Book
Review: "See No Evil" by Robert Baer
 (Crown
Publishers - 284 pages)
Reviewer - Luke Brown
The momentous failure
of intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA, to prevent the
horrors of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World
Trade Centre and Pentagon is obvious, certainly with the benefit
of hindsight. For Robert Baer, an ex-CIA field officer in its Directorate
of Operations division from 1976 to 1997, that it was able to occur
was not so surprising. Along with recounting the career of a spy
who would go on to recruit agents in such places as India, Lebanon,
Sudan, France and Tajikstan, See No Evil also details, in Baer's
opinion, the CIA's decline from an agency that would do whatever
was felt necessary to achieve its goal of eliminating security threats
to the United States, into a toothless, politically correct organisation
run by bureaucrats.
The strength of the book
is the interesting and dangerous nature of the experiences he is
able to relate to the reader, in his engaging storytelling style.
Conversely, its weakness, quite naturally, is what he is not able
to tell us. Due to his employment contract with the CIA, there are
operations he isn't allowed to divulge the details of, some he cannot
acknowledge and even places where he operated that he cannot reveal.
Undoubtedly the secretive nature of his job has also contributed
to his personal life not receiving more than a superficial airing,
resulting in only a modest insight into his personal motivations
and drive.
What we do know is that
ever since the age of nine, Baer lived a relatively adventurous
life. His divorced mother took him to Europe for a couple of years,
where he would travel extensively, ski, learn about politics and
philosophy from his mother, and get a taste for the exotic. Moving
back to the United States he went to school, doing so badly that
he was sent on to military school. Next was University and then,
as a "prank," he applied to and was accepted in the CIA.
It was then onto spy school, to learn such things as how to use
weapons, use explosives ("By the end of the training, we could
have taught an advanced terrorism course"), survive deserts
and mountains, jump out of planes, as well as evade surveillance.
His first assignment was India, then under the sphere of influence
of the Soviets, where after a couple of nerve-racking and aborted
agent-recruitment attempts, he finally found his feet. It was in
Beirut, Lebanon several years later, that it seems he really came
into his own, arriving right after the bombing of the US embassy.
It was the mystery surrounding this attack that drove Baer to undertake
his own investigation of the attack, as well as to become frustrated
by the bureaucratic nature of the CIA and the direction it was taking.
It was in the mid-nineties,
in Iraqi Kurdistan, where Washington's unwillingness to support
efforts to overthrow Saddam Hussein, that he concluded his last
foreign mission for the CIA. He was called back to Washington and
was by this time rather disillusioned. In his view, the CIA had
a near complete lack of interest in the human intelligence side
of spying, in favour of technology-driven surveillance. This combined
with their unwillingness to get their hands dirty and deal with
unsavoury types, its see no evil-hear no evil-speak no evil attitude
(hence the title of the book), and the politics of Washington, finally
took their toll, causing Baer to resign.
Of course, the CIA has
also had its external critics, but for different reasons. Its involvement
with coups, funding of armed opposition groups in sovereign countries,
and the like, has brought about calls for its reigning in or downright
scrapping, whether it be due to concern over human rights abuses
or its critics' ideological differences. While that side of things
(documented elsewhere) does not really get a mention in Baer's book
(the closest he gets is in recalling his Beirut embassy bombing
investigation, where he had the opportunity to have a terrorist
suspect assassinated, but turned it down; regretting it later) that
is not a reason to ignore this particular work, with its insight
into a true believing ex-spy.
Reviewer - Luke Brown
Email: editor@polosbastards.com
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