Robert Baer

This is book is a bit dated in that it tackles the question of U.S. withdraw from Iraq, but it is very valuable for the years of experience Baer gained on Iran from his years in the middle east. The title of this work is loaded and layers of meaning are not fully clear until the audacious (enlightened? visionary?) epilogue. Baer builds up a tale of a misunderstood Iran with astute geo-political machinations bearing success at positioning it as a regional hegemon and leader of a show more Shia-dominant, oil-rich Muslim (not Arab) world. It is easy to take this as subtle coloring of a wily adversary, but in the conclusion Baer boldly advises getting the jump on Russia and China and the U.S. directly allying with and cooperating transparently with Iran.

like Wells in "Outline of History", we see here that below the imposed political map wrestles a religio-cultural map. by disrupting Iraq, we've tipped the scales in Iran's favor. Baer suggests we run with that. show less

I have seen and enjoyed Baer as a talking head on cable news. That got my interest and I came to see him as really not in the stereotypical spy mold when I read The Company We Keep: A Husband-and-Wife True-Life Spy Story. Here he really has a screed against the CIA and a leadership and gov't (NSC, especially) cowed by big business putting profit above national security. Incompetence is a real prominent thread: "...a headquarters staffed with officers [who] so badly misidentified the Chinese show more embassy in Belgrade that we sent a missile into it."

Baer's behind the scenes story on a failed Kurdish coup in Iraq and lack of CIA interest in Bin Laden linkages to Iran paint an intriguing back story to the Beirut embassy bombing that one of the first salvos in the war with Islamic jihad. Along with Clinton admin influence peddling, this edition is updated with post-9/11 observations by the veteran spy.

Among the most interesting things to me here, though is all the fits and starts and details to the beginning of his career - what it's like to be a spy noob - and similarly learning to recruit agents and then have to pass them on as a veteran to another new-hire. show less

I listened to the audiobook of The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower (2008) by Robert Baer and I can tell you right now that this isn't going to be a good review because this book presents such a different understanding of Iran than any other perspective I've ever encountered. Here are the highlights as I understand them:

Americans and the West in general have a distorted view of Iran and especially of what Iran wants.
Iran is a country that is trying to modernize, show more participates widely in the internet, and even watches a lot of American television. They are not like some other Islamic states trying to return to pre-modern times.
Iranians desire empire and wish to be recognized as a major player in Middle East politics, perhaps even a superpower.
We should not be scared that Iran will build and use nuclear weapons nor that they desire some nihilistic destruction of the west. What Iran actually really does do and what they're capable of is actually more unsettling if unnoticed by the West. Iran succeeds through asymetrical tactics and weapons
Through proxy wars, Iran has carried out their quest for imperialism throughout the Mid East. Baer asserts that through Hezbollah, Iran won the first military conflict against Israel in 2000. Through cunning and strategy Iran has achieved many military goals and won over the support many Muslims even Sunnis & Arabs who traditionally are at odds with the Shiite & Persian Iran.
Nations the US currently allies with are weak (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE) or not really states at all just strong armies (Pakistan). Plus the oil fields in Saudi Arabia are emptying out and Iran's hegemony has them in position to control the oil supply for the future.
In general, Shiite Iran is hierarchical, commands come only from leaders with extensive religious trading, and they carry out their campaigns with specific goals and targets in mind. Sunni Arabs are not hierarchical, leaders with no religious training give out commands (such as Osama bin Laden), and carry out attacks for slaughter's sake alone. Western governments have successfully negotiated peace with Iran because they can not only find someone to negotiate with but because they are open to negotiation.
Continuing on the present course will require a huge outlay of money and military force to either contain Iran in a 30+ year Cold War or to actually engage them in battle. In addition to losing many lives and bankrupting the country, Iran would shut off our supply of oil. Baer does not believe the US populace would stand for any of this.
In the end Baer gives several reccomendations for the US to bury it's pride and recognize Iran as a major power, grant them a role in restoring order to Iraq, and allow nations artificially created after WWI (such as Iraq and Pakistan) to be disolved into smaller states. Baer believes this realpolitik approach to Iran's de facto superpower status is are only sensible option.

I obviously know only a little about Iran and the Mid East in general, and Baer seems to be stacking the deck to support his thesis and has certain obvious prejudices (especially against Sunnis/Arabs. Yet its a compelling argument, and a very nuanced understanding of today's Iran. It's not likely that American politicians will follow any of these suggestions, and perhaps with good reason. Still it's an eye-opening account that challenges the accepted wisdom. show less

Don't expect to learn much about specific CIA operations in this impressionistic joint memoir. Like CIA field agents themselves, we collect many a fact but rarely get to collate them into a narrative. Was that house in Athens innocent or were its residents with 17N, a terrorist organization that assassinated a CIA agent in 1975? Was the shooting of an agent in Sarajevo a random act in a war between Croats and Bosnian Serbs or a Hizballah hit? Whatever became of Yuri, a KBG officer, after his show more attempted recruitment was noted by one Aldrich Ames?

What you do get, with Robert and Dayna's alternating, present-tense accounts, is a sense of life as a CIA field operative.
Robert was a field agent for over 25 years. We get snapshots of life in Beirut, telling a would-be informant in Morocco not to bother because the US really isn't all that interested in more documentation on the royal family smuggling narcotics into Europe, of allying with the KGB in keeping up with events in newly independent Tajikistan, and running surveillance operations against Hizballah, described as a "great spies and saboteurs", in Sarajevo.

Dayna was in the CIA about 5 years, first running background checks on people in the Los Angeles area then as a Protective Agent, a "shooter" in Agency parlance. After a rigorous training course in firearms, aggressive and evasive driving, and unarmed combat, Protective Agents are used to provide security to other field agents and aid in surveillance and counter-surveillance activities abroad. It's an odd life of disguise, codenames for even your fellow employees, living in dumps and elegant hotels, 18 hour days and long stretches of boredom.

It's also long stretches of separation from family. A substantial part of this story is the fatal damage that such long separation and secrecy do to Robert and Dayna's first marriages. After they left the CIA - and about a third of this book is their post-CIA life, they married each other after meeting on assignment in Sarajevo. The importance of "the human touch" is shown throughout the book whether it's Robert on errands to tell Syrian intelligence officers the US will not interfere in a Lebanon-Syrian war; the amazing ability of Robert's world-traveling, chatty mother to insinuate herself in social circles her son can't; or his post-CIA employment as a consultant. One of the "eccentrics, rogues, and scoundrals" he meets is Malik, an Iraqi of the Dulayn tribe so influential in the Hussein regime. The book concludes with the Baers' struggles to adopt a Pakistani girl

Recommended for anyone wanting a feel for the lives of modern CIA agents or glimpses of Middle Eastern intrigue. show less