The Untouchable

Michael Taylor's friends say he is a top undercover man. Critics say he is out of control -- and that federal agents are protecting him. One thing is certain: the government doesn't want you to read this story.

by Tim Sandler

Part 5

That may be an understatement. In the early 1980s, the Reagan Administration was embroiled in a full-blown crisis in the Middle East. In Lebanon, Iranian-backed Shiite terrorists bombed the US Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, killing 50 people. The bombing succeeded in virtually wiping out the CIA's station in Lebanon, leaving US anti-terrorist operations blind and crippled. Six months later, a truck bomb barreled into Marines headquarters in Beirut, killing 250 soldiers. Oliver North, working for the National Security Council as the country's anti-terrorism point man, vowed to track down the terrorist responsible for the truck bomb. And at about the same time, the CIA station chief in Beirut was kidnapped and tortured to death.

By that time, the US Marines and the Army Special Forces -- including Taylor's group -- had spent two years training the Christian-dominated Lebanese National Army to reassert national control over a country mired in a bloody civil war between Muslims, Druze, and Christians. But with its ground operations there wiped out by the bombings, the US intelligence community was desperate to re-establish its presence in Lebanon.

According to one of Taylor's résumés, after his group was withdrawn from Lebanon in 1983, he returned there as a "security consultant" from 1983 to 1986. If Taylor was indeed working in Lebanon during that time, there was good reason. An audacious ex-Green Beret who spoke fluent Arabic and had married a Lebanese woman from a prominent Christian family, Taylor had entry into otherwise impenetrable parts of Lebanese society. He even received a merit award from the Lebanese government.

One former military officer familiar with the scene in Lebanon at the time says that such a man "would have been an invaluable asset."

And, perhaps, an asset that officials in US law-enforcement and intelligence agencies would deem worth protecting at any cost -- regardless of what he did in his civilian life.

Part 6

Tim Sandler can be reached at tsandler[a]phx.com.