The Good Spy.

• Author: Camp, Donald

Title: The Good Spy

Author: Donald Camp

The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames by Kai Bird, New York: Crown, May 20, 2014, ISBN-13: 978-0307889751, 448 pp., $20.03 (Hardcover), $10.99 (Kindle).

Robert Ames, "The Good Spy" in Kai Bird's masterful biography, was a senior CIA officer killed in the Beirut embassy bombing in 1983. Ames was an Arab linguist and the Agency's most senior Mideast analyst when he died. He seemed to be everywhere it mattered in those years, including as liaison with the PLO in the years when the U.S. had no official contact. In Bill Casey's eulogy, he was "the closest thing to an irreplaceable man."

Bird has crafted a biography that intersects with the history of the Middle East, the PLO, and Lebanon from the early 1960s to 1983. He has written the story of a man trying desperately to make a difference and to find a way forward on Israel-Palestine issues. Sadly, it is also a story--as it is today--of missed opportunities, steps backward rather than forward, and increased polarization of the combatants.

Ames would have fit well in academia, but he became instead a fine CIA covert officer. He was no organization man, maturing from shenanigans during training at the CIA's Camp Peary to an unauthorized meeting with Yasir Arafat in 1977. (Ames wrote to his wife "headquarters would go into outer space if they learned about this.") He established and nurtured the crucial liaison relationship with Arafat's intelligence chief Ali Hassan Salameh that was our main channel into the PLO for years. As he advanced in his career, he craved a role in policy and was part of a small coterie of senior officials whom Secretary of State Shultz entrusted to come up with a creative peace plan after the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in 1982. Despite his cynicism, he was optimistic that a new approach could resolve these knotty problems. And while deeply sympathetic to the Palestinians, he developed a solid respectful relationship with Mossad and strove for objectivity in his analysis

Ames had two vital Arab contacts throughout most of his career. Although it would seem hard to assess from this distance, Bird sees Ames dealing with both as friends as much as assets. One-- Mustafa Zein--is a major source for this book. The other is the PLO's intelligence chief Ali Hassan Salameh. Ames resists misguided efforts to recruit him as a paid agent, arguing that this would be a death sentence for him within the PLO. But he is powerless...