people who had access to the real names of agents hadn’t any access to their operational records, and vice versa.
The agency had borrowed many of these bookkeeping practices, along with so many other details of running a secret service, from the British. The British, however, took the business of secrecy far more seriously than the Americans. In the early days, they didn’t even like to use code words in their operational records and preferred, where possible, to use numbers. Rogers had read of an SIS man who had been reprimanded for a security breach years ago. His crime was that in a message home he had identified Berlin as the capital of the country known in SIS jargon only as “12000.”
A six-letter cryptonym was assigned to the case. Agents in Lebanon all had code names that began with “PE.” Jamal Ramlawi became, in agency-ese, an agent with the code name PECOCK.
The portrait of PECOCK that emerged from the biographical material suggested that he had the makings of a quite remarkable agent. Indeed, the Americans could not have invented a better target for recruitment.
PECOCK, the documents explained, was a sort of Palestinian aristocrat, with the self-assurance and disdain for conventional manners that are typical of the children of prominent families around the world. In 1964, after graduating from Cairo University, he had attended the founding session of the Palestine Liberation Organization in East Jerusalem. At that meeting he accosted some of the leaders of Fatah, then a small underground network based in Kuwait, and asked to join them. Several of the elders tried to convince him to go to graduate school instead, but he would have none of it. He moved to Kuwait in 1965. Because of his easy bearing and his knack for languages, he was used often as a courier in Europe.
Like so many aristocrats, the young man gravitated toward intelligence work. Perhaps the visible world bored him. He moved to Amman in 1967 and worked under Abu Namli, vetting new recruits to Fatah. The next year, the Egyptians quietly offered to help Fatah form a security service. PECOCK was among the ten members of Fatah who went to Cairo in mid-1968 for a six-week training course in intelligence. The course covered recruitment and control of agents, surveillance and interrogation techniques, and the preparation of intelligence reports and estimates.
The ten Cairo graduates, who returned to Jordan in late 1968, formed the nucleus of a new Fatah intelligence organization, known as the Jihaz al-Rasd, or “Surveillance Apparatus.” Like many security services, it was divided into two parts: one responsible for counterintelligence and the other charged with collecting information and conducting special operations. The chief of the Rasd, from 1969 on, was Mohammed Nasir Makawi, known as “Abu Nasir.” PECOCK was one of his three top assistants. He was thought to be the most influential because of his relationship with the Old Man, who treated the handsome young Palestinian like a son.
Why had the Old Man placed such trust in Jamal? Rogers asked himself. Why had this relatively junior intelligence officer been singled out and given responsibility for Fatah’s most sensitive operations? Perhaps because the Old Man couldn’t trust anyone his own age, who might be a potential rival.
Suspicion was the universal sentiment of the Arab world, Rogers believed. This was the land of the stab in the back, a culture that believed the admonition: “Fear your enemy once, fear your friend a thousand times.” The bond of friendship among Arab men was intense, but it never lasted. Confidences were always betrayed, pledges of trust and fidelity always broken. Look at Islam. Within a few years after the death of the Prophet Mohammed, his followers were at daggers, hatching assassination plots against each other. The same problem had afflicted Arab politics ever since. The suspicions and rivalries were so intense that it was difficult to trust anyone long enough to build something solid, like a political party or a nation. An Arab man trusted only one other man completely: his son. Even his brothers were potential rivals. The Old Man had no son. But he had Jamal.
The rest of the PRQ Part II summarized operational details. It was obvious that agent PECOCK had access to Fatah’s most important secrets. The only question was how to run him.
Here Rogers made a recommendation that he knew would upset headquarters. PECOCK should be regarded initially as an asset, rather than a controlled agent. He should be encouraged to believe that the CIA accepted his definition of the relationship-as “liaison” between two potentially cooperative intelligence services-and didn’t view him as an American agent. Rogers drew on the conversations in Kuwait. He noted that the young Palestinian had been directed by the Old Man himself to work with the United States. The agency should appear to accept this approach. It should enhance PECOCK’S stature and encourage the fiction of a two-way relationship, by providing him with a regular flow of low-level intelligence that might be useful to Fatah. There was a strong chance that PECOCK could eventually be recruited in the usual way, paid a stipend, and run as a controlled agent. But only if the agency was patient.
“We shouldn’t get greedy,” Rogers stressed in a cable to Stone that accompanied the PRQ. “The operation may collapse if we insist at the outset on complete control and reliability. We should make no effort to buy or compromise PECOCK, and we should not, at this point, ask him to submit to a polygraph.”
For now, recommended Rogers, the Palestinian should be handled discreetly. The Lebanese contract agent who had spotted him and helped develop the case should continue as the courier and intermediary. His cover as a Lebanese leftist with strong pro-Palestinian sympathies would give him easy acesss to Fatah without arousing suspicion. Rogers should meet regularly with PECOCK, but outside Lebanon whenever possible.
Rogers included, as appendices, summaries of his sessions with Jamal in Kuwait, along with summaries of Fuad’s meetings in Beirut. He gave the bulky file to Hoffman, who reviewed it and sent it to Langley.
“You’re going to lose on this one,” Hoffman warned Rogers before sending the PRQ on its way. “You have me half-convinced that you can recruit an agent who isn’t really an agent. But you’re not going to convince them.”
“Why not?” asked Rogers. “What I am proposing makes perfect sense. It will give us what we want, without the risk of blowing the operation.”
“Because they are stupid,” said Hoffman. “In the way that only very smart people can be stupid.”
“Why?” asked Rogers, genuinely puzzled.
“Something happens to people at Yale, I think,” answered Hoffman, picking at his teeth with a wooden match.
“They become convinced that it’s only because of a few people like them that the world isn’t a hopeless mess. They think the world’s problems stem mainly from the fact that there aren’t enough rules and regulations-and well-educated gentlemen to enforce them. That’s where they come in. They are the rulemakers, standing guard against chaos and disorder. And that’s why they’re going to say no to your proposal.”
“Why?”
“Because it violates the rules.”
“But what I’m recommending makes sense.”
“Don’t waste your breath on me, sonny,” said Hoffman. “I just work here.”
18
Washington; April 1970
Rogers was summoned to Washington three weeks later. The Operational Approval branch didn’t like his plan of action. Neither did John Marsh, the operations chief of the NE Division, who urged Stone to recall Rogers for “consultations.”
It was the first real rebuff Rogers had faced in a career that, until then, had been a steady progression of successes and commendations. Hoffman tried to assure him that being summoned home was part of the game, a rite of passage in mid-career. They didn’t take you seriously in the front office until they had hauled you on the carpet and given you a lecture. Anyway, Hoffman said, if Rogers wanted to play it safe, he should have chosen another career.
Hoffman was kind enough not to add: I told you so. But Rogers could hear him thinking it anyway.
Rogers dreaded the trip. He was edgy at home with Jane, distant in their final few nights together, restless and temperamental even around the children. He didn’t like being second-guessed, especially by people who hadn’t recruited an agent of their own in years. He also didn’t like to be reminded that he was in mid-career, no longer a prodigy, exposed to attack from people back home who regarded him as a threat or a rival. Rogers liked to keep his life in neat compartments. The biggest one, called work, had suddenly passed out of his control.
Rogers tried to relax on the airplane. He had a few drinks. He thought of his athletic exploits in high school. He reminisced about old girlfriends. He reviewed in his mind some of the intelligence operations for which he had
