Technical surveillance can never replace human spies, says Pulitzer Prize-winner Kai Bird

Kai Bird is a historian, who specialises in America's expansionist foreign and military policies of the second half of the 20th century. He's the author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of J Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist called father of the atomic bomb. He has also written on the Bundy brothers —McGeorge and William —who played a key role in America's disastrous Vietnam war; John J McCloy, the American banker and lawyer, who was assistant secretary of war during world War II; and recently, Robert Ames, a CIA spy who was killed in the 1983 bombing of the American embassy in Beirut. All of this makes Bird an expert on how America's muddlesome policies have fomented or exacerbated wars and insurgencies in several parts of the world —especially the Middle East. Here he shares some of his views with dna's Gargi Gupta

Q) You suggested recently that Israel had to decide whether it was a Jewish state or a Hebrew republic. How would that help?
A) I was making the case that Israel is not a Jewish state. It's a Hebrew-speaking Israeli state. It is a more inclusive, new identity that would help the prospects for peace, because then a Palestinian living in Haifa can be an Israeli. It's not a popular idea. The founders of Zionism had attempted to found a new republic where Jews around the world could come if they wished to acquire a new national identity. They were not particularly religious men. Of course, over the years it's changed and that's the problem. Israel itself is in a divide — Tel Aviv is a big, modern, secular city and Jerusalem is increasingly populated by orthodox Jews.

Q) But, can you deny that America itself is responsible for the continuing Israeili occupation of West Bank-Gaza?
A) Indeed, if an American president wanted to bring peace in the region he could have done it. But like any foreign policy issue, this too is driven by domestic politics. And when it comes to Israel, it is not just the Jewish lobby but also the Christian-Israel lobby. But all this is changing. There is a new debate going on among American Jews, evident in initiatives like the Boycott [Divestment and Sanctions] Movement and J Street. It's become a generational divide now — younger, Jewish Americans are much more skeptical of Netanyahu and Likud.

Q) Tell us about your latest book, The Good Spy. Who was Robert Ames?
A) The Good Spy is an a biography of CIA officer Robert Ames. The CIA officer who, in 1969, first opened a back channel of communication with the Palestine Liberation Organisation through Ali Hassan Salameh, Yasser Araft's aide. But it was very secret, if it had become public knowledge then it would have been a scandal in America. Salameh and Ames, who learnt Arabic, met in secret and continued their meetings for 10 years. This relationship is regarded in the CIA today as the beginning of the peace process, of the American government talking to the Palestinians, and eventually, the Palestinians to the Israelis.

Q) What happened then? Why didn't Ames and Salameh succeed?
A) Mossad found out and tried to kill Salameh on three occasions. They succeeded in 1979, killing him with a car bomb in Beirut. But this did not end the back channel.

Q) It seems like an innocent time, when militaries relied on covert human intelligence, unlike today when it's all about tapping phones and screening emails.
A) It was an innocent time. Ames and Salame, who was a professional revolutionary, had hours of conversations. It was very personal. It would be much harder today. In a way, it was also a missed opportunity. They could have taken it further, faster. If the US president had pushed Israel it might have led to an earlier peace, and now...we're stuck. So many decades have passed and new facts have been created on the ground. There are 700,000 Israelis living in the occupied territory and it's going to become that much harder to impose a two state solution.

Q) What is the CIA's role in the US military operations now?
A) The CIA is no longer the organisation it was 30-40 years ago. Since 9/11, it has been running the drone assassination programme in Pakistan-Afghanistan.

Q) What do you see as the role of the spy in today's war efforts?
A) Spies were meant to develop relationships, to go to places where a regular diplomat could not go. Today, most of the US military's resources and personnel is spent on technical surveillance and it's worthless— it cannot tell you human intentions or motivations.