 "The truth can be ugly" | 2008-05-31 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2XQSIYG55GOJB |
| 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" | 2008-03-19 |
| - Reviewed By User: A230Z4DMPSQDRX |
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 |
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| "cry for justice" | 2008-03-13 |
| - Reviewed By User: A32Q3KGTKX2QGZ |
| 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. |
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 "We have to start listening to people again" | 2008-03-04 |
| - Reviewed By lodge2 |
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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 "Interesting, informative; poorly written, poorly edited" | 2008-02-29 |
| - Reviewed By jedrury |
| A rambling CIA agent's tale of working in the Middle East pre Bush Administration. Baer recently appeared on television after the 2008 car bomb death of Imad Mugniyah in Syria and clearly knows about which he speaks because, in this 2002 book, he describes his investigation of the 1983 bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut and the death of William Buckley, the CIA agent. He fingers the killer. Beyond the scattered nature of his writing, the crazy dangerous life of this CIA agent is detailed including the bureaucratic handcuffs and leg irons placed on the operational side agents from home basis at Langley. Baer, no friend of Anthony Lake, describes how the operations division of the Agency was hamstrung during the Clinton years. The Crown Book publishers editing is very poor; e.g., Aldrich Ames is Rick, Robert Hanssen is spelled Robert Hannsen. Sentences, often conversational in format, run on and off the page. The CIA editors were more exacting than the Crown editors who appear out to lunch at the time of final editing. |
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| "Insightful book on the CIA" | 2007-12-28 |
| - Reviewed By dr_bob_hill |
| I originally purchased this book because it was cited as the source for the movie Siriana. However, the movie was 100% different than the book and seems unrelated to me. The book details 25 years of work for the CIA and provides good insight to the challenges of gathering intelligence. The changes in the CIA do not seem to be good for America. |
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| "GREAT BOOK! READ THIS ONE TOO..." | 2007-11-25 |
| - Reviewed By justinrowe4 |
| This was a great novel, go buy Detained Differences by J. Robert Rowe. It is about Detainee Operations inside Afghanistan. |
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| "Eye Opening" | 2007-11-02 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3L94JD1DWQSQB |
| Baer tell's his personal stories very well and keeps them interesting...while at the same time using those stories as the back drop for the CIA's failure to pick up on the coming terrorist attacks of 9/11. His stories set a relative timeline of the agency's attitude toward increasing dependence on electronic information gathering and less on having people on the ground getting inside the bad guy's heads. |
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| "Right Diagnosis Wrong Prescription" | 2007-10-11 |
| - Reviewed By netman1 |
Bauer gives a compelling account of his exploits as a CIA agent. For the "ripping good yarn" three stars.
He also offers his take on the reasons for serious deficiencies by our intelligence services. No argument that there are shortcomings, but no stars for his analysis of the causes.
Why? Some major thematic defects with the book on this score.
First, the underlying genre is a familiar one: the single honest and courageous protagonist fighting against apathy, stupidity and venality. Perhaps, understandable given Mr. Bauer's experience with the Agency's appreciation of his service. But a plot line more suited to fiction than serious analysis.
Is there bureaucracy, stupidity and even venality in the CIA? No argument here. But equally there should be no argument that this condition exists in any human institution. So then the right question becomes one of degree rather than kind. Were these factors so pervasive as to compromise the mission of the Agency? Was Bauer the only dedicated, selfless intelligent operative in the Agency? Or, if not the only one, one of a mere handful of such individuals? All in all this seems a bit far fetched.
The book does shed some light on why our intelligence services may be working at a suboptimal level, particularly in the Middle East, though perhaps not in the way the author intended.
Bauer's career is in some ways a "poster child" for suboptimal behavior.
Intelligence work is a not a particularly glamorous craft. At its heart it's rather mundane meticulous analysis and the routine work of running agents rather than flamboyant action. The heroes of fiction - James Bonds or "Jack" Bauers - are not particularly useful. Grey anonymity - an absence of footprints - is the most desirable operational trait.
Intelligence work requires a cold discipline. Actions in the field are undertaken for concrete objectives. Many of Bauer's missions seem to have been highly visible personal adventures with little apparent (intelligence) utility. They exposed a valuable asset to capture or compromise. No doubt the trips to the Beka'a, the Pamirs or the Yaghob Valley were ripping good fun as was driving T-72s and parachuting with Russian troops. How these advanced US intelligence interests is questionable.
Intelligence is also a team sport, contrary to popular fiction. In this critical game, it's very important that the players let the coach call the plays. Policy is set in Washington not in the field. Bauer's disingenuous actions in Northern Iraq - his attempt to make his own foreign policy - were not appropriate and really didn't serve our national interests well.
Intelligence requires careful discretion. Agents associate with a variety of people, many of whom are rather unsavory. The trick is to use the contact rather than be used. How our national interest benefited from contact with Mr. Tamraz isn't immediately clear to me. There is another danger here: the contact spinning such association as an American imprimatur.
Bauer does highlight some structural and political problems which affect the Agency's performance. That the national interest of the USA is often conflated with business interests, particularly oil, is distressing but not surprising.
However, all these points are at the margin of the central issue.
A more fundamental failure needs to be addressed. It is the same one which dogs the crafting of our foreign policy - a failure to think coldly and rationally about issues.
When we analyze domestic policies, by and large we accept that our government is influenced by popular perceptions with results shaped by the interplay between competing groups. However, when we venture to lands foreign, we abandon this nuanced view for one much more simplistic and simple minded.
We see our own interests as the only legitimate ones. Competitors must then be evildoers. Or, if we are in a charitable mood, suffering from some other serious moral or intellectual defect. The impulse for discovering grand conspiracies follows in train. Often we fail to recognize groups of our antagonists for what they are - temporary tactical alliances of convenience among groups with disparate constituencies and often competing ideologies rather than unitary blocs controlled by some grandmaster of evil who can compel his subordinates to take actions against their own very real interests. Imagine ascribing master/servant relationships and unanimity on all points among the Allies in WWII - the USA the master, or if your politics differ, the servant of the USSR and you'll understand this fallacy.
We also fall prey to the "great man" theory. If only we can remove the wrong man or install the right one, we can engineer a change in policy even if it is contrary to the wishes of the majority of that country. To use a domestic analogy, this is equivalent to believing that Al Franken or Fred Thompson could persuade the NRA to embrace gun control. Or NOW to abandon Roe v. Wade. In some extreme cases we believe we can manufacture leaders and parachute them into power. Delusions of this sort doom our actions and also reflect the poverty of our strategic thinking. As a result, we often associate with leaders who do our cause no good. The choice of the former head of the INC - a man with no discernible political support in Iraq as well as with certain other considerable negatives - as that country's putative Thomas Jefferson is an example of this pathology. No surprise that we fail and wind up being used.
And sadly often we also fail to marry our long term strategic interests to appropriate foreign policy. Foreign policy or intelligence "quick" fixes result in unwelcome blowback as history demonstrates time and time again.
Finally, perhaps an obvious point: a rational foreign policy in the long term interests of the US will promote the work and thus the success of our intelligence services. Rowing against the tides of history while perhaps heroic is at the end of the day rather foolish and so destined for failure. This is really the issue for reflection.
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| "Real behind the scenes of how the spy agency worked" | 2007-10-02 |
| - Reviewed By xamarshahx |
| Only halfway through, but this book is great. It shows you in depth how the agency worked. Reveals how training was done, how missions worked. Includes real stories not just analysis. |
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