The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames (21 page)
Read The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames Online
Authors: Kai Bird
Whether in Washington or Tehran, Ames continued to work on Palestinian-Israeli affairs. Over the next few years, he traveled constantly between Washington, Tehran, and Beirut. Black September’s terror exploits were beginning to push the Palestinian problem to the front page of newspapers around the world. The 1971 assassination of Wasfi al-Tal was only the beginning. Over the next two years, Black September was allegedly responsible for numerous other attacks:
March 15, 1971: the sabotage of a Gulf Oil refinery in Rotterdam.
December 15, 1971: the attempted assassination in London of Jordan’s ambassador, Zeid al-Rifai.
February 6, 1972: the gunning-down of five Palestinians, suspected of being Mossad agents, in Cologne.
May 8, 1972: the hijacking of Sabena Flight 572 to Lod Airport in Israel, where it was stormed by Israeli commandos. Two of the four Black September operatives were killed, along with one passenger.
August 4, 1972: the destruction of oil-storage tanks in Trieste, Italy.
Autumn 1972: the killing of Israeli agricultural counselor Ami Shachori in Britain by a letter bomb.
December 28, 1972: the capture of the Israeli embassy in Bangkok by four Black September operatives. The operation collapsed when Thai police surrounded the embassy and the Fedayeen surrendered.
January 1973: the smuggling of a handful of ground-to-air missiles into Rome. Black September agents were within minutes of firing them at a plane carrying Prime Minister Golda Meir when Mossad officers intercepted them.
March 4, 1973: the rigging of three car bombs in New York City, timed to explode upon the arrival of Golda Meir. The bombs failed to explode, and the Black September operative, Khalid al-Jawary, escaped only to be arrested in 1991 in Rome. Deported to the United States, he was convicted and imprisoned until 2009.
Ali Hassan Salameh more or less confessed to his complicity in some of these attacks.
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He explained to a reporter, “
We had no choice but to strike back at the Jordanian regime, or at least at the people who were behind the events of September 1970.… This gave birth to [the] Black September [organization], which undertook several operations against the Jordanian regime, its men and its institutions—in Jordan and elsewhere. Some of these operations were associated with my name. It was natural that my name be singled out and that a price be placed on my head by the Jordanian authorities.”
The authoritative Israeli
investigative journalist Aaron J. Klein later concluded that Salameh was responsible for five operations outside the Middle East: (1) the Rotterdam oil-tank explosion; (2) the attempted assassination of the Jordanian ambassador in London; (3) the February 6, 1972, assassination of five Palestinians in Cologne who were thought to be Mossad agents; (4) the bombing of oil-storage tanks in Trieste; and (5) the attempted attack on the Israeli embassy in Bangkok in late December 1972.
Ames naturally was privy to classified intelligence about these and other PLO operations, and he feared Salameh and his associates were planning on taking their “revolution” beyond Europe and into American territory. In the spring of 1972, Ames wrote a long and candid letter to Zein explaining his concerns. “
I am fully aware of the activities of our friend,” he wrote, “and although I do not agree with all of them, I can sympathize with his organization’s feeling that they must carry them out. Despite what our friend thinks, we are not out to ‘get’ his organization. Contrary to his beliefs, we are not an action group like
his group is. It is because of misunderstandings like this that I value my talks with him. We were always frank and I think the talks were beneficial even though they never reached the level we both sought. I don’t think that wasn’t because he and I, with your help, didn’t try. It was just because our superiors were too inflexible.”
Ames then conveyed a strict warning:
As things now stand, the only area where our two organizations will clash is when his group chooses to carry out operations in our territory as they are now planning. I know the frustration his group is currently facing. I also know that his group has many men willing to be martyrs. However, sending men here is not sending them as martyrs but as sacrificial lambs, and I mean that sincerely. His group has made many errors recently. I know most of them were not his fault as he was out of power for a while. Also his parent organization [the PLO] has made many errors.… Blaming other people and groups is not going to solve his problems. He must first put his own house in order. Our friend has, in the past, always been able to differentiate between his organization’s rhetoric and the facts of life. I hope that he never loses that ability.
