Coming In From The Cold

By DOUGLAS WALLER/WASHINGTON

As a crowd of diplomats gathered in the Wye Plantation's conference room two weeks ago for the ritual photo op that launched the latest Middle East peace talks, two men were missing: CIA Director George Tenet and the agency's Tel Aviv station chief were hiding out upstairs, waiting for the reporters and photographers to clear out so they could slip back into the meeting unnoticed.

Their shyness was understandable. The CIA usually works in the shadows, particularly in the byzantine, often dangerous Middle East, where too much publicity about what the agency does can get a spy killed. Over nine days of grueling negotiations at Wye, however, Tenet and a small group of agency operatives became the key diplomats who hammered out the most contentious part of the interim accord: the Palestinians' promise to crack down on terror- ists so Israel would withdraw from more West Bank land. Tenet, said Bill Clinton, "had an unusual, almost unprecedented role to play because of the security considerations." His spies are venturing into uncharted waters as well. The CIA will monitor the Israeli and Palestinian roundup of suspected terrorists and referee disputes over security measures.

Never before has the agency been so involved or so visible in a negotiating assignment. The process began in 1996 when Israeli-Palestinian talks broke down and the CIA station chief in Tel Aviv began playing host at weekly meetings between officials from both sides to share intelligence on terrorists. Tenet has since flown four times to Israel and the Palestinian territories, and the CIA has set up a satellite office in the Gaza Strip, along with "operations rooms" in Jericho, Hebron, Ramallah and Nablus, to help in communications with Arafat's agents.

Though the CIA has had its setbacks in the region--it failed to predict the Shah's 1979 fall in Iran and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990--the agency retains a mystique in the Arab world. "For Arafat, it's a big deal to be dealing with the head of the CIA," says a senior State Department official. The P.L.O. chairman and Tenet have taken pains to cultivate each other. During Tenet's first visit to the West Bank in 1996, Arafat arranged for Tenet, who is Greek Orthodox, to tour Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, guided by the Greek Orthodox priests who help run it.

Tenet's diplomatic play is sure to raise his stature in Washington. A former National Security Council staff member, he was thought by some to be too young and inexperienced when he took over the CIA at age 44. There have been missteps on his watch. The Indian nuclear tests last May caught the agency by surprise. Critics complain that the CIA knew too little about the pharmaceutical plant the U.S. bombed in Sudan to prove it was producing chemical weapons for terrorist Osama bin Laden.

Tenet, however, is close to Clinton, who likes his low-key but blunt style. The Director has also courted Congress enough for Newt Gingrich to push through a $1.8 billion increase in the intelligence budget this year, bringing it to $29 billion. Tenet avoids the media and refuses to talk about his Middle East foray. But in an exclusive interview with TIME after the Wye marathon, he maintained that the CIA "can have an enormous impact on the future, but the fact is that we have to become a more agile institution."

Tenet and his senior intelligence officials are nervous about all the attention the agency is getting in the talks. When terrorists strike again, as they surely will, the CIA arbitrators "will be under tremendous pressure from both sides to place the blame on the other," says a senior intelligence official. By helping Arafat crack down on Hamas, the CIA may invite attacks against American targets, including strikes against CIA staff in the region. Tellingly, at the White House signing ceremony last Friday, the seat reserved for Tenet was empty. He had returned to CIA headquarters after the talks concluded--trying to get back into the shadows.

--With reporting by Jamil Hamad/Jerusalem

With reporting by Jamil Hamad/Jerusalem