CIA CONSPIRED TO SAVE A TERRORIST

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100940008-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 23, 2010
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: September 23, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100940008-1
ARTICLE AFFZA1 -1'D
p : r,t C i-D_l., -
THE WASHINGTON POST
23 September 1980
CIA ConsFfred to Save a 1eiToisZ
In the "wilderness of mirrors" that ?June 1973: An Israeli hit team assas-
makes up the espionage game, the sinated Carlos' old Moscow friend
Central Intelligence Agency once con- Boudia, and Carlos took over Palestin-
spired to save the life of the world's ian terrorist operations in Europe.
most notorious terrorist-Carlos the Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi
Jackal. financed the extremist Palestinian
He picked up his animal nickname group, called the Rejection Front.
from the fictional assassin who almost ? December 1973: Carlos shot Zionist
nailed Charles deGaulle in Frederick department store tycoon Joseph Sieff
Forsyth's novel, "The Day of the Jack- in London, but failed to kill him.
al," but his real name was Ilitch Rami- ? January 1974: Carlos bombed an Is-
rez Sanchez. He was the eldest son of raeli bank in London.
an 'expatriate millionaire Colombian ? August 1974: Carlos planted three
lawyer in Venezuela. bombs in downtown Paris aimed at a
This is his story as pieced together Jewish newspaper and two French
by- my associate Dale Van Atta from newspapers that supported Israel.
top-secret CIA and State Department ? September 1974: Carlos supervised
documents: the Japanese Red Army seizure of the
? 1966: At 17, already influenced by a French Embassy at The Hague, tieth-
younger brother who was a leader in erlands, using grenades stolen from a
the Venezuelan Communist Party, Car- U.S. Army depot in Germany by the
los was trained in one of Fidel Castro's Baader-Meinhof terrorist gang. Carlos
guerrilla camps. There he learned the tossed a grenade into Le Drugstore in
terrorist's art from Gen. Viktor Sime- Paris, -killing two and wounding
nov of the Soviet KGB. others, preparatory to the embassy
? 1969: Carlos was expelled from Lu- takeover in Holland.
mumba University in Moscow where ? Late 1974: Enter the CIA. Through
he had developed a fast friendship its intelligence contacts, the agency
with a Palestinian commando named learned that an assassination squad of
Mohammed Boudia. the six-nation consortium of South
? 1970: Carlos fought with Palestin- American dictatorships, known as
tan guerrillas in Jordan against King "Operation Condor," had been ordered
Hussein. to kill Carlos. The assignment was ap-
? 1971: Carlos was the hit of the parently in retaliation for Carlos' as-
Latin-American cocktail crowd in Lon- sassination of Col. Ramon Trabal, Uru-
don, where he escorted his beautiful guay's military attache in Paris; and
mother and charmed women with his for two other murders he was sus-
guitar-playing talent. He was known as pected of plotting-that of a Bolivian
"El Gordo"-the fat one: ambassador in Paris and a Chilean offi-
? 1972: Carlos helped organize the cial in the Middle East.
massacre of Israeli athletes at the Mu- . According to a top-secret document
nich Olympics, and the Japanese Red based on CIA internal files, Carlos was
Army's- indiscriminate machine-gun spared when the CIA warned the
slaughter at the Tel Aviv airport._
execution, and the -Condor nations
were warned to call off the murder
plot. ..::Af,,?-,.::, -
Why did the CIA save Carlos? Sev-
eral sources in the agency suggested
that it was ?a Mafia-like professional
concern-that if Carlos were mur-
dered, it would cause chaos in the
murky world of international espio-
One source thought it was at least
possible that Carlos had been a CIA in-
formant, and that the agency was sine-
ply protecting one of its. own. This
source did not. however; suggest that.
Carlos had ever been a paid killer'for
the CIA. " !I
At any rate. Carlos was spared.
thanks to the CIA's intervention. and
lived to wreak his blondy handiwork
for at least a few more months. He was
captured by French police in June
1975, but managed to escape after kill-
ing an informant and two policerhen;
he masterminded the kidnaping oi?the
OPEC oil ministers in December 1973.
and was reportedly rewarded with a $21
million bonus by his paymaster, Qad-
dafi; he helped engineer, in July 1976,
the hijacking in Athens of an"Air
' France plane which wound up at En-
tebbe Airport in Uganda, where the Is-
raelis pulled off their daring rescue !
mision.
. After that, Carlos the ' Jackal
dropped from sight. Intelligence .
sources say he wound up in Iraq,-and
may have been exterminated in that ;
nation's secret purge of'Palestine ter-
rorists. There is some speculation he is
now in Libya, but the smart money in
the intelligence community bets that
French, government of the proposed Carlos is dead. Still, no one is sure..-
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100940008-1