Incisive Biography of a Great Spy

The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames by Kai Bird

The Good Spy is Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Kai Bird’s compelling portrait of the remarkable life and death of one of the most important operatives in CIA history – a man who, had he lived, might have helped heal the rift between Arabs and the West.

On April 18, 1983, a bomb exploded outside the American Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people.  The attack was a geopolitical turning point. It marked the beginning of Hezbollah as a political force, but even more important, it eliminated America’s most influential and effective intelligence officer in the Middle East – CIA operative Robert Ames.  What set Ames apart from his peers was his extraordinary ability to form deep, meaningful connections with key Arab intelligence figures. Some operatives relied on threats and subterfuge, but Ames worked by building friendships and emphasizing shared values – never more notably than with Yasir Arafat’s charismatic intelligence chief and heir apparent Ali Hassan Salameh (aka “The Red Prince”). Ames’ deepening relationship with Salameh held the potential for a lasting peace.  Within a few years, though, both men were killed by assassins, and America’s relations with the Arab world began heading down a path that culminated in 9/11, the War on Terror, and the current fog of mistrust.

Bird, who as a child lived in the Beirut Embassy and knew Ames as a neighbor when he was twelve years old, spent years researching The Good Spy.  Not only does the book draw on hours of interviews with Ames’ widow, and quotes from hundreds of Ames’ private letters, it’s woven from interviews with scores of current and former American, Israeli, and Palestinian intelligence officers as well as other players in the Middle East “Great Game.”

What emerges is a masterpiece-level narrative of the making of a CIA officer, a uniquely insightful history of twentieth-century conflict in the Middle East, and an absorbing hour-by-hour account of the Beirut Embassy bombing.  Even more impressive, Bird draws on his reporter’s skills to deliver a full dossier on the bombers and expose the shocking truth of where the attack’s mastermind resides today.

= = = = = = = = =  a letter from the author: = = = = = = = = = = = =

I never thought I could write this book—a biography of a spy. Who would talk to me about the life of a clandestine CIA officer? Who would tell me thirty- and forty-year-old secrets, all still classified?

But within months my narrative morphed into a full-blown biography of Robert Ames, a legendary CIA officer who was killed in April 1983 in Beirut. I had known Bob Ames when I was a teenager in Saudi Arabia. He was our next-door neighbor. And so when I contacted his widow, Yvonne Ames, somewhat to my surprise she readily agreed to an interview, and later, much more. A year into the project, she found in the family attic Bob’s correspondence, literally an open window into his life and work as a CIA officer.

Simultaneously, other doors opened. While the CIA itself never responded to my requests, eventually more than forty retired CIA and Mossad officers told me their memories of Ames. These seasoned spies all seemed to feel that these old secrets now belonged to history.

One evening in Tel Aviv, a retired Mossad officer interrupted me and asked, “But is your government really going to permit you to tell these secrets?” I laughed.

And then one day I made a cold call on Skype to a cell phone in Amman, Jordan. Mustafa Zein answered the call—and immediately asked how I had found his number. I couldn’t tell him, but Mustafa talked to me anyway. He later said he had been waiting for someone to tell his story—and the incredible story of Bob Ames—for nearly three decades.

Mustafa told me everything about his friendship with Ames, the man he called “Munir” or the “enlightened one.” But he was also able to tell the extraordinary story of how Ames cultivated a ten-year relationship with Ali Hassan Salameh, Yasir Arafat’s intelligence chief. This highly clandestine relationship between the CIA and the PLO became the seeds for the Oslo peace process.

     -- A letter from author Kai Bird, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer. His next book The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, is a biography of a CIA officer.

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Customer Review on Amazon.com:

5 Stars

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
History's bitterest vintage will always be What-Might-Have-Been
By Nathan Webster TOP 500 REVIEWER VINE VOICE on April 10, 2014

This is a difficult book to review because it will encourage reactions that have nothing to do with the book's material at all, but rather how a reader applies this knowledge to the present day. So it's easy to go off on tangents, which I couldn't avoid as I wrote this review. The fact that it did connect so well to the present day is a large part of why it deserves five stars. This is not dusty history - this had a direct bearing on who we are today.

I would consider this less a biography of Robert Ames than it is using the story of Ames to tell the much larger story of the Mid-East in the 1970s-80s, an era we've basically forgotten. There were lessons that we SHOULD have learned from that time, but we chose other directions.

Ames' story is intriguing and nuanced - he was navigating the difficult backrooms of diplomacy, trying to build relationships with high-level PLO officials that he was actually barred from talking with (unless they were paid 'agents' of the CIA). At the same time, Israel intelligence was actively opposed to these contacts, and was essentially trying to subvert any US moves toward normal interactions with PLO figures that Israel considered terrorists.

A parallel (and this is a tangent) is Nixon's approach to China, which put the Soviet Union on its heels a little bit. Israel clearly did not want to find themselves as the lesser member of a three-party discussion. So while discussions between the PLO and the US could have helped those nations/organizations come to an understanding, that was not in Israel's interest.

Readers who think history began on Sept. 12, 2001 would be well-advised to read carefully the history of Beirut in the 1980s, and some questions will be answered about how we found ourselves in the mess we're in.

By invading Lebanon to evict the PLO (after Ames efforts were flatlined by the asassination of his main PLO contact, Hassan Salameh), Israel created a power vacuum that led to the massacre of some 2,500 civilians in a Palestinian refugee camp. To put that in perspective, it's the same number of Palestinians, Shi'a Muslims, etc. as the number of US civilians who died on 9/11. What do you think the response to that would be? We have the answer - the destruction of the US embassy in Beirut that killed Ames and many others, and later the 241 Marines who died in the Marine barracks bombing.

Of course, that was 1982-83 - plenty of Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israel had occured for decades before that. Ames' contact, Salameh, was suspected of involvement in the 1972 Munich Olympics attack - so of course Israel would target him.

It's the perfect definition of a circle of violence, and we're still living in it today.

I think author Kai Bird does an amazing job of taking the reader through this convoluted and epically frustrating history. I think he leans a bit too heavily toward "what might have been" arguments that I'm not sure history supports. In the 1980s, neither Israel or the PLO were ready to engage each other - add to that Iranian hatred of the US that dated back to our support of the despotic Shah, and then add Syrian nervousness at a Christian, possibly Israel-aligned government on their border, and I don't think peace was coming - whether Ames had lived or not.

Another connection to the present day - while there's all sort of raving about "Benghazi!" a read of this book reveals the kidnapping and killing of several US diplomats. It happens. But, the US government - for much of it, the Ronald Reagan-led government - did little or nothing in response. Mainly because they didn't know who to target. While there was SOME response to the bombing of the Marine barracks, it was limited to salvos from the USS New Jersey - hardly an invasion of two countries like post-9/11. In fact, one response was a screwed-up car bomb that killed 80 civilians - and those casualties led to the dismantling of the entire 'revenge' effort; compare that to how we attack with drones today, where common civilian casualties are barely discussed. Do we think there will never be a cost? That the 'other side' is simply going to forget?

The 70s-80s governments had plenty of flaws, but Nixon, Carter and Reagan recognized that the US had global responsibilities and had to keep things in perspective - the nation could not go off half-cocked on crazed foreign misadventures. We had to take our lumps and navigate the rough water as best we could. Unfortunately, that lesson in perspective and unintended consequences was ignored by subsequent administrations; and look what happened.

Of course, had we responded more forcefully in 1983, maybe Bin Laden never rises above a local despot in an Afghan mountain town. Or maybe we bomb Soviet ally Syria and it escalates into tactical nukes over Europe. You never know.

This is a great book, not just for the upclose look at an unheralded US agent, but for a history to which we would do well to pay better attention.

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Spy-Life-Death-Robert/dp/0307889750/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1400316933&sr=1-1&keywords=the+good+spy+the+life+and+death+of+robert+ames