aicher culture is more trendy and people responded to what has happened with the honey bee losses by getting hives in the yard. and it is a windfall in those employs who use the print of them to have that sacramento feet bled to they love their bees and want to keep them alive. but generally i have eight of virginity whole local but

really people are hoping that it will opt out to the commercial environment so they can find ways to take care of the bees without the big industrial treatment -- are more and more aware because of that college the collapse one of the things that i conclude in my book is warda but so in some ways

the horrendous two years that his head with those links to all of us

representing kai bird. >> don't know how many boy scout we have in the room that you all deserve badges fiing >> at zero have been a boy scout's we had this in the room they all deserve the explore patch to find your way. does anybody missed the mall as much as i do? of fairly recently we live within 1 mile of each other of the past few years of poor grew and the specific

ocean it has been our good fortune to have two books published and the best buy for parents is the story of tip o'neill. of kai bird.

[applause] [applause] >> think year it is great to be here and see john tomorrow he promises to make me of good peruvian sour. [laughter] my new book is called the good side, and with the other bad spot, ames says completely unknown character. and also the clandestine officer, a man there who recruited a gymnast, i came

to a very crude air but do you need to steelwork for in philadelphia? a basketball star, the six ft. 3 inches event had that aristocratic background for her haste to return has the

american character. i know this because he was my next-door neighbor at 11 a 12 for 13 years old in saudi arabia where my father was a foreign service but

from beirut 1979 and today been even aims was posed says cher. h california officers were killed that day and a total of 70 americans and the lebanese and those to happen to be walking by reply for the piece of. and dozens of people were severely wounded and is survived but initially i was

not pretending i think i could read dash 1/2 of a head but everything seemed to be classified. i stumbled on this idea that i will do it both ways. >> that it means it occurred six months before that.

and the largely forgotten but to file that civil suits but to pave the testimony and the children with that documentation of what happens that day in beirut. have these people had lost their lives. i thought this is very a

business material. of focus to their characters so i have appeared within to see the public affairs officer for the ncaa and i explained i was the officer but i wanted to do this

biography as the history of the embassy bombing. all i asked for was a chance to sit down with in-house historian to check my fax and chronologies to get the correct judge ito's but apparently have not broken see i act

the widow and i've flown down to a small town in north carolina where she lives in very simple circumstances, in an old farmhouse to i spent a day and half with her interviewing her, seeing her family albums. she gave me some of these photographs and we had a great interview. she remembered me from when i was 13 but we hadn't seen each other since then our y >> at one point that she thought maybe there were some letters that bob had written to her over the years. she didn't know where they were anymore, but maybe in a suit case someplace in the attic where her daughter lived nearby. and i said womack, you know, that might be something worth looking for. you know, this is a biographer's

best dream and worst nightmare, that there are letters out there that would allow you to write in an authentic way about your subject. and the nightmare is that you never find them. so i spent six months thereafter sort of gently sending e-mails to her encouraging her to find those letters. and eventually after six months she did indeed find them in an attic, and a proverbial trunk. and never 150 pages of handwritten letters that bob had sent to murdering his various postings abroad when he was sort on short-term duty and she was still living in virginia. and the letters were sometimes mundane, family letters, reading queries about their six

children. but he also wrote about his work. and he did so in a really personal way describing his daily routine. sometimes how much, you know, he complained about how much she had to write. so you sort of learn that an intelligence officer, every time he has a meeting he has to record what was said by everyone in great detail. this takes a lot of time. aims described some of his meetings with agents in beirut. he described his dinners every other night when he was in beirut. you know, he was, the old saying in intelligence is if you slept with the devil you should use a very long spoon. well, ames is the kind of empathetic character who know how to listen, you have to make people feel comfortable and he

slept with the devil with a very short spoon. he very got close. he had dinner with them. he got to know his wife and his kids and when ames learned in the 1976 that hassan salameh was thinking of taking on as a muslim a second wife, he was squiring around beirut nightclubs a beautiful young woman who just happened to be ms. universe of 1971, a gorgeous woman, lebanese maronite, and yet fall in love with her. and bob ames disapproved and then one of his literacy writes, i don't understand what he sees in that woman. [laughter] anyway, it was great material in these letters and it made me, i

knew then that i could actually write a biography. and i then proceeded to try to find, you know, i had asked for cooperation from the cia and i hadn't heard from them. they never set up a meeting with one of their in house historians at -- as i had requested. i wrote personal e-mails to the director, and i never heard back. they never answered. i never got any cooperation from the agency to write this book about one of their hero's. but i gradually found retired cia intelligence officers who, one by one agreed to see me initially off the record. i wasn't allowed to use their name. and they would talk to me and then refer me to other friends. and eventually i interviewed

over 40 retired cia officers. and all of these guys had signed a secrecy oath's, and they all wanted desperately to tell me their secrets. there were 30, 40 year-old secrets, nothing that was going to harm national security, and they wanted to talk about their good friend, bob ames. betty, you finally made it. [applause] >> so this is the man who confirmed for me in the first instance of bob ames was actually a spy and not a forum service officer. but as i was saying, the cia officers were eager to tell me

their stories. and yes, they were divulging secrets, but they were all 30 and 40 year-old secrets and they wanted to tell me the secrets for very honorable reasons. they wanted you as citizens to know the story, to know the history. anyway, it was great but it was a lot of fun talking to these old spooks. and at one point, at one point i was told, of course jonathan yardley mentioned that one of his colleagues at the "washington post," david ignatius, had written, published a book, a novel called agents of innocence in 1987. and so of course, in the book, everyone told me, was based on the robert ames story. but it was a novel.

but when it started out i went to see david ignatius. and i wanted to feel him out and get his opinion about whether he thought this biography was feasible or not. and i knew we had sources in the cia and retired sources, but also active intelligence officers who might have known games. nt, i'm very grateful. he encouraged me to do this. he said yes, it's possible and the a great story. he wanted to tell the story as nonfiction, as a reporter, but in the 1980s he thought it was too early and no one would talk to him and everything was too sensitive. and he very graciously gave me some names and helped to get me started on finding some of these retired spooks. and he also told me, well, you know, a key source is a young

lebanese businessman that ames and that in 1969. he said i don't know where he is now, but if you're going to tell the bob ames story you really have to find him. but he's kind of elusive and he's a difficult personality, and i don't know if i could find a i don't know if i would go to see him today. it was sort of a warning. but i nevertheless come every time i had interview with one of my cia sources i would say hey, have you ever heard of mustafa zein? is he still alive? at one point i get when he was in florida. i got his address. and i got one of my retired spooks who live in florida to go and knock on the door. and it turned out to be he had

moved on. it was the wrong address, a dead end. many months later at a point where i had a chili, i was close to having a full draft of my, first draft of my book. i got a message from another spook who said, here's the number that i'm told is mustafa zein's cell phone. you can try calling it. so we i am sitting in lima, peru, and i get on my computer and i do a cold call on skype to a cell phone in, somewhere in the middle east. and the phone rings and it's picked up, and it's mustafa zein. and i explained what i'm doing, but i'm trying to write a biography of robert ames. and the first question mustafa

zein has is how did you get this number? [laughter] only certain people have this number. and i explained, welcome i can't tell you who gave me this number but it's a mutual friend. and so he then said well, i've been waiting for 30 years for you to call. he gave me his e-mail, and for the next week we e-mailed each other furiously back and forth, and he had lots of stories. he was eager to tell. a few months later i flew out to the middle east, went to amman, and i spent eight days, 10 hours a day listening to mustafa. it was like i sort of like to think of it as a debriefing in an intelligent fashion. i took notes. i didn't record it because i

thought that would make him nervous. but i filled notebook after notebook. and he turned out to be one of those great sources, because he was then 71, but he had a great memory and he was a good storyteller. at times such a good storyteller that i sort of wondered, well easy embellishing things? and i knew i had to be careful with some of this. when i got back i had to check every story with my other cia sources, and you know, it turned out trying once stories all checked out. he also had letters -- trend once stories all checked out. he also had letters that bob ames turned out -- sent to me. some of the dramatic letters about crucial moments in his relationship with ali, where the

relationship had broken down in the wake of the terrible massacre at the munich olympics, carried out by like september -- black september, a wing of -- bob ames thought maybe ali hassan salameh had been involved in the munich operation in which 11 israeli athletes were tragically murdered. so the letters, you know, they give you a window into sort of id and how intelligence officer thinks and operates, and if you read the book you will get, you get an understanding that the cia officers are not james bond. and bob ames was no james bond. he did occasionally have to carry a gun, but he hated guns.

he never killed anyone. in one of his letters to yvonne, his wife, he was in aden at the time of -- operate in the midst of this aborted before getting assassinated in the streets, and his cia station chief told him he had to take his pistol. and he just disobeyed the order and wrote to yvonne, you know, if i'm going to be shot, i'm going to be shot from behind. i will never see the boat coming, there will never be an opportunity to use this so the pistol anyway so i am not carrying it around. anyway, he was a very empathetic man, and that is why he was a good spot, why he was good at his work. i don't want to go on too long. anyway, after seeing mustafa zein in amman, i didn't have to

spend about 10 days, two weeks in israel trying to track down some officers who may have known bob ames. and, indeed, i found 4, and they remembered him. they knew exactly who he was. they knew that he was a back channel. he had created this very secret back channel to the plo through ali hassan salameh, and that was a disturbing revelation to them in the 1970s. because henry kissinger had promised the israelis that we wouldn't have any dealings with this terrorist organization. but, of course, i learned from my cia officers that this is exactly what intelligence officers are supposed to do. they go where foreign service officers can't. and they go to dangerous neighborhoods and talk to bad guys. bad guys like ali hassan

salameh, who, choose your level. he was a terrorist. he was a professional revolutionary. he was a freedom fighter for the palestinian cause, but he was someone that no u.s. diplomat could talk to. but things could and he created this back channel that actually inside the agency today everyone gives him credit for starting the oslo peace process, starting to get americans talking to the palestinians, getting americans to try to persuade, actually rather successfully, to think about achieving palestinian aspirations without the gun, with a compromise, a two-state solution. and, of course, the tragedy is that we are this many years later, 31 years after bob ames was killed in beirut, the peace process is still at a stalemate.

writing this book, researching it was a lot of fun, but when i announced to my wife, susan, i had to fly off to the middle east for a month to the research, she was a little worried. and i assured her that, you know, no problem, it would be a piece of cake, and indeed when i get to the root were i had a whole series of interviews -- got to beirut, schedule some time for myself and some of the newspaper archives of leaving beirut newspapers, i landed around noon and checked into the mayflower hotel which is the hotel that bob ames himself checked into and spent his last night before he was killed on

april 18, 1983. it's a lovely little boutique hotel, and i got to see the room where he had spent his last night. and then i went for a stroll along the seashore. beirut looked fabulous. it had been rebuilt as part of the city have been rebuilt since the terrible civil war that are taken over 150,000 lives, over 15 years. and i walked along the river towards the spot where the u.s. embassy used to stand. it had been completely destroyed by the 2000-pound truck bomb, and beirut looked fabulous. it had seaside restaurants along the corniche pic you look like a very livable place but i was thinking to myself, oh, you

know, i thought maybe we should think about spending a vacation here, or maybe even move your for a year or two but it would be a nice place to live and work. i get back to my hotel in the mayflower, two hours later, and i turned on the television and there was cnn reporting about a car bomb that i got off a mile away in beirut and dead killed eight people, including the chief of intelligence collecting investigating the assassination of the prime minister put been killed in 2005. so i quickly open my laptop and router e-mail to susan saying don't worry, a bomb exploded a mile away from me. i'm fine. [laughter] she immediately called me on her cell phone and says, what bomb? [laughter]

anybody, it was a sad reminder that beirut is still a last a very dangerous place, very troubled part of the world. it reminded me that the book that i was trying to write and finish at that point was a very relevant subject. but having almost finished after speaking to mustafa zein, i had to rush back to lima, peru, and spent the next six was completely rewriting the book because what kind one had told me. which was a good thing. when the book finally came out, it was greeted with some really great reviews, and an official denial from the cia.

[laughter] regarding the in the story in the book which was, you know, i actually to my surprise with mustafa's help and the help of some of my cia sources, and a lot of just playing detective work i managed to put together a really fairly iron cast story about the beirut embassy bombings had occurred. it wasn't, you know, it was the first suicide truck bomb attack on the u.s. embassy and when it happened it was industry about who have done it. and over the years the presumption was that hezbollah had done it in fact hezbollah did really exist until 1985. but at the end of the book i revealed that it was actually an active state terrorism carried

out by the islamic republic of iran in the form of an intelligence operation carried out by some of their iranian revolutionary guards officer stationed in the valley who had been sent there in the wake of the israeli invasion of lebanon in 1982. and i named the commander of the iranian revolutionary guard post in lebanon, and i named his intelligence officer. and the surprising thing, the shocking thing that i learned in the end was that one of the masterminds of the truck bomb attack was this iranian intelligence officer who rose to became deputy defense minister in iran and then effected into the house and seven -- defected. at one point was debriefed here outside of washington in a cia safe house. and he is still alive and well

and living may be in america, maybe in europe someplace. we are not quite sure, but the cia, when the book came out, issued a statement, a tweet saying that we categorically deny that we had anything to do with arranging and affection -- the defection. so the book ends on a sort of classic intelligence dilemma. you are dealing with bad guys and you want to get information that they have, and sometimes even if they have killed eight cia officers, you end up giving them haven in this country. it's a shocking story to me, but also a classic intelligence story. this is, you know, this happens in this world. anyway, i hope you all get a chance to read "the good spy" and understand it will give you

not only a lot of history about the middle east and the arab-israeli conflict, sadly, also sort of a window into this world of intelligence. and i want to stop now, and we have time for at least 10 minutes of questions i think. so fire away. [applause] >> i've got a question. as a nation writer, i salute you for your work. fellow nation writer. thank you. one of the amazing things i thought about the book when i read it was president reagan's critic, criticism of israel during the invasion. and he was a president i always had a lot of contempt for, and it was surprising to me what he did at that time.

and particularly in contrast to what has happened recently in gaza, and i consider the silence of the president i voted for. i was wondering if you could talk a little bit about mr. ames relationship with president reagan and how he sort of influence that critique speak with sure. that's a great question. as i said, ames started out on the clandestine side -- site as a clandestine cia officer recruits agents in such. and he rose very high up inside the agency in that field on the covert side, but he got bored with it and frustrated with the business of recruiting agents. he was a very intellectual fellow. he was criticized in fact by his colleagues for being too intellectual.

he read a lot of books on the middle east. he loved the history. he loved the language. he relieved learned the language. so at one point in his career he jumped at the chance to flip to the other side, to the analytical side. so by the time reagan became president in 1981, robert ames was chief of the whole analytical division for the middle east and south asia. and in that capacity he was a guide to brief the president on anything to do with the middle east. and he would do so often in the oval office or up in camp david. and in the wake of the israeli invasion in 1982, where you recall the israelis under general sharon, ariel sharon, initially walked into southern lebanon and then suddenly pushed all the way to the gates of beirut and deceased the city. -- beseiged the city and attempted come eventually successfully expelled the plo from beirut.

in the wake of that invasion, ronald reagan was being briefed by ames. and he took the opportunity to sort of persuade reagan and his 22nd of state, george schultz, to sign on to a peace plan. the first official american initiative to say well, here's our notion of what should happen in a sort of final peace settlement. let's try to settle this. this conflict between israelis and the palestinians and the rest of the arab world. and it was called the reagan peace plan and initiative, unveiled by reagan himself in a speech on september 1, 1982. and ames was basically a ghost writer for it. and it was inching towards a

two-state solution. so reagan had, the questioner suggested, and understanding that is festering problem was a threat to u.s. national security and that peace was in the interest of the united states. and he attempted to get the israelis to withdraw from lebanon and to honor the commitments they have made in the camp david accord with regard to settlements in the west bank. but, you know, after ames was killed in 1983 just six months after the reagan peace initiative, ames was the only person that reagan knew personally who have died in the bombing, and he was devastated to you can see this from his diary notes. and then six months later with

the marine barracks were another truck bomb rolled in and killed 241 u.s. servicemen, reagan gave up. he withdrew the troops. he lost interest in pushing his middle east peace plan, and everything began to fall apart in retrospect i believe. >> i didn't think i was going to have a question but i do. where to start? so, 30 some years ago you sent me down to pick up some freedom of information act documents -- not from langley but somewhere in northern virginia. i don't remember where. >> steve was "nation" magazine intern working for me at the time, and so i stated i am an unsuccessful protége, kind

words. [laughter] so i remember looking through these documents and coming across a report from 196 1963 or 1964 that was an internal memo that someone in the cia wrote to someone else in the cia about how the castro regime is going to implode of its own corruption and wait any day now, and they united states did need to do anything, that the cuban government is going to just fall apart of its own accord. this was five or six years after the revolution. and i mentioned that now because i know you've done a lot of thinking over the years about intelligence and intelligence community, and i'm wondering in the post 2001 world, and thinking about the u.s. role in iraq and afghanistan and the way that the agency and intelligence

world has changed since then, to what extent are we getting good intelligence and to what extent are people within the intelligence community passing disinformation to themselves to justify a point of view that they all leader -- already want to promote such as invading a country on the basis of weapons of mass destruction that don't exist? >> okay. well, that's a difficult question. actually i'll answer it by telling you, giving you a quote, as far as i can paraphrase it, from one of my cia sources, who explained that when he was a young man in the clandestine services, he was, you know,

mesmerized by all the secrets he had access to. all the privileged intelligence. it was, you know, it gave him a rush. and learning more and more secrets was, you know, it's fun to be on the inside. and you think you have special knowledge. but then he explained to me that, you know, over the years, and he said that this is true of all intelligence officers, over the years they become a little more cynical and skeptical about this special knowledge. and they realize a lot of it is not so special. they think initially that, well, if i can just get the right, right the right kind of memo, get access to the policymaker in the right moment, and my special

knowledge can persuade the policymaker, the politicians, to arrive at a better policy. but over the years they become very cynical and they suddenly realized that u.s. foreign policy is not fact-based. that, in fact, none of the secrets, none of the special knowledge they have makes any difference. the policymakers rarely listen, and i think this is, this is not a self-serving sentiment. a lot of the people i interviewed expressed to me their enormous frustrations with the fact that they know u.s. policy and x, y or z is on the wrong road, but they have no ability to change it. and the cia in particular, from its founding, it was actually a liberal haven during the

mccarthy era in the early '50s, when mccarthy was going after state department foreign service officers and destroying their careers. the cia was protected because it's a secret intelligence agency. they didn't allow senator mccarthy to question their men. and a lot of them were, had a good sense. in fact, i interviewed people who, for some of my previous books about the bundy brothers who got us into the vietnam war. this it was actually often giving good intelligence about what a disaster it would be to turn this conflict in vietnam into a ground war, and we would end up doing the same thing the french did in the '50s. so the lesson i learned if anything from writing "the good spy" is that yes, there are secrets, but they are often

wasted, and many of the secrets long in the pages -- belong in the pages of the washington post and "the new york times" and we would all be better off if we had fewer secrets and more knowledge available to the public. >> i found mustafa zein such an interesting character are you still in touch with him? what is he doing? is he going to write a book of his own? [laughter] >> i am still in touch with mustafa, and he is a lovely man. he is in his mid '70s now, and he has written an unpublished personal memoir just for his own use and purposes. he, you know, at the end of my eight days, or more than that, he actually came to america at one point and we had more

sessions. he finally get access to his unpublished memoir abou here bua don't think it's any intention of publishing it. this is a man actually i should make very clear who never accepted a dime of u.s. money. he never signed a contract to be an agent. he was never under orders, but he had befriended ames in beirut in 1969. he was a successful lebanese businessman, and he had his own financial resources. but he had spent a senior year in high school as an exchange student in naperville, illinois, and had fallen in love with america and all things american and he just thought it was a damn shame that the u.s. government didn't understand th