Robert Baer

Robert "Bobby" Baer (born July 1, 1952) is an author and former case officer at the Central Intelligence Agency.

Youth, career and geopolitical views

Baer was raised in Aspen, Colorado, and aspired to become a professional skier. After a poor academic performance during his freshman year at high school, his mother sent him to Indiana's Culver Military Academy. In 1976, after graduating from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and entering the University of California, Berkeley, Baer decided to join the CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO) as a case officer. Upon admittance to the CIA, Baer engaged in a year's training, which included a four-month paramilitary course.

During his twenty-year CIA career, Baer has publicly acknowledged field assignments in Madras and New Delhi, India; in Beirut, Lebanon; in Dushanbe, Tajikistan; and in Salah al-Din in Kurdish northern Iraq. During the mid-1980s Baer was sent to Iraq with the mission of organizing opposition to Saddam Hussein but was recalled, and investigated by the FBI, for allegedly conspiring to assassinate the Iraqi leader. [Ignatius, David (2002) Not a job for Kissinger, Washington Post. December 20, 2002.] [Turner, Michael A. (2006) Why Secret Intelligence Fails (revised edition). Potomac Books: Washington DC. ISBN 1574888919] While in Salah al-Din, Baer unsuccessfully urged the Clinton Administration to back an internal Iraqi attempt to overthrow Hussein (organized by a group of Sunni military officers, the Iraqi National Congress' Ahmad Chalabi, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's Jalal Talabani) in March 1995 with covert CIA assistance. Baer quit the Agency in 1997 and received the CIA's Career Intelligence Medal on March 11, 1998. Baer wrote the book "See No Evil" documenting his experiences while working for the Agency.

According to Seymour Hersh, Baer "was considered perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East." [ [http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=36661 Robert Baer - Authors - Random House ] ]

Baer offers an analysis of the Middle East through the lens of his experiences as a CIA operative. His political outlook does not hew exclusively to either conservative or liberal viewpoints. Through his years as a clandestine officer, he gained a very thorough knowledge of the Middle East, Arab world and former Republics of the Soviet Union. He speaks Arabic fluently. Over the years, Baer has become a strong advocate of the Agency's need to increase Human Intelligence (HUMINT) through the recruitment of agents.

In 2004, he told a reporter of the British political weekly "New Statesman", regarding the way the CIA deals with terrorism suspects, "If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear—never to see them again—you send them to Egypt."ref|sendthem

Baer's books "See No Evil" and "Sleeping with the Devil" were the basis for the 2005 Academy Award winning Warner Brothers motion picture "Syriana". The film's character Bob Barnes (played by George Clooney) is loosely based on Baer. For this role, Clooney won a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. To better resemble Baer, Clooney gained weight. When Baer learned of this, he was inspired to get back into shape. Baer shares his Hollywood pull with former CIA colleague Alan Premel who also oversaw script writing on Syriana. [http://www.imdb.com/news/wenn/2006-03-07/#9] Baer has a cameo appearance in the film.

For the past two years, Robert Baer has worked closely with the director Kevin Toolis and [http://www.manyriversfilms.co.uk Many Rivers Films] , a Channel 4 production company in the UK, and presented four authoritative documentary series, "Cult of the Suicide Bomber I", "The Cult of the Suicide Bomber II" and "Cult of the Suicide Bomber III" on the origins of suicide bombing. "Cult of the Suicide Bomber I" was nominated for an Emmy in 2006. In 2008 Baer presented "Car Bomb" - the first film history of the deadliest weapon of the Twenty-First Century.

Baer was also interviewed in the Robert Greenwald documentary "".

In an interview with Thom Hartmann on June 9, 2006, Baer was asked if he believed "that there was an aspect of 'inside job' to 9/11 within the U.S. government". He replied, "There is that possibility, the evidence points at it." [http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_070922_seven_cia_veterans_c.htm] However, he later stated, "For the record, I don't believe that the World Trade Center was brought down by our own explosives, or that a rocket, rather than an airliner, hit the Pentagon. I spent a career in the CIA trying to orchestrate plots, wasn't all that good at it, and certainly couldn't carry off 9/11. Nor could the real pros I had the pleasure to work with." [ [http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1692518,00.html Commentary: The CIA's Gift to Conspiracy Theorists - TIME ] ]

Mr. Baer lives in Silverton, Colorado, near the "The Miner's Tavern" American Legion Post 14. [ [http://www.telluridegateway.com/articles/2006/08/14/news/news01.txt Telluride Daily Planet] ]

Books

* "See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism", Crown Publishing Group, January 2002, ISBN 0-609-60987-4.
* "Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude", Crown Publishing Group, July 2003, ISBN 1-4000-5021-9.
* " [http://www.amazon.com/dp/140009836X Blow the House Down: A Novel] ", Crown Publishing Group, 2006, ISBN 1-4000-9835-1.
* "", Crown Publishing Group, September 2008 (forthcoming)

Films

* [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1373849/ IMDB entry for Robert Baer] listing films and TV interviews
* [http://www.manyriversfilms.co.uk/pages/productions/the_cult_of_the_suicide_bomber.htm The Cult of the Suicide Bomber]
* [http://www.manyriversfilms.co.uk/pages/productions/the_cult_of_the_suicide_bomber_2.htm Cult of the Suicide Bomber II]
* [http://www.manyriversfilms.co.uk/pages/productions/the_cult_of_the_suicide_bomber_3.htm Cult of the Suicide Bomber III]
* [http://www.manyriversfilms.co.uk/pages/productions/car_bomb.htm Car Bomb]
* Syriana

Articles

* [http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,631433,00.html "See No Evil by Robert Baer"] , The Guardian Unlimited, January 12, 2002.
* [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tehran/interviews/baer.html Interview] with Frontline, March 22, 2002.
* [http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/09/12_baer.html Interview] with Buzzflash.com, September 12, 2003.
* [http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=interviews&id=5140 Interview] with Chud.com, November 20, 2005.
* [http://www.greencine.com/article?action=view&articleID=302 Interview with GreenCine.com] June 20, 2006
* [http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2006/07/baer.html Interview with "MotherJones.com"] , July 5, 2006
* [http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200305/baer "The Fall of the House of Saud" by Robert Baer] , The Atlantic, May 2003
* [http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1710078,00.html "A Coming Hamas-Israel War?" by Robert Baer] , Time, February 5, 2008
* [http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1712995,00.html "Justice Served: Killing Mugniyah" by Robert Baer] , Time, February 13, 2008.
* [http://www.linktv.org/programs/mystery_flights Spotlight Mystery Flights] Link TV
* [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95285396 Interview] with Terry Gross - Fresh Air, October 2, 2008.

ee also

*William Francis Buckley (1928–1985)
*John P. O'Neill (1952–2001)
*Imad Mugniyah (1962–2008)

External links

* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7242607.stm Hezbollah's most secretive operative] BBC February 13, 2008
* [http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1713020,00.html Hizballah Mourns Its Shadowy Hero] Time February 13, 2008
* [http://www.newsweek.com/id/112771 The Death of Terror's Pioneer] Newsweek February 25, 2008
* [http://www.historycommons.org Robert Baer]

Footnotes