The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames

A fascinating, well-written and thoroughly researched book about the life of CIA officer Robert Ames. Ames was a Middle East expert who made his by establishing contact with the PLO as an operational officer. He later moved onto the analytical side, excelled there, and continued his contacts with not only the PLO, but with many players in the region. Kai Bird does an excellent job of bringing Ames to life within the context of his profession and the events that surrounded him.

Ames was an Arabist, and was accused by some within the agency of being too sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. He learned Arabic in the army and continued to improve his language skills throughout his life.

Though most of the events in the book happened over show more thirty years ago, it feels relevant to today. That’s in part because the Middle East continues to be one of the world’s most volatile and newsworthy political hot spots and in part due to the immediacy of Bird’s writing.

The book shows how the CIA often tried to do the right thing – such as during events leading up to the Iran Hostage Crisis – but were often thwarted by events beyond control. As Bird describes the practice of intelligence gathering, it is often “a wilderness of mirrors.”

An added dimension to the story is that Bird knew Robert Ames and his family as a child, when they lived in the same compound at the U.S. Consulate in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

Somewhat ironically, Ames death in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut on April 18, 1983 was the result of the terrorism he was trying to control. But it was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, rather than as a specific target. show less

Books about Israeli-Palestinian strife are way down on my list of interests. However, this was a book about a CIA agent who, while unknown to the world, was a major player in Middle Eastern politics for a while, so I was mildly interested.

It’s possible this book may incite some strong feelings for those who dear care about those politics.

For the record, my own biases are that Israel has way too much influence in American affairs. It is not the 51st state. It has not been a staunch ally. It is capable of taking care of itself. On the other hand, I really don’t care what Israel does with their Palestinian or Arab neighbors. The necessity for America to insert itself in this conflict is non-existent in a post-Cold War era where America show more produces so much of its own oil.

Robert Ames, a CIA employee from 1960 to his violent death on April 18, 1983 when the United States embassy in Lebanon was bombed, was not a neutral in that conflict. He sympathized with the Palestinians. He was a romantic Arabist, a lover of the Arab street though, in his later days, he did empathize with Israeli concerns too.

The book starts on September 13, 1993 with Ames’ CIA colleagues going to his grave as a peace accord is about to be signed by Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat at the White House. They privately tell some CIA young recruits that Ames made that moment possible. But, as the book notes, that, like every other attempt at settling the Israeli-Palestinian question, came to naught.

Bird seems to think the effort was worthwhile. Yet, it has still come to nothing. It’s hard to think that this book is not the story of an unusually talented agent who devoted his career to a futile cause. Bird acknowledges that possibility by quoting others.

I must say that, especially for someone who is not very interested in the background to this story, Bird makes Ames’ story compelling. Bird received absolutely no help from the CIA with this biography, but Ames’ former colleagues (many on record but a few hiding behind italicized pseudonyms) as well as Mossad agents, Palestinians, and Lebanese were happy to co-operate with Bird. And Bird doesn’t just quote those who agreed with Ames but those critical of him too. An amazing amount of detail was put together to provide a picture of Ames on and off duty.

Additionally, there is an unusual connection between Bird and Ames. Bird, as a young boy, met Ames when he posted to Saudi Arabia where Bird’s father served as a Foreign Service officer. To Bird, he was a handsome, affable man always happy to play basketball with the American kids, and Ames’ wife was friends with Bird’s mother. (Bird, of course, did not know until years later that Ames was not a Foreign Service officer but a CIA agent under diplomatic cover).

Ames career eventually took him from an agent in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations to a senior analyst to a man who had input in President Reagan’s speeches on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and U.S. attempts at a peace process. He became an intelligence agent who self-consciously tried to influence policy, generally considered bad practice. Director of Central Intelligence, Stansfield Turner, did not think highly of CIA field agents – in fact he fired many, but he regarded Ames highly and helped in his promotion.

Ames interest in Arab matters started with his posting, in 1951 as an Army serviceman to the highlands of Ethiopia at a CIA listening post. He started to teach himself the language. After he joined the CIA, he loved to drive around and talk with Bedouin and street Arabs. It sharpened his language skills and knowledge of Arab history and cultures. He genuinely sympathized with what he considered the Arab world’s struggle against colonialism, and he considered Israel as a colonizer. An example of what that attitude and knowledge is shown when he quashed a rumor that Russian pilots were flying planes over North Yemen planes in a civil war. After all, a body recovered from a crash had red hair according to report. Ames bluntly pointed out the pilot was an Arab returned from the haj, his hair colored with henna, a frequent occurrence in returning pilgrims.

Ames never really recruited many agents – many CIA case officers never recruit foreign agents. Ames had sources, many sources, whom he genuinely liked, but they weren’t formal agents.

The most significant of these in Lebanon was Ali Hassan Salameh. Salameh was a high ranking member of the PLO, closely tied to Arafat, and Ames knew he was involved in several acts of international terrorism though there is some dispute whether he was involved in the Black September terrorist operation at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Essentially, Salameh was an unacknowledged diplomatic channel from the U.S. government, starting with the Nixon administration, to the PLO. The CIA tried to recruit Salameh who always refused. He was willing to pass information and frank statements about PLO policies and goals, but he would not be bought off.

The Mossad operation to kill Salameh for his alleged part in the Munich Olympics incident resulted in the death of an innocent waiter in Norway and ended the revenge operation by Israel. However, after the CIA failed to explicitly list him as a US asset, the Mossad did get Salameh – and his driver, two bodyguards, a British secretary, a German nun, and two Lebanese bystanders – on November 22, 1979 with a car bomb. (Detonated by Erika Chambers, a British citizen, who was chosen because she didn’t delay – due to moral or psychological reasons or simply better reaction times isn’t clear– pushing the button unlike the men the Mossad tested.)

The book is full of violence: kidnappings, public executions, assassinations, suicide bombers, massacres in refugee camps, and good old-fashioned conventional warfare. However, Bird doesn’t dwell too much on the gory details except a detailed accounting of the bombing that killed Ames and 62 other people. It is clear is Bird is interested in memorializing the career of a man he knew briefly and providing some comfort to the Ames family.

Personally, I was interested for the background to news stories I heard in my youth.

While he doesn’t overstress it, Bird points out the moral and personal ambiguities of espionage. Did Ames become too friendly to those who supplied him information? Did he empathize too much with men he knew to be terrorists and with the Arabs in general?

Espionage involves dealing with bad people. Ames wasn’t under illusions about who he was dealing with in the PLO – though he probably was too incredulous in believing the PLO’s claim they would recognize Israel’s right to exist as anything more than a temporary concession.

Epitomizing that truth is that Ali Reza Asgari, the Iranian intelligence agent that planned the bombing that killed Ames, ended up coming to America, the guest of the CIA. show less

N.B. This book was reviewed by my husband.

To read this book is to come to understand two things. The first of these is the remarkable life and work of Robert Ames, the farthest person imaginable from the trite, “movie” version of a CIA clandestine agent. He did his work, not through nefarious undercover espionage, but through empathy, trust and friendship with the people from whom he acquired information. This was not a pose for him but true friendship, based on understanding of the positions of the friends he made. Ames was an agent called an “Arabist” by the agency for which he worked. This meant that he was informed, in sympathy with and therefore trustworthy to the people in the Arab world. It is difficult to imagine an show more agent more competent and more knowledgeable in his area of expertise. The more painful it is to imagine his frustration, being so often right about the situations he confronted, and yet to have had so little real effect on policy.

The second, and even more distressing thing, is to be made aware through the mirror of Ames's life and work, of the lamentable policy mistakes of both the U.S. government and the government of Israel from the 1960's through the 1980's, the period covered by the book. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but it is easy enough to see, through the agency of this book, the seeds of disaster sown by both governments – seeds which bore ominous fruit in the bombings of the Beirut U.S. Embassy, the U.S. Marine barracks and, yes, the destructions of 9/11 in New York City and Washington, DC.

To begin to understand the tortured history of the Middle East is to read this book. show less

I won this book in a LibraryThings giveaway and I am really glad that I did. It's an extraordinary book and an absolute must read for anyone interested in US foreign policy and/or American diplomatic history.

The focus of the book is Bob Ames. Ames was a bright young man who began the study of Arabic. He was employed in a mundane job and sought something more. He joined the CIA in the early 1960s and asked to be sent to Arabia.

Ames became an Arabist. He met and befriended several members of the PLO. His superiors were sometimes critical of these relationships because Ames "failed to close the deal," i.e., to make these friends paid CIA recruits/informants .Ames kept up these contacts even when it became official US policy that no show more American could have any dealings with the PLO because it was a terrorist organization

As an American, reading this book is a frightening experience at times. It's hard to believe that a senior CIA official could seriously opine that language study was a waste of time for CIA agents because anyone worth recruiting spoke English. It's stunning to read that when the Ayatola Khomeini took control of Iran not a single member of the Embassy contingent, including the CIA contingent, spoke Farsi.

It's also painful to read that the CIA tried repeatedly to bribe PLO agents who seemed to be genuinely motivated by a desire to bring peace to the Middle East and felt that reaching out to the US was essential. The idea that PLO members could be true patriots seems to have beyond the comprehension of many people in the CIA.

There are some shortcomings to the book. The author is the son of a Foreign Service officer and knew Ames when his father and Ames were posted at the same place; the author was junior high age at the time. Ames's widow was one of the author's sources.While from time to time, Bird reminds us that some people said Ames was highly ambitious and competitive, overall the tone of the book is positively reverential towards Ames, to a degree that doesn't seem warranted by the facts about him which appear in the book.

Ames was killed in the 1983 bombing of the American embassy in Beirut. Others died too. It was the biggest loss of CIA agents the US had ever experienced.

On balance, it appears that Iran is responsible for the attack although guilt has never really been proven. Ironically, the person who may have been responsible for planning the attack now lives in the US, having cut a deal with the CIA. Bird finds this morally unacceptable. I'm not sure that Ames himself would have.

This really is a good book and I recommend it wholeheartedly. show less

Until his death in the 1983 bombing of the American embassy in Beirut, Robert Ames was the premier CIA operative in the Middle East. His colleagues and superiors respected his depth of knowledge regarding Arab culture (he was fluent in Arabic, something not as common among American officials in the Middle East as one would expect or hope), his gregariousness, and his basic decency. Ames was much sought after for briefings at the highest levels of government, including Secretaries of State from Carter through Reagan and even President Reagan himself. Nevertheless, some considered him a throwback to an earlier time when spying relied less on technology and more on language skills, personal relationships, and (perhaps most important) show more knowing when to listen. The bombing that killed Ames and 62 others is generally considered to be the beginning of the terror campaign by Hezbollah and other Arab extremists against the U.S. Bird's engrossing biography covers the events of Ames life up to the bombing and concludes with a plausible unraveling of the individuals and groups responsible (some information surrounding the investigation is still classified, but certain relationships and linkages are known). The story of the bombing itself is told with suspenseful and heartrending immediacy. Robert Ames was truly "the good spy" who wanted more than anything to see peace come to the Middle East and spent his career working to that end. Highly recommended. show less

The Good Spy is a fascinating look at just how hard it actually is, to be a good spy. The most fascinating aspect of it may have been the hard stance the author took on Israel. We are so used to the United States always backing Israel and considering the Arabs to be nothing but bloodthirsty terrorist. But Bob Ames was able to form strong relationships, even friendships, with high ranking members of the PLO. Ames was convinced that the PLO wanted to reach some kind of peace accord with Israel. But Israel always took a hard stance and seemed unwilling to make any concessions. And I have to say I was quite surprised to read of just how harsh the Israeli Mossad could be when seeking out vengeance against the PLO. Talk about ruthless. The show more Mossad often crossed the line and were downright brutal, often killing innocent people along with their intended victims.The hardest part about reading this book was detailed account of how, Ames despite all his efforts to achieve peace in The Middle East, was himself a victim of yet another act of senseless terrorism. show less

Times the CIA has succeeded are far less well known than when it fails. Indeed, when credit is due it is either the case that someone else gets their hard-earned plaudits or, more likely, that officially nothing happened at all. When the truth does come out, it is inevitably too late for those to receive ones proper due.The Good Spy is both comforting and heartbreaking to read.

It is comforting to know that the United States has the capacity to produce such talented practitioners of statecraft as Robert Ames, however scarce his like may seem among his profession (in their so-called wilderness of mirrors, the numbers are impossible to know), that poor boys from the streets can become regional experts of the first degree.

The book is show more heartbreaking when one considers how close the region had been to reaching a safer and healthier future than the path it has taken to the present. Kai Bird traces the career of Robert Ames from a windswept listening post in Ethiopia to his death in the 1983 Beirut Embassy bombing, a story which convincingly demonstrates the importance of personal relationships and the tragedy of violence.

If you are interested in Intelligence, in the history of the Middle East peace process, or learning more about America's efforts abroad, you will enjoy this book. show less