The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames (61 page)

Caskets of the eleven Israeli athletes murdered at the September 1972 Munich Olympics by a team of Black September terrorists. “After that act no one would listen anymore,” Ames wrote. “All sympathy was gone. The only thought was that this should never happen again.”
Corbis Bettmann

The PLO’s Yasir Arafat addressed the United Nations on November 13, 1974. Ames played a key role in getting Arafat and Ali Hassan Salameh to New York. “I’m just a middle man in all this,” Ames wrote. They stayed at the Waldorf Astoria—and before leaving, Salameh bought a postcard of the famous hotel and wrote to his son, “The PLO at the Waldorf Astoria!”
Corbis Bettmann

Former Lebanese prime minister Saeb Salam (left) with Ali Hassan Salameh and Yasir Arafat (right) in 1976. Ames assigned Salameh the CIA cryptonym MJTRUST/2. By 1976, Salameh’s fedayeen from Force 17 were providing security for the U.S. embassy in the midst of the Lebanese civil war.
As-Safir
newspaper, Beirut

Ali Hassan Salameh shaking hands with Pierre Gemayel, a Lebanese power broker and founder of the right-wing Phalangist Party. His son Bashir Gemayel (center), a Maronite Christian warlord, was elected president in 1982—but was assassinated within weeks. As-Safir
newspaper, Beirut

Bashir Gemayel (left) and Ali Hassan Salameh were enemies who admired each other. Ames called Bashir “our brutal warlord.” As-Safir
newspaper, Beirut

The Imam Musa Sadr (far left) with Ali Hassan Salameh (right, wearing a leather jacket) in 1975. Musa Sadr, the spiritual leader of Lebanon’s Shi’a Muslims, vanished mysteriously in 1978 on a trip to Libya. Ames asked Salameh to investigate the Imam’s disappearance. As-Safir
newspaper, Beirut

Georgina Rizk with Bob Barker in Miami Beach upon being selected Miss Universe of 1971. “She is Lebanon’s queen, Lebanon’s goddess.” Ali Hassan Salameh began dating Rizk in 1976, and that year Ames arranged for the couple to visit Washington, D.C.; Disneyland in Anaheim, California; and Hawaii.
Associated Press

Ali Hassan Salameh with his two boys by his first marriage, to Nashrawan Sharif. Ames frequently visited Salameh at his home with wife Nashrawan, and he frowned on Salameh’s affair with Georgina Rizk: “This affair is ruining his reputation.” Salameh nevertheless married Rizk in June 1977.
Courtesy of Mustafa Zein

In the autumn of 1978 Ames was promoted to National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. It was a big step up and a step away from clandestine operations. “Bob had a reputation in the DO [Directorate of Operations] of being too smart, too much of an intellectual.”
Courtesy of Yvonne Ames

In November 1978 Ames flew to Beirut to warn Salameh that Mossad was once again targeting him for assassination. “I know that I’ll die,” Salameh said fatalistically. On January 22, 1979, his convoy passed a Volkswagen packed with explosives. When it blew up, Salameh was killed together with eight other people. As-Safir
newspaper, Beirut

Mike Harari, the head of Mossad’s Caesarea clandestine unit in the 1970s, tried to assassinate Ali Hassan Salameh in Norway in 1973, but his team mistakenly killed an innocent Moroccan immigrant. Harari succeeded in 1979. Mossad officer Erika Chambers pushed the remote-control button that ignited the explosives just as Salameh’s car passed her balcony. Haaretz
newspaper / credit: Dudu Bachar