See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism

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“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.

What Customers Say About See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism:

Politics and intelligence is all too often politicized for unnecessary agendas, but Baer seems to be able to disassociate from the potential for pointing fingers and accusing a political group for the failure of CIA operations. Baer is a skilled historian, having actually been a part of the recent history of the CIA. His account of the American politics with the Middle East is enlightening to say the least. Instead, the failure is one of bureaucratic leaders, afraid to take a risk for intelligence.The author takes the reader through a journey from his days of uncertainty as a grad student, the highly secretive spy training, and his own journey in finding Iran at the root of all evil. While the book focuses on his entirety in the CIA and takes the reader through the timeline of events, Baer is quick to reference how each event built upon the previous and the evidence continued to lead back to Iran.No doubt this book's popularity and poignant nature spawned his following book, "The Devil We Know."

Then it begins to get dense with names and details and the bigger picture gets obscured.There is a whole lot of complaining in the book and when I read a book like this I must always remember that hindsight is 20/20. I'm surprised at the large number of favorable reviews. It is very easy to criticize decisions in the past when the outcomes have already been determined. I was very excited to read this book from the description but ended up disappointed. It started out great - describing what it was like to join the CIA and the training etc. Nonetheless, the author does present some valid overarching criticisms of the CIA and I'm sure the CIA would do well to heed them.The author does not give a lot of historical context to his situations and I think that hurts the quality of this work.Unless you are a die-hard CIA enthusiast, you may want to pass on this one. There are other better books that expose the CIA.

See No Evil is a fascinating true view of 20 years of life in the CIA.including the frustration of how "political correctness" has changed the role of the CIA and how America is so vulnerable today. A really eye-opening and thought provoking book.I am so glad I read it.

If you're looking for a more high level review of that you may want to check out The CIA at War by Ronald Kessler. In my mind though the greatest knowledge the book offered up were the subtle insights into the international intelligence community and the lesions able to be garnered from past short comings which may allow us to prevent history from repeating itself once more.

For anyone interested in the real world of intelligence and espionage it tells a riveting tale complete with close calls and the dangers of intelligence collection without glamorizing it to the point of a Flemming-esq satire. See No Evil is by most accounts an excellent read.

It also provides weighty insights into the lapses in the US intelligence community that lead to the eventual rise of international terrorism and the development of multinational terror networks, mostly from the perspective of a foot soldier evaluating the continually changing cultural and socio-political landscape of the Near East. Of course the book's real value comes from the insight provided by Robert Baer and his twenty plus years working for the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence as an Operations Officer.

His detailing of the CIA's gradual movement away from its origins with the OSS and towards a very politically correct intelligence agency in a dangerous world in important for anyone evaluating the current world climate. It should be noted though that the book only details events prior to 9/11 and doesn't detail any number of changes which were said to occur in the US Intelligence community in the following seven years.

Defiantly a recommended read though for anyone who is curious what life is like for a spy in modern society.

I work for the Federal government and I can feel Robert Baer's frustration with management. Management does not listen to the little guy who is out in the feld actually doing the leg work and who has an actual feel for what is really going on. Most managers sit in their Ivory tower and relish in thier "Superior Self",I know everything and can kiss off.

See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism

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