The Foreign Service Journal, May 2005

M A Y 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 75 Entering the Family Business Overworld: The Life and Times of a Reluctant Spy Larry J. Kolb, Riverhead Books, 2004, $25.95, hardcover, 466 pages. R EVIEWED BY W ILLIAM A. M ARJENHOFF If Larry Kolb were not a real per- son reminiscing about his experiences in covert operations, one might imag- ine he had stepped out from the pages of an Eric Ambler novel. Overworld: The Life and Times of a Reluctant Spy seems modeled on Ambler’s success- ful prose formula of drawing an unwit- ting Everyman into a web of interna- tional espionage and intrigue. Yet while possessed of ample mea- sures of innocence and naiveté, Kolb was, in truth, no ordinary bystander swept up in the secret war of clandes- tine operations. His father, a high- ranking U.S. intelligence officer, and his father’s colleagues gave him early instruction in the covert arts. Some of those lessons will be familiar to Foreign Service readers as basic polit- ical tradecraft — e.g., taking flowers to the wives of contacts, learning rudi- mentary language skills in host coun- tries, wearing “quiet clothes.” Kolb also discusses the effective communi- cation of useful information up the chain of command, especially taking the time to write less. But other lessons Kolb learned later might well benefit FS readers, such as how to have a secure conversation and how to elicit data from interlocutors. Asking the opinions of contacts, and drawing little pieces of people’s stories out of them is not only good manners — it’s a subtle form of interrogation to collect useful information. Despite his background, Kolb spurned the CIA’s first efforts to recruit him, opting instead for a career in business and, eventually, life among the jet set. He founded one of the first adventure travel agencies, had a tempestuous one-year marriage to golfer Jan Stephenson, the Anna Kornikova of her day, and became an agent and publicist for Muhammad Ali. On a secret mission sanctioned by Vice President Bush, Kolb accompa- nied Ali to Lebanon in 1985 to seek the release of American hostages Benjamin Weir, Peter Kilburn, Law- rence Jenco, Jeremy Levin and William Buckley. Through his association with Ali, Kolb met and befriended a wide vari- ety of international luminaries. He became a confidant of Saudi middle- man and “financial high-wire artist” Adnan Khashoggi and married Khashoggi’s adopted daughter. The company he kept and the family into which he married solidified Kolb’s bona fides as an insider with enormous potential as a clandestine operative. Meanwhile, CIA co-founder Miles Copeland launched another effort to recruit Kolb into the secret world Copeland had helped create, and this time, Kolb was receptive. Kolb became Copeland’s right-hand man, his eyes and ears (and sometimes mouthpiece) throughout much of the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. The two even collaborated on several white papers for the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, including one that fused Khashoggi’s proposal of a “Marshall Plan” for the Middle East with Reagan’s Mideast peace plan. Technically, Kolb was a business associate of Copeland. But he could never be absolutely certain for whom he was working at any given time, or even on which project, in the “over- world” — his father’s term for the realm of shadowy figures-behind- the-figureheads who secretly shape events. Much of his fascinating narrative is devoted to the “St. Kitts Affair,” in which Kolb, with the blessings of Copeland and Khashoggi, became enmeshed in an attempt to help his friend Rajiv Gandhi seek re-election. The convoluted intrigue surrounding his involvement landed him in serious trouble with the Indian judiciary, trouble from which he is only now B OOKS Some of the lessons Kolb learned might well benefit FS readers, such as how to have a secure conversation and how to elicit data from interlocutors.