Product Description

In his explosive New York Times bestseller, top CIA operative Robert Baer paints a chilling picture of how terrorism works on the inside and provides startling evidence of how Washington politics sabotaged the CIA’s efforts to root out the world’s deadliest terrorists, allowing for the rise of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda and the continued entrenchment of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

A veteran case officer in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations in the Middle East, Baer witnessed the rise of terrorism first hand and the CIA’s inadequate response to it, leading to the attacks of September 11, 2001. This riveting book is both an indictment of an agency that lost its way and an unprecedented look at the roots of modern terrorism, and includes a new afterword in which Baer speaks out about the American war on terrorism and its profound implications throughout the Middle East.

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

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5491 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-07
• Released on: 2003-01-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From AudioFile
Although the author/narrator lacks a trained voice, his muttered, sometimes hesitant speech makes him more believable as an intelligence-gatherer--trained more to listen than to talk. Robert Baer's abridged work leaps by place and time, illuminating the CIA field officer's career from recruitment to retirement, with lots of detailed recollections culled from twenty years of clandestine Middle Eastern operations. Due to government censorship of the manuscript, the reader must interject, "words blacked out" at the most annoying times. However, the stuff that does slip through gives ample detail of how these guys bribe, steal, intoxicate, and deceive to gain vital information. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Review
?See No Evil is a compelling account of America?s failed efforts to ?listen in? on the rest of the world, especially the parts of it that intend to do us harm.?
?Wall Street Journal

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

Review
“See No Evil is a compelling account of America’s failed efforts to ‘listen in’ on the rest of the world, especially the parts of it that intend to do us harm.”
–Wall Street Journal

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

Customer Reviews

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.

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.

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