The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames (2 page)

So when he arrived at his office at Langley’s CIA headquarters that morning, Anderson convened a regular 9:00
A.M.
meeting of his top officers.
“It was noted that this was a big day for the peace process,” recalled Charles Englehart, another clandestine officer, who’d worked with Ames. “We were all quite optimistic in those days that
this
time the Israelis and the Palestinians would get it right. Someone asked who was representing the CIA on the occasion: the director? A quick check indicated that there was no CIA representation at the ceremony.”

After an awkward moment of silence, Anderson turned to his assistant, Bob Bossard, and said,
“Okay, let’s get a bus and go visit our dead.” Anderson quickly spread the word that he wanted to take dozens of young, newly minted clandestine officers—and a few analysts—out to Arlington National Cemetery. They would walk to Ames’s gravestone and say a few words in his memory.
“I’m proud to say that it was my idea,” Anderson said many years later. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. By 10:30
A.M.
a CIA bus was waiting at the southwest entrance. “We filled the bus,” said Anderson, “probably thirty or
forty people.” Anderson wanted the younger officers there because he thought of the visit as a “values transmission opportunity.”

When they arrived at Ames’s gravesite on a gentle hill near a clump of oak trees, Anderson and his colleagues stared across the Potomac River toward the White House. They knew that at that moment, at 11:43
A.M.
, Israeli and Palestinian officials were signing a Declaration of Principles on Palestinian self-government in the Israeli-occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank. Rabin said in his formal remarks,
“We the soldiers who have returned from the battle stained with blood, we who have fought against you, the Palestinians, we say to you today in a loud and clear voice: ‘Enough of blood and tears! Enough!’ ”

The
New York Times
’s correspondent Thomas Friedman reported that as soon as the documents wer
e signed, President Clinton “took Mr. Arafat in his left arm and Mr. Rabin in his right arm and gently coaxed them together, needing to give Mr. Rabin just a little extra nudge in the back. Mr. Arafat reached out his hand first, and then Mr. Rabin, after a split second of hesitation and with a wan smile on his face, received Mr. Arafat’s hand. The audience let out a simultaneous sigh of relief and peal of joy, as a misty-eyed Mr. Clinton beamed away.” It was an awkward moment, but “hope” had seemingly “triumphed” over history.

“We were at Bob’s gravesite,” Anderson later recalled, “at the moment of the handshake—as planned.” The chalky white gravestone read simply, “Robert Clayton Ames, Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America, March 6, 1934–April 18, 1983.” Nearby were the graves of veterans from the Civil War and America’s wars in Europe, Korea, and Vietnam. A rear admiral born in 1876 was buried behind Ames. But Ames’s was then the only gravestone in Arlington to identify a clandestine officer of the CIA. Standing near the grave, Frank Anderson spoke briefly of Ames’s career and how Bob’s clandestine relationship with Arafat’s intelligence chief, Ali Hassan Salameh, had brought the Palestinians in from the cold. Ames, Anderson explained to the novice officers, was one of the CIA’s fallen heroes, a man who was good at forming clandestine relationships in a dangerous part of the world.
“He was no Lawrence of Arabia,” said Henry
Miller-Jones, another clandestine officer. “He had little patience with pretentiousness or patronizing ‘Arabophiles’ and fanatic adventurers. He was never naïve about the Middle East, a cockpit of power politics. He understood the personalities and motivations of the revolutionary left in the Arab world as much as he appreciated the rituals of the Sheiks.”

Ames had understood that a good CIA officer must have a curiosity about the foreign other—and a certain degree of empathy for their struggles. As Miller-Jones put it,
“He came to know kings, emirs and princes as well as revolutionaries and terrorists, goat herders and penthouse commandos.” He was adroit at making his way through the wilderness of mirrors that was the Middle East. He was naturally reserved, a man who easily kept secrets. He inspired trust, even in the company of men with bloody pasts. But he was also an intellectual, who later in his career could brief a president or a secretary of state about the intricacies of Middle Eastern politics and history. He was a model intelligence officer.
“Everyone credited Ames with getting the peace process started,” recalled
Lindsay Sherwin
, a CIA analyst.

“There was a moment of silent prayer,” recalled Englehart, “as we all stood on the grass around the grave. I remember wondering why, after all we had done for this, President Clinton would not recognize our contribution—but it wasn’t politically expedient. We should have known that, but it still stung.”

After a few minutes, Anderson led his colleagues over to the nearby grave of William Buckley, the CIA Beirut station chief who’d been kidnapped in March 1984; he had been severely mistreated in captivity and had died fifteen months later, probably of pneumonia. Next they visited the gravesites of James and Monique Lewis, both of whom had died with Ames on that terrible day in April 1983. Both were CIA employees. And then they walked to the gravesite of Kenneth Haas, the CIA station chief in Beirut at the time. He too had died with Ames. Finally, they found the gravesite of Frank Johnston, yet another CIA officer who’d died that day in Beirut. All had been buried in Arlington. It had been a heavy toll—the worst in the Agency’s history.

The visit to the cemetery was a sobering moment. But there was also a feeling of exhilaration—as if these sacrifices had been vindicated.
“We were all quietly excited,” Englehart recalled. “For those of us who spent our working lives in the Arab-Israeli firestorm, it was positive. After all, everybody would get what they wanted [with the Oslo peace accords], or what they thought they wanted. I had a definite feeling at the time that the sacrifices of our dead were not in vain, that the Israeli people and the Palestinian people could at last let go of each other’s throats and understand that they are all brothers and sisters.”

It was not to be.

Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin hesitates for a moment before the iconic handshake with PLO chairman Yasir Arafat, September 13, 1993.

Robert Clayton Ames was a very good spy. Everyone at the Central Intelligence Agency who knew him thought he was good at his work precisely because he was so very disarming and innocent. He was a classic American—idealistic and good-hearted and open as a Jimmy Stewart character. There was nothing phony about him, nothing cosmopolitan or pretentious. To the contrary, as another CIA officer later observed, he exuded a
“rock-bottom American-ness that was neither Ugly nor Quiet.” Foreigners invariably liked him.

Bob Ames was born on March 6, 1934, in Philadelphia and grew up in Roxborough, a largely white, working-class neighborhood in the northwest part of the city.
People prided themselves in caring for the row homes that lined the streets. Fairmount Park, Wissahickon Creek, and the shops along Ridge Avenue were all within walking distance, and Roxborough residents had multiple bus routes to take them into downtown Philadelphia. Ten churches graced the neighborhood. Life in Roxborough was sheltered and comfortably predictable. Bob spent his entire childhood in the same plain, two-story row house at 4624 Pechin Street. His father, Albert Clayton Ames, was a steelworker who spent thirty-two years with SKF, the Swedish-owned ball-bearing plant. His paternal grandfather, Albert Beauregard Ames,
was a Philadelphia policeman. Albert “Bud” Ames’s job at SKF was to inspect the quality of ball bearings; it was tedious, low-paid work. Bob’s mother, Helen Frances Amorose, was a homemaker. Bob was the second of three children. He had two sisters, Patricia, who was three years older, and Nancy, who was two years younger. The family got by, but modestly. Albert Ames lived from paycheck to paycheck. He was a union man, a member of the United Steel Workers—and every two years, around Christmastime, the union would take him out on strike. Albert would then sometimes go door to door, selling Christmas trees. A soft-spoken man, he never complained. He never raised his voice or his hand against the children. There were hard times, but Albert’s son, Bob, grew up feeling as though he was a part of the American dream.

Helen was a second-generation Italian. She was the avid reader in the family—and also the disciplinarian. “She had her way,” recalled Nancy Ames. “You did what you were told.” Helen kept the house immaculate. Mondays were washdays, Tuesdays ironing days. Every child had chores and regular homework hours. Helen was a lapsed Catholic. She’d married a Methodist, so the children went to their father’s Methodist church every Sunday. Though the Ameses were a working-class family, they were registered Republicans, like most of their neighbors in Roxborough. “My mother didn’t think much of FDR,” recalled Nancy. “She was a very smart woman. She listened to the radio news every day and read the newspapers. She was the kind of Republican who liked Ike.”

Bob took after his mother. He was an avid reader.
“He used to devour books,” Helen later said. When Bob turned ten, his Uncle John gave him an encyclopedia—and many months later Bob came downstairs one night and announced that he’d read it from cover to cover. He was mild-mannered and personable. “He didn’t like confrontation of any kind,” recalled his sister Nancy. “He was very private and quiet. Not a talker.” Like most boys in the neighborhood, he was a Cub Scout and later a Boy Scout. Though his father liked to hunt and fish, Bob took no interest in his father’s guns. As the only son, he got away with things. If his mother asked him to do the dishes, he’d stand at the sink
and start whistling a tune. He loved to whistle, but he knew his mom hated it—and inevitably she’d dismiss him from doing the dishes. In school, he was known as the class prankster. When Bob was in sixth grade, a teacher thought he was so bright that she recommended he be sent to Penn Charter, a local private school.
“There was no money for that,” recalled Nancy.

Bob was always meticulous. His bedroom in the Pechin Street house was tiny. There was room only for a bed, a small bookcase, and a desk. So maybe he
had
to be neat. But his handwriting was also remarkably tiny and perfect script. “At dinner,” remembered Nancy, “all his food had to be separated; nothing was ever to be mixed. The gravy had to be poured exactly in the center of his scoop of mashed potatoes.”

One evening when Bob was thirteen or fourteen years old he was given tickets to see the Harlem Globetrotters perform in an exhibition game. He was enthralled by the show. That Christmas his parents bought him a basketball. It became his prize possession. “In Roxborough,” recalled his sister Nancy, “if you owned your own basketball, you were special.”

Bob and the girls attended Roxborough High School, just a few blocks from their home. By then, he stood six feet three inches. He was a strikingly handsome teenager with brown hair and hazel eyes—and a prominent, squared-off chin. His smile was broad and infectious. He was a spiffy dresser. Despite all these attractive qualities, he never dated in high school. His mother later observed that her son was
“never one to travel in crowds.” He either kept to himself or socialized with a few friends who enjoyed basketball.

During his summers “Big Bob” worked as a lifeguard at Wildwood Crest, a small beach community on the Jersey Shore. Wildwood was almost a second home. His mother’s parents—Vittorio and Agnes Amoroso (later changed to Amorose)—owned a summerhouse at Wildwood. An Italian immigrant, Victor had done well in the furrier business. He boasted that his clientele included the wives of Dupont chemical company executives. Like most everyone, he’d lost money during the 1929 crash, but he was still well off enough to own a beach
house and a small apartment building on the Jersey Shore. Helen Ames refused to take any money from her father, but every summer she sent her children off to the Wildwood beach house.

Bob’s passion was still basketball, and even at the Jersey Shore he played the game at a local gym. One evening at Wildwood’s Kenny Gym night court he was introduced to a young man named Tommy Gola, who he soon realized was a truly phenomenal player.
“Bob was always talking about Gola,” recalls Jack Harmer, a friend who lived a block away from the Ames house. “Bob played basketball year round. We had a dirt court at the end of my street where the neighborhood kids played. I would hear Bob dribbling his basketball past my house on the way to the court, and I’d join him to shoot baskets. In the winter mornings the ground would be frozen, but later it would thaw out and your hands and the ball would be coated in mud.” Harmer thought Ames was a “quiet fellow, and a little hard to get to know on an intimate basis … but very likable.”

Ames loved the game, and by his senior year he was the team’s leading scorer. This earned him a four-year athletic scholarship to La Salle University, an all-men’s Catholic college in Philadelphia run by the Christian Brothers. He also had a scholarship offer from Gettysburg College, where he would have been a starter on the basketball team. But he knew Tommy Gola was going to La Salle, and he wanted to play ball with Gola. Bob was the first and only member of his family to attend college. To save on expenses, he lived at home throughout his college years.