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.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography, Espionage, Middle East, Politics, War

448 pages, Hardcover

First published May 20, 2014

About the author

Kai Bird is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist, best known for his biographies of political figures. He has also won the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography, the Duff Cooper Prize, a Woodrow Wilson Center Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a Contributing Editor of The Nation magazine.

Bird was born in 1951. His father was a U.S. Foreign Service officer, and he spent his childhood in Jerusalem, Beirut, Dhahran, Cairo and Bombay. He finished high school in 1969 at Kodaikanal International School in Tamil Nadu, South India. He received his BA from Carleton College in 1973 and a M.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University in 1975. Bird now lives in Miami Beach, Florida with his wife, Susan Goldmark, and their son, Joshua.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

“You are interested in a person, not in life, and people die or leave us…But if you are interested in life it never lets you down. I am interested in the blueness of the cheese. You don’t do crosswords, do you, Mr. Wormold? I do, and they are like people: one reaches an end. I can finish any crossword within an hour, but I have a discovery concerned with the blueness of cheese that will never come to a conclusion…”
- Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana


I received Kai Bird’s The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames as a gift. Initially, I didn't quite know what to make of it. If we’re being honest, I suppose I was momentarily confused. Robert Ames? The name didn't immediately ring a bell. That was the CIA officer who turned out to be a KGB mole, right? I asked myself. And the title is meant to be ironic?

All wrong, of course.

This book is indeed about the CIA, and it’s about a spy, but there is nothing ironic about the title, and Robert Ames, as opposed to Aldrich, never betrayed his country. To the contrary, he served it long and well, to the best of his abilities, right up to the day when he was killed in the Beirut Embassy bombing of April 18, 1983.

I doubt I’m the only one who had never heard of Robert Ames before cracking the cover of this biography. I also doubt I’m the only one who has only a fleeting notion of the Beirut Embassy bombing, or the bloody Lebanese Civil War that preceded it. For that reason alone, The Good Spy is worth tackling, even if it is far from perfect.

The Good Spy feels like two different books rolled uncomfortably into one. One of these books is a standard cradle-to-grave biography of Ames. The other is a lucid intro to the unraveling of the Middle East following the Second World War, focused primarily on the rise of Yasir Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization. As a biography, I found The Good Spy rather thin and listless; as a history of American interventions into the conflicts of the Middle East, I found it rather fascinating.

The early going is a pretty slow trudge, as Bird details the upbringing and early life of Robert Ames. These sections, before he joins the CIA and becomes part of the Middle East Directorate of Operations, are rather dull. Too often, Bird seems to be listing facts, instead of using facts to derive meaning. Ames was born on this date. He went to this school. He liked basketball. He went into the Army. He was posted here. It goes on like this. At this point, however, I should add that I have a rather high bar for biographies. Having read Caro and Morris and Chernow, I expect a certain level of quality. If I simply wanted a collection of tidbits laid out in chronological order, I’d read Ames’ wiki. A good biography brings the subject to life, so that you understand them from the inside out. I never got that here. Not even close.

Part of the issue, I think, is in the way this was researched. Bird says at the outset that his chief sources of information are the interviews he conducted with people who knew Ames (some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity). He tried to get access from the CIA, but they rebuffed him, and a lot of documentary evidence remains classified (in this era of leaks, I’m surprised Bird wasn’t able to turn up more). Practically speaking, this means that Bird is relying on people’s memories long after the events they are relating took place. The result is that Ames is often spoken of and described in vague terms and rosy platitudes. “He was a great guy,” for example, or “he was a loving father,” or “he was an excellent operative.” These are conclusions that don’t give me any idea of what Ames was actually like. Why was he a great guy? What made him a great operative? Too often, these questions aren’t answered.

This opaque picture gets really frustrating when it comes to Ames’ career. The title of the book led me to believe that I’d get some idea of how spycraft works in reality, as opposed to a novel by Greene or Le Carré. Yet, despite all the statements on how Ames was a such a fine clandestine officer, Bird never explains what that means in real terms. What made him so good? I’m assuming it takes more than a wig, funny glasses, and a fake mustache. But maybe that’s the key. Who knows? The Good Spy certainly didn't enlighten me.

(I should add that Bird cowrote the well-received American Prometheus, about the life of J. Robert Openheimer. It won a bunch of awards and everybody liked it. Everybody but me. I might be totally alone in being impervious to Bird's biographical style).

In any event, my waning interest got a boost about one hundred pages (out of 355 pages of text) into things. This is when Ames develops a “back channel” to the PLO by making the acquaintance of Ali Hassan Salameh. Salameh is a captivating character. If you’ve read anything about the Israeli hit squads following the 1972 Munich massacre, or if you’ve seen the film Munich, you have probably heard of Salameh. The Israelis fingered him as a planner of the disastrous kidnappings, though it is likely he wasn’t involved. That did not make him an innocent, as he was connected to a number of other terrorist plots. Despite being a wanted man, Salameh did not hide in a cave or Pakistani safe house. Instead, he lived the high life, driving fast cars, spending big dollars, and even dating Lebanon’s only Miss Universe winner, Georgina Rizk.

According to Bird, Ames’ relationship with Salameh, and by extension Arafat, helped bring the PLO “out of the cold.” What that actually means is never fully developed, at least in my opinion. But in delineating Ames’ ties to Salameh, and also to Mustafa Zein, a Lebanese contact who believed in America’s potential for good, Bird provides a powerful look at the roads taken, and not taken, towards a lasting peace in the Middle East.

In the most engrossing portions of The Good Spy, Bird gives a propulsive rundown of a Middle East wracked by war and laced with cultural and religious schisms. He narrates the expulsion of the PLO from Jordan, which led to the formation of the Black September terrorist organization. Black September was responsible for the ’72 Olympic massacre, which has to be counted among the all-time backfires, as it turned world opinion against the PLO. Bird covers Operation Wrath of God, the unrelenting campaign of assassination undertaken by Mossad to destroy those involved in Munich. This proved to be a friction point between Israel and the U.S., since the CIA was cultivating Salameh while Mossad was trying to kill him. Bird devotes a large amount of space to the long war in multi-sectarian Lebanon that turned Beirut from the Paris of the Middle East to a synonym for terror. His ability to craft a coherent and easily digestible narrative that slices through the thickets of a long and complex struggle is this book’s chief achievement.

“Human nature is not black and white,” Graham Greene once wrote, “but black and grey.” That could be the epigraph of The Good Spy. Ames’ association with Salameh is fraught with ethical implications. Salameh was, to many, a terrorist and a murderer. But he was also a conduit. Ames believed that the Israeli-Palestinian question could not be answered by speaking to only one side. So he forged ahead on his path, regardless of what his superiors or various administrations thought.

America is a longstanding ally of Israel, and accordingly, her foreign policy has been overwhelmingly slanted in Israel’s favor. Thus, it took a certain kind of guts for Robert Ames to spin his webs in the ways he did. I appreciated Bird’s willingness to not only present Ames’ beliefs, but to demonstrate sympathy to the Palestinian cause. Too often, the conversation about Palestine begins with “they’re terrorists” and ends with “they’re terrorists.” Ames recognized that he existed within an imperfect world, short on fairy-tale heroes, and he attempted to work within that paradigm to make things better. As Bird writes in his coda:

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict still engenders angry emotions on all sides. Robert Ames believed that a real peace was possible. The Middle East need not remain a perennial battlefield. He used his intelligence and charm to begin the peace process in the shadows of Beirut. His clandestine work was a catalyst for that symbolic handshake on the White House lawn [between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat]. He was the good spy. But his work remains unfinished.

As I’ve already mentioned, I don’t think that The Good Spy works well as a biography. I did not get any real sense of Robert Ames as a person. But Bird is interested in more than just a person. He is interested in the lives of many people caught up in a seemingly intractable conflict, one that has flared, subsided, and flared again for decade after decade. It is an issue that stubbornly eludes a satisfactory conclusion. Bird succeeded in convincing me that any acceptable endgame will only come about through the efforts of men and women like Robert Ames, who are willing to cross lines, think broadly, speak directly, and challenge their own preconceptions.

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

”People expect a revolutionary to be a miserable-looking, shabby creature dressed in rags. That’s the wrong notion….As the Arabic saying goes: Better a reputation of opulence than a reputation of misery.” ----Ali Hassan Salameh

From the moment that Robert Ames set foot in the Middle East he fell in love with it. He loved the language. He loved the culture. He loved the people. The reason he was in the Middle East was because the United States wanted to learn more about the region and also become a player in the ever changing politics.


Robert Ames was sometimes passed over for promotion because he was deemed too bookish or too intellectual. ERRGGHH!

We are always the big, goofy, well meaning, naive kid that has to get knocked down on the play ground several times before we start to realize that this is no game, there is no play, no holding of hands singing kum ba yah. Beirut was a web of loose alliances with changing causes and shifting loyalties. Everyone expects you to pick a side. Neutral never means neutral to these groups. There are only enemies and friends.

Beirut is at the heart of everything. She is the mistress that everyone desires. The goddess everyone wants to call their own.

Lebanon is a multisectarian country with Sunnis predominantly along the coasts and Shias in the South, but when the French colonial powers set up the government they placed the pro-western Maronite Christians in control. When the state of Israel is created hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians end up in Lebanon tilting the balance of power even further in favor of Muslim control. Do you feel the cauldron starting to stir? Of course the Cold War doesn’t help matters as the Western Powers and the Soviet Union are picking their favorite splinter groups to support providing them with training, supplies, and encouraging things to destabilize. All believing of course that their side will eventually be triumphant.

Ames is not the best recruiter, not in the technical sense that makes the CIA happy. The CIA doesn’t consider a person theirs unless that person is taking money, lots of money. Ames, because of his true passion for Arabic culture is able to make friends, make connections all without using money as the main incentive. He doesn’t want power over his contacts. He wants friendships and long term relationships built on mutual trust.

Yasir Arafat after a particularly good piece of intel is passed to them through Ames says: “Okay, whatever Bob says from now on, it is like it is written in the Koran.”


Lebanese Prime Minister Saeb Salam, Salameh, and Yasir Arafat.

Ali Hassan Salameh, The Red Prince, is the soul of the Palestinian movement. He is dynamic, intelligent, and reckless, and in many ways more a political force than his boss Arafat. He was destined to be the leader of the movement. He lived large, as you can see from the quote at the beginning of this review his philosophy was about showing the world just how successful he is. He seduced German reporters, wives of diplomats, and Lebanese women from prominent families making friends and enemies in equal measure. He was a wild card, unstable, but also the man in the middle of everything happening.

Mustafa Zein, a man who believed in America, dreamed about America, and proved to be the best friend the Americans ever made in Lebanon, introduced Robert Ames to Salameh. It was an interesting relationship with the serious, bookish, faithful family man on one side and the flamboyant playboy on the other. When Salameh took Georgina Rizk, the Lebanese Miss Universe winner as his second wife, Ames refused to meet him at her apartment or with her even in the room anywhere. Ames disapproved of the relationship with Rizk for a number of reason, but one being that he really liked and respected Salameh’s first wife.

Georgina Rizk, the great Lebanese beauty who fell in love with Salameh. She is the only woman from the Middle East to win Miss Universe.

Salameh was dangerous for a lot of reasons. The Israelis were uneasy about him because they realized he was the window to the West. He was the very man that might be capable of brokering a deal with the Americans that would see Arafat standing in the White House.

In 1972 everything changes. During the Munich games a band of Palestinian militants calling themselves Black September kidnapped and killed eleven Israeli athletes and officials at the Olympic games.

The worst publicity event in the history of the world.

It wasn’t supposed to go that way. They were supposed to hold hostages to get Palestinians languishing in Israeli prison cells released in exchange for the Olympic athletics. When their position is stormed they spray the hostages with machine gun fire and grenades.

The sympathy the world had for the Palestinian cause went cold.

Golda Meir launches Operation Wrath of God. Mossad over the next few years systematically hunts down anyone even peripherally involved with Black September. One of their primary targets is Salameh. Even Ames with his influence will not be able to save him.

In 1982 the Israelis invaded Lebanon to root out the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The Palestinians withdrew. Janet Lee Stevens an American activist known as The Little Drummer Girl, who also inspired the book by John Le Carre, pleaded with Arafat not to evacuate his men. She knew from her own sources that things could go very, very wrong.

They did.

The Israelis surrounded the Palestinian camps at Sabra and Shantila, camps that were full of mostly women, children and old men. The Phalange, representatives of the Maronite Christians, came into the camps and systematically raped and killed thousands. The Israelis routinely launched flares that allowed the Christians better lighting for their butchery.

So why?

The Lebanese president elect Bachir Gemayel had been assassinated. The Phalange wrongly assumed the Palestinians were behind it. As it turned out Syrians were the culprits.

It is hard to fathom how anyone could convince themselves that this was an appropriate response to the death of one man. The fact that the Israelis blocked the exits and were complicit in these massacres makes me nauseous. Even imagining the discussions and handshakes that had to happen while decisions are made to allow this to happen is enough to make me want to be a new species of human being unrelated to anyone who could actually decide that torturing and killing these innocent people was acceptable.

In 1983 a pro-Iranian group called the Islamic Jihad Organization convinced a young man to drive a pickup truck loaded with 2,000 pounds of explosives into the US Embassy and hit the detonator. This is considered by many to be the dividing line in the United States relationship with the Middle East. This is the moment when there is a perception change by Arabs regarding the United States’s involvement in Middle Eastern affairs. This happened in April. In October of the same year was also the deadly attack on the Beirut Barracks of American and French servicemen killing 299.


Beirut Embassy after the bombing

David Ignatius was at the Beirut embassy on the morning of the attack. He was researching a book that was to be called Agents of Innocence. Robert Ames was the basis for his hero. Mustafa Zein; and of course Salameh. are also primary characters in the book masquerading under pseudonyms. Fortunately for Ignatius he left the Embassy not long before that fateful explosive moment when relations between the Middle East and the United States took a dramatic turn.


Mustafa Zein, an ardent supporter of American involvement in the Palestinian issue. He believed in the Agents of Innocence.

Robert Ames was also at the Embassy that day and so was the Little Drummer Girl. They were among the seventeen Americans who perished. Most of the rest of the 63 victims were Lebanese. It became just an event among many atrocious events during the Lebanese Civil War, but the ramifications continue to be felt today.

I was in some ways fortunate that I read Agents of Innocence before reading this book because I had already been introduced by Ignatius to a number of people that gave me a broader base of identification with the evolving events covered by this book. Bird introduces the reader to a lot of people and to a long list of splinter groups which can become overwhelming.

Of course there is much more to the story than what I chose to cover here. As Ignatius led me to Kai Bird, now Bird has lead me to reading the Little Drummer Girl by John Le Carre. Even now I’m not sure how I feel about the events that continue to swirl around Beirut. I feel sympathy for the people that love that city and have seen it destroyed by invasion, civil war, rocket fire, and ideology. I hope to see the day when it becomes the progressive, tolerant society it was on the road to becoming before these series of disasters turned it into the center of a maelstrom.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
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[Trish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kai Bird believed Robert Ames exemplified the best of American values: sober, diligent, thoughtful, and fair. Ames was an enthusiastic family man, and despite being occasionally short of funds, he wanted a big family. When stationed in Washington, he often kept regular work hours, leaving at the same time every morning and arriving home in time to listen to music and read a bit before dinner with the family. When someone keeps a regular schedule, it is difficult to imagine what goes on in the hours he or she is gone, and Ames’ children never knew until his death that he was not the Foreign Service officer he purported to be.

Ames’ career as a covert CIA agent spanned the decades from the nineteen fifties to the eighties, when he was killed in the 1983 Beirut Embassy bombing. Outside of his personal life, Robert Ames has always been a device. During his lifetime he was a device for listening to and interpreting activities in the Middle East and a means by which to influence events. Now he is the contextual device by which Kai Bird personalizes and focuses his history of the modern Middle East featuring cameos by important players.

I’m not sure how I convinced myself I needed to read another book about spies. I must have been in the midst of Ben McIntyre’s compulsive read, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal, when I agreed to take on this true tale of the American spy Robert Ames who was operating about the same time and same location as the infamous British mole Kim Philby. After finishing McIntyre’s book and PBS documentary and doing the attendant research, I admit to exhaustion with the idea of spies. I have a better idea of what they do but I can’t say I am particularly impressed with what they accomplish.

Spies often feel the same way. Bird quotes letters from Ames to his wife in the 1980’s in which he says he feels he has written the same cables over and over during his career and “nothing seems to change.” Of course, he was writing of the long-running Arab-Israeli conflict which even today is no closer to resolution, despite Ames’ help in preparing the ground for the 1993 PLO-Israeli Oslo Accords.

It is tempting for us civilians to imagine the CIA as an agency of super-humans, knowledgeable and capable beyond the capabilities of ordinary folk. But however good they are, these individuals operate in a deadening bureaucracy peopled with outsized egos holding differing opinions, and they may be held hostage by swift changes in policy that come with newly elected officials and administrations. Bird explicates the environment in which Ames navigated, introducing us to Ames’ superiors (Duane “Dewey” Clarridge, among others) and presidents (including Reagan and Bush), and concludes that everyone gets cynical after years in the Agency. Bird reports that some CIA officers are amazed when academics are found to have “incredible understanding” of political scenery overseas despite having no access to confidential information or restricted cables. (!)

Robert Ames was an Arabist. Bird paints him as a serious man, not given to frivolity or drinking and carousing, in contrast to many operatives at the time (the British esprit and bonhomie appeared to revolve around alcohol). Ames had an earnestness about resolving the Israeli-Palestinian issue that he acted upon by forming a liaison with a close associate of Yassar Arafat, the flamboyant Ali Hassan Salameh, with whom he corresponded throughout his years studying the Middle East. Bird goes to great lengths to cast doubt on Salameh's involvement in the 1973 Munich Massacre at the Olympics. Ames was sympathetic to the Arab position and distrusted the leadership in Israel, and apparently did not believe Salameh would take such an action. Bird, the son of two Foreign Service Arabists, appears to agree with this view. Bird writes that “all the Foreign Service officers who spent any time in the Middle East felt a deep sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians.”

Bird writes in detail about the changing alliance of Arab factions and how one group would morph into another with the death or sidelining of one or another key player. With this background we can chart in hindsight the growth in strength of radicalist factions in the Middle East, and locate particular times when things might have been steered differently (other than eliminating people we disagree with). What remains chilling is how little we know despite our “intelligence,” and how little we affect for good the larger picture.

Perhaps Robert Ames deserved his own book; I thought Bird’s final chapters in which he places Ames’ work in the context of larger happenings in the Middle East more instructive than focus on a bookish Arab specialist bushwhacking the CIA bureaucracy. I am suspicious of people called “fine examples of American values” simply because America has so often proven herself tone deaf and ignorant rather than a courageous and open-minded example of democracy at work. I am not sure, however, that Bird was lauding the man Ames so much as showing us that his type of covert CIA officer, the learned specialist who dignifies with his consideration positions our political leadership claims to oppose, may be a better risk for us as a country to take than to have extrovert, fast-talking non-specialist operatives offering our stated enemies monetary bribes (in English!), thinking they’d “recruited” them. Probably both are necessary, if only to keep one type from thinking they "know it all," though I often wonder about the use of the Agency for intelligence-gathering anyway. Surely a giant bureaucracy is hardly the way to obtain secrets.

In the end, I found I was more interested in the broader context of Ames’ work in the Middle East, and in the final chapters after the Beirut bombing, Bird expands from Ames to give us the larger context. It is in these chapters that all the personal attempts by various individuals acting in their own circles come together to create a drama large enough for the world stage. All the personalities begin to make sense and we see places we might have had a moment for rapproachment. One could argue that Ames died without accomplishing his dream of ending the Arab-Israeli conflict but that Kai Bird’s retrospective of his work in context shows us both the errors and the possibilities for the future.

That this book is written today may be another indication that the tide of public opinion is shifting in America regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. Historians and reporters may write unpopular positions but they usually don’t get recognition unless there is a groundswell of appreciation of their arguments. My guess is that the tide is (finally) shifting to support of the Palestinian cause. With this history we can see the outlines of American policy in the Middle East in the past fifty years. Bird makes no excuses for Israeli intransigence on the issue of a Palestinian state and instead highlights Israel’s role and responsibility for current conditions in the Middle East. There are indications the American public is ready to hear this argument. Our government will come along when we do.

Random House Audio provided me with an audio of this book in exchange for an honest review. The reader for this book, René Ruiz, was particularly good with pacing and pronunciation, making the details comprehensible.

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

DISCONNECTED

Robert Ames was a CIA analyst/operative, an “Arabist”, specializing in the Middle East during the height of the Cold War. In 1983 he was tragically killed – along with 62 others - when a suicide bomber drove a truck loaded with explosives into the American Embassy in Beirut. This is his biography which is at times fascinating and prophetic, but is also sketchy, muddled – and at least to this reader – ultimately frustrating – raising more questions than it answers – particularly about its subject let alone the Middle East.

In his introduction the author explains he received no assistance from the CIA. Putting aside the debate whether this lack of support was right or wrong – I think it’s safe to say such a decision by Langley is not surprising, if not predictable. Furthermore Ames’ wife/widow – I assume during interviews with the author - makes it clear that her husband was a good company man – sharing only what was necessary with her about his work. (Furthermore the author knew Ames as an adolescent and just like his parents and neighbors assumed Ames was a State Department employee.) But even taking that into account these two information sources – or lack thereof - this reader had a very difficult time gaining any appreciation or understanding of Robert Ames the man and more specifically the operative– who by all accounts was extremely effective in gathering and cultivating trusted sources.

Two cases in point, PLO “intelligence officer” and Arafat favorite, Ali Hassan Salameh – a name I was familiar with - and Ames’ go-between, Mustafa Zein – a name I wasn’t. The chronicling of these two men the most informative and engaging part of the book, providing the reader with a behind the scenes look at the formation/evolution of the PLO, Arafat himself, the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the terrorist off-shoot Islamic Amal/Hezbollah.

In the “lack of info department” - There are only a few paragraphs on Desert One, the failed US attempt to rescue the American hostages in Iran, which the author tantalizingly hints Ames may have helped plan. And Ames’ chumming up to Secretary of State George Schultz – a possible inter-department/bureaucratic faux pas – at least among his CIA peers

There is also a lot of repetition in the narrative from chapter to chapter – including the presence of author John LeCarre and his inspiration for/writing of his novel The Little Drummer Girl, the disappearance in Libya of Imam Musa Sadr and even the status/ages of the Ames children.

Bottom line is that I found The Good Spy a mixed bag – excellent in parts, but far too often sketchy or at least incomplete.

[Judith E · Rating 3 out of 5]

Around the 1970’s, contrary to public policy, the U.S made back door overtures (pissing off Israel) to Yasser Arafat to broker a peace plan with Israel.

CIA operative, Bob Ames, was an Arabist, a lover of the Arab culture, the language, and the history. His sympathies appeared to be with the displaced Palestinians and he was a logical choice to create a relationship with Yasser Arafat’s camp.

This is a strange and confusing book. The CIA refused to comment or declassify any information about their involvement (as if we would believe them anyway). Allegedly, some ex-CIA employees spoke with the author (as if they are reliable-ha!), but most of the confirmed information is the history of the escalating conflict between Arab factions, Israel, and the U.S.

Here are some revealing tidbits:

1. There is a majority population of Palestinians in Jordan and the U.S. hoped Jordan would become a Palestinian State.

2. It appears the communication and goals between the U.S. State Department and the CIA are sometimes blurry.

3. The CIA and its operatives should never have an agenda separate from intelligence gathering.

4. Jimmy Carter actually said fuck.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since I'm into history and the publisher mailed me this book a while back, I've just finished Pulitzer-prize winner Kai Bird's The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames. I'd never heard of Robert Ames before, but now I'll never forget him. I've made a very lengthy post at the nonfiction page of my online reading journal, so if you want the long of it, click through. Otherwise, you're just getting my impression of the book here.

Ames' life and work as a CIA agent and then Intelligence Officer in the Middle East, as well as the glimpses behind the scenes at politics and policymaking are all very well portrayed here, and there may be some small merit in the author's thesis that when Ames was killed in the 1983 bombing of the US embassy in Beirut, a sizeable chance for peace in the Middle East died along with him. He had the both the ear and the confidence of formidable players there, he worked tirelessly to help put out flames before they became raging fires, and gave up much of his family life in the interests of peace. A Good Spy is a most excellent read, and it is definitely a book that a)I'll never forget b) I urge everyone who has an interest in trying to understand the current situation in Middle East to get a copy of and c) has definitely spurred my interest in further reading.

I'm still in a little bit of shock after having finished this book. Well worth every second.

[Steven Z. · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I write, rockets continue to be launched from the Gaza Strip by the militant group, Hamas, and Israel continues to retaliate with massive bombing and ground forces. As this tragedy continues to unfold, Kai Bird’s latest work that deals with the Arab-Israeli conflict, THE GOOD SPY: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ROBERT AMES is extremely timely. When one thinks of the CIA operatives who have impacted the Middle East, the names of Miles Copeland, Kermit Roosevelt, and William Eveland come to mind, but usually not Robert Ames. However, when one calculates the impact of these operatives on events in the region, Ames’ name should emerge near the top of the list. Bird, who during his teenage years was a neighbor of Ames, recounts his private and shadow life as a CIA operative in great detail, but what he has written is more than a general biography. He places Ames’ career that encompassed the years 1962 through 1983 in the context of events throughout the Middle East concentrating on the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and the Lebanese Civil War that raged between 1975 and 1983. What separates Ames’ work from others who have attempted to facilitate peace in the region is that he was the individual who “brought the Palestinians in from the cold” through his relationship with Yasir Arafat’s intelligence chief, Ali Hassan Salameh. (15) The book opens at the White House with a smiling President Clinton cajoling Yitzchak Rabin and Arafat into signing the 1993 accord granting the Palestinians a degree of self-government in Gaza and the West Bank. Bird argues throughout that this agreement would not have been possible without Ames, and that his death during the American embassy bombing in Beirut in 1983 was a blow to the peace process because of Ames’ ability to empathize with Palestinians, gain their trust, and behind the scenes work to establish a relationship between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the US government in order to foster negotiations with Israel for a permanent peace.

During his first posting in 1962 in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia Ames became the protégé of Richard Helms who later would become the Director of the CIA. Like Helms, Ames came to believe in human intelligence, not splashy technical operations or the application of force which tends to bring too much attention to CIA operations. Ames wanted to remain in the “shadows” gathering intelligence from his contacts in making recommendations for policy. For Ames “violence was usually impractical, ineffective, and costly.” (37) In the early 1960s the CIA came to place a high value on officers who could develop human resources. To do so they recruited agents who could remain anonymous, apply discretion and ironclad secrecy in cultivating sources. These qualities were difficult to find, but along with “commonsensical powers of observation,” Robert Ames was the perfect operative. Employing these skills for over two decades from postings in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Yemen, Lebanon, and Langley, Va., Ames developed numerous sources that allowed him to alter American Middle East policy and work to find a solution to the many conflicts in the region.

Bird does an excellent job explaining the background history of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict as well as the Lebanese Civil War through the lives of the most important historical characters. He focuses on many individuals but zeroes in on those who interacted with Ames the most. The two most important people are Ali Hassan Salameh, who followed in his father’s footsteps by fighting for Palestinian statehood and eventually he was recognized as one of the top two Palestinian military commanders and the eventual successor to Yasir Arafat. The second was Mustafa Zein, educated in the US and was a very successful business consultant in Beirut. Zein had many contacts in the Arab world and believed he could help bridge the political and cultural divide between America and the Arabs. Ames would develop genuine friendships with these individuals and would work behind the scenes using Zein’s contacts to foster a strong relationship with Salameh. Bird details how Ames was able to ingratiate himself with a man so close to Arafat and once he is able to do so, what the implications of that relationship were. Though Salemeh was seen as a terrorist by the US and Israeli governments, Ames were able to convince CIA and other national security officials in Washington of the benefits of establishing some sort of tie to the PLO. At the time the PLO was labeled a terrorist group by the US and officials were banned from having any contact with them. In the early 1970s Ames relationship with Salameh established a back channel for PLO-US communication that President Nixon and Henry Kissinger were aware of, and Arafat approved. With the Jordanian Civil War and the formation of Black September resulting in the Munich Olympic massacre in 1972 Ames worked through Zein to establish further links with Salameh who grew distant at times when elements other than Ames within the CIA tried to officially recruit him. Ames realized that would make Salemeh a candidate for elimination by radical elements and just wanted to maintain his “friendship” with him. The book at times is a dual biography of Ames and Salameh and stresses how their lives interacted as each tried to use each other for the benefit of the causes they believed in.

Bird does a superb job explaining the intricacies of the political rivalries within the Arab world and how the US could take advantage of it. He explores the relationship between the CIA and the Israeli Mossad and the conflict that usually remained dormant between these two intelligence groups. The Mossad resented Ames’ work with Salameh who they blamed for the Munich massacre. On a number of occasions Ames warned his source about assassination attempts against him, in part because of his friendship, and in part because he was so integral to what Ames was trying to achieve. As their relationship progresses it becomes clear that Ames is not objective when it came to the Palestinians. He developed an emotional attachment to them and in a number of ways reminded me of an American version of T.E. Lawrence. As Bird writes, “to say that Bob Ames was sympathetic to the Palestinian cause would be an understatement. He empathized with them deeply and admired Ali Hassan to a degree that is hard to explain. He knew that Salameh had done some terrible things” and he wrote his wife Yvonne, “It is hard to believe our friend was what he was.” But, being that Ames was the CIA’s only conduit to the PLO he was given great latitude and to his credit usually his subjectivity was not an impediment to his work.

The most important parts of the book aside from development of the Ames-Salameh partnership was Bird’s description of the Lebanese Civil War from 1975-1983. Bird explains the different Lebanese factions and how they came to be and how they impacted events. Bird also explores in detail the connection between events in Lebanon and the development of a plan in the early Reagan years to use Arafat as a vehicle for peace. Ames was directly involved in negotiating an Arafat-US rapprochement, especially after he and his fighters were forced out of southern Lebanon and were given safe haven in Tunisia. Bird’s description of the harrowing bombing of the US embassy in Beirut in 1983 that killed Ames and the bombing of the US Marine barracks shortly thereafter are very accurate. As he does throughout the narrative Bird relies on his firm grasp of history and numerous sources within each government and movement.

The last section of the book focuses on who might have been responsible for the various acts of terror that occurred in Lebanon and an exploration of the role of Iran and its allies in the bombings. Bird’s conclusion is that the perpetrator of these acts is currently living comfortably in the US under CIA protection is very disturbing. Bird also reiterates his thesis that Ames laid the ground work for the 1993 accords and conjunctures as to what might have been accomplished had Ames not perished in the 1983 embassy bombing. Bird’s writing is crisp and his conclusions reflect a great deal of thought and are usually very accurate. The book is an important addition to the literature of its subject, and if one would like another perspective in trying to understand what is currently presented on the news each hour, then Bird’s book is for you.

[Shannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

An overly dry telling of a true tale that could have been more engaging.

This was the audio version.

OVERALL GRADE: D plus.

[Dax · Rating 3 out of 5]

Labeled a biography of Robert Ames, this is really a deep dive into politics of the Middle East in the 1970's and 1980's. The shadow tactics between Mossad and the PLO are fascinating. Bird's narrative does not cast a glowing light on the Israelis. The chapter detailing the 1983 US embassy bombing in Beirut was nothing short of horrific in its detail. We learn about several fascinating characters, particularly Ames' Lebanese contacts Zein and Salameh. The passages regarding Ames' career were actually the least intriguing, and Bird's delivery was somewhat flat at times, but overall this was a very good read. Not quite excellent, but a strong 3 stars.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book on several levels and I give it my highest recommendation (which for all practical purposes is entirely meaningless).

Kai Bird sets out to tell the thorny and complicated story of Middle East relations during the 1970s and 1980s through the life of former CIA operative Robert Ames. (Not to be confused with infamous CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames.)

The book is very Ames centric early on. We learn that Ames and his wife were neighbors with the author’s family in Saudi Arabia in the 1960s, thus the connection between author and subject. From there we get background information and the quotidian elements of life in the CIA. That may sound dry but it isn’t. It formed a solid foundation to build the story that starts to pick up very quickly. (By many accounts Ames was a rock solid person, which was nice to read, but I worried early on that we’d only get an idealized version of the man. We don’t and that’s good.)

As Ames’s career progresses he makes deep personal connections with Mustafa Zein (the Lebanese Zelig) and Ali Hassan Salameh (“The Red Prince”) (thought by some to have at least some involvement with the murder of the Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich in 1972). Both men are fascinating and Salameh is very controversial. (He was security chief for the PLO and a wanted man by the MOSSAD for his terrorist activities.)

While Ames remains in the picture we start to get a broader view of Palestinian/Israeli/Lebanese/Syrian/Iranian relations as the book unfolds. This is twisty subject matter but the language and storytelling are very straightforward and the author adeptly avoids the confusing blur that has overwhelmed lesser books on such material.

The last several chapters are absolute page turners. The author doesn’t force his opinion on the reader but it’s very clear where he comes out on various subjects. I liked his perspective and thought he handled that aspect very well.

Edit - Two other books I enjoyed very much and which overlap well with The Good Spy are Objective Troy (by Scott Shane) and Rise and Kill First (by Ronen Bergman).

[Mohamed · Rating 4 out of 5]

الكتاب دسم جدا وملئ بمعلومات مفيدة جدا عن الفترة ما بين 1962 و 1985 الخاصة بالشرق الأوسط عن الصراع العربي الإسرائيلي

والصراع العربي العربي والذي يندى له الجبين من هول الأحداث البشعة الفظيعة التي حدثت في تلك الفترة بين العرب بعضهم البعض

روبرت ايمز هو ضابط مخابرات أمريكي أمضي حياته المهنية بين دول الشرق الأوسط وقد كان عربي الهوى وعاشق للشرق ساعد في حل العديد من المشاكل من خلال الوسطاء الذين كانوا يساعدونه لحل مشكلة الصراع العربي الإسرائيلي مثل مصطفى زين وعلى حسن سلامة والذين رفضوا أن يكونوا عملاء لإيمانهم بالقضية العربية وضرورة إنهاء الصراع بين العرب وإسرائيل وكان السبب الرئيسي في اتفاقية أوسلو بين رابين وعرفات

توجد الكثير والكثير من المقولات التي تبين لك النذر اليسير من طرق تجنيد وسطاء او عملاء مثل مقولة هليل كاتز موظف سابق بالموساد حيث قال
<أفضل طريقة لتجنيد العملاء من خلال جعلها قضية مبدأ فهي تسمح للوكيل أن يمتلك سبب جيد لتبرير ما يقوم به فهو في أغلب الأحيان يطمئن نفسه أنه يقدم خدمات جليلة لوطنه ... أترك الرجل ينعم ببعض الكبرياء>

ما صدمني هو مدى الحقد والغل الذي يملأ نفوس العرب وذلك بسبب أحداث أيلول الأسود حيث قام الجيش الأردني بقصف أماكن اللاجئين الفلسطينيين ونتج عن ذلك مذبحة بالألأف

وكذلك مذبحة صبرا وشاتيلا والتي قام بها إيلي حبيقة أو إلياس جوزيف حبيقة قائد مخابرات حزب الكتائب وميليشيا القوات اللبنانية خلال الحرب الأهلية اللبنانية بسبب اغتيال السفاح بشير الجميل الذي تم انتخابه رئيس لبنان بمساعدة الوكالة وبمباركة إسرائيل ونتج عن ذلك قتل الآلاف من الفلسطينيين

<أن الأنظمة العربية بما فيها المحافظة والراديكالية وجهان لعملة واحدة حيث تتميز بالفساد والطغيان والعجز ولا يمكنها بأي حال من الأحوال مواجهة التحديات الإسرائيلية السياسية والعسكرية >

للأسف الكتاب ملئ بمواقف مخزية للتعاون السري بين العرب وإسرائيل للقضاء على بعضهم البعض ... فهم في العلن أسد هصور في مهاجمة إسرائيل وفي الليل يفتحون أرجلهم للموساد وقادة إسرائيل

الترجمة كانت أكثر رائعة والمترجم لم يبخل بإضافة بعض المعلومات لكي لا يلتبس الاّمر أثناء القراءة

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

his men had come out here John Wayne–style, believing that they could save Lebanon, only to find themselves being shot at by the Israelis and bombed by the Arabs. We should withdraw and let the people here fight it out among themselves. They deserve each other.

- an American officer stationed in Lebanon following the terrorist bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that killed 63 people including Robert Ames and 16 other Americans.

In my experience great non-fiction writers so often turn out consistently good or great material. Maybe it’s beyond the research and the polish and the editing but there is often a deftness and awareness about pacing and moving on when the reader might get bored. For his work on American Prometheus, the biography of Robert Oppenheimer, Kai Bird won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006. It remains one of my favorite books.

In this equally amazing book about a completely different topic, Kai Bird tells the tragic story of CIA agent Robert Ames. His experience in Arab affairs and in Lebanon were so valuable specifically were sought by President Reagan. His expertise was considered towards peace in the Middle East - at least from the U.S. perspective.

We learn - in the prologue - that Ames’ life was tragically cut short on April 18, 1983 when Ames - now a high level official in the U.S. and aide to William Casey CIA Director - while visiting the U.S. Embassy was killed by the concussion from the massive truck bomb explosion.

Bird takes us through Ames’ childhood in Pennsylvania where he starred in basketball and then on to college where his LaSalle team won the NCAA basketball championship. After graduating and then serving two years in the Army at a remote outpost in Africa he decided to learn Arabic and join the CIA. His twenty five year career began in the Middle East and ended there in 1983. There were many different assignments that he held in the Middle East as he rose through the ranks. There many pages addressing his closeness with his family who were living with him in most places - except Lebanon which was a war zone by the late 1970’s. His wife was interviewed extensively for the book.

What makes this biography special is - not so much the humanity that Bird is so good at delivering - but the clarity around the Middle East history and conflicts that were so vital to Ames’ career. Bird is able to weave this historical narrative seamlessly into the biography.

The views in this book are critical of the Israeli government during Ames’ tenure in the Middle East. Ames was sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and the important contacts that he curated were Lebanese and Palestinian. Some of these men risked their lives for Ames. Others were long-term operatives and terrorists who the Israeli Mossad were simultaneously trying to assassinate.

6 stars. Highly recommended.

[AntKathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book from the publisher at no charge, and with the understanding that any reviews would be my own opinion.

"The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames" is an in depth view into CIA operative Robert Ames and the Middle East/Israeli/Western World conflicts and politics. The author, Kai Bird, knew Bob Ames as an adolescent when both families were stationed in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. As an adult, Bird meticulously researched the personal history of Ames from his youth, through his ever-rising career in the CIA, and to the legacy he left on US-Middle Eastern relations, policies and spy craft.

The book starts out somewhat slowly, but eventually reaches a comfortable stride that keeps the reader (both fans of fiction and non-fiction) deeply involved in and informed of the complexities of CIA operations and the pursuit of peace between Western and Middle Eastern countries. It is heavily favorable of Robert Ames ("the good spy") as a person, and most people interviewed for the biography agree with Bird's assessment of Ames. Some of his colleagues found Bob to be overly ambitious, but most agreed that he was a truly decent individual who loved the Middle East, knew it and its people well, and worked hard to try to give US leaders an understanding of the region. "The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames" is very well researched by the author. It is easy to read, but not overly simplistic. What is most interesting about the work is that the reader is shown that Ames felt the Palestinian quest for a homeland was a worthy pursuit. He felt that some sort of agreement could probably be achieved through mutual respect and understanding between multiple nations and cultures. Unfortunately, this did not occur during Bob's fairly short lifetime, and of course, has yet to be fully resolved to this day.

A detailed biography of Robert Ames, and a significant view of peace efforts and terrorism in the Middle East, Kai Bird's "The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames" is a significant primer of US involvement in Islamic/Israeli affairs. The only improvement I would suggest is that a map of the Middle East be included to show the changing boundaries and areas of turmoil described in the book. A veteran reader and student of the area would be familiar with such geography, but this book has wider appeal than that, and someone wanting to learn more about the area could do with the visual aid.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent biography of Robert Ames, who worked for the CIA in the Middle East and Near East and at headquarters in Langley, Virginia, through a 20+ years career, and was killed in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983, in which 63 people died. The author does a great job of documenting Ames's life--he was a superior on-the-ground intelligence officer who spoke fluent Arabic and loved the people and cultures where he worked. He would get to know everyone he could, not just as potential assets but because he was genuinely interested in people. His appreciation of Palestinian people, history, and culture was sometimes not well-received by more political-leaning colleagues and superiors who thought that U.S. interests always lay in supporting Israel, and he was passed over for promotion a couple of times because he was considered "too intellectual" (this is a bad thing?) and by some to have "gone native." I learned a lot from this book about the recent history of the Middle East and the various points of view there, and especially about the diversity of attitudes and cultures there--no monolithic "Arabs" exist, and many people who just want to live in peace have been harmed by the political and terroristic actions of others who are willing to sacrifice the innocent to various causes in this trouble-plagued region. Certainly there is no moral high ground left to claim. In addition to tracing Ames's life and career, the author presents his relationship to his family. Bird also tries to figure out who was responsible for the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, and does a pretty good job of pointing out the responsible parties despite the limitations imposed by the shadowy world of international intelligence. This is by no means a spy thriller (although there's some of that), but is worth reading as a chronicle of a good man's life and for insights into the troubled Middle East.

[Oren · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a bit of a disappointment. I felt like I was plodding through it, picking up the occasional nugget along the way. Much of the book details Bob Ames' relationship with the Red Prince, Ali Hasan Salameh, who was head of Fatah Force 17. According to the book, he was wrongly implicated in the Black September Munich operation. However, the book implies - and it's not difficult to believe this - that Israel targeted Salemeh simply because of his relationship with Bob Ames, which gave the PLO a back-door negotiating channel with the CIA, and ultimately the White House.

I could have done without much of the mundane detail surrounding the life of Bob Ames. But it was interesting reading about how Arabists like Ames pushed the PLO into conflict with Israel after the PLO had given up targeting Israel and refocused its efforts on usurping the Hashemite kingdom of Jordon. According to the book, the US - out of a simplistic Cold War version of loyalty to Jordan - convinced Arafat to leave Jordan alone, although the US's primary negotiating goal was to get the PLO to cease targeting Americans. Thanks to Ames' relationship with Salameh, this worked...kind of...for a little while.

I also didn't realize the extent of the CIA's relationship with Force 17, which, according to the book, had formal training from the CIA to professionalize Arafat's bodyguard force. This had the unfortunate side-effect of providing Imad Mugniyeh with professional training, which later served as a basis for his prodigious terrorist abilities, which were later nurtured by the Iranian Republican Guard.

This book is worth reading, but its length - around 350 pages - betrays the lack of in-depth research that you find in many popular history books today. That's why I'm giving this book only 3 stars. It contained too much boring information about Bob Ames' life, and not enough about more of the operations he ran. It's good to understand the rift between the CIA and the State Department and between Arabists and more level-headed analysts, but this type of information is better documented in other books.

Mustafa Zein emerges as one of the books more interesting figures. I would have liked to read more about Zein's thoughts on the unnamed perpetrator of the Beirut embassy bombing that killed Ames that the book states is living comfortably in America. Is it General Ali Reza Asgari?

In the end, I found myself bored by the life of Bob Ames and wholly unimpressed by his mindset and infatuation with the Arab lifestyle. I felt he was unfairly hostile to the State of Israel and a prototype for Edward Said's Orientalism, which is kind of ironic. Again, the book contains a few juicy nuggets, but 3 stars is all it gets.

[KOMET · Rating 5 out of 5]

"THE GOOD SPY" is a book with a dual character which tells a history of U.S. diplomatic and espionage activities in the Middle East during the Cold War. First, it is a story about a most remarkable CIA officer, Robert Ames, who devoted the whole of his 23 year career in the Middle East to helping develop and secure peace in that troubled region through engaging with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) at a time when the U.S. disavowed any contacts with it. And it is also a story of the evolution of U.S. Middle East policy between the 1960s and the early 1980s.

Reading "THE GOOD SPY" rekindled some of my earliest memories of the Middle East (from the early 1970s). And for that reason, it was both refreshing and a much appreciated learning experience to receive from Kai Bird fuller accounts and analyses of events as diverse as the Black September murders in Munich during the 1972 Summer Olympics; the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975; the courage Egyptian President Anwar Sadat displayed in his attempts to make peace with Egypt's erstwhile enemy, Israel, which culminated in the Camp David Accords of 1979; and the 2 tragic events of 1983 in Lebanon which profoundly altered the U.S. approach in dealing with what is now (as was then) a seemingly intractable conundrum in the Middle East.

"THE GOOD SPY" is a book I recommend to anyone who wants to understand why efforts to obtain peace in the Middle East have proved illusory since 1948. It also gives the reader insight into the sincere efforts of Bob Ames (he was one of the CIA's premiere Arabists who spoke fluent Arabic and loved the people of the Middle East and its varied cultures) to help provide a platform from which Israelis and Palestinians could establish ways of peaceful coexistence and reconciliation - and the realization of the 2-state solution and a lasting peace.

[Nancy Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to read this book solely for its chapter on the 1983 Beirut embassy bombing. I've read several accounts of the Marine barracks bombing that same year, but nothing in much depth of the embassy tragedy. I have to admit I turned to this chapter first and then went back for the backstory.

As always, I am amazed when a journalist can put his or her hands on so much material that a story like this one can be told almost minute by minute. I'm not sure any of us truly understands the copious amounts of dogged research that goes into a book whose writing seems effortless and a story whose tension mounts with every sentence. I am a new fan of Kai Bird!

When I went back to start at the beginning, I was surprised at how quickly the author's story pulled me in. I'm not a reader of spy fiction or a viewer of spy movies -- I'm so dense when it comes to figuring things out that I'm usually lost and feeling grouchy within minutes. Add to that the difficulty of understanding the politics of the Middle East, and this book could have been a tough slog. But through his focus on the personalities that populate this complex world, Mr. Bird spins a tale not only of intrigue but also of down-to-earth, day-to-day life that will appeal to readers even as clueless as me.
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[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5. DEEP. BREATH. This book was riveting, timely, and burdensome (but paradoxically in an unputdownable way). It not only helped shape my understanding of what is currently happening with the Israel-Hamas war, but provided a fascinating look at several of the major moments in modern history that have shaped the broader relationships between Israel, Palestine, Iran, and the United States.

I wish I could say this book gave me hope - in some teeny tiny ways I suppose it did in that Bob Ames got as far as he did in some regards. But even 10 years after this book was written, it now feels like we have totally regressed, and it does feel like Bob Ames’ work was, tragically, in vain.

This was a five-star book except that I have an advanced reader’s copy, which was apparent in some duplicative material that I assume is resolved in the fully edited version. I am stunned how well I was able to keep up with all of the fine details - all credit to Kai Bird for that, even unedited!

Quite the book to finish out the year with. I am exhausted. Imagine actually working for the CIA - absolutely never, no thanks.

[Chris Dietzel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a decent biography on Ames. It does a good job of providing an account of his entire life, his family, and his work. It's also effective at introducing a ton of supporting personalities and does well at keeping them all distinct so it's not confusing to the reader who each person is. The main drawback is that you can never be sure how credible the information is and whether the author is being impartial. With Napoleon: A Life, you know Roberts is impartial, just as with Truman, you know McCullough is completely biased and in love with his subject. With this biography, you sometimes get the sense that Bird is not being impartial and other times you can't be sure, so you never really know if what you're reading is a romanticized version of Ames' life or an objective account.

[RANGER · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating read interrupted by author's political and personal biases
Kai Bird's The Good Spy is a well-written, fascinating biography of CIA field agent, Arabist and martyr, Robert Ames. But it's also biography loaded with bias. Interestingly, when Kai Bird was a child, he knew his subject, Robert Ames, and the Ames family who lived alongside Bird's own family when the author's parents served in the State Department. This might be one reason why this book takes such a sycophantic approach to its subject. Ames was a classic post-WWII CIA field station denizen, those agents who spend their careers living abroad under diplomatic cover, attending cocktail parties and host nation ceremonial functions in the hopes of recruiting a bona fide agent for intelligence exploitation. Ames was a particularly gifted Arabic linguist and devoted Arabphile. As a former intelligence officer, I can tell you that the great risk of such people is the tendency to become so infatuated by the culture and people you love that you become blind to their shortcomings and deceptions. The result is biased intelligence work that undermines national security objectives. This certainly seems to have been the case with Robert Ames. While he stood apart as possibly one of the most gifted Arab experts in the US government during the difficult days of the 1970s, he also became infatuated with several nefarious characters including the head of the PLO’s Force 17, Ali Hassan Salameh. The two had a relationship which eventually became the US government's diplomatic backdoor to the PLO. Salameh, as head of Force 17, was believed by most intelligence experts to be the secret brains behind Black September and the death of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics (one of the most notorious terrorist operations of all time). But oddly enough, Ames believed otherwise. And the misplaced trust he placed with the PLO may have led directly to his Ames' own death in the Beirut Embassy bombing in 1983 at the hands of a nascent Shi'ite terrorist group that would eventually morph into Hezbollah (a group started, ironically, by one of the rare Shi'ites acolytes of Salameh). One of the weaknesses of this book is the fawning presumption by Kai Bird that had Ames lived, his relationship with Salameh would have blossomed into a genuine US-PLO diplomatic alliance that would have led to world peace. This utopian delusional faith in Ames' messianic potential ruins what otherwise could have been a brilliant and important biography. It's as if Bird is now channeling Ames' ego-driven blind spot. In The Good Spy, Bird echoes all of Ames’ prejudices: every Muslim Arab is good, every Lebanese Christian is a liar, the Israelis are mere colonial interlopers who have brought misery to the good hearted Palestinian peoples and, worst of all, every US government official who ignored, dismissed or failed to follow Robert Ames was a fool and a bumpkin... at least in the eyes of Kai Bird. Kai Bird suggests that the Oslo Peace Accord could never have happened without Ames--a dubious honor considering that the Oslo Accords may be among the worst "peace deals" ever made, one broken by the Palestinians over and over again despite the best efforts of American diplomats and Israeli goodwill. This utopian take on the part of Kai Bird ruins what is otherwise a great history of some important and little understood events of the Robert Ames period. The chapters about the US embassy bombing and later Marine Barracks bombing are particularly moving and well-researched. Robert Ames was undoubtedly a good CIA soldier who did what he thought was best. But he was also flawed. He made some mistakes that may have cost him his life. Kai Bird's sentimentalizing of Robert Ames is an unfortunate weakness of an otherwise fine book. But Kai Bird's own progressive, utopian bias combined with his personal connection with the Ames family probably made a more objective biography impossible. After all, Bird is a product of the establishment and cannot help but pay homage to establishment ideals... even if it taints this book. Recommended nonetheless.

[Mostafa · Rating 5 out of 5]

لا شك أن القضية الفلسطينية خسرت الكثير بسبب تخاذل الدور الأمريكي الفعال والمؤثر حينما يريد، وبسبب ندرة المستعربين من أمثال "روبرت ايمز" الذي يناقش الكتاب ما لن أقول عنه "حياته" بل "حقبته" فالكتاب لا ينصب على شخصية ايمز فقط، بل هو يركز على مناقشة حقبة كاملة من تاريخ الوطن العربي منذ أن بدأ ايمز العمل في محطة وكالة الاستخبارات في قاعدة الظهران في أواخر الخمسينيات، ثم انتقاله إلى اليمن في الستينيات، ثم محور الكتاب الرئيسي في لبنان السبعينيات والثمانينيات، والأشخاص الرئيسيين في تلك الفترة كعلي حسن سلامة وياسر عرفات وويليام كيسي وريتشارد كلارك وأرئيل شارون ورؤساءه وكيسنجر وشولتز وزملاءهما، كما أن ترجمة الأستاذ الأرزقي كالعادة تأتي متعة فوق متعة الكتاب، وتدخلاته، وحتى لا تُفهم تلك الكلمة خطأً فالراجل لا يفرض وصاية على النص بالحذف أو التزويد، ولكنه يشير بين أقواس إلى تعليق إذا أراد قوله ورأى أنه التبس على الباحث لجهل بالشأن العربي أو لوثيقة تاريخية مُعيّنة، مثل هذا الكتاب يُقرأ بنهم ومتعة لا ينقطعان، وحسرة وآلالام، وحزن على مصائر أصدقائنا من أمثال ايمز وجانيت لي ستيفنسون وعلى ندرة أمثالهم في الإدارة الأمريكية

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a phenomenal read! Really will forever make me feel different about a number of things. This is basically a biography of a CIA officer, Bob Ames, who died tragically in a bombing in Beirut in the early 1980s. He is the good spy. What made him good, according to Bird, was his quest for knowledge, his ability to listen, his even-handedness, and his ability to empathize with many different people. Perhaps for people who have read a lot about the Middle East and intelligence, none of this will be surprising, but for me, a follower of stuff from my comfy northern Virginia abode, it makes clearer that a lot of what I hear from the DC bubble is all the more crap than I already thought it was. Ideologies, black-and-white thinking, good vs. evil - it's all bullshit. Sure, there really is evil out there, but too many people label too many things evil, and then feel great about not talking to what they have deemed evil. Ames was willing to listen and talk to anyone, and he learned a lot, and he came closer (albeit perhaps not close) to seeing Middle Eastern possibilities that haven't seemed even imaginable since then. He was an Arabist, and he fell in love with the Middle East, and he befriended people we today despise. And he got information for it. Sadly, as Bird notes, in working with people who many of us call terrorists, he was killed by terrorism.
I have not found it possible to look at the ongoing tensions between Israel and Palestine (and the fighting going on now between Hamas in Gaza and Israel) and believe for sure who is more to blame for it all. The US has made it's bed with Israel, for some very good reasons (and some questionable ones), and the US will continue to pay a price for that decision (and reap some rewards for it too). I'm quite non-biased on the whole matter, which may make me the idiot, but I sure hope that there are Bob Ames's out there who are at least trying hard to extend a hand to a diversity of factions and groups in and around this area.
Finally, there's a lot of neat info in the book on Ames's work with Presidents Carter and Reagan. Knowing how hard both presidents wanted to see peace in the Middle East (and likely made decisions that made peace at different times possible more and less likely), one could take the parts of the book where Reagan is mentioned, and replace his name with GW Bush or Obama, and it would seem to be an accurate depiction of our more current presidents' inabilities to see progress made in and around Israel. The frustrations are constant, the opportunities are still limited, and the players involved are stubborn as hell. Though I have already leaned this way over the past couple of years, I am all the more convinced that from this point forward, all presidential candidates - of either party - will earn eye rolls from me when they talk about their plans for Palestinian and Israeli peace, and all presidents - of either party - will have my sympathy as they deal with this insolvable issue.

[Scott Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Ford’s departing secretary of state Henry Kissinger, tried to veto the Salameh visit. Kissinger, of course, knew full well that this was the man who’d been the CIA’s back channel to the PLO for nearly seven years. But in an extraordinary intervention, CIA director Bush approached President-elect Jimmy Carter’s designated secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, and persuaded him that Ali Hasson Salameh’s visit to Washington was in the U.S. national interest.”

This is one of the many occurrences where the right thing to do is a matter of opinion. What is the answer in the middle east with respect to Israel and the Palestinians and should the US be working with people like the PLO who carry out terrorist actions.

The Good Spy, The Life and Death of Robert Ames tells the amazing true story of Robert Ames a CIA spy who put himself in harm’s way for years. What Ames true motivation is debatable in my opinion. I think he started out interested in the work and probably hoping to help American interests but I think over time his motivations may have changed. He was clearly brilliant and principled but became more supportive of the Palestinians over time which may have affected his loyalties. His relationship with one of the top PLO leaders Ali Hassan Salameh clearly was more than just a CIA agent and an asset.

I love history but when its simply a list of facts it can be very dry. To me history is at its best like it is in this book when you have people and issues that are not all black and white or right or wrong.
I debated while reading the book if I thought Robert Ames and the author Kai Bird were anti Israel, It was debatable enough on both counts to say that Ames and the author were at least fair in presenting evidence for both sides although I do think they both are very sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

Overall Robert Ames led a fascinating life and this was a story well told.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames by Kai Bird is extraordinary. If you enjoy a well-written Biography about spies and the Middle East, this is not a book to be missed.

[Elizabeth Theiss Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bird’s biography of CIA master spy Robert Ames initially reads like a set of dossiers on people in his personal and professional life—where they went to school, how they met Ames, the nature of their interactions. As Ames’ experiences in the Middle East grow, a network of clandestine relationships emerges with fractured and violent Middle East politics as the backdrop. We know the end at the beginning of the book, of course. Ames’ death in the bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut is a matter of public record. By telling the story of his life as a spy, a friend, a husband, and a man, the tragedy of decades of violence stands out in sharp relief.

Ames was an Arabist who studied the language and culture of Arab society carefully. At a time when US sympathies lay heavily on the Israeli side, Ames developed relationships and respect for Palestinians.
While he didn’t condone violence on either side, he understood why it occurred. He was an optimist who believed that peace was possible, even after increasingly discouraging events took place. He was known as a good listener and a good friend.

The events that left me rather shell-shocked were the many accounts of assassinations and mass killings. What is the value of human life in a region where the Phalangists can overrun a Palestinian refugee camp and murder hundreds of women, children, and elders? When one assassination provokes a seemingly unending chain of murder and mayhem, when is enough, enough?

After reading Bird’s book, my estimation of the possibilities of peace in the Middle East became decidedly more pessimistic. I hope I am wrong.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very timely book, even though it tells the story of a man who died on April 18, 1983 in the suicide bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.  That man was Robert Ames, a CIA expert on the Middle East.  In the course of telling his story, the Pulitzer Prize winning author also provides excellent background on the roots of the current problems in the Middle East.

Bob Ames was highly regarded in the CIA because for one thing, he could speak Arabic fluidly.  He even acted as a translator at times for State Department officials in the Middle East.  (I find that to be a rather sad commentary on the qualifications and/or training of the Foreign Service.)  Ames was also attracted to the Arab culture generally and made it his business to interact with natives rather than just hanging around with other diplomats, as so many others did.

This very admirable quality of Ames had the effect, however, of making him rather biased toward the Arab side of affairs.  He had little sympathy for Israel and seemed to consider himself an advocate for the Palestinians.  To that end, he made some close friendships with members of the PLO, including Ali Hassan Salameh, the so-called Red Prince, commander of Yasser Arafat's personal security squad and chief of operations for the terrorist Black September group (the organization responsible for the 1972 Munich massacre and other attacks).

Bob Ames considered Salameh a “special friend” and even tried to get permission to give him a firearm as a gift.  He was denied that request, but he was able to arrange (with the approval of CIA Director George H.W. Bush) for Salameh to get an all-expense paid trip to Disneyland, New Orleans, and Hawaii with his mistress.  (This mistress, a former Miss Universe, eventually became Salameh’s second wife -- the allowance of multiple wives being one of the few aspects of Islam to which Salameh paid obeisance.)


Bird devotes a lot of coverage to Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and brutal massacre that same year in mid-September by Lebanese Maronite Christians of mostly civilian refugees in the camps at Sabra and Shatila.  The massacre was horrific, involving rape, torture, mutilation, and execution.  Oddly, the Maronite Christians were not the ones who were blamed for the outrages they committed.  Most Arabs blamed the Israelis, who were in fact in the area, and did nothing to prevent what happened.  But in addition, the U.S. had pulled out most of its forces shortly before the Maronites went on the rampage.  The U.S. preferred Maronite primacy in Lebanon to the increasing influence of Soviet-backed Syria.

In any event, the blowback from the murder of all the innocents in the refugee camps energized a number of terrorist groups who wanted nothing more than to wreak havoc on both Israel and the U.S.

The United States embassy bombing in Lebanon the following April was part of this blowback.   A car loaded with explosives drove into the lobby of the building and detonated.  At the time, concrete car barriers had been sitting in a storage area at the Embassy, yet to be put outside to prevent just such an occurrence.  Aside from Bob Ames, 62 others were killed, including a total of seventeen Americans.

One of the men thought to be a mastermind behind the attack, Imad Mughniyeh, went on to arrange a number of other suicide bombings for Hezbollah, and it was rumored that Osama bin Laden consulted with him in planning for the September 11 attacks.  Mughniyeh was assassinated in 2008 in an action that the CIA says was undertaken by Mossad, and Mossad says was undertaken by the CIA.

Discussion:  While incredibly well-researched, there is occasional repetitiveness in the book, which is surprising.  I can only guess it was rushed into publication precisely because the issues in the book are so relevant to today’s news.

That relevance relates to one of my biggest takeaways form from this book, which is that, if the past is any guide (and I have no reason to think it would be different now),  no one can say what is ever really going on behind the scenes with governmental players.  They not only have to present a certain face to the world for political and diplomatic reasons, but also a lot of their negotiations are highly dependent on secrecy and even duplicity.  Maybe you will find out the truth forty years later, maybe not.  But I think we can be fairly certain that whatever Obama, Netanyahu, Putin, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, King Abdullah, David Cameron, or anyone else says in public, it only has a 50% chance of reflecting what is really going on in private.

My second takeaway:  both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have legitimate concerns and grievances, and both sides have responded to each other irrationally.  But Bob Ames definitely sympathized with the Arab side, overlooking or justifying somehow their terrorist activities, and I think the author sways in that direction as well.  This was never conveyed by a discussion of the pros and cons of each side, if you will.  It was just simply always there, in the background.

Third:  One of the biggest tragedies with the situation between Israel and the Palestinians is that, while people in countries all over the world feel passionately about one side or the other, no one wants to allow either one to emigrate, so neither side really has anywhere else to go.  Furthermore, both sides are convinced (largely for religious reasons) that they need to be in that particular place.  (So much for the idea of Larry Ellison, who purchased an entire island of Hawaii, buying them each a place somewhere else ….)  There seems to be no alternative but for the two sides to find a way to get along with each other, but of course, that doesn’t seem to be happening….

Evaluation:  I tended not to regard this so much as a biography but rather as a detailed examination of the operations of the CIA, particularly in the Middle East.  As such, it is an extremely valuable insider look of a part of U.S. operations that don’t often see the light of day. 
 
A Few Notes on the Audio Production:

Wow!  Rene Ruiz does a fantastic job.  He clearly did a great deal of research into the pronunciation of a multitude of Arabic names and Middle East places.  His intonation and pacing are good as well.

[Paul Frandano · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m loath to add another (unread) comment to this thread, but I thought it might be useful to observe that, among those who had lived the “Secret Life” (as a friend of mine likes to label it), Kai Bird’s book on Bob Ames is a particular favorite. Personally, I go as far as former Agency officer and author (and one of Bird’s many sources from the US national security community) Bob Baer and call The Good Spy simply the best book on espionage I've ever read. (For what it's worth, I've read considerably more than a few, have given graduate seminars on intelligence, and, yes, made a career in that world.)

I didn't know Bob Ames but envy those who did, several of whom are friends. Bird tells his remarkable story at a level of detail that is itself remarkable for all the information he surfaces about a man whose children did not learn his true employer until after his death in the tragic April 1983 bombing of the US embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. And in telling this story, Bird provides a useful primer on the tasks of espionage and “the wilderness of mirrors” that is intelligence and counterintelligence.

In short, as Bird is careful to detail, Ames led a consequential life. Early in his Agency career, he became fascinated by the Middle East, Arab civilization, and the Arabic language, and he became CIA’s most esteemed Arabist. Early on, he rose rapidly in the organization but later ran afoul of bosses who thought him too scholarly and hesitant to “seal the deal” by formally recruiting foreign agents. At the time of his death, Ames filled a senior Intelligence Community analytic post, National Intelligence Officer for Near East and South Asia, making him the top advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence on Middle East topics. Unusually, Ames saw maintaining contacts with old sources as part of the job and, because of his stature, few voiced objections to his crossing of intelligence streams – analysis and operations.

At the heart of Bird's narrative is a single intelligence relationship of a decade's duration. During the Nixon administration (and into the Carter presidency), the United States pursued a policy of shunning the PLO as terrorist organization; any departure would have caused serious friction in Israel relations and would have made domestic US politics as well, riling American supporters of Israel. In 1969, however, well before American diplomats met with Palestinian Liberation Organization members – Ames opened up a back-channel to Yassir Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization through Ali Hassan Salameh, the suave, wealthy, handsome head of Force 17, a PLO intelligence organization that also provided Arafat’s security detail. Ames arranged meetings and venues in his relationship with Salameh – both men would have called it a "friendship" – through a mutual friend, Lebanese businessman Mustafa Zein, whom Bird terms “an Arab Zelig,” a fascinating character in his own right. Salameh was never a recruited CIA asset – that is, had never consented in writing to be directed and remunerated by the US government – but Ames and Salameh helped each other convey to their respective sides information that saved lives and advanced policy agendas.

But the ambiguities of the Ames-Salameh relationship, through the eyes of each side, are part of the essential imponderables of relationships between officers of rival intelligence organizations. Questions of “who’s running whom?” are always part of the picture and, as depicted by Bird, created internal pressures within the rival agencies and political pressures from above, not only for specific information but for heightened security lest word leak out that “the US government is in liaison with terrorists who have murdered Americans and Israelis.” (Reports generated by Ames were “close hold” but routinely passed to Presidents and National Security Advisors, beginning with Nixon and Kissinger.) As one Agency officer who had read the entire file on Ames and Salameh observed, “Part of the time, Salameh was probably telling Arafat the he had recruited a CIA officer…And Ames probably knew this. He would have understood that there was probably some resentment inside Fatah [the dominant Arafat faction of the PLO] circles against Salameh’s friendship with ta CIA officer. Salameh needed to tell his own people something like this for his own protection.”

Most readers will have known how Ames' life ended before picking up this book. Bird's telling of the final days in Beirut, from myriad points of discerning view, is both graphically shocking and powerfully moving. Some passages shook me deeply.

I have one gripe with the book, although it's probably more with Bird's editor than with the author himself. The petty redundancies in the text occasionally drove me to distraction. The editor, Rich Horgan, gets a generous credit in Bird's acknowledgements, but I’m presuming he found Bird's dramatis personae too large, foreign, and unwieldy and - I repeat: I surmise - insisted the text contain an identifier that frames recurring characters in context, despite how many times we've met the person in the text. The customary editorial rule-of-thumb, of course, is to identify the person at first mention, then merely use his name - either, depending on how recent the last mention, given name and surname, or simply surname - as circumstances warrant. The Bird text contains irritatingly redundant introductions of people we’ve sometimes met a page earlier.

That said, such nits cannot detract from Kai Bird's magisterial account and shouldn't deter anyone (except perhaps a particularly punctilious Miss Grundy, who might fling the book across the room) from picking up The Good Spy. The reader will meet real human beings conducting dangerous business on behalf of their countries while gaining a detailed picture of espionage as conducted by practiced professionals. Between the lines, readers can consider Ames' reasoned, alternative American slant on Arab-Israeli affairs, amplified by Bird, that remains, in most US national security and foreign policy circles, a minority position.

[Brad B · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author is too much of a cheerleader for Robert Ames for The Good Spy to serve as a proper biography. However, there is some interesting content here about CIA operations during the Cold War (particularly the 1970s and '80s), and about the United States' consistently failed interference in the Middle East.

[Bartek Węglarczyk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Są dobrzy szpiedzy. Ames był jednym z nich. Bardzo, bardzo warto.

[امتياز · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتاب دسم جدًا ومهم للمهتمين بالقضية الفلسطينية، استغرقت في قراءته ما يقارب من سبعة أشهر

لا أعرف ماذا أقول عنه، ربما كان هو كتاب العام بالنسبة لي

أحببت بوب آيمز (الجاسوس الأمريكي!) وأشفقت على عائلته، وتعاطفت مع جانت لي ستيفنز (ضاربة الطبل الصغيرة) بقدر تعاطفها مع الفلسطينيين وبكيت بحرقة على حياتها القصيرة

كتاب مهم جدًا أنصح بقراءته وبشدة