The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames (62 page)

Yasir Arafat (center with keffiyeh headdress) at Ali Hassan Salameh’s funeral. His arm is draped across Ali’s son Hassan, who is holding an AK-47 Kalashnikov gun in his hand. As-Safir
newspaper, Beirut

Yasir Arafat kissing a pregnant Georgina Rizk, one of Ali Hassan Salameh’s two widows. “The day Ali Hassan Salameh was killed was a very bad day,” recalled one of Ames’s colleagues.… “Bob was clearly stunned when he heard the news.” As-Safir
newspaper, Beirut

Dewey Clarridge (left), George Cave (center), and Alan Wolfe (right). All three senior clandestine officers worked closely with Ames.
Courtesy of Henry Miller-Jones

William Casey brought to the CIA a fiery Catholicism and Cold Warrior certitudes.
Courtesy of Corbis Bettmann

Ames (wearing his trademark tinted aviator glasses) enthralled Casey with his spycraft stories. Casey promoted him to become the CIA’s chief analyst for the Middle East.
Courtesy of Yvonne Ames

Paul Wolfowitz (left), President Ronald Reagan, and Ames (second from right) at Camp David. Ames regularly briefed Reagan about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 1982. “It is a tricky business,” recalled one of Ames’s colleagues. “Do you try to stay true to your views or do you try to remain effective? At some point, people stop listening to you.”
Courtesy of Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon (right) with his troops in Lebanon. When asked how far he intended to advance into Lebanon, Sharon replied, “As far as we have to.”
Corbis Bettmann

After Arafat and the PLO were expelled from Lebanon, Phalangist militiamen massacred more than 1,000 Palestinian and Shi’ite Lebanese refugees in Sabra and Shatila. Ames was then working closely with Secretary of State George Shultz, who said, “The brutal fact is we are partially responsible.”
Corbis Bettmann

Janet Lee Stevens, age thirty-two, was an American reporter who was known in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps as “the Little Drummer Girl.” She served as John le Carré’s guide in the camps and spent the rest of her life investigating the massacre.
Courtesy of Kristen Stevens

At 1:04
P.M.
on April 18, 1983, a truck bomb destroyed the U.S. embassy in Beirut. “The smoke had cleared, but blood and body parts were everywhere. It is a smell you never forget.”
Corbis Bettmann / credit: Claude Salhani

Sixty-three people died, including seventeen Americans and thirty-two Lebanese embassy employees. Eight of the Americans were CIA officers.
Getty Images

U.S. Marines form a perimeter around the destroyed U.S. embassy. “Bob Ames among the dead in Beirut,” wrote a White House official in his diary. “We believe Iran involved. Felt very sad about Bob.”
Getty Images