Memoirs: Plame vs. Baer

Here is excerpts of Valerie Wilson's book on Amazon.com.

It is interesting that Ms. Valerie Plame's Wilson's memoir book was redacted by the CIA but not former 21 year CIA agent Robert Baer's memoir book ans his other books. Baer's book, See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War Against Terrorism is a 2003 memoir by Robert Baer, a former CIA case officer in the Directorate of Operations. Baer begins with his upbringing in the US and Europe and continues with a tour of his CIA experiences across the globe. It ends with his growing disillusionment with the agency and his eventual resignation.

And his memoir book was not redacted. Yet, in a August 18, 2007 Time article he reported that some U.S. officials were supporting a strike against Iran within six months. And Baer's book was based on the movie with actor George Clooney: Syianna. I decided to examine another Baer's book which hits close to home in this country's crisis:

Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude (Paperback)

Amazon.com

According to Robert Baer, the center of the global economy is a "kingdom built on thievery, one that nurtures terrorism, destroys any possibility of a middle class based on property rights, and promotes slavery and prostitution." This kingdom also sits on one quarter of the world's oil reserves, thus ensuring that it receives the full support and protection of the U.S. government. Sleeping With the Devil details the hypocritical and corrupt relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia and the potentially calamitous economic consequences of maintaining this Faustian bargain.

As Baer makes clear, the U.S. has been aware of problems within the bitterly divided Al Sa'ud family for years, but has ignored the facts in order to keep lucrative business deals afloat. (The amount of money the royal family spends to influence powerful American politicians and lobbyists is staggering.) Particularly damning are his details regarding Saudi Arabia's support of militant Islamic groups, including al Qaeda. The ruling family funnels millions of dollars to such groups in order to dissuade them from overthrowing the monarchy--a protection scheme that is shaky at best, given the hatred most citizens feel for the ruling family. To prevent economic disaster that could come from either a local uprising or an interruption in the flow of oil due to terrorism, Baer raises the possibility of the U.S. seizing the Saudi oil fields and forcing a regime change on its own terms: "An invasion and a revolution might be the only things that can save the industrial West from a prolonged, wrenching depression," he warns.

Baer spent 21 years with the CIA, much of it in the Middle East, so he is an informed guide to this complex subject. His alarming book deserves to be read for raising many important and troubling questions. --Shawn Carkonen --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

And here is an excerpt of an interview with Baer in 2003:

BUZZFLASH: Let me begin by asking you, just to establish your background, you wrote a book called See No Evil, in which you talked about your career with the CIA. Can you explain a little bit more about what your background and areas of responsibility were with the CIA?

ROBERT BAER: I spent 21 years in the CIA as what’s called a case officer. That means that I went overseas and served overseas almost all the years I spent with the CIA, meeting with what we call agents. Those are foreigners who spy for the CIA. And you write up their reports and send them back to Washington. So I was a field officer, in short.

BUZZFLASH: In what area? You did serve in Iraq, if I recall, in reading your book.

BAER: I served in Iraq for awhile. A couple times I was there on a temporary basis. I was mostly in the Middle East – Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Bosnia as well as a couple of other countries.

BUZZFLASH: So you have extensive experience with the Middle East.

BAER: Yes.

BUZZFLASH: As a gatherer of what is called "human intelligence."

BAER: Yes.

BUZZFLASH: And of course, 15 of the 19 hijackers of 9/11 were Saudi.

BAER: The Saudi hijackers were spending time in these mosques paid for by the Saudi government. The clerics are essentially government employees that recruited these kids. I know why Americans don’t have time to think about the Middle East. It’s a very complicated place. I certainly don’t understand it all that well, but I’ve spent 25 years now doing nothing but trying to figure it out.

BUZZFLASH: You also mentioned how intertwined business relationships are with Saudi Arabia. Another point you bring out is that the Saudi Arabians keep possibly as much as a trillion dollars on deposit in U.S. banks. So how does that factor in?

BAER: Well, Kissinger set this up in the first oil embargo. He said, listen, fine, you can raise the price of oil. You’re going to get more money for your oil. But let’s be reasonable about this. Take this money and all this profit you’re making, and invest it in the United States, which is a perfectly good policy, by the way. Buy our arms. Keep your money here. It’ll keep our economy floating. We won’t go into a recession or a depression because of high oil prices. And we’re all going to win by this. And that worked fine.

But then that goes back to the dependency. We depend so much on Saudi investments in the stock market, in Citibank and other funds. This is not just Saudi money; it’s other Arab money too. If we go into a confrontation with the Middle East, especially with oil prices so high right now, and that money is not recirculated back in the United States, it’s going to do some real damage. Or if one day, they just completely pull their money out. I mean, that’s the perfect storm: an oil embargo, the Saudis and others' pulling their money out, and having the price of oil go up to $70 - $80 a barrel. We would be hurt, badly hurt.

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/09/12_baer.html