Is Ali Reza Asgari, allegedly one of the key players in the 1983 American embassy bombing in Beirut, living under CIA protection in the United States? A new book, published on May 23, argues just that. In The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, a biography of CIA agent Ames, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Kai Bird writes that George W. Bush granted Asgari asylum in the United States in 2007, after he traveled to Istanbul via Damascus. According to the book, the administration believed Asgari could provide crucial information on Iran’s nuclear program.
The Revolutionary Guards general and former deputy minister of defense played an important role in setting up Hizbollah, which was responsible for a number of attacks on US citizens in Lebanon, including the embassy attack in April 1983 that claimed the lives of 63 people, including Ames and other CIA agents.

Bird interviewed 40 current and former CIA agents for the book. He claims that Asgari made two phone calls from the United States to an Iranian friend in Germany. The book has received a favorable review in The New York Times.

A CIA spokesman denied Bird’s assertion, and U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf did the same in a tweeton May 20th, writing that Bird had been irresponsible to make “Blind accusations w/o facts.”

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