The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames (15 page)

The parachute drop botched the entire operation. British police soon received reports that locals had stumbled across gold coins. Search parties were sent out to scour the Jericho region. Wieland and two others
sought refuge in one of Jericho’s caves—where they were soon discovered and arrested by British forces. But Salameh and another German escaped on foot toward Jerusalem. Salameh had suffered a foot injury during the parachute landing. He nevertheless made his way to his native Qula, near Lydda, where a doctor treated him. Despite putting a price on his head,
the British never caught Salameh.

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming that the British Mandate in Palestine would end on May 15, 1948. On that date Palestine would be divided into a Jewish state and a Palestinian state. The Jewish population of Palestine celebrated long into the night of November 29. The very next morning, however, Palestinian guerrillas firing machine guns and throwing hand grenades attacked a Jerusalem-bound bus filled with Jews, six of whom were killed.
Salameh’s guerrillas allegedly carried out the attack. A week later, Salameh led three hundred of his men in an attack against the Hatikva Quarter, a suburb on the eastern edge of Tel Aviv. But he lost sixty of his fighters and was forced to retreat. Salameh concluded that his militia was no match for the Haganah, so in the ensuing months he returned to attacking Jewish vehicles on the open roads. It was a deadly strategy.

Sheikh Hassan coordinated his road attacks with Abdul Qader al-Husseini, the Palestinians’ most famous guerrilla leader—and a cousin of the grand mufti. Abdul Qader tried to conquer Jerusalem, while Salameh sought to control the roads leading up to Jerusalem.
During the first six months of 1948, Salameh’s force grew to a roving band of perhaps five hundred guerrillas. He called his men the “Mediterranean Irregulars.” They specialized in roadside bombs. On January 22, 1948, seven Jewish auxiliary policemen were killed when their vehicle was blown apart as it drove past a booby-trapped carcass of a dog lying in the middle of the road. In late March 1948,
Salameh boasted to a reporter from the Associated Press that his men were preparing to conquer Tel Aviv. He maintained his headquarters in a building in an orange grove outside Ramla. On the night of April 4, 1948, this four-story structure was blown up; more than twenty of his men died, but
Salameh once again escaped with his life. By then he and Abdul Qader al-Husseini were recognized as the Palestinians’ two top military commanders. But not for long. On April 8, an Israeli sentry outside the village of Al-Qastal shot and killed Husseini.

On May 30, 1948, militia from Menachem Begin’s paramilitary group, the Irgun, attacked the strategic village of Ras al-Ein, whose wells supplied Jerusalem with much of its drinking water. After a two-hour battle, the Irgun seized the village, including the ruins of Antipatris, a Crusader fortress. The next day Salameh led three hundred of his men to take back Ras al-Ein. After eleven Irgun men were killed and a score were wounded, the Irgun fell back. But as they retreated, they managed to fire off one more mortar round that exploded in the midst of the advancing Fedayeen—volunteer militia. Salameh’s cousin was killed and a nephew was wounded. And Salameh himself suffered shrapnel wounds to his chest.
On June 2, 1948, he died in a Ramla hospital. He was only thirty-seven years old. His death marked a decisive turning point in the Palestinian resistance to the newly established Israeli state.

Ali Hassan Salameh was only six years old when his father died. But he grew up with family stories of his father’s exploits. Salameh was reared to regard his father as a legendary Palestinian hero and martyr to the cause—notwithstanding his association with the failed plot to poison Tel Aviv’s water supply. His father had displayed audacity and courage. “
We must mention two Palestinian commanders,” later wrote the official historian of the Haganah. “Abdul Kader [al-Husseini] and Hassan Salameh. In spite of all the cruelty they showed in harming non-combatant Jewish civilians, they fought personally at the head of their soldiers, and both perished in battle.”

Salameh was a Palestinian patriot, a guerrilla fighter, and a terrorist. He had killed civilians in the name of Palestinian nationalism. His fellow partisans would say that he only fought terror with terror. He was brazen and unorthodox and fearless. His son would become all these things.

Ali Hassan spent his childhood years in Beirut. He and his sisters,
Jihad and Nidal, were raised by their mother in a middle-class apartment in the lovely neighborhood of Ashrafiyeh. They were Palestinian refugees; the Salameh family house in Qula had been razed to the ground. But in Beirut they did not live like refugees. Ali attended Maqassed College, a private school. In 1956, when he was fourteen, he was sent to a boarding school in Bir Zeit, on the West Bank. His mother constantly reminded him of his father’s legacy. “
The influence of my father has posed a personal problem to me,” Ali Hassan Salameh later told a Lebanese reporter in the only extended interview he ever gave to the press. Twelve other family members, mostly cousins, had died in the 1948 war. “My upbringing was politicized,” Ali Hassan said. “I lived the Palestinian cause, at a time when the cause was turning in a vicious circle. They were a people without a leadership. The people were dispersed, and I was part of the dispersion.… The problem I faced was this: whereas the family considered struggle a matter of heritage, there was no real cause to struggle for. There was a history of a cause, but no cause. My mother wanted me to be another Hassan Salameh at a time when the most any Palestinian could hope for was to live a normal life.… I was constantly conscious of the fact that I was the son of Hassan Salameh and had to live up to that, even without being told how the son of Hassan Salameh should live.”

Ali tried for years to live his own life. “
I wanted to be myself,” he said. “The fact that I was required to live up to the image of my father created a problem for me.”

In 1958 the family moved to Cairo, where
Ali studied engineering, graduating with a B.A. in 1963. The move to Cairo was made possible by an invitation from Egypt’s charismatic president, Gamal Abdel Nasser—who had heard that the family of the famous Palestinian martyr was living in strapped circumstances.
Nasser offered scholarships to Ali Hassan and his two sisters. Afterwards, Ali did graduate work in Germany—where he learned fluent German and acquired a taste for expensive clothes, gourmet foods, and wine. Also women. But all along, despite his ambivalence, he was always drawn to politics. In May 1964 Ali Hassan attended the first convening of the
Palestinian National Council in East Jerusalem, and thus he witnessed the formation of the PLO.
Shortly afterwards he joined Yasir Arafat’s Fatah, a secular Palestinian political party and militia. (The name is an acronym from the full name—the Palestinian National Liberation Movement—which when spelled backwards becomes “Fatah” in Arabic, or “opening.”) Ali Hassan had finally found his cause—and how to live as the son of Hassan Salameh. “
I became very attached to Fatah,” he recalled. “I had found what I was looking for.”

After spending a year in Cairo, Salameh was sent by Arafat to Kuwait to be in charge of the PLO’s Popular Organization Department. As chairman of the Kuwaiti chapter of the General Union of Palestinian Students, Salameh actively recruited students into Fatah. In 1966 Mustafa Zein paid a visit and spent a week in his home. When the June 1967 war broke out, Ali Hassan fled to Amman, thinking he could join in the fight. It was all over soon after he arrived. Afterwards, Arafat assigned him to work in Fatah’s Revolutionary Security Apparatus (al-Razd), the organization’s intelligence bureau. In 1968
Salameh was sent back to Cairo, where he received intelligence training from the Egyptian government. Initially, Ali Hassan specialized in counterintelligence, vetting the security files of Fatah volunteers and keeping track of Palestinians who might have been recruited by the Israelis to penetrate Fatah. It was distasteful work, but Ali Hassan was good at it.
He was methodical and patient.
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Arafat liked Salameh—despite the young man’s extravagant lifestyle. And he was certainly drawn to Salameh’s pedigree as the son of a famous Palestinian martyr. Perhaps it also counted that
Ali Hassan had married well. His wife was Nashrawan Sharif, whose wealthy Palestinian family came from Haifa, where they’d owned property worth millions of dollars. Ali and Nashrawan had met in Cairo—and it had
been a love marriage. Nashrawan was an intelligent, attractive woman who had earned a bachelor’s degree in French literature.

Bob Ames knew only enough of Salameh’s biographical details to know that he made an interesting target for recruitment. Accordingly, he encouraged Mustafa to approach his friend. Zein and Salameh soon met in Faisal’s Restaurant on Rue Bliss, across the street from the American University of Beirut’s main gate. Salameh was as clever as he was flamboyant, and he immediately understood that Zein had some special American friends. According to Zein, some months earlier Salameh had “alerted me to expect an American request for me to arrange a contact with the PLO.” Salameh wanted to establish contact with some “official” Americans. But he could not meet in public. So Ames later conveyed through Zein his plan for an initial contact: Zein would meet Salameh at the Strand café at Hamra Street and Rue Jeanne d’Arc. Ames would stroll by at an appointed hour, and as he walked by their table Zein would signal that the man walking by was their contact. Salameh would respond by placing his hand on Zein’s shoulder. It was a script by which Ames could know that Salameh indeed knew whom he was dealing with and was willing to play the game. They would not speak to each other; they might make eye contact. In public, they were merely passing strangers on Hamra Street. But in the future, they’d be able to recognize each other. It was designed by Ames as the first step—one that would preserve Salameh’s security.

The scene is accurately portrayed in
David Ignatius’s novel about Ames and Salameh,
Agents of Innocence
. Both Salameh and Ames brought their own security. Salameh had a number of Force 17 commandos in civilian clothes stationed discreetly around the café. Ames had his own security team in place. As scripted, Ames approached Salameh’s table at the Strand café; but instead of walking by silently as planned, Ames suddenly paused, and Salameh rose and shook his hand. “
Ali looked at Bob, and then pointed to me,” Zein recalled, “and said, ‘This is my man.’ ”

Soon afterwards, Ames had Zein set up a clandestine meeting with Salameh in a CIA safe house—actually an apartment—in Beirut. A PLO source later told David Ignatius that Ames had told Salameh he’d been authorized by the National Security Council to open up a channel to the PLO. The gist of his message was: “
You Arabs claim your views are not heard in Washington. Here is your chance. The president of the United States is listening.” This was somewhat of a calculated embellishment. Ames would have reported the initial contact and requested permission to develop the relationship.

CIA director Richard Helms had cause to learn of Ames’s operation at the end of January 1970, when he attended a meeting of the National Security Council in the White House’s West Wing. Also present were President Nixon and British
prime minister Harold Wilson. On the agenda was a discussion of the political challenges facing King Hussein’s Hashemite monarchy in Jordan. The British handed over intelligence reports showing that Arafat had communicated to one of Hussein’s associates an offer to be prime minister in a future government. Clearly, the PLO expected to soon topple the king. According to David Ignatius, who talked with a source close to Helms while researching
Agents of Innocence
, Helms went back to the Agency convinced that the CIA needed to improve its sourcing from within the PLO. After questioning some top officers in the Directorate of Operations, Helms was informed about
Ames’s promising lead with a top Fatah officer.

Helms thus knew about Ames’s contact with Salameh within six weeks of the meeting. But at what point Helms went to President Nixon to inform him of the existence of this back channel is unknown. Helms had an awkward relationship with Nixon. They didn’t meet often. So Helms probably waited until he had something of substance to report from Ames’s meetings with Salameh. He wouldn’t have waited too long, however, because of the political sensitivities. The PLO was regarded as a terrorist organization, and thus political contacts with its members were prohibited. On the other hand, the CIA viewed the PLO as a natural target for intelligence recruitment. Ames had not
gone “rogue” by approaching Salameh. Helms knew Ames was just doing his job as a clandestine officer. His encounter with Salameh could always be seen as the first step in an attempted recruitment. But it was another matter if Ames’s intention was not recruitment but the opening of a liaison relationship. That could be political dynamite if it were to leak. Helms understood that the president—and probably his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger—had to approve the operation and judge its potential rewards against the risks of disclosure. Nixon and Kissinger were probably brought into the loop by the summer of 1970, some six months after the initial contact. And this meant that at some point intelligence reports sourced to someone close to Chairman Arafat—not naming Salameh, but making it clear where the information came from—would have landed on the president’s desk, perhaps in the Presidential Daily Brief. So maybe Ames’s boast to Salameh was not such an exaggeration. The president of the United States was listening.