Robert Baer, former CIA officer, author of 'The Devil We Know; Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower'
Biography provided by participant
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.
It makes no sense for the CIA to become involved in assassinations. The CIA has not had a military component since Vietnam. CIA operatives today are liberal arts who do their best work sitting behind the wheel of car debriefing a source. The assassination program going to hearings apparently never got off the ground. No targets were picked, no one was deployed, no weapons issued. If it ever came to actually carrying out an assassination, the CIA would have had to turn to the military, to either currently serving officers or retired officers. So why not give it to the… Read more
Beware of Iran. We very well could be in for an unpleasant change there, a country more expansive, more dangerous. As the smoke clears in Tehran, it is almost certain that what occurred on June 12 was not an election but rather a classical military coup d'etat. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, through the Supreme Leader Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, seized the reigns of power from the old guard. Evidence of this is the Baseej's role in putting down the demonstrations, Monday's warning from the IRGC, the attacks on former president Rafsanjani, the leader of the old guard. The IRGC… Read more
No matter what President Obama says in Cairo, Abu Ghraib will be a pall hanging over whatever he has to say. Until now, no one knows what precisely happened in our military and secret prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. General Taguba says he's seen images of the rape of a teenage boy. Was rape used by interrogators to break detainees? Our enemies assume the worst, and their version of events is spreading faster than ours. Let's don't forget that the United States is held to a different standard in the Middle East. We are not yet identified with European colonialism,… Read more
Freeman's right -- You cannot speak the truth in this country about Israel. If you want to hear it you need to go to Israel, and listen to both the Palestinians and Israelis. I figured this out a couple years ago when to my astonishment the Israelis allowed me to wander around their national security prisons talking to Hamas and Islamic Jihad inmates. Most were members of suicide bombing networks -- maybe the largest collection of mass murderers in the world. The visits were unsupervised, and I was allowed to roam any block I wanted to. The Israelis weren't even… Read more
Now is the time to pull out of Afghanistan, not add troops. There are no secure supply lines into that country. When Pakistan collapses -- is it not inevitable? -- we are left with Iran and Russia. Now is not the time to leave NATO forces hostage to either country. And then there's what I think is the blindingly obvious consideration: No one has been able to define victory in Afghanistan. Force each and every Afghan to denounce the Taliban? Disarm the civilian population? Stay until Afghanistan has a stable working Jeffersonian democracy with a writ throughout the country? If… Read more
I would be surprised if this administration has the political capital to push through intelligence reform, at least as long as it's looking into the abyss of a depression. I'd imagine Blair and Panetta's marching order will be no intelligence scandals. What it can do is make long overdue improvements. Here's what I would do if I were Blair: 1. Link data bases. I find it almost unbelievable that seven years after 9/11 the FBI, State, and Immigrations cannot run an electronic trace in raw CIA and NSA databases. This doesn't mean the FBI should have full access, but… Read more
Biography provided by participant
