Ismail explained to Ames that he wanted to change all this. Casey gave a speech in May 1985 in which he explained:
Abd’al Fatah told Bob of his experience in the higher Komsomol school that the Soviets maintain in Moscow for training young revolutionaries.… Abd’al Fatah explained that he had been taught in Moscow that he would need 20 years—a generation—to consolidate his revolution. He would have to control the education of the youth. He would have to uproot and ultimately change the traditional elements of society. This would mean undermining the influence of religion and taking the young people away from their parents for education by the state. He was taught that to control the people he would have to establish block committees … and a powerful secret police.
Ames was a patient listener. He’d already confided to his own colleagues his disdain for the British Raj. So it isn’t inconceivable that he’d express to someone such as Ismail his empathy for Ismail’s anticolonial struggle. By December he’d already met many of the regime’s new cabinet ministers. “Most of them are just about my age,” he wrote, “and I must say that I’m impressed with their sincerity and desire to get their country on the road of progress. Perhaps this, more than any other factor, has given me confidence in the new state.” Ismail wasnamed minister of culture in the new NLF government. The right-wing faction of the NLF purged him in March 1968; he was arrested and then sent into exile. But then in the summer of 1969 he orchestrated a “correction” in NLF party doctrine—essentially an internal party coup—and by the summer of 1969 was secretary-general of the NLF and a member of the Presidential Council. As such, he was South Yemen’s de facto leader. *1
“Ames told me,” Casey said, “that as he looked back, Abd’al Fatah—with Soviet bloc help—had done just as he’d been taught. He captured and subverted a legitimate war of independence in his own country. He killed or drove into exile those members of the movement who believed in democracy, and then went about the work of consolidating a Communist regime.”
Ames’s colleagues back in Langley noted that he’d been able to cultivate a future head of state.Getting to know the right people was the definition of good spy craft. It was all about getting close to influential or powerful actors. It’s hard to see in retrospect what Ames or Washington got out of this relationship in any concrete sense. And it’s hard to see what Ismail got out of it. Perhaps the young revolutionary got a kick out of confiding in a CIA agent. But Ames got a chance to understand the mind of someone who became a player. It didn’t matter that Ismail was an ideological opponent. It didn’t matter that he was not a “controlled” source. He’d become a source nevertheless, a window onto this very foreign world called Yemen. Ames thought his government wanted him to understand what motivated Ismail and his colleagues to wage a revolution against the British. Good spying was all about empathy.
“Had Ames been a public man,” wrote one of his colleagues in Aden, “he would have stood tall in his all-American shoes [cowboy boots] as a Louis L’Amour hero. But he belonged more to John le Carré’s world:anonymous, perceptive, knowledgeable, highly motivated, critical, discreet—with a priest’s and a cop’s understanding of the complexity of human nature in action. More private than secret—but that too.”
One day at the Gold Mohur Beach Club three Arabs swam over from another beach and approached a U.S. Foreign Service officer swimming in the cove. One of the young men asked the diplomat if he knew how to contact “Mr. Bob.” The Foreign Service officer said, “Sure, you can find Bob Ames at the Caltex building.”Later, Ames casually thanked the Foreign Service officer for the referral.
This young man would become one of Ames’s sources. Born in Iraq in
Abd’al Fatah told Bob of his experience in the higher Komsomol school that the Soviets maintain in Moscow for training young revolutionaries.… Abd’al Fatah explained that he had been taught in Moscow that he would need 20 years—a generation—to consolidate his revolution. He would have to control the education of the youth. He would have to uproot and ultimately change the traditional elements of society. This would mean undermining the influence of religion and taking the young people away from their parents for education by the state. He was taught that to control the people he would have to establish block committees … and a powerful secret police.
Ames was a patient listener. He’d already confided to his own colleagues his disdain for the British Raj. So it isn’t inconceivable that he’d express to someone such as Ismail his empathy for Ismail’s anticolonial struggle. By December he’d already met many of the regime’s new cabinet ministers. “Most of them are just about my age,” he wrote, “and I must say that I’m impressed with their sincerity and desire to get their country on the road of progress. Perhaps this, more than any other factor, has given me confidence in the new state.” Ismail wasnamed minister of culture in the new NLF government. The right-wing faction of the NLF purged him in March 1968; he was arrested and then sent into exile. But then in the summer of 1969 he orchestrated a “correction” in NLF party doctrine—essentially an internal party coup—and by the summer of 1969 was secretary-general of the NLF and a member of the Presidential Council. As such, he was South Yemen’s de facto leader. *1
“Ames told me,” Casey said, “that as he looked back, Abd’al Fatah—with Soviet bloc help—had done just as he’d been taught. He captured and subverted a legitimate war of independence in his own country. He killed or drove into exile those members of the movement who believed in democracy, and then went about the work of consolidating a Communist regime.”
Ames’s colleagues back in Langley noted that he’d been able to cultivate a future head of state.Getting to know the right people was the definition of good spy craft. It was all about getting close to influential or powerful actors. It’s hard to see in retrospect what Ames or Washington got out of this relationship in any concrete sense. And it’s hard to see what Ismail got out of it. Perhaps the young revolutionary got a kick out of confiding in a CIA agent. But Ames got a chance to understand the mind of someone who became a player. It didn’t matter that Ismail was an ideological opponent. It didn’t matter that he was not a “controlled” source. He’d become a source nevertheless, a window onto this very foreign world called Yemen. Ames thought his government wanted him to understand what motivated Ismail and his colleagues to wage a revolution against the British. Good spying was all about empathy.
“Had Ames been a public man,” wrote one of his colleagues in Aden, “he would have stood tall in his all-American shoes [cowboy boots] as a Louis L’Amour hero. But he belonged more to John le Carré’s world:anonymous, perceptive, knowledgeable, highly motivated, critical, discreet—with a priest’s and a cop’s understanding of the complexity of human nature in action. More private than secret—but that too.”
One day at the Gold Mohur Beach Club three Arabs swam over from another beach and approached a U.S. Foreign Service officer swimming in the cove. One of the young men asked the diplomat if he knew how to contact “Mr. Bob.” The Foreign Service officer said, “Sure, you can find Bob Ames at the Caltex building.”Later, Ames casually thanked the Foreign Service officer for the referral.
This young man would become one of Ames’s sources. Born in Iraq in
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