We have to start listening to people again

books:


	• See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism Robert Baer Crown, 2002 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 208 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

cry for justice

For those that think the goverment (not CIA) is here for you. This book should show you otherwise. For those conspiracy theorists...this should be right up your ally. Where is the justice in this country when such fine individuals can suffer through so much to keep us all safe....all in vain and all only so the richer can get richer. The government doesnt run this country, the "big oil" does. This will never change. Great book, great read.

The truth can be ugly

This is probably the best memoir I have come across by a former CIA case officer. Baer is spot on when it comes to how government operates. Who could ever imagine that those in the field are often times prevented from achieving superior results by risk averse management, or that those in Washington are too concerned about politics and/or "drinking and whoring" to comprehend what's truly unfolding beyond our borders? The truth can be ugly.

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The Road To Self Defeat

Robert Baer's account illustrates how American intelligence gathering capability was decapitated by bureaocrats and politicians. The author paints a vivid picture of work in the field as humint (human intelligence)was relegated to the back bench. Our enemies could not have done better than our own political establishment in neutralising the CIA. This book tells it all.

Kingmaker

An Eye Opener....

This book is an incredible account of a man's journey and almost an obsession with finding the truth - and how his efforts were sometime thwarted by his own government and bureaucratic bull. Mr. Baer makes an excellent point that the CIA and the United States in general has to get back into the nitty gritty of operations and spying - face to face, person to person contact. Technology can only take us so far and get us basic information. In order to beat this enemy, we need to be patient, determined, and willing to accept the truth.

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We have to start listening to people again

Excellent story that provides an inside view of life on the ground for CIA operatives.

Much of the book revolves around the Middle East and Mr. Baer's search for those responsible for bombings in Lebanon. One name that comes up frequently was a terrorist by the name of Imad Moughniyah. This person was involved in the Beirut embassy and Marine barracks bombings, the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, kidnapping of Terry Anderson, hijacking of TWA flight 847, etc...By coincidence, Moughniyah was assassinated in Syria on the day that I finished reading this book. I must assume that was good news to Mr. Baer.

Some of the stories he tells of bureaucratic ineptness do not engender a great deal of confidence in the CIA..."As the civil war in Afghanistan started to boil, I repeatedly asked for a speaker of Dari or Pashtun...to debrief the flood of refugees coming across the border...I was told there were no Dari or Pashtun speakers anywhere...Headquarters instead offered to send out a four-person sexual harassment briefing team."

Near the end of his career, he seemed to descend into a self-destructive pattern of behavior that only got worse after he returned from the Middle East. In my opinion, he had spent so much time looking at the trees (and individual leaves) that he got lost in the forest.

His closing comments, however, are right on the mark..."It all comes down to the point that we have to start listening to people again, no matter how unpleasant the message is."

Overall a good book about very brave men who were willing to take significant risks for their country.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

?Robert Baer was considered perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East.? --Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker

?Robert Baer [was] one of the most talented Middle East case officers of the past twenty years.? ?Reuel Marc Gerecht, The Atlantic Monthly

In See No Evil, one of the CIA?s top field officers of the past quarter century recounts his career running agents in the back alleys of the Middle East. In the process, Robert Baer paints a chilling picture of how terrorism works on the inside and provides compelling evidence about how Washington politics sabotaged the CIA?s efforts to root out the world?s deadliest terrorists.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, the world witnessed the terrible result of that intelligence failure with the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the wake of those attacks, Americans were left wondering how such an obviously long-term, globally coordinated plot could have escaped detection by the CIA and taken the nation by surprise. Robert Baer was not surprised. A twenty-one-year veteran of the CIA?s Directorate of Operations who had left the agency in 1997, Baer observed firsthand how an increasingly bureaucratic CIA lost its way in the post?cold war world and refused to adequately acknowledge and neutralize the growing threat of Islamic fundamentalist terror in the Middle East and elsewhere.

A throwback to the days when CIA operatives got results by getting their hands dirty and running covert operations, Baer spent his career chasing down leads on suspected terrorists in the world?s most volatile hot spots. As he and his agents risked their lives gathering intelligence, he watched as the CIA reduced drastically its operations overseas, failed to put in place people who knew local languages and customs, and rewarded workers who knew how to play the political games of the agency?s suburban Washington headquarters but not how to recruit agents on the ground.

See No Evil is not only a candid memoir of the education and disillusionment of an intelligence operative but also an unprecedented look at the roots of modern terrorism. Baer reveals some of the disturbing details he uncovered in his work, including:

* In 1996, Osama bin Laden established a strategic alliance with Iran to coordinate terrorist attacks against the United States.

* In 1995, the National Security Council intentionally aborted a military coup d?etat against Saddam Hussein, forgoing the last opportunity to get rid of him.

* In 1991, the CIA intentionally shut down its operations in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, and ignored fundamentalists operating there.

When Baer left the agency in 1997 he received the Career Intelligence Medal, with a citation that says, ?He repeatedly put himself in personal danger, working the hardest targets, in service to his country.? See No Evil is Baer?s frank assessment of an agency that forgot that ?service to country? must transcend politics and is a forceful plea for the CIA to return to its original mission?the preservation of our national sovereignty and the American way of life.

From The Preface
This book is a memoir of one foot soldier?s career in the other cold war, the one against terrorist networks. It?s a story about places most Americans will never travel to, about people many Americans would prefer to think we don?t need to do business with.

This memoir, I hope, will show the reader how spying is supposed to work, where the CIA lost its way, and how we can bring it back again. But I hope this book will accomplish one more purpose as well: I hope it will show why I am angry about what happened to the CIA. And I want to show why every American and everyone who cares about the preservation of this country should be angry and alarmed, too.

The CIA was systematically destroyed by political correctness, by petty Beltway wars, by careerism, and much more. At a time when terrorist threats were compounding globally, the agency that should have been monitoring them was being scrubbed clean instead. Americans were making too much money to bother. Life was good. The White House and the National Security Council became cathedrals of commerce where the interests of big business outweighed the interests of protecting American citizens at home and abroad. Defanged and dispirited, the CIA went along for the ride. And then on September 11, 2001, the reckoning for such vast carelessness was presented for all the world to see.

From the Hardcover edition.

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