Fisky,” said Jenkins, “something’s going on …”: Fisk, Pity the Nation, pp. 357–58.

  91 “Sharon! That fucker Sharon!”: Ibid., p. 360.

  92 He counted at least fifty bodies: Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 104.

  93 “I saw dead women …”: Franklin Lamb, “Remembering Janet Lee Stevens, a Martyr for Palestinian Refugees,” April 20, 2010, The Palestine Chronicle, http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=15900.

  94 “irrepressible”: John le Carré to Jo Ann Stevens, April 29, 1983.

  95 “I’ve spent the past four days …”: Anne Dammarell correspondence, September 27, 1982.

  96 “It was clear that this was a mass grave”: Anne Dammarell, interview, November 12, 2010.

  97 “What Arafat said is absolutely true”: Fisk, Pity the Nation, p. 372.

  98 “I started phoning people …”: Carolyn Kovar, interview, March 18, 2011.

  99 “We need action quickly”: Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 108.

  100 “After Sabra and Shatila …”: Geoffrey Kemp, interview, March 29, 2011.

  101 “A limited Beirut mission is too risky”: Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 109.

  102 “It soon became clear”: Geoffrey Kemp, interview, March 29, 2011.

  103 “The Israelis did nothing …”: The Reagan Diaries (New York: HarperPerennial, 2007), p. 155.

  104 “The decision on the entry …”: Eban, Beirut Massacre, p. 104.

  105 “The Israelis had assumed …�
�: Bruce Riedel, interview, March 30, 2011.

  106 “I don’t know …”: David Crist, The Twilight War: The Secret History of America’s Thirty-Three-Year Conflict with Iran (New York: Penguin Press, 2012), p. 125.

  107 “I don’t think there was any real understanding …”: Lindsay Sherwin, interview, March 22, 2011.

  108 death squads: Robert Fisk, a correspondent at the time for the Times of London, reported on these autumn murders: Fisk, Pity the Nation, p. 386. See also the memoir by the Lebanese Phalangist Robert Hatem, From Israel to Damascus (La Mesa, CA: Pride International Publications, 1999), pp. 23, 29.

  109 Mughniyeh himself was injured: Hala Jaber, Hezbollah: Born with a Vengeance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 115.

  110 Mahmoud Ahmedinejad: Nicholas Blanford, Warriors of God: Inside Hezbollah’s Thirty-Year Struggle Against Israel (New York: Random House, 2011), p. 45.

  111 Asgari hired Mughniyeh: Mustafa Zein, interview, October 8, 2012, Amman. Zein says that Mughniyeh told him about his 1982 meeting with Asgari. Asgari was initially an intelligence officer stationed in Baalbek, but later in the 1980s he became the commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps in Baalbek. “Mr Asgari was the commander in the 1980s of a small group of Revolutionary Guards sent to Lebanon to train and organize opposition to the Israeli occupation.” Gareth Smyth, “Mystery of Former Iranian Minister Deepens,” Financial Times, March 11, 2007. See also Jaber, Hezbollah, p. 82.

  112 “I’m off to India …”: Robert Ames to Adrienne, October 1, 1982, courtesy of Yvonne Ames.

  113 “very pessimistic assessment …”: Geoffrey Kemp, diary, January 11, 1983, courtesy of Geoffrey Kemp.

  114 Reagan’s “talking points”: William P. Clark, National Security Planning Group Meeting, February 4, 1983, secret, declassified November 15, 2005, NSPG 0051, Lebanon, Box 91306, Ex Sec, NSC, Reagan Presidential Library.

  115 Clark wrote Ames a thank-you note: William P. Clark to Robert Ames, February 22, 1983, MC 003 Box 18, #128971, Reagan Presidential Library.

  116 Shamir “cannot leave without hearing from me …”: “Talking Points for the President,” 3/11/83, NSPG 0058, Lebanon, Box 91306, Ex. Sec. NSC, Reagan Presidential Library.

  117 “I’m a little more optimistic …”: Robert Ames to Helen Ames. This was Bob’s last letter to his mother.