See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism by Robert Baer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
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 [b:The Company We Keep: A Husband-and-Wife True-Life Spy Story|8576188|The Company We Keep A Husband-and-Wife True-Life Spy Story|Robert Baer|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320452743s/8576188.jpg|13445106]. 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 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.
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