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See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism Paperback – January 7, 2003
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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.
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCrown
- Publication dateJanuary 7, 2003
- Dimensions6.19 x 0.89 x 9.3 inches
- ISBN-10140004684X
- ISBN-13978-1400046843
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Editorial Reviews
Review
–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
From the Inside Flap
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.
From the Back Cover
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.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
In late 1994 I found myself living pretty much on airplanes. I would arrive in Amman, Jordan, in the late afternoon, check into a hotel, take a quick shower, and then spend the night talking to one Iraqi dissident or another about what to do with Saddam Hussein. Often I wouldn’t crawl into bed until well after midnight, only to get up a few hours later to catch a plane back to Washington and my office at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It made for a long day. I was used to it, though, having spent nearly twenty years working the streets of the Middle East at the same pace.
Occasionally, in this covert version of shuttle diplomacy, I’d get off the plane in London and just walk around the city so I could catch my breath. I didn’t follow a particular route, but often without intending it, I’d end up in the Edgeware Road area, a part of central London taken over by Arabs and other Middle Easterners. With the veiled women, and the men walking around in flowing robes, it felt like I’d never left the Middle East, but there was one subtle difference: the Arabic bookstores.
In most parts of the Middle East, bookstores are forbidden from selling radical Islamic tracts that openly advocate violence, but in London’s Arabic bookstores there were racks of them. One glance at the bold print and you knew what they were about: a deep, uncompromising hatred for the United States. In the worldview of the people who wrote and published these tracts, a jihad, or holy war, between Islam and America wasn’t just a possibility; for them the war was a given, and it was already under way. Having spent so much of my life in the Middle East, I knew that such intense, violent hatred represented an aberration of Islam; but I also knew better than most the human toll that such hatred can take.
Often I would pick up a tract and take a look at the small print. Rarely did the publisher or the editor’s name appear on the masthead, and office addresses were never noted. But with few exceptions, they carried a European post-office box, often in Britain or in Germany. It didn’t take a sophisticated intelligence organization to figure out that Europe, our traditional ally in the war against the bad guys, had become a hothouse of Islamic fundamentalism.
Curious, I asked my CIA colleagues in London if they knew who was putting this stuff out. They had no idea, but there was really no reason why they should have. Since our London office couldn’t claim a single Arabic speaker, it was unlikely that anyone there was going to wander down Edgeware Road. Even if someone had, he wouldn’t have been able to read the venomous headlines. What’s more, the CIA was prohibited by British authorities from recruiting sources, even Islamic fundamentalists, in their country. What was the point, then, in spending time with the Arabs there?
In general, things were no better on the continent. By the mid-1990s, the CIA was shriveling up everywhere in Europe. Our offices in Bonn, Paris, and Rome were shadows of what they had been during the cold war with the Soviet Union. They lacked the officers to go after Europe’s vast Middle Eastern communities, and those they did have too often lacked the inclination, the training, and in some cases the incentive to do so.
Things weren’t much better in the Middle East. Often there was only one or two CIA officers assigned to a country. Rather than recruit and run sources—foreign agents—CIA stations in the tinderbox of the world spent most of their time catering to whatever was in fashion in Washington at the time: human rights, economic globalization, the Arab-Israeli conflict. To veterans like me, the CIA seemed to be doing little more than flying the flag.
*
A lot of us who spent time on the ground in the Middle East worried that something big and bad was in the offing. There was too much hatred out there, and too many means of destruction to keep the bubble of American innocence from bursting. But I don’t think anyone saw with any precision the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon coming. Even by the standards of the terrorists involved, the scale of the assault was almost unimaginable. The point, though, is that we didn’t even try to find out what was headed our way.
Like the rest of Washington, the CIA had fallen in love with technology. The theory was that satellites, the Internet, electronic intercepts, even academic publications would tell us all we needed to know about what went on beyond our borders. As for Islamic fundamentalists in particular, the official view had become that our allies in Europe and the Middle East could fill in the missing pieces. Running our own agents—our own foreign human sources—had become too messy. Agents sometimes misbehaved; they caused ugly diplomatic incidents. Worse, they didn’t fit America’s moral view of the way the world should run.
Not only did the CIA systematically shed many of its agents, it also began to ease out many of their onetime handlers: seasoned officers who had spent their careers overseas in the hellholes of the world. In 1995 the agency handed the title of director of operations—the man officially in charge of spying—to an analyst who had never served overseas. He was followed by a retiree, and the retiree by an officer who had risen through the ranks largely thanks to his political skills. In practical terms, the CIA had taken itself out of the business of spying. No wonder we didn’t have a source in Hamburg’s mosques to tell us Muhammad Atta, the presumed leader of the hijacking teams on September 11, was recruiting suicide bombers for the biggest attack ever on American soil.
*
This book is a memoir of one foot soldier’s career in the other cold war, the one against terrorist networks that have no intention of collapsing under their own weight as the Soviet Union did. 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. It is drawn from memory, investigative notes, and diaries. As the reader will soon figure out, there is too much detail, almost none of which has ever appeared outside of government files, for any one person to remember. All my life I’ve been a consummate note taker. At the same time, not surprisingly, some of the details simply can’t be told. Every CIA employee is required to sign an agreement that allows the agency to review and censor anything written for publication. I’ve left the censor’s blackouts in the text so readers can see how it works. But more than enough detail remains to give the reader an idea just how complicated the problem of terrorism is, and what this life has been like: the highs and lows, the dangerous moments in the field, and the sometimes more dangerous moments around the conference tables of official Washington, often as nasty a snake pit as Lebanon’s Biqa’ Valley.
I haven’t edited out the many mistakes I made in the field. The reader should see how painful the learning curve can be in the spy business. Nor have I hidden that I set out to understand how Washington works, with all of its special interests. I allowed myself to get sucked into the fringes of the Clinton campaign-funding scandal. I have nothing to apologize for—other than maybe my own stupidity—but if my name rings a bell, it’s likely to be from that time.
I also intend my story to be a metaphor for what has happened to the CIA that I served for nearly a quarter of a century, and for what needs to be done now. September 11 wasn’t the result of a single mistake but of a series of them. The Germans failed us, as did the British, French, and Saudis. But most of all, we failed ourselves. We didn’t have the intelligence we needed or the means for gathering it. Correcting those mistakes and regaining the upper hand in the long war against terrorism isn’t going to be easy, but it can be done. The way to start is by putting CIA officers back on the street, by letting them recruit and run sources in the mosques, the casbahs, or anywhere else we can learn what the bad guys’ intentions are before they break into horrible headlines and unbearable film footage.
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. In letting the CIA fall into decay, we lost a vital shield protecting our national sovereignty.
Americans need to know that what happened to the CIA didn’t happen just by chance. 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 oceans on either side of us were all the protection we needed. Afloat on this sea of self-absorption, 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.
Even if no one could have foreseen those attacks, it’s still inconceivable that so many people had to die in order to wake us up to the fact that we have sacrificed a national resource for greed and convenience and small-minded politics. I’m incensed, and I think we should all be incensed, that the courageous passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 were the White House’s first and only line of defense on September 11—not the CIA or the FBI or the Immigration and Naturalization Service or any other office or agency that we pay our taxes to support.
The other day a reporter friend told me that one of the highest-ranking CIA officials had said to him, off the record, that when the dust finally clears, Americans will see that September 11 was a triumph for the intelligence community, not a failure. If that’s going to be the official line of thinking at the agency charged with manning the front lines in the war against the Osama bin Ladens of this world, then I am more than angry: I’m scared to death of what lies ahead.
Product details
- Publisher : Crown; Reprint edition (January 7, 2003)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 140004684X
- ISBN-13 : 978-1400046843
- Item Weight : 13.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 6.19 x 0.89 x 9.3 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #275,716 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #285 in Terrorism (Books)
- #316 in Middle Eastern Politics
- #453 in Political Intelligence
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
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ROBERT BAER is the author of two New York Times bestsellers: Sleeping with the Devil, about the Saudi royal family and its relationship with the United States; and See No Evil, which recounts Baer's years as a top CIA operative. See No Evil was the basis for the acclaimed film Syriana, which earned George Clooney an Oscar for his portrayal of Baer. Baer writes regularly for Time.com and has contributed to Vanity Fair, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. He is considered one of the world's foremost authorities on the Middle East.
Customer reviews
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book fascinating and informative. It provides a compelling story that keeps them engaged. The writing is well-crafted and easy to understand. Readers appreciate the insider's view of CIA operations and covert activities.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book engaging and educational. They say it's worth reading and an eye-opener about programs that worked and those that didn't. Readers mention it's better than the movie and a real eye-opener about what it's like in the Middle East.
"...in Syria, Lebanon, and throughout the Middle East make for a fascinating read...." Read more
"...remove their shoes to board a domestic flight, this book is worth your time...." Read more
"...Overall, this is a great book...." Read more
"...For those of us interested in espionage procedurals, this part of the book is exhilarating. I couldn't put it down...." Read more
Customers enjoy the book's insights into intelligence gathering and counterintelligence. They find it informative and engaging, especially when real-life descriptions are presented. The book provides a good understanding of the challenges faced by CIA agents and their work. Readers appreciate the book's important perspective on U.S. government priorities and activities of spies and terrorists.
"The author is easy to connect with and understand at some points of his motivations...." Read more
"...Baer's is a first-hand account as a case worker, recruiting local people for gathering intelligence...." Read more
"...At the time, it made a big impression, giving readers a rare look inside the secret wars of America’s intelligence services like the CIA, author Bob..." Read more
"...It's surprising the sheer amount of information that Baer is allowed to present in this book...." Read more
Customers find the story compelling and poignant. They say it keeps the story flowing and engaging. The author is praised for his ability to build suspense and tell a good story. Many describe it as a true 21st-century spy novel about real events and history with real people.
"...Simply riveting stories. A good contribution to the ever-increasing quantity of geopolitical treatises on the Middle East." Read more
"Baer provides a compelling story of his 21 years as a DO officer in the CIA and his tireless efforts to bring understanding to the conflicts..." Read more
"...book review The first half of this book is a great adventure story. The second reveals a personality...." Read more
"...This is deeply disturbing material. If you ever wondered how foriegn spies are recruited, read this...." Read more
Customers find the writing quality informative and easy to understand. They appreciate the author's detailed descriptions of situations and encounters. The book is described as detailed and engaging, never slow or disinteresting. Readers praise the straightforward approach to a complex environment.
"...remain on some issues of interests but overall he did a very good job in explaining events (the best he could)...." Read more
"...Eveland's book was very detailed, relating the individual story of one man's effort to work in a newly important region within the global environment..." Read more
"...In sum, read this book. Mr. Baer the author is a good writer and deserves a loyal audience for this and the other books he has written...." Read more
"...This is a 'you're there with him' book, and Mr. Bear's writing is never slow or disinteresting. Is it all true, though?..." Read more
Customers enjoy the insider's view of CIA operations. They find it fascinating and easy to read, providing a behind-the-scenes look at how the CIA works.
"This was a great behind the scenes of how our CIA works. To read how the our government sends these individuals out with a mission...." Read more
"...vs. good old detective work and inside intelligence on the ground...." Read more
"...This book goes inside: Inside the life of a REAL spy (sorry, Mr. Bond), inside the horrors of the Middle East, and inside Washington DC...." Read more
"A fascinating read. An insiders view of what risks some covert ops officers take to get the Intel that is needed...." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2012The author is easy to connect with and understand at some points of his motivations. A few questions still remain on some issues of interests but overall he did a very good job in explaining events (the best he could). Baer has a bank of knowledge on the Middle East and its actors/groups. It is rare to read similar details on the Middle East outside of the classroom environment (texts). All though I do not personally know Baer, from this book it appears that he may have taken certain issues very personal and doing so, he allowed his emotions to override the brilliance of his character. The grudge seemed to have been presented to show his actions but as you read on, it begins to control him. Granted the events and the loss of friends or associates that you depend on would affect anyone. But by placing yourself within this theater it is bound to happen, you are there for the bigger picture, the identifiers of his personal changes and questionable tactfulness are seen withering away. I am not sure if being made, in the region, only complicated the inner struggle that was already becoming present in his daily actions. He may have wanted another direction within the agency, one which was not possible when he was sent out of the area of his expertise. He did not take on change very well and instead went to the CTC. Later in the details of the CTC being a letdown, he also felt needed due to his language skills which later on appeared to be not that important, as he was placed on the back burner. As if he was losing himself and almost needed others to remind him of whom he is.
I have read more than a few books on the changing dynamics of the agency and its people. From field positions and being very good at it, to the paper pusher that slowly destroys the officer. Baer was very good at what he did; when the operation environment changed he did not.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2012A year ago I bought a book, "Ropes of Sand," by Wilber Eveland. Eveland's book outlined the growth and maturation of intelligence gathering in the Middle East post-World War Two through the 1970s. Eveland's book was very detailed, relating the individual story of one man's effort to work in a newly important region within the global environment, and doing so as the U.S. transitions from the OSS to the CIA.
Having read Eveland's book first set the stage for Bob Baer's book. Baer's account takes off where Eveland's ends. The books were not meant to be read that way, as Eveland's book was published in 1980. The events, policies, and geography persist, evolve, and adapt over the decades "Ropes of Sand" and "See No Evil" cover, though. Reading them together provides fascinating insight into the realm, politics, concerns, and people.
Baer's experiences in Syria, Lebanon, and throughout the Middle East make for a fascinating read. Yes, Bob has taken some flack for sounding somewhat bombastic, or self-congratulatory. When one reads through those few cases, and simply reads the context of the situation, the details of his experiences in the region are film-worthy (and have been adapted for film). His is not a history book, and he doesn't delve into history. For a history, read "Power, Faith, and Fantasy" by Michael Oren. Baer's is a first-hand account as a case worker, recruiting local people for gathering intelligence. If I learned one thing from Eveland and Baer, the CIA does not run spys. The CIA tries to "recruit" indigenous people to gather information. Also, people who conduct legitimate business in the realm are also recruited to keep their eyes and ears open. Simply riveting stories.
A good contribution to the ever-increasing quantity of geopolitical treatises on the Middle East.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2018“See No Evil” was released in 2003, just 18 months after the terrorist bombings of the Twin Towers in New York City. At the time, it made a big impression, giving readers a rare look inside the secret wars of America’s intelligence services like the CIA, author Bob Baer's former employer. In the 15 years since, audiences have been exposed to shows like “24” the “Americans” and “Homeland” and reports like The 9/11 Commission Report findings as well as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s findings on CIA torture techniques. We’ve all become terror experts it seems, and the spycraft that author Bob Baer describes doesn’t feel new and grand, anymore.
What has aged well, though – sadly – are his observations of the geopolitical conflicts in the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Russian-bloc countries. Those areas remain mired in the same religious radicalism, sectarian violence, and tribal wars that he described nearly two decades earlier. His work also shows how far back – as early as 1983, and at the same time agencies began to shed operatives – that the US intelligence services were aware of the potential for large-scale domestic attacks by foreign enemies. It’s grim, sobering reading, and his career dovetails with the rise of that extremism – both at home (World Trade Center bombing in 1993, Oklahoma City Bombing of 1995) and abroad (Pan Am flight 103.)
As a primer of the roots of our siege mentality in this country where we make travelers remove their shoes to board a domestic flight, this book is worth your time. Baer writes that our domestic security depends on a robust and apolitical national security apparatus with global reach through well-placed human operatives. That's still a timely message.
Top reviews from other countries
- Jim RossReviewed in Canada on December 16, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars See No Evil
CIA used to be the best of the best until money and politicians change the landscape.
Why anyone would do what the author did is mind blowing.
-
leseratteReviewed in Germany on August 30, 2019
5.0 out of 5 stars Alles bestens!
Alles ok.
-
Boré IvanoffReviewed in France on November 6, 2017
4.0 out of 5 stars Good and instructive read
Quite good reading. Discovered some interesting and usefu information and facts from an inside source...Even if obviously the text was carefully filtrated before going to the grand public.
- Dr.Jaideep RatkalReviewed in India on September 18, 2015
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Well written book!
- LukeReviewed in Australia on May 3, 2016
5.0 out of 5 stars Pretty damn good
A real revelation on the way America sees the world and the way the Middle East works. A must read.