'See No Evil', renamed 'Syriana' for it's big-screen release, is an astonishing and controversial memoir from one of the CIA's top field officers of the past quarter century. He recounts his career as a ground soldier in the CIA's war on terrorism, running agents in the back alleys of the Middle East, with blistering honesty. Baer paints a chilling picture of how terrorism works on the inside and provides compelling evidence about how Washington politics sabotaged the CIA's efforts to root out the world's deadliest terrorists. Not only is this an unprecedented examination of the roots of modern terrorism and the CIA's failure to acknowledge and neutralise the growing fundamentalist threat, it is an engrossing memoir of Baer's education and disillusionment as an intelligence operative.
"See No Evil" includes revelations about the strategic alliance Osama bin Laden forged with Iran in 1996 to mastermind terrorist attacks on the United States and elsewhere, about the planned coup d'etat against Saddam Hussein and how it was aborted by the National Security Council, and about the CIA's disastrous decision in 1991 to shut down its operations in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, ignoring the fundamentalists working in those countries. An extraordinary testimony that has become even more vital and damning since the events of 9/11 and the subsequent War on Iraq.
