Smoke and Mirrors or Valued Guide in Global Mine Field? : Counterterrorism Expert Wheels and Deals Way to Fortune

He looks more invented than real, like a character in an Arnaud de Borchgrave novel filled with international intrigue and right-wing derring-do. A fringe of blond hair cloaks a shiny head. The shirt is white on white, the suit dark and expensive. The watch is gold and so is the heavy linked bracelet. There are three rings and they flash as his hands work over some Turkish worry beads. The beads, too, are pure gold.

The voice is deep but quiet, with little inflection, even when he says Moammar Kadafi should have been killed long ago.

He lives, as would a character in a Washington novel, in the Watergate; a huge crystal vase filled with flowers rests on a glass table next to the Partagas cigars. The black Corvette is stabled in the garage below.

In one room are replica instruments of death--models of Czech pistols and letter bombs that he uses in lectures--and collected writings on germ warfare. On one wall is an autographed picture of President Reagan; on another, a picture of a half-dressed woman, a flak jacket only partially covering her bra.

Welcome to his world: Neil Livingstone is the name, counterterrorism the game. It is a world of studied mystique; scoffed at by some as a smoke-and-mirrors province of the right wing or a fast-buck consultancy scam exploiting scared travelers; valued by others as a reassuring guide service through the global mine field of alien cultures and political violence.

At 39, Livingstone is one of the more flamboyant and controversial of the breed. “Anti-terrorism is the fastest growing industry in America,” he says, “which is why it has attracted every type of bozo and thug along with some very good firms.” Although he regards himself as one of the more rational voices in the trade, others, particularly academicians, view Livingstone as an alarmist ideologue who advocates assassination and the violent overthrow of governments and scares up clients with high-decibel prophecies of germ warfare terrorism.

“We should have killed the ayatollah,” he says, softly. “Assassination is a dirty word but I do believe there are terrorists and people like the ayatollah who can so disrupt the world order we have today.” As for Nicaragua, “Somoza was a bad guy, but these guys are worse. The right thing in my judgment is to overthrow that government. Whether the contras or the United States should go in and throw them out, I’m not prepared to say.”

One might wonder how the 1964 graduate of Helena (Mont.) High School--a hot-rocket entrepreneur who owned a Ferrari at age 16, had time for both track and debate, won a Voice of Democracy contest and listed “politics” as his future--wandered into the shadowy world of counterterrorism.

It was a convoluted trail. His thinking on world affairs began to crystallize while he was studying for a doctoral degree at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in the early ‘70s.

“I became seduced from being a normative person who said we have to design the world to being a pragmatist that said, ‘Let’s look for real solutions,’ ” he says.

“Our world is populated by people who don’t enjoy our sensitivities, don’t enjoy our institutions and, quite frankly, mean us real harm. We have to roll up our sleeves and do the dark and dirty deeds.”

Livingstone has lots of former lives--former Hill aide, former partner in Air Panama airlines, former power broker at (public relations firm) Gray & Co., former executive in a now-defunct security company--and a pretty lucrative present. He is a consultant on terrorism to ABC television’s “20/20,” and to the CBS series “The Equalizer.”

He also wrote a book, “The War Against Terrorism,” in 1982, and last year edited, with Terrell E. Arnold, a book of essays, “Fighting Back: Winning the War Against Terrorism.” In February, Lexington Books plans to publish a book on germ warfare by Livingstone and Joseph D. Douglass, “America the Vulnerable: The Threat of Chemical Biological Warfare.” He teaches a course on terrorism at Georgetown University and is trying to start a Ramboesque magazine aimed at a “more upscale audience” than Soldier of Fortune.

For a handsome fee, he lectures kidnap-fearful corporate executives, warning them, among other things, that the hooker eyeing them in some European boite may be a member of, say, the Japanese Red Army or the Baader-Meinhof Gang. He says he also helps advise various governments at crucial times on terrorism, but what he has done and with whom is always vague.

“I wish I could be more forthcoming,” he says, “but in the security business you never talk about your clients.”

Depending on whom you talk to, Neil Livingstone is everything from a self-promoting hustler of dubious skills to a kind and loyal expert, smart and knowledgeable. Says former Sen. James G. Abourezk, national chairman of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee: “He’s a very nice guy, even if his politics are weird as hell. I scoff at this new terrorism business. They’re all right-wing and by their very terms they define terrorism as anyone who is against them. But I like Neil. And I have to tell you he was the first guy I went to when the AADC got blown up. He recommended a very good security person.”

Counterterrorism Contacts

Av Westin, producer of “20/20,” says Livingstone came up with some “fantastic” French counterterrorism contacts for the show. And J. Robert McBrien, Treasury Department deputy to the assistant secretary for law enforcement, praises Livingstone as a “good thinker and writer with a good strategic perspective and strong security contacts.”

But there are many others who, in the standard practice of official Washington, will not speak for attribution. Says a high State Department official, laughing, “The ability to promote oneself as an ‘expert’ counts for a lot. Livingstone is someone who has decided he’s found an interesting and lucrative area.”

Livingstone answers his critics: “Many of my more scholastic colleagues spend time talking to each other in mutual mental masturbation. I sit in the trenches with the folks who do. . . . When I spoke at the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations I had the Chicago bomb squad in the first row, the guys with three fingers. My book had been helpful to them.”

If the bomb squad has no trouble with Livingstone’s credibility, others do. At Gray & Co., for example, where he is remembered for having his own personal document shredder, former colleagues say he insisted that people call him “Dr. Livingstone,” as if he had his Ph.D. He doesn’t, and insists that he never promoted that idea.

“Because my thesis has been accepted (at Fletcher in 1973) they probably assumed that.” He plans to pass his language requirements for the degree this fall. Livingstone knows French and Russian slightly and speaks Spanish. However, one Gray & Co. applicant insists that he told her any employee had to speak at least two languages, which is not the case, then added that he spoke no fewer than eight and was fluent in Spanish because he grew up in Havana. Livingstone denies the story.

‘Graduate-Level Courses’

During this interview, Livingstone said the College of William and Mary “let me into graduate-level courses as a freshman.” A clerk in William and Mary’s registration office said, “Our records show that his first year Livingstone took all 100-level courses, which are freshman courses.”

“He’s had an angle ever since he was born,” says Livingstone’s mother Jeanne, with a laugh, in a phone interview. Does she see a sense of mystery? “He promotes that. Come on. He’s not a mystery to his mommy.”

The slightly hooded eyes reveal nothing and Livingstone barely smiles when he says he has never been with the CIA or in any other intelligence capacity. Did he ever run guns? “No, but we did sell some guns through the firm (Joseph J. Cappucci Associates, the Washington security firm that once employed him.) They were for executive protection.”

Livingstone said the security firm dealt in “small shipments of counterterrorism gear, infrared and night-sighting devices, silencers--all closely monitored by the State and Defense departments.” What about weapons for international corporations fearful of kidnaping and ransom (K&R;, as it is known in the trade)? “We bought it abroad. There is less red tape to go abroad.”

Cappucci, who sold his security company a few years ago, says “Neil collected and collated information about terrorist acts: whose, where, modus operandi , tactics.”

Livingstone makes it sound more exciting than that:

“I spent four years learning what technical security was about.” He recalls Bogota as a “Wild West. Everyone carried a gun. We did some very tough things. A large American company was being driven out of the country, and when they replaced their Americans with locals one of the locals came home and found his wife in the entry hall with her throat slit and a note pinned to her saying, ‘Stop working with the Yankees.’ We ultimately became consultants to one of the largest insurance underwriters in the world.”

Hoped for a Position

When Reagan was elected, Livingstone was hoping for a position in the Administration. “My name had been floated for a job in this (counterterrorist) area and had engendered a . . . match between some of the powers that be. I also had been taking some hits in the press. I had been attacked by Human Events in 1981 as too liberal, and various far-left groups said I was too conservative.” His life was “on hold.”

Enter Bob Gray, who “wanted to create an international division” of Gray & Co. Livingstone’s credentials? “My special expertise, if you will.”

His work for Gray began when “Bob (Gray) needed advice about Libya.” Livingstone had once been arrested there, he says. “Someone put a machine gun in my ribs.” He was taken to a “secret police headquarters that a friend of mine in Libya did not know existed. I had to go through a very lengthy interrogation and at the end had to sign a confession in Arabic. It could have said, for all I know, that I am a CIA agent . . . but (I signed it anyway because) I figured I was in a tight spot. Afterward, there were profuse apologies and they let me go. I never figured out whether it was mistaken identity or what.”

Last year, Livingstone, who supervised Gray’s foreign operations, was placed on leave after the company reached a severance agreement with its then-vice chairman, Alejandro Orfila. This followed an investigation of Gray’s Madrid office, which raised concern that Orfila had been involved in money being transferred from a client to a Spanish legislator for the purpose of influencing legislation.

Livingstone’s name never surfaced in any of the alleged dealings, except as supervisor of foreign operations. Today, he says, he and Gray & Co. “had a difference of opinion on how they handled that matter. Because it is still under investigation, it would be inappropriate for me to comment on it, but I consider the view that I took vindicated and we’re working toward an amiable resolution of our differences.”

Made a Killing on Coins

The son of a dentist in Helena, Mont., Livingstone remembers his childhood with great affection. At 15, his mother took him to his first coin club meeting and Livingstone quickly saw the possibilities of selling rare coins. He made a killing on the estate of a coin collector whose son didn’t understand its value.

Poring over the collection, Livingstone found a 1797 uncirculated $10 gold piece and “rolls and rolls of rare silver dollars. I wrote $20,000 worth of checks that night and all I had was like 500 bucks. I knew I had to cover those checks by morning. . . . I woke up people in the middle of the night and said, ‘I’ve got a deal for you.’ By morning I had covered my checks and had probably about $200,000 to the good.” He immediately bought the Ferrari, but says he quickly ran through all his money on cars and partying.

Although Livingstone sometimes wears cowboy boots and hats in Washington, such Montana trappings contrast considerably with his usual apparel. Says his mother, “Montana has a terribly different image than the way we are. For example, my husband had tailor-made suits. I was raised with Neiman-Marcus.” One reason Livingstone went to William and Mary, says his mother: “I wanted him to be raised as a gentleman.”

At William and Mary, Livingstone met Susan Morrisey in his freshman year. Their senior year they met again, walking across campus. He asked her for a date, they went out from then on and got married after graduation in August, 1968. His wife is bright and bubbly and clearly adores Livingstone, whom she describes as her “closest friend.”

Avoided Vietnam

Livingstone managed to avoid Vietnam as a member of the Army Reserve and the two of them lock-stepped through life from then on. Both worked on Capitol Hill, then left to get master’s degrees at the University of Montana. They were the first married couple accepted at the Fletcher School. She is now associate deputy administrator for logistics with the Veterans Administration.

Livingstone started with the late Sen. Stuart Symington in 1969, then returned to the Hill in 1973 after Fletcher to work for then-Sen. James B. Pearson of Kansas. He is but vaguely remembered by some ex-Symington staffers. As for Pearson (“I was Pearson’s foreign affairs assistant,” says Livingstone), the former senator, now a Washington lawyer, says, “I can remember the name and I sort of remember who he is.” A former staffer says, “He did a lot of research and speech writing. He was ambitious and energetic, but for us, his level of work didn’t match. He sounded better on paper than in actuality.”

Next, Livingstone returned to his entrepreneurial days of old, acquiring, along with four other partners, Air Panama. They got interested, in part, because “it’s a way to power. One of my partners had very strong political ambitions.” He refuses to mention the names of his partners.

The whole venture fell apart, according to Livingstone, “because very high Panamanian officials wanted to run the airlines so that their friends could have it. In order to meet one of our letters of credit we were selling some of the planes and they had to be certified with an FAA inspection by a certain date.” Livingstone says the Panamanian government tied up their permit to get the planes out of the country. He and his partners could not make their financial commitments “so the government took it over.”

Livingstone lectures about 100 times a year. He recently warned a group of women business leaders to be inconspicuous when traveling and not to carry attache cases.

‘Don’t Sit in First Class’

“Under no circumstance accept responsibility for any luggage . . . especially if a stranger asks that you ‘watch’ a suitcase . . . never hesitate to take the next carrier when suspicious of fellow travelers. Don’t sit in first class. We all love to but it usually becomes the control center for terrorists and also they think you’re more important. Don’t try to look too important.”

Sitting in his Watergate apartment, frequent flier Livingstone says: “You can live with terrorism without being paranoid. If you don’t want to look like an American, wear tinted glasses. I do. And I wear Italian suits.”

How to escape a kidnaper: If armed with a knife and desirous of dispatching a guard or sentry, slip up behind him and, if right-handed, cup your left hand over his mouth, jerk his head upward, and push forward with the knife across the side of his neck below the angle of the jaw. A 1 1/2-inch deep slash will sever the jugular vein and often the carotid artery. The victim will be rendered unconscious within five seconds, and death will usually follow in another seven seconds.

That was Livingstone, not Ken Follett, writing in his book “The War Against Terrorism,” emphasizing that this is one of the last-resort techniques if a kidnaping victim is “convinced that he is going to be killed and his only chance lies in escape.”

‘Sea of Black Lace’

“The woman pulled up her long formal gown, and from a sea of black lace removed a metal canister that had been strapped to her leg. Her companions attached the canister to the air-conditioning unit and set a timer that would release the contents.” In a matter of minutes “the President and his retinue collapsed as if mowed down by machine gun fire. They died before they hit the richly carpeted floor.” Victims of deadly nerve gas.

That was Livingstone, not Robert Ludlum, writing in The Washingtonian about a scenario of a chemical- and germ-warfare attack.

Livingstone says he has credibility because he takes a “rational, thoughtful approach.” And, indeed, a Wall Street Journal editorial drew attention to “some important answers to the problem of chemical warfare in a chilling report by Neil Livingstone and Joseph D. Douglass Jr., ‘The Poor Man’s Atomic Bomb,’ ” published by the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis. Much of his “Fighting Terrorism” book is a quick-read history of terrorist movements and attacks, less sensational than his kidnaping advice.

However, others in the anti-terrorism field see his emphasis on germ warfare as part of what one calls the “threat-mongering school of literature . . . more lurid and sensational than helpful.”

Weapon of Mass Destruction

Livingstone contends that “a single individual with normal education working alone in his garage or kitchen with unclassified data and readily available materials could build a weapon of mass destruction of a chemical or biological nature, killing perhaps tens of thousands of people, with no more risk to himself than refining heroin and with no more degree of difficulty than brewing beer at home. And that’s pretty frightening.”

Two other experts in the field, Brian Jenkins of Rand Corp. and Robert H. Kupperman, a science and technology specialist at Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, demur. “While anyone may be able to grow the bugs,” says Kupperman, “such moves would neither be logistically feasible nor in the best interest of terrorist groups who seek attention for their cause far more than hundreds of thousands of dead bodies.”

But, to be sure, there will be much about this in Livingstone’s forthcoming book. Should it not sell well, he says, he has other ideas for the future.

“You really don’t want to be typecast,” he says, so, with the knowledge he has collected, it is not at all impossible that a future gambit might be--you guessed it--fiction.