Penetrating Terrorist Networks

By David Ignatius

Sunday, September 16, 2001; Page B07

As the United States prepares for war against a shadowy enemy, politicians are understandably insisting that the CIA improve the quality of its information. America should never again feel as blind and vulnerable as it did last Tuesday.

But some of the second-guessing from Capitol Hill has implied that fixing the CIA will be an easy task: Just add more money and spies and -- presto -- you have better intelligence about terrorist networks. Alas, if spying were that easy even a member of Congress could do it.

To understand the challenge facing America's spymasters in coming months, it's useful to recall the CIA's most successful operation ever against terrorists -- its penetration of the Palestine Liberation Organization during the 1970s. I reported that story during my years as Middle East correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, and later wrote a novel, "Agents of Innocence," which described the operation in detail.

What the CIA did back then was to open a secret channel with the PLO's chief of intelligence, a charismatic operative named Ali Hassan Salameh. At that time, Palestinian terrorism against the United States was a serious threat -- as vitriolic if not as deadly as Osama bin Laden is today.

When these secret contacts began in 1970, they had the explicit approval of Yasser Arafat himself. But the relationship evolved and expanded over the years, and Salameh came to be regarded within the CIA as a witting "asset" -- uncontrolled and unpaid but immensely valuable. He supplied the CIA with extensive information about terrorist groups, and on several occasions he intervened directly to halt planned attacks. His cryptonym in CIA cable traffic, I'm told, was MJTRUST/2.

Part of what motivated Salameh to work with the CIA was the belief that America could help the PLO win its political goals. It was America's unique status -- a close ally of Israel but also a peace broker allied with moderates in the Arab world -- that allowed the intelligence relationship to work. Assets as valuable as Salameh can rarely be "bought." The motivation is deeper and more complex.

The CIA officer who handled Salameh was an equally charismatic man named Robert Ames. He loved the Middle East, spoke Arabic fluently and had a gift for the human relationships that are, in the end, what espionage is all about. People like Ames can't be bought either, no matter how much money Congress appropriates. They are successful because they enjoy their work and are given wide latitude to do it effectively -- without lawyers or legislators looking over their shoulders all the time.

Make no mistake: Salameh, the CIA's contact, was a terrorist himself. He had been a key operative in Arafat's covert "Black September" organization, and the Israelis believed he helped plan the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. They even targeted Salameh for assassination. To gather information about terrorism, in other words, the CIA was prepared to sup with the devil.

Even after Munich, the CIA worked to maintain its intelligence link to Salameh. Ames sent the Palestinian this message in September 1973, using a simple code for the CIA, the PLO and Israel: "My company is still interested in getting together with Ali's company. The southern company [Israel] has investigated. I've seen a lot of their files, and they know about our contacts."

Hauntingly, both men were eventually killed by car bombs -- Salameh by an Israeli hit team in 1979; Ames by the Iranian-backed terrorists who destroyed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, on a day he happened to be visiting from Washington. But the secret contacts the two men began eventually led to the Oslo peace accords.

Few intelligence operations work out so successfully. But there are some relevant lessons that can be drawn from this long-ago skulduggery. The most obvious is that collecting intelligence about terrorists is a truly dirty business. This world cannot be penetrated without help from members or friends of the terrorist network. Rules that pass muster with lawyers in Washington won't get you very far in Kabul or Islamabad.

A second lesson is that there aren't many quick fixes in the spy world. Relationships of trust take months and sometimes years to develop. America's allies may be better placed to develop these relationships than the CIA. That's part of why friendships with moderate Arab regimes remain so important; they provide the intelligence liaison that the CIA feeds on.

And, finally, the collection of intelligence can't really be separated from America's larger role in the world. That doesn't mean sympathizing with the terrorists or endorsing their demands. But to win a war, you need allies. And if the United States treats all Muslims as the enemy, it isn't likely to have much luck recruiting them as spies.

Paradoxically, these tragic days have probably been an ideal time for the CIA to be recruiting new sources of intelligence about terrorism. The barbaric attacks Tuesday aroused disgust around the world -- not least among civilized Muslims. Some of these disgusted Muslims will surely want to help the United States and its allies put the terrorists out of business.