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Interview with Robert Baer
Robert Baer was a case officer in the Directorate of Operations for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1976 to 1997. He served in places such as Iraq, Dushanbe, Rabat, Beirut, New Delhi, Khartoum, and Sarajevo. In 1998 the CIA awarded him the Career Intelligence Medal. His book, See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism, recounts his career at the CIA. He now divides his time between Washington, D.C. and France.
Trento: 1. How do we determine if the US intelligence community is successful? They have not located bin Laden. Has this undermined the public and the President's confidence?
Baer: Well, I think that’s the whole goddamn key. Look at the NY Times today about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. How do we know about Mohammed? Because he went to Al Jazeera and described how he did September 11th... You know, we’re following the newspapers around to find these guys. We have to get them to confess on television before we can really decide who is at the center of it. And now if you look at the NY Times today and apparently this guy went to our best ally in the Gulf and hid there and I don’t think Patrick Tyler wrote that article until he goddamn was sure of it.
Trento: Well, Patrick Tyler’s a pretty good reporter.
Baer: And plus we’ve been after this guy since ‘95 since the Phillipines.
Trento: Why do you think it is that the agency almost approaches this thing in an academic fashion? The reality is, it’s been a year and a half.
Baer: We don’t have anybody on the ground as sources – all through the Afghan war, it was all a logistics operation, hand out money, hand out whatever – get the Pakistanis, get the Saudis to do it and everybody was there and they came back and patted themselves on the back for bringing down the evil empire. But, we just left this time bomb ticking, you know, we had no interest. Someone said you know, get a source in IIRO. Well, you know that’s Saudis -- they’re helping on our side, why should we spy on them? They’re handing out the money, they’re doing God’s work, they’re killing commies -- let’s don’t ask.
Trento: When you look at Bush’s attitude towards the agency does this failure undermine the president’s confidence in the agency? It doesn’t seem to, but how about the public’s confidence?
Baer:I think the public’s confidence is still high. This is all very confusing for the public. Who is Bin Laden? What is Qaeda? Do people have membership cards? Do they swear oaths? Do they get a monthly magazine? It’s all very confusing for Americans who don’t follow the Middle East and there is this Arab underground that we’re not plugged into.
Trento: Does the public put together the fact that the US was using some of these senior assets, Al Qaeda assets back in the day. Does the public get that is there a connection there?
Baer: No. The way the public is seeing this, even from the journalists I get, is that bin Laden just sprung from a shell, like Venus on the half shell from the sea.
Trento: 2. Because the CIA had done business with bin Laden and others that later came together as Al Qaeda, should we be suspicious of the CIA's motive in the terrorism war?
Baer: I think that’s going too far. It stopped collecting intelligence in the 80s, that’s what it did, because it was easier not to collect it.
Trento: In other words, you can be in business with the bad guys, the trick is, after you’re done using them don’t ignore them, pay attention. Remember where you’ve been…
Baer: The rule is if you’re going into any of these dirty wars, you always have at least one or two sources for the group that you’re running. So, if you’re going to be running bin Laden, whether it’s indirectly or directly, you got to know what the guy’s up to. That’s just a rule of intelligence. If you’re going to hand out stingers in Afghanistan, you want to know who’s going to get them. And if they decide to sell them, you want to know to whom they’re selling them. We never knew that. And, we have a whole generation of agency officers that ran the place based on logistics -- that were logistics officers.
Trento: And so, the idea, this illusion that the agency really had insight into the Islamic movements because we had done the support against the Soviets was kind of a myth. But, the agency sort of dined out on that myth in Congress and other places. We know how these folks work; we had this great victory. Do you think they sort of created this situation?
Baer: Well, that’s why they spent so much time on the movies: just generating a myth. The other hand is in a story is that the agency’s very good when it has a mandate and tries. I’m talking about the Soviet Union. I mean -- we had their shorts through the 90s.
Trento: Right, by the 90s we did.
Baer: In terms of counter-espionage -- we were great. We could run circles around the FBI; we ran circles around defense. We created all the advance counter-Soviet equipment -- that was all thanks to the CIA. So, it’s unfair to say the group is just incompetent. But, it was incompetent when it came to Islamic fundamentalism, or it became a problem.
Trento: Is there a cultural problem inside the agency regarding Islam in general?
Baer: Well everybody’s white middle class and goes to Midwestern schools. If you’re an Arabist -- you go to Arabia for two years and then you go to an assignment and you say this is goddamn awful sitting in Yemen or whatever. And my wife doesn’t like it, my kids don’t like it and I’m not getting promoted because the guy back at headquarters is getting promoted. So, I’m going to headquarters or I’m going to Europe at least where I can live well. And all of a sudden you are recycling Arabists through the Middle East. And figures look great for the Hill because they’re training twenty people a year.
Trento: Yea, it becomes the numbers game. It’s like what Shackle used to do in Vietnam. “Give me reports, give me reports.” The fact that they’re true or not don’t matter.
Baer: Yea, how many reports you send in. Just don’t get the State Department mad at you. But, this is the important part of the story: the CIA does its job; it does a fantastic job. I’m talking about the Soviet Union not about predicting the fall -- that was an analytical problem.
Trento: Well, that also got politicized. That wasn’t your fault.
Baer: The DO caught all the Russian spies because they were doing their job.
Trento: 3. President Bush has stated flatly that Saddam has connections to Al Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence community has failed to back him on either assertion. Did the President overreach, or are the intelligence organs being too cautious? Tenet’s sort of walked the fine line on all of this.
Baer: Well, he was opposed to it a few weeks ago, but now he’s all lined up, if you can go by the TV.
Trento: Most of the people I’ve talked to think it’s unlikely that Saddam would be trusted by Al Qaeda. So, why do they believe this?
Baer: Well, if you look at the NY Times today, that camp that they’ve identified…
Trento: It’s under Kurdish control…
Baer: Yea, it’s under the group that we pay for. So, that means we’re paying for the camp. Well, that’s not a good sign. It’s become a goddamn circus and now Bush is praying and the mastermind is going in and out of Kuwait and Qatar, our two allies. That is not a good sign. After 9.11 the guy we know did it goes to Qatar to hide?!?
Trento: 4. Numerous articles have said that Saudi Arabia is responsible for funding Al Qaeda through various Islamic charities and front groups. Should the intelligence community have known this before 9.11 and should the administration have acted upon it?
Baer: That’s a red herring. Yea, the intelligence community should have known. Look, the Saudi Ministry of Interior stiffed Louis Freeh on Khobar bombings. It was much wider -- more people were involved in this. We had no way to find out how they stiffed us because we didn’t have any sources because Saudi Arabia was our ally and it was a protected country. If we got caught spying on Saudi Arabia, Fred Dutton would ring the CIA a new asshole. He would say, what do you mean you fucking cowboys going out and recruiting our best ally, our friend? People live off of Saudi Arabia in this town. University of Arkansas was funded by Saudi Arabia as soon as Clinton got elected. Everybody looks at Saudi Arabia as some sort of clandestine tax. Saudi Arabia…keeps the Kennedy Center funded.
Trento: So we simply look the other way when things they have done have resulted in the deaths of Americans?
Baer: Yea. And, this is what we’re doing on Iraq, we’re looking the other way on our Gulf friends who are supporting these people – paying for them. They’re not cooperating in the investigation. I mean, everyday in the newspaper you see it.
Trento: 5. Many supporters of the CIA claimed that President Clinton handicapped the Agency with too much government oversight and political correctness in its recruiting. Did our failure to penetrate Al Qaeda and find out what bin Laden was planning have anything to do with restraints on the CIA?
Baer: Of course it did. The fact that the agency sent an analyst in ’97 to Riyadh. Analysts are smart guys, but you need the human intelligence to figure out what’s going on.
Trento: Was that deliberate so there wouldn’t be any spying in Riyadh?
Baer: That’s too complicated. The fact is there wasn’t any pressure to find out what the Saudis were doing.
Trento: Is there pressure now?
Baer: No. It’s all publicity.
Trento: 6. We have been fighting in Afghanistan for 18 months and the country is not secure. Are you confident that the intelligence the government is getting about the status of the war on terrorism is reliable?
Baer: In Afghanistan? No. I think they simply turned over money to the tribes to go kill Taliban. That’s how everybody got away.
Trento: In other words they tried to buy it on the cheap?
Baer: Well, not on the cheap…
Trento: I mean with no loss of American life.
Baer: Yea, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. They had to get in, they had to move fast; they needed to close it down. We had no choice.
Trento: But, we should have gone in with them?
Baer: Yea, but that’s going to take for years because we weren’t collecting on Afghanistan.
Trento: 7. The CIA's current leadership has issued numerous and often dire but vague warnings about the continued threat of Al Qaeda and bin Laden. Is the leadership trying to cover itself with these warnings?
Baer: I think it’s noise and they’re covering themselves. What’s the public going to do about it? Just panic. It’s good for raising budgets – tax budgets. The irony is these guys attacked the United States with 19 box cutters – and we’re building B-2 bombers?
Trento: 8. What five things would you do to improve the intelligence community?
Baer: I would back away from government to government assistance, because these governments are hostile in the Middle East.
Trento: Expand on, for example Pakistan. How do we know what we’re dealing with there?
Baer: You don’t need the CIA to deal with Pakistan. The State Department can do that. What you do is you go to the police, you say what have you got? They hand you a folder and then you hand them a folder back and it’s done. The State Department, the RSO can do that. They’re only going to be as good as their junior officers are working on our behalf. So, if they decide not to raid a place in Karachi because they’re pissed off at the Americans, or they report back up the line there’s no point in raiding it – then they don’t raid it. And we become hostage to the politics of these governments who are not on our side – they may say they are.
Trento: Ok, that’s one thing. What else?
Baer: You need human sources. You need the National Security Agency to keep your sources honest, you need satellites to keep your sources honest and you need a lot of people.
Trento: Do you need to let your sources know that you’re watching them?
Baer: Well, yea. With all sources you establish a baseline of truth.
Trento: When you get a great officer who is a great recruiter…
Baer: You have to reward them. You have to tell that officer that what you’re doing is important and we’re going to reward you with either more authority, money, recognition or whatever motivates people in an organization. If on the other hand, you got the guy, the current director of operations, who is in Europe and moved from one staff position to another and becomes-- that’s how you’re rewarded – being in Washington as a staffer, smart people say maybe intelligence isn’t that important, maybe people don’t care.
Trento: So the awards go to the people who are staying in headquarters fundamentally?
Baer: Yea.
Trento: What else would you do to fix it?
Baer: Give people more running room. I would have two levels of officers – I’d have officers that were cleared for secretive information that would go out, meet agents, recruit them, meet arms dealers, meet drug dealers, hang around Europe.
Trento: Doing the kind of stuff like what very good investigative reporters do?
Baer: Yea, just go out and be doing shit. But, you can’t then hold them to a CI standard -- saying well what do you mean you took money from an arms dealer and he gave you a diamond ring? Well – fine, you gave the diamond ring to us or told us about it, but you can’t -- you have to show some imagination.
Trento: You have to let them work like undercover cops in other words?
Baer: Yea.
Trento: 9. How does the public resolve the contradictions between the White House and intelligence community? For example we are told that an Al Qaeda terrorist base located in a Kurdish controlled section of Iraq demonstrates Saddam is connected to Al Qaeda and the base is producing toxins to be used against the infidels. Yet the CIA reported that the base was established with the permission of the Kurds and Saddam had nothing to do with it. Do you ever remember this kind of public fight over the meaning and accuracy of intelligence?
Baer: You can’t. At the end of the day you’re a hostage of the White House.
Trento: Have ever seen the White House ever stretch the intelligence. What do you think that means in the future?
Baer: No. I think it tells us it’s completely politicized.
Trento: 10. The Administration seems to have sided with the CIA. In fact, two weeks after 9.11 President Bush went out to the CIA and gave the Agency a pep talk. Has the President's blessing of the CIA made it difficult to correct or even recognize failures and problems at the CIA?
Baer: I think the person who knows about the agency is Dick Cheney. And he knows the problems and he knows the product. I know this indirectly. There’s not a whole lot you can do about it to change this around. The problem is I’m out. It’d just be unfair for me to say to them they’re still fucked up. I imagine they are, because I know big organizations. It’s really hard to change the culture, but that’s just an extrapolation.
Trento: Do you think there’s any chance that bin Laden is in Saudi Arabia?
Baer: He could be anywhere, that’s the problem. This Arab basement really does exist. And we sort of saw this in the Zarqawi deal. Zarqawi I think is in Iran, but there obviously is the basement there. I think this whole thing is slipping us by. Of course what’s going to happen is a country like Saudi Arabia is going to go under and someone’s going to fly an airplane into Ras Tanura and all of a sudden we’re going to be without 25% of the world’s oil resources. It’s going to disappear in three or four crashes and we’re going to be sitting in the dark saying, “what happened?”