Robert Baer

Last updated

Robert Baer
Robert Baer 2008.jpg
Baer in 2008
Born
Robert Booker Baer

(1952-07-11) July 11, 1952 (age 71)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater
Occupations
SpouseDayna Williamson
Children3
Espionage activity
AllegianceUS
Service branch Central Intelligence Agency
Service years1976–97

Robert Booker Baer (born July 11, 1952) is an American author and a former CIA case officer who was primarily assigned to the Middle East. [1] He is Time's intelligence columnist [1] and has contributed to Vanity Fair , The Wall Street Journal , and The Washington Post . [2] Baer speaks eight languages, won the CIA Career Intelligence Medal [3] and is a frequent commentator and author about issues related to international relations, espionage, and U.S. foreign policy. He hosted the History reality television series Hunting Hitler . [4] He is an Intelligence and Security Analyst for CNN. [5] His book See No Evil was adapted by the director Stephen Gaghan and used as the basis for the film Syriana , with George Clooney playing Baer's character. [6]

Contents

Early life

Baer was born in Los Angeles. [7] At the age of 9, his parents divorced and he moved to Aspen, Colorado, where he aspired to become a professional skier. [7] After a fairly poor academic performance during his first year at high school, his mother, a wealthy heiress, took him to Europe where they traveled throughout Europe including Paris during the 1968 riots, Germany, Prague during the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, and Russia. [8]

Career

Baer worked field assignments, starting in Madras and New Delhi, India; and subsequently in Beirut, Lebanon; Damascus, Syria; Khartoum, Sudan; Paris, France; Dushanbe, Tajikistan; Morocco; the former republic of Yugoslavia, and Salah al-Din in Iraqi Kurdistan during his 21 years with the CIA. During the mid-1990s, Baer was sent to Iraq with the mission of organizing opposition to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein but was recalled and investigated by the FBI for allegedly conspiring to assassinate the Iraqi leader. [9] [10]

Baer wrote the book See No Evil documenting his experiences while working for the Agency. The C.I. Desk: FBI and CIA Counterintelligence As Seen From My Cubicle, by Christopher Lynch (Dog Ear Publishing), describes parts of the contentious CIA pre-publication review process for Baer's first book. In a blurb for See No Evil, Seymour Hersh said Baer "was considered perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East." In the book, Baer offers an analysis of the Middle East through the lens of his experiences as a CIA operative.

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 a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. 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." [11] [12]

He retired to Silverton, Colorado. [13]

Commentary

In January 2002, Baer wrote about the events of the September 11 attacks in The Guardian : "[D]id bin Laden act alone, through his own al-Qaida network, in launching the attacks? About that I'm far more certain and emphatic: no." [14] 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." [15]

In 2008, video interviewed 'live' by 'We Are Change.org' in Los Angeles about pre-9/11 intel, Baer exclaimed: "I know the guy that went into his broker in San Diego (on September 10th) and said, 'Cash me out, it's going down tomorrow'...His brother worked at the White House!" [16] [17]

In June 2009, Baer commented on the disputed election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iranian President and the protests that accompanied it. "For too many years now, the Western media have looked at Iran through the narrow prism of Iran's liberal middle class—an intelligentsia that is addicted to the Internet and American music and is more ready to talk to the Western press, including people with money to buy tickets to Paris or Los Angeles; but do they represent the real Iran?" [1] Following reports of an attempt by Iranian agents to assassinate the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the United States, Baer told Die Zeit that he doubted that Iran was behind the attempt since there seemed no obvious motive and Iran had been more careful in past collaboration with terrorists. [18]

Baer has long been a supporter of the theory that the PFLP-GC brought down Pan Am Flight 103. Later he began to promote the theory that Iran was behind the bombing. On August 23, 2009, Baer claimed that the CIA had known from the start that the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 had been orchestrated by Iran, and that a secret dossier proving this was to be presented as evidence in the final appeal by convicted Libyan bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. According to Baer, this suggests that Megrahi's withdrawal of the appeal in return for a release on compassionate grounds was encouraged to prevent this information from being presented in court. [19]

Personal life

Baer has been married twice. He has two daughters and a son from his first marriage, [7] to a State Department secretary. [20] His second marriage was to fellow CIA operative Dayna Williamson. [21]

Books and media

In 2015–2017, Baer has appeared on Hunting Hitler (2015–2017), [22] and JFK Declassified: Tracking Oswald . [23]

Robert Baer has never written or promoted a book with the title "The Secret of the White House", but a fabricated interview with him about promoting this book in Canada has been circulating on the web since 2012. In this fabricated interview the USA was accused of having caused the collapse of Yugoslavia. [24] [25] [26] [27] [28]

Media

Books

Films

Television

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allen Dulles</span> Director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961

Allen Welsh Dulles was an American lawyer who was the first civilian director of central intelligence (DCI), and its longest serving director to date. As head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the early Cold War, he oversaw the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, the Lockheed U-2 aircraft program, the Project MKUltra mind control program and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. He was fired by John F. Kennedy over the latter fiasco.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E. Howard Hunt</span> American intelligence officer and author (1918–2007)

Everette Howard Hunt Jr. was an American intelligence officer and author. From 1949 to 1970, Hunt served as an officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), particularly in the United States involvement in regime change in Latin America including the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état and the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Along with G. Gordon Liddy, Frank Sturgis, and others, Hunt was one of the Nixon administration "plumbers", a team of operatives charged with identifying government sources of national security information "leaks" to outside parties. Hunt and Liddy plotted the Watergate burglaries and other clandestine operations for the Nixon administration. In the ensuing Watergate scandal, Hunt was convicted of burglary, conspiracy, and wiretapping, eventually serving 33 months in prison. After release, Hunt lived in Mexico and then Florida until his death.

ODESSA is an American codename coined in 1946 to cover Nazi underground escape-plans made at the end of World War II by a group of SS officers with the aim of facilitating secret escape routes, and any directly ensuing arrangements. The concept of the existence of an actual ODESSA organisation has circulated widely in fictional spy novels and movies, including Frederick Forsyth's best-selling 1972 thriller The Odessa File. The escape-routes have become known as "ratlines". Known goals of elements within the SS included allowing SS members to escape to Argentina or to the Middle East under false passports.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Curveball (informant)</span> Iraqi defector

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, known by the Defense Intelligence Agency cryptonym "Curveball", is a German citizen who defected from Iraq in 1999, claiming that he had worked as a chemical engineer at a plant that manufactured mobile biological weapon laboratories as part of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program. Alwan's allegations were subsequently shown to be false by the Iraq Survey Group's final report published in 2004.

Ronald Rosenbaum is an American literary journalist, literary critic, and novelist.

The Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group is a United States government interagency group, which is tasked with locating, identifying, inventorying, and recommending for declassification classified U.S. records relating to Nazi German and Imperial Japanese war crimes.

Manucher Ghorbanifar is an expatriate Iranian arms dealer and former SAVAK agent.

<i>Syriana</i> 2005 film written and directed by Stephen Gaghan

Syriana is a 2005 American political thriller film written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, loosely based on Robert Baer's 2003 memoir See No Evil. The film stars an ensemble cast consisting of George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Cooper, William Hurt, Tim Blake Nelson, Amanda Peet, Christopher Plummer, Alexander Siddig, and Mazhar Munir.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Duane Clarridge</span>

Duane Ramsdell "Dewey" Clarridge was an American senior operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and supervisor for more than 30 years. Clarridge was the chief of the Latin American division from 1981 to 1987 and a key figure in the Iran-Contra Affair. Clarridge pleaded guilty to seven counts of perjury and making false statements relating to 1985 shipment to Iran.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pan Am Flight 103 conspiracy theories</span> Speculation on the 1988 bombing

Pan Am Flight 103 conspiracy theories suggest a number of possible explanations for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988. Some of the theories preceded the official investigation by Scottish police and the FBI; others arose from different interpretation of evidence presented at Libyan agent Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's 2000–2001 trial; yet others have been developed independently by individuals and organisations outside the official investigation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tony Mendez</span> American CIA technical operations officer and writer

Antonio Joseph Mendez was an American technical operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who specialized in support of clandestine and covert CIA operations. He wrote four memoirs about his CIA experiences.

Project Mockingbird was a wiretapping operation initiated by United States President John F. Kennedy to identify the sources of government leaks by eavesdropping on the communications of journalists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Fuisz</span> American physician, inventor, and entrepreneur

Richard Carl Fuisz is an American physician, inventor, and entrepreneur, with connections to the United States military and intelligence community. He holds more than two hundred patents worldwide, in such diverse fields as drug delivery, interactive media, and cryptography, and has lectured on these topics internationally. Fuisz is a member of the Board of Regents of Georgetown University, where he and his brother created an annual scholarship honoring their deceased elder sibling, and established the first endowed professorship at the Georgetown University School of Medicine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Kiriakou</span> American counter-terrorism consultant

John Chris Kiriakou is an American author, journalist and former intelligence officer. Kiriakou is a columnist with Reader Supported News and co-host of Political Misfits on Sputnik Radio.

Vincent Cannistraro was Director of Intelligence Programs for the United States National Security Council (NSC) from 1984 to 1987; Special assistant for Intelligence in the Office of the Secretary of Defense until 1988; and Chief of Operations and Analysis at the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Counterterrorist Center until 1991.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories</span> Conspiracy theories regarding the assassination of JFK

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 has spawned numerous conspiracy theories. These theories allege the involvement of the CIA, the Mafia, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, the KGB, or some combination of these individuals and entities. Some conspiracy theories have alleged a coverup by parts of the federal government, such as the original FBI investigators, the Warren Commission, or the CIA. Former Los Angeles District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi estimated that a total of 42 groups, 82 assassins, and 214 people had been accused at one time or another in various conspiracy scenarios.

A fabricator is an intelligence agent or officer that generates disinformation, falsehoods or bogus information, often without access to authentic resources. Fabricators often provide forged documents in order to substantiate their falsehoods. It is normal intelligence practice to place identified fabricators on a black list or to issue a burn notice on them and to recall intelligence sourced from them.

<i>Hunting Hitler</i> American television series

Hunting Hitler is a History Channel television series based on the conspiracy theory that Adolf Hitler escaped from Berlin at the end of World War II in Europe. The show was conceived following the declassification of government documents exploring the premise that Hitler might not have died in April 1945. The series explores how he might have escaped, where he might have gone, and whether he plotted a Fourth Reich. The series ran for three seasons between 2015 and 2018, followed by a two-hour special in 2020.

JFK Declassified: Tracking Oswald is a History Channel television series about an investigation led by former CIA agent Robert Baer and former LAPD police lieutenant Adam Bercovici into the 1963 assassination of U.S. president John F. Kennedy, using recently declassified government documents to track down locations and witnesses connected with assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Otto Pünter</span> Swiss journalist and anti-Nazi resistance fighter

Otto Pünter was a Swiss journalist and anti-Nazi resistance fighter. During the Second World War, his codename was Pakbo, and he was a member of the Red Orchestra.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Robert Baer "Don't Assume Ahmadinejad Really Lost", Time website, June 16, 2009
  2. ↑ "Robert Baer – Authors – Random House". Randomhouse.com. Retrieved March 18, 2010.
  3. ↑ "Interview with Robert Baer (as uploaded on you tube) by Lowell Bergman – 2 hours 19 minutes". c-span.org. Jewish community center San Francisco – retelecast by C-Span. Retrieved April 12, 2019.
  4. ↑ "Bob Baer – Hunting Hitler Cast | HISTORY Channel". The HISTORY Channel.
  5. ↑ "Robert Baer Intelligence and Security Analyst". CNN . Retrieved April 6, 2017.
  6. ↑ Halbfinger, David M (May 15, 2005). "Hollywood has a Hot New Agency". The New York Times . Retrieved April 15, 2009.
  7. 1 2 3 Draper, Electa (August 15, 2006). "Ex-CIA Middle East field officer a man in demand". Chicago Tribune.
  8. ↑ Ketcham, Christopher (October 23, 2009). "Unlearning the CIA". Counterpunch.
  9. ↑ Ignatius, David (2002) "Not a job for Kissinger," Washington Post. December 20, 2002.
  10. ↑ Turner, Michael A. (2006) Why Secret Intelligence Fails (revised edition). Potomac Books: Washington DC. ISBN   1-57488-891-9
  11. ↑ America's gulag. By Stephen Grey. 17 May 2004. New Statesman .
  12. ↑ America's Gulag on Stephen Grey's Website By Stephen Grey. 17 May 2004. Stephen Grey .
  13. ↑ Ex-spy feels at home in mountain town | Wyoming News | trib.com Retrieved 2016-11-14.
  14. ↑ Baer, Robert (January 11, 2002). "See No Evil (Part 2)". The Guardian.
  15. ↑ Baer, Robert (December 7, 2007). "Commentary: The CIA's Gift to Conspiracy Theorists". Time. Archived from the original on December 8, 2007. Retrieved March 18, 2010.
  16. ↑ "Part 4 – 9 ⁄11 Suspects – Robert Baer (Corbett Report)" – via www.youtube.com.
  17. ↑ "The real Suspects of 911 (Corbett Report)" – via www.bitchute.com.
  18. ↑ Schack, Ramon (October 13, 2011). "Warum sollte Iran so ein Risiko auf sich nehmen?". Zeit Online (in German).
  19. ↑ "CIA Spook says Megrahi was freed before appeal humiliated justice system". Sunday Mail. Retrieved June 5, 2010.
  20. ↑ Ian, Shapira (March 14, 2012). "How to keep your marriage going when you're in the CIA". Washington Post .
  21. ↑ Pesta, Abigail (February 14, 2011). "A Real-Life Spy Couple – Robert Baer and Dayna Williamson hid their real identities and spent their lives trying to be invisible. Then they got married". Marie Claire.
  22. ↑ "Hunting Hitler – Watch Online | Full Episodes on History". Archived from the original on October 10, 2015.
  23. ↑ "JFK Declassified: Tracking Oswald | Schedule and Episodes on HISTORY". Archived from the original on May 13, 2017.
  24. ↑ "A fictional interview with a former CIA agent has been circulating in the Balkans for a decade". Raskrinkavanje.ba (BiH). seecheck.org. March 24, 2023. Retrieved March 31, 2023. Cupurdija claimed that he interviewed Baer in Canada, where he was promoting the book "The secret of the White House". Baer never wrote or promoted such a book, nor was he in Canada at the time the interview was published. On the other hand, Baer did publish several books about his experiences working for this agency, in which he never claimed anything close to what the obscure author of the fake interview wrote. Finally, Robert Baer confirmed for Raskrinkavanje that he never gave the said interview.
  25. ↑ Ramon Schack (February 24, 2016). "Der Staat Jugoslawien stand dem strategischen Entwurf der USA im Wege Ex-CIA-Agent Robert Baer über die Strategien der CIA während des Jugoslawien-Krieges)". Telepolis (in German). heise.de. Retrieved March 31, 2023. (fabricated interview in German translation)
  26. ↑ "Secrets of the White House - Confession of a CIA Agent". azvizion.az. December 24, 2015. Retrieved March 31, 2023. (fabricated interview in English translation)
  27. ↑ Milos Cupurdij (October 10, 2015). "nterview with the Former Officer of the CIA, Robert Baer". revolutionarydemocracy.org. Retrieved March 31, 2023. (fabricated interview in English translation)
  28. ↑ Napisao Miloš Ćupurdija, četvrtak (September 6, 2012). "Intervju sa Robertom Baerom - Kraj Jugoslavije". Moje Novine (in Croatian). Archived from the original on September 9, 2012. (origin of the fabricated Interview on a platform for aspiring young journalist)
  29. ↑ "Many rivers films – independent film production company making documentary films, investigative journalism, dramas, and feature films".
  30. ↑ "many rivers films – independent film production company making documentary films, investigative journalism, dramas, and feature films". www.manyriversfilms.co.uk.
  31. ↑ "many rivers films – independent film production company making documentary films, investigative journalism, dramas, and feature films". www.manyriversfilms.co.uk.
  32. ↑ "many rivers films – independent film production company making documentary films, investigative journalism, dramas, and feature films". www.manyriversfilms.co.uk.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.