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

Rating:
Summary: Gripping account of the CIA of from the 70's and 80's
Review: Reading this book is like sitting down with a colorful crusty old man who schelped for the CIA for most of his career. Great metaphors, Baer goes into how he was recruited and his hunt for the creeps that murdered over 200 U.S. Marines during the 1980's in Bierut. If you like that kinda "counter-intelligence" thing then this book is a fascinating read.

Rating:
Summary: See No Evil
Review: Although the editing of this book is not the best (i.e., omitted spaces between words, etc.), the content is excellent and eye-opening. Mr. Baer conveys the alarming deterioration of one of our most respected agencies, the CIA. When read in the context of today's Homeland Security mania, it becomes crystal clear how much of what we are told about by governmental leaders is really only "window-dressing." The behind-the-scenes scheming and dealing illuminated by Mr. Baer will leave you with many concerns and questions. You will certainly gain a broader context within which you'll form your own perspectives about our nation's security. Mr. Baer has shared an excellent personal perspective gained from his own courage and integrity. Although I suspect he was often not viewed as the "golden-haired boy," he seems to have been genuinely committed to the service of our country. You'll enjoy reading this book and learning about the intelligence-gathering process via nimble story-telling by a nimble, intelligent man.

Rating:
Summary: See No Point
Review: It's disappointing how many people gave this rather poor book such high numbers. It can only be that the book takes easy shots at the CIA and politicians--always easy targets and that the book came out at a time when everyone was obsessing about terrorism and our response to it.

If this was really the best field agent we had in the Middle East, it looks to me like there is more of an explanation for our intelligence failures than the politicians and bureaucrats back home.

In all of his self-serving description of his exploits in the CIA, he never seems to have prevented a single terrorist attack or have recruited a single valuable asset in the war on terror. He savages Arafat for his terrorist roots, but more or less gives prominent Israeli politicians a pass for their similar history.

More importantly, he is a poor writer, the book is poorly edited, with spelling and punctuation mistakes, and his accusations of various players tend to be poorly backed up with facts. (Someone in his line of work spells Caucasus as plural "Caucases?", like Iowa or something? Labels a C-130 as a c-140?) Not damning mistakes, but not adding much credibility to a book which is so full of innuendo and unsubstantiated allegations that it could really use some.

I'm sure plenty of mistakes were made in the war on terrorism, in the CIA, in the White House, and elsewhere, and in all recent administrations--but I wouldn't take this guy's word for what the problems are or how to fix them.

Rating:
Summary: More interesting in light of war in Iraq
Review: Baer's dust ups with the National Security Council and the Clinton White House's preferential treatment of oil companies in former Soviet Repbulics makes this book well worth the read.
I have to say, his friendly experiences in Dushanbe with Russian paratroopers and tank drivers makes this a memorable read. In 1992, while serving at a CIA outpost in Dushanbe, Baer managed to befriend a Russian colonel just after the fall of the Soviet Union and this got him on a Russian special forces training drop and he then managed to actually drive a T-72 tank and put it through its paces (bear in mind this tank is still used by America's enemies today) ... what was CIA's response. Don't do that again.
That's just mind numbing. Here a CIA officer shows his ability to develop friendships, manage resources and maybe even run a few decent agents in the former Red Army and what's he told to do "Stop it ... somebody's scared you might bump your head cowboying around inside that Russian tank."
Let's see, maybe if Baer could have kept his buddy the Russian colonel happy or put him on the payroll then maybe we might know a little more about what's going on in Putin's Russia today.
There's a section on that 1995 attempted coup in Iraq that makes you think if we had supported some of the resitance a little closer then we could have ousted Saddam and maybe the whole vacumn of power problem we have over there today (22 Dec. 2004) might not be as bad.
You read his book and it becomes pretty clear why we missed the warning signs on a lot of things over the past 15-20 yeas. Everytime you trip across an area that seems like it would be in America's best interest to keep up with what's going on you see the same phrase crop up ... "We had no reporting agents there ..." And we are not likely to recruit any either if the zero-mistake, no-chance-taking management attitude Baer describes is still around in the halls of CIA and other agencies.
Maybe President George W. Bush should hire Robert Baer to be the newly created National Intel Director and nominal boss over CIA. I know I'd feel a lot better.

Rating:
Summary: Arafat's role in terror
Review: The courageous author of this book offers readers a rich supply of vital information, but I'll focus on just one aspect of great interest in the wake of Yasser Arafat's death. Lest anyone lionize him as a hero, Baer exposes the terrorist trails that convereged at Arafat's feet; Baer deemed him an eminently unworthy Nobel laureate.

Baer undoubtedly risked his life often. He learned that PLO or Force 17 operatives were involved in virtually every major terrorist attack in the last two decades, Baer alleges that a trail might even have led from Arafat to Osama bin Laden, had it been followed. In any case, he notes that by the mid-1990s, the CIA had stopped following good leads. His well-developed and frightening point: As the Cold War waned, the CIA quickly transformed into a politically correct bureaucracy, more interested in promoting corporate and big oil interests than gathering critical intelligence.

That's too bad, because as a Middle East operative, Baer picked up great information on Arafat. Born in Cairo as Muhammad 'Abd al-Rauf Arafat al-Qudwa in 1929, Baer writes, Arafat hails from the same prominent Huysayni clan that spawned Jerusalem Mufti Hajj Amin el-Huysayni, indicted at Nuremberg for World War II war crimes.

After studying at University of Cairo, Baer reports, Arafat became a second lieutenant in Egypt's army, joined Egypt's Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, and never renounced ties the violent sects. Arrested for sedition, Arafat fled to Kuwait and founded Fateh in the 1950s, drawing members from the Muslim Brotherhood and Palestinian Arabs; he soon actively assumed a violent role.

Therefore, Baer writes, Arafat never earned the trust of other Arab leaders. In 1977, he joined the Middle Eastern fundamentalist tide, asking Abu Jihad to organize Fateh into an umbrella Committee of 77. Through Student Cells, Arafat recruited fundamentalist Munir Shafiq Asal who in turn brought in young Palestinian and Lebanese Arabs, including 'Imad Fa'iz Mughniyah.

It was Mughniyah, a Shi'a Muslim from southern Lebanon, who according to Baer kidnapped Beirut CIA chief William Buckley on March 16, 1984. He also negotiated with Arafat in Tunis for the release of four Soviet diplomats kidnapped in Beirut in September 1985, and earned $200,000 from PLO security chief Abu Iyad for the favor. (Buckley died in captivity.)

Bear discovered Mughaniyah's links to Hizballah and Iran's Pasdaran, the latter headed by Ali Saleh Shamkhani, now Iran's defense minister. He discovered Mughaniyah's ties to the Dec. 25, 1986 hijacking of an Iraqi airliner, which crashed in Saudi Arabia, killing everyone aboard.

According to Baer another Fateh commander, Azmi Sughayr, ordered the April 18, 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut that killed 63, including 17 Americans and six CIA officers. Sughayr intended to kill Ambassador John Habib and hired PLO operative Mohammed Na'if Jada to give the signal for the explosive-laden pickup to hit the embassy compound. (Happily, Habib was not in the embassy. Jada survived was arrested.)

Baer also reports Sughayr's ties to Iran: Jada was released and traveled to Dubai where he connected with Anis Abdullah Hassan (Abu Ali), the head of a Fateh cell in the Gulf. Abu Ali worked for Abd-Al-Latif Salah, in turn an associate of Arafat's in the Iranian Islamic Jihad Organization. In 1983, bomber Muhammad Hassuna left Lebanon, ostensibly to fight with Iran against Iraq, but is assumed to have driven the deadly truck.

Baer also reports that Arafat supported the 1982 Muslim Brotherhood insurrection against Syria's Hafiz Al-Asad. In June 1983, Asad retaliated with a full-scale counter-attack in Hama, after which Arafat evacuated 4,000 followers from Tripoli on five Greek ships to Tunis. Sughayr stayed behind to lead Iranian-backed terrorists, including Ali Dib (aka Khudur Salamah) and Abd Al-Latif Salah, a Jordan-born Palestinian Fateh member.

Sughayr joined Fateh's Force 17 predecessor in 1969, fought Jordan for Arafat in 1970, and the Fateh Black September terrorist organization in 1971. Sughayr was named head of the PLO Security Office for Foreign Operations in 1973 and very likely participated in the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Meanwhile, Fateh member Husayn 'Ali Husayn Jawad Khalil also worked for Azmi Sughayr. Khalil was the brother-in-law to senior Hizballah agent 'Ali 'Ammar, and kidnapped ABC correspondent Charles Glass on orders from Iranian Pasdaran chief Husayn Al-Musawi, whom Baer discovered to have seized the Shaykkh Abdullah barracks. He imprisoned CIA chief Bill Buckley where the latter died.

Bear notes that Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution was largely "suckled on the Palestinian teat."
Indeed, Arafat signed a 1972 deal with Ayatollah Khomeini in Najaf--to train Fateh Islamic fighters in southern Lebanon camps. Virtually all the Iranian revolutionary leaders passed through these camps, we learen, including Khomeini's son Ahmad and Pasdaran commander.Mustafa Chamran On Khomeini's his return to Iran, Arafat was first to call in congratulations. Nine months later, Arafat flew to Teheran to greet Khomeini personally.

Arafat ordered Fateh to give the Iranian revolution full assistance. He also commanded the February 1980 attempted assassination of former Iranian prime minister Shapour Bakhtiar in Paris. Furthermore, Mughniyah and Ali Dib masterminded the April 5, 1988 hijacking of Kuwait Airlines Flight 422, in which two hostages were murdered.

Baer also believes that Arafat's Iranian-backed terrorists arranged the December 1988 Pan Am disaster over Lockerbie Scotland.

In 1996, Baer reports that the CIA refused to let him gather information from a source close to Tajik chieftain Abdullah Nuri. Baer rightly regrets this major CIA oversight, since Nuri had just allied with Osama bin Laden and Iranian intelligence.

These are but a few aspects of this extraordinary insiders' account. Read it.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

Rating:
Summary: Excellent insite into the war on terrorism
Review: Robert Baer offers insite into the orgins of terrorism in the Middle East from the view point of a CIA field agent. This is a must read if you want to understand the interworkings of terrorism, how and why it developed, and how the U.S. dropped the ball numerous time over the past 30 years. This book will also help you wrap your mind around where we stand today in fighting this global enemy. Great read!

Rating:
Summary: Seeing no evil indeed
Review: I read SNE barely six months after 9/11, and it finally opened my eyes to how much the CIA really degraded, and Mr Bob Baer has made several remarks about the complacency of the CIA with regards to terrorism.

You may have watched The Recruit, but SNE's chapters on the application process would tell you that entering the CIA is not a walk in the park. The book would show you a CIA that's different from what you see in movies.

Intelligence gathering is indeed a dirty business, but some people in the CIA thought that running agents was something that can cause embarrasment for them if something went wrong, so the real agents quit and the bureaucrats took over. Robert Baer's detailed recollections of agent recruitments and operations are worth the read.

As a CIA operative, he's bound by a contract not to publish anything Company-related without higher approval, so that explains the numerous blacked-out sentences you'll encounter as you read the book.

The degradation of the pre-9/11 CIA caused major screwups revealed only now, after the 9/11 Commission released it's findings. The timing of SEE NO EVIL's release could not have been better-three months after 9/11.

I really liked this book, and would recommend it to others that want to read stories about the CIA from people who've been there.

Rating:
Summary: Gripping!
Review: The CIA from an insiders prospective. A true account of how the CIA has become a "toothless wonder" due to Washington's "Politically Correct" atmosphere. Baer takes you through his career as a CIA street officer; his recuitment, training, successes, mistakes, and close calls. If you like Tom Clancy novels, you'll love this because IT'S ALL TRUE!

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely eye opening
Review: I could not put this book down. I have read it several times and other people that saw it went and bought it also.

Rating:
Summary: Great read
Review: I read this book over 2 years ago and recommend it highly. It is a credible journey of how and why are CIA fell apart and became too politically correct to do its job. Great work by an insider.