Chapter Seventeen
The CIA’s Involvement
The documents sat on my desk at home in a neat and ordered stack. [anb1]The National Archives periodically declassifies information thought to be obsolete or sanitized. In this instance, the agency released a raft of formerly classified briefings delivered to members of Congress by the FBI and CIA. These briefings, which took place in the late 1970’s, detailed various terrorist threats and operation against U.S. targets at home and abroad. As I read through them, I came across an incredible admission made by the Agency on February 15, 1977.
The CIA knew Black September had carried out the assassination of Joe Alon[anb2]. This revelation came a year after the case had been closed and the evidence in FBI hands destroyed.
What’s more, they had learned the details of the assassination operation directly from a “senior Feadayeen official[anb3].” The CIA had a highly placed informant within either the PLO, Fatah or Black September .
This informantwho hadrevealed [anb4]that the assassination had been carried out by two Arab students who had come into the country on the eve of the mission. They had entered the United States via Canada on Lebanese or Cypriot passports. Traveling to WashingtonD.C., they stayed with other Palestinian students living in the area. An Arab professor teaching at a university in the D.C. area took part in the pre-mission logistical operation. He was the one who rented the white sedan and acquired the weapons to be used by the student-assassins. The pistols were placed in the trunk and the car pre-positioned for the operation. The students then were driven to its location on the night of the murder[anb5].
Exactly what happened next was unclear. The car was ditched [anb6]after the hit team killed Joe. [anb7]The weapons went back into the trunk and shared the sedan’s fate. The team did an outstanding job in this regard. The car was never located. The next day, the young assassins either flew out of the country the next day via DullesAirport, or used another rental car to drive across the country, where they departed the United States from a West Coast airport.
<LB>Who was the source within the Palestinian leadership? And who was the professor that provided the logistical support? These documents provided two new vital leads to our case. That they had come to light in a briefing on Capital Hill after the FBI washed its hands of the MURDA investigation seemed astonishing. For years after the killing, the agents Ed and I had interviewed lamented that no solid leads ever came their way[anb8].
If this information was accurate, the Alon’s two murderers might still be at large, which meant we still had a chance of securing justice for Rachel and Yola. First
In the meantime, I worked to track down the “FFeadayeen senior official.” Fortunately, my media associates had already done much of the legwork. Included in my stack of documents were a series of cables and diplomatic telegrams that passed between the State Department and the U.S. embassy in Beirut. Most of the material they contained was mundane, boring government-speak matters. However, one cable sent from Beirut back to WashingtonD.C. provided the smoking gun.
In November of 1974, as Arafat prepared to travel to New York to give his famous address to the United Nations, a meeting with U.S. embassy “officials” took place with a key member of Arafat’s entourage. Ostensibly, the meeting was supposed to[anb9] discuss security issues and concerns for the PLO leader while he visited the United States. However, the conversation went well beyond that, as the cable reported.[anb10]
- In course of Nov 11 discussions with Fatah’s “Ali Hassan Salameh” RE travel of Arafat and Co….EMBOFF (Embassy Official) took opportunity to inquire RE BSO Chief Abu Iyad. Salameh indicated PLO/Fatah leadership remains ignorant of Abu Iyad’s whereabouts and is actively trying to find out where he is at present. He said, “Abu Iyad will have lots of questions to answer when we find him.” Admitting that persons arrested in Morocco included several of Abu Iyad’s “boys,” Salameh said he found reports that their targets included Arab leaders other than King Hussein “hard to believe.” At same time, he remarked with apparent bitterness that Qadafi “corrupts every one of us he touches.”
- Salameh thought that Abu Iyad, when he finally surfaces, would probably be able to explain his role in the Rabat Affair to Arafat’s satisfaction but if he died (Abu Iyad) would emerge from it as “hero” in Fadayeen eyes. While most Palestinians still regard King Hussein as “fair game” for future assassination attempts, said Salameh, his murder at Rabat would have been “disaster” for the Palestinian cause, since it would have thrown summit conference into confusion, prevented achievement of valuable political gains won by PLO at Rabat, and caused Arafat to appear at UNGA (UN General Assembly) “with Hussein’s blood on his hands.” “We assassinated Hussein politically in Rabat,” Salameh remarked, “and that should have given enough satisfaction to Abu Iyad.” He added that if it proves true that the Rabat plotters were bent on killing other Arab leaders in addition to King Hussein, then (Abu Iyad) is guilty of “high treason.”
- Other comments volunteered by Salameh to EMBOFF included assertion that USG (United States Government) could discount possibility of PFLP terror operations in New Your or elsewhere during the next few weeks. He claimed that Habash had been warned strongly against doing anything to besmirch PLO image while UNGA debate is in progress.
- Comment: We suspect that much of Salameh’s remarks RE: Abu Iyad were calculated for our benefit. At same time, there may be some truth in his contention that (Iyad) has lot to answer for when and if he returns to Beirut.
[anb11]
That spring of 2007, I read and reread this incredible document. The Red Prince, the mastermind behind Munich and countless other terrorist operations, had sat down with “EMBOFF”—read CIA agents—to discuss a rogue assassination plot hatched by Abu Iyad and his loyalists that would have targeted King Hussein and other Arab notables during a key moment in PLO history. Some twenty Arab leaders had gathered to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian situation, and for the first time the Arab nations recognized the legitimacy of the PLO’s territorial claims. The conference took place in October, 1974 shortly before Arafat spoke at the UN General Assembly in New York[anb12].
King Hussein vigorously opposed the Rabat Declaration at first. He only signed it after the other Arab nations essentially bribed him with an annual subsidy of $300 million.[anb13]
Then, in early November 1974, Salameh sat down with American intelligence agents to discuss the inner tensions and politics among the PLO, its rival factions and its rival leaders. No wonder why Abu Iyad was left behind when Arafat flew to New York.
Suddenly, all of this made sense. Salameh had traveled with his boss to the United States, something that absolutely could not have happened without State Department approval. State had allowed a known terrorist whose actions had cost the lives of countless innocents to enter the country. The U.S. government knew Salameh had planned and ordered the Khartoum operation that killed our ambassador there.
That simply does not happen unless somebody sprinkled his Visa application with pixie dust. In this case, I had no doubt the CIA greased that wheel. He was an asset, an informer. As a result, he received his VISA and shadowed Arafat in New York.
Three years later, Salameh revealed to his CIA contacts the details of the assassination mission against Colonel Josef Alon[anb14]. No wonder why when I served with the DSS and tried to access the CIA’s files on the Alon murder that even with my high level security clearance I couldn’t get anywhere with the Agency. They were protecting a potentially volatile and dangerous secret.
My associates in the media [anb15]related to me that they sat down with three senior level, retired CIA agents to acquire deep background on Alon and his murder. All three independently confirmed that Salameh had been a CIA source[anb16]. They also noted the Agency had two more BSO sources at the time, neither of which they identified.
From Beirut, I received additional confirmation of the Red Prince’s connection with the Central Intelligence Agency. My contact in Lebanon had sat down with one of his sources, a man who had spent most of his life serving the PLO. This source discussed Salameh at length with my contact and asserted that the Israelis did not kill him in 1979 out as an act of revenge for the Munich massacre, but rather because of his relationship with the CIA. His ties with the Agency were not only well-known within the PLO, but Arafat used them as a back channel means of communicating with the American government. By 1979, the Israelis felt secure enough with their relationship with the United States to remove that connection between their ally and enemy.
<LB>
In fact, Salameh’s relationship with the CIA began in Beirut in 1969 when Robert Ames [anb17]first made contact with him. Arafat blessed that meeting, as he made a point of keeping lines of communication open with every player in the Middle East morass who could help the PLO and its cause[anb18].
Over the years, the CIA made direct overtures to the Red Prince to turn him into a double agent. The Agency offered him cash, a move that offended him and cause Salameh to break communication for several years. The CIA had failed to understand that Salameh had plenty of money and was ideologically, not economically, motivated.
Ames refused to give up and reached out to the Red Prince again in the mid-1970’s. This time, the two men met face to face in Kuwait. Salameh had received Arafat’s approval to do so. Though he never became a double agent, he did serve as an informant for the CIA. He did so at Arafat’s behest and passed along only information the PLO chief personally approved[anb19]. That said, much of what Salameh ultimately shared with his CIA handlers proved to be accurate.
Who was playing who here? Did the CIA realize that Salameh was manipulating its agents, proving only what Arafat wanted the Agency to know? The Red Prince played a dangerous game, walking the fine line between conduit and traitor. It was a role he embraced with cunning and skill.
<LB>
In the mid-1970’s, a parallel game was played out between two nations in the midst of forming a new military alliance. The Israelis had established an intelligence foothold in the United States and had used Joe Alon to further expand it even as he functioned as the liaison between the IAF and USAF. Simultaneously, the CIA had a back door into Israel’s most deadly non-governmental enemy: Black September. The shadowy world of intelligence and espionage operations exists in the gray areas of morality. It is a place where the ends justify the means, and pragmatism almost always wins out over idealism and adherence to noble values. And in 1973, Joe Alon’s murder threatened to reveal the depths of the mutual betrayals entangling the United States and Israel.
No wonder why both sides simply let the matter drop. Everyone had too much to lose if the truth had come out. In the end, the game consumed almost all the players. Most of BSO’s leadership died by mid-1973. The Red Prince and his entourage burned to ashes in his Chevrolet on a Beirut street in 1979. Robert Ames died in 1983 when Mugniyah and Hassan Izz-al Din blew up the front half of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. Abu Iyad was next to go in 1991. Mugniyah was blown up by a car bomb in Damascus, Syria, on February 12, 2008. Nobody knows exactly who killed him, though the Mossad was on the top of most suspect lists.
On the Israeli side, gone are all the major players as well. Golda Meir died of cancer in 1978. Mordechai Gur died in 1995. Zvi Zamir is one of the few who remains alive, an old warrior whose days with the Mossad have long since passed into legend.
In the Capitol Hill briefings, there remained one more lead that Ed and I could pursue. The professor who had provided the logistical support for the Alon assassination had evidently escaped any sort of prosecution. Ed and I data mined our way through the FBI files we possessed and discovered the professor’s identity.
As a boy of fourteen, Elias S. Shoufani endured the Israeli War of Independence while living in a small Palestinian village in 1948. In the violence that swept across the region that year, his aunt drowned herself rather than to submit to a sexual assault instigated by a group of Yemeni volunteers who had occupied the village during the fighting with Jewish forces.
In 1973, Professor Elias Shoufani was teaching history at the University of Maryland. The FBI had suspected him of playing a role in the plot to kill Golda Meir at JFKAirport. He was interviewed by the FBI on March 8, 1973 and released.
In all likelihood, Shoufani was BSO’s point man in the D.C. area. It fit their method of operation in Europe perfectly to use outwardly pacifistic intellectuals as cell leaders in key cities or regions. Shoufani, as a middle aged historian, fit that bill perfectly.
He remained at the University of Maryland for at least a few more months, publishing articles in professional journals. Later in the 1970’s, he moved to Beirut where he held a position as the head of Zionist and Israeli Affairs at the Institute of Palestine Studies. Subsequently, he relocated to Damascus, Syria, where he currently resides.
[anb1]Open with a date so we know how much time has gone by.
[anb2]Would be good to have exact language here. What was this – a memo? Who did it come from, what was the context? Need more explaining / specifics.
[anb3]Source direct quote in an end note.
[anb4]When? context?
[anb5]Need source for this narrative.
[anb6]Meaning what exactly?
[anb7]Contradiction – you say it’s unclear and then you say what happened very clearly….
[anb8]Redundant – you already express surprise above. And no need for multiple questions.
[anb9]redundant
[anb10]unclear how the following relates to the Alon case. Feels like a tangent.
[anb11]need source for this quote.
[anb12]Redundant, you say that already above.
[anb13]Will need backup for this claim in text and source in an end note.
[anb14]Huge leap here. How do you know for sure that he was the source? Not at all a linear conclusion. Either back this up with clear evidence in the text or tone down the claim.
[anb15]Unclear what this means
[anb16]Here’s your back up – until you reveal this you can’t come out using such bold language, as you do above.
[anb17]introduce
[anb18]will need sourcing for all these stories.
[anb19]Need sourcing for all this.