Difference between revisions of "Robert Baer"

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'''Robert Booker "Bob" Baer''' (born July 1, 1952) is an American author and a former [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] [[case officer]] who was primarily assigned to the Middle East.<ref name="TIME.com"/> He is currently [[TIME.com]]'s [[Espionage|intelligence]] columnist<ref name="TIME.com"/> and has contributed to ''[[Vanity Fair (magazine)|Vanity Fair]]'', ''[[The Wall Street Journal]]'', and ''[[The Washington Post]]''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=36661 |title=Robert Baer – Authors – Random House |publisher=Randomhouse.com |date= |accessdate=2010-03-18}}</ref> Baer is a frequent commentator and author about issues related to international relations, espionage and U.S. foreign policy with a particular focus on the [[Lockerbie bombing]].
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{{person
 +
|image=Robert_Baer.jpg
 +
|image_caption=Experienced [[CIA]] operative
 +
|constitutes=spook
 +
|interests=Lockerbie bombing
 +
|serviceyears=1976–97
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|birth_date=1952-07-01
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|birth_place=Los Angeles
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|description=American author and former CIA operative; some very interesting stuff, some suspected misdirection.
 +
|wikipedia=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Baer
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|alma_mater=Georgetown University, University of California, Berkeley
 +
|nationality=American
 +
|powerbase=http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Robert_Baer
 +
}}
 +
'''Robert Booker "Bob" Baer''' (born 1 July 1952) is an American author and former [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] operative. Robert Baer worked for the [[CIA]]'s Directorate of Operations for more than two decades and spent most of his career in the Middle East, with postings in Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq as well as Tajikistan, India and Europe. An Arabic speaker, he was considered one of the best on the ground field officers in the Middle East.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/2549937.stm "BBC Panorama profile of Robert Baer"]</ref>
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Robert Baer is currently ''TIME'' magazine's intelligence columnist and has contributed to ''Vanity Fair'', ''The Wall Street Journal'', and ''The Washington Post''.<ref>[http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=36661 "Robert Baer – Authors – Random House"]</ref> Baer is a frequent commentator and author about issues related to international relations, espionage and US foreign policy with a particular focus on the [[Lockerbie bombing]].
  
 
==Early life==
 
==Early life==
Baer was born in Los Angeles, raised in [[Aspen, Colorado]], and aspired to become a professional [[ski]]er. He spent many years of his childhood with his mother in Europe before returning to the US. After a fairly poor academic performance during his first year at high school, his mother sent him to Indiana's [[Culver Military Academy]]. In 1976 he graduated from the [[Georgetown University]] [[Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service|School of Foreign Service]] (where then-future CIA director [[George Tenet]] was a classmate). While a graduate student at the [[University of California, Berkeley]], he applied to the CIA's [[Directorate of Operations]] (now the [[National Clandestine Service]]). Upon admittance to the CIA after graduating, Baer engaged in a year's training, which included a four-month paramilitary course and several foreign language courses.
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Baer was born in Los Angeles, raised in [[Aspen, Colorado]], and aspired to become a professional skier. He spent many years of his childhood with his mother in Europe before returning to the US. After a fairly poor academic performance during his first year at high school, his mother sent him to Indiana's Culver Military Academy. In 1976 he graduated from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service (where then-future [[CIA]] director George Tenet was a classmate). While a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, he applied to the CIA's Directorate of Operations (now the National Clandestine Service). Upon admittance to the [[CIA]] after graduating, Baer engaged in a year's training, which included a four-month paramilitary course and several foreign language courses.
  
He is fluent in [[Arabic]], [[Persian language|Persian]], French, [[German language|German]] and his native English. He is also conversant in Russian, [[Tajik language|Tajik]], and [[Balochi language|Baluch]].
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He is fluent in Arabic, Persian, French, German and his native English. He is also conversant in Russian, Tajik, and Baluch.
  
 
==Career==
 
==Career==
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Baer wrote the book ''See No Evil'' documenting his experiences while working for the Agency. The C.I. Desk: FBI and CIA Counterintelligence As Seen From My Cubicle, by Christopher Lynch (Dog Ear Publishing), describes parts of the contentious CIA pre-publication review process for Baer's first book. In a blurb for ''See No Evil''  [[Seymour Hersh]] said Baer "was considered perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East." In the book, Baer offers an analysis of the Middle East through the lens of his experiences as a CIA operative.
 
Baer wrote the book ''See No Evil'' documenting his experiences while working for the Agency. The C.I. Desk: FBI and CIA Counterintelligence As Seen From My Cubicle, by Christopher Lynch (Dog Ear Publishing), describes parts of the contentious CIA pre-publication review process for Baer's first book. In a blurb for ''See No Evil''  [[Seymour Hersh]] said Baer "was considered perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East." In the book, Baer offers an analysis of the Middle East through the lens of his experiences as a CIA operative.
  
Through his years as a clandestine officer, he gained a very thorough knowledge of the Middle East, [[Arab world]] and former [[Republics of the Soviet Union]]. Over the years, Baer has become a strong advocate of the Agency's need to increase Human Intelligence ([[HUMINT]]) through the recruitment of agents. Baer, long a supporter of the theory that the [[PFLP-GC]] brought down [[Pan Am Flight 103]], has recently begun to promote the theory that Iran was behind the bombing.
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Through his years as a clandestine officer, he gained a thorough knowledge of the Middle East, [[Arab world]] and former [[Republics of the Soviet Union]]. Over the years, Baer has become a strong advocate of the Agency's need to increase Human Intelligence ([[HUMINT]]) through the recruitment of agents. Baer, long a supporter of the theory that the [[PFLP-GC]] brought down [[Pan Am Flight 103]], has recently begun to promote the theory that Iran was behind the bombing.
  
In 2004, he told a reporter of the British political weekly ''[[New Statesman]]'', regarding the way the CIA deals with terrorism suspects, "If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear - never to see them again - you send them to Egypt."
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In 2004, he told a reporter of the British political weekly ''[[New Statesman]]'', regarding the way the CIA deals with "terrorism" suspects, "If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be [[torture]]d, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear - never to see them again - you send them to Egypt."
  
 
==September 2001 attacks==
 
==September 2001 attacks==
 
{{FA|9/11}}
 
{{FA|9/11}}
In the months after [[9/11]], Baer expressed skepticism of the US government's {{on}}, writing in ''[[The Guardian]]'' "[D]id [[Osama bin Laden|bin Laden]] act alone, through his own [[al-Qaida]] network, in launching the attacks? About that I'm far more certain and emphatic: no."<ref>''The Guardian'': [http://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/jan/12/extract1 See No Evil.]  January 11, 2002.</ref> However, in 2007 he stated, "For the record, I don't believe that the [[World Trade Center]] was brought down by our own explosives, or that a rocket, rather than an airliner, hit the [[Pentagon]]. I spent a career in the CIA trying to orchestrate plots, wasn't all that good at it, and certainly couldn't carry off 9/11. Nor could the real pros I had the pleasure to work with."<ref>{{cite web|last=Baer |first=Robert |url=http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1692518,00.html |title=Commentary: The CIA's Gift to Conspiracy Theorists – TIME |publisher=Time.com |date=December 7, 2007 |accessdate=2010-03-18}}</ref>
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{{YouTubeVideo
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|code=OpWPMdfkfDo
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|caption=A video by [[James Corbett]]
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}}
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In the months after [[9/11]], Baer expressed skepticism of the US government's {{on}}, writing in ''[[The Guardian]]'' "[D]id [[Osama bin Laden|bin Laden]] act alone, through his own [[al-Qaida]] network, in launching the attacks? About that I'm far more certain and emphatic: no."<ref>''The Guardian'': [http://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/jan/12/extract1 See No Evil.]  January 11, 2002.</ref> However, in 2007 he stated, "For the record, I don't believe that the [[World Trade Center]] was brought down by our own explosives, or that a rocket, rather than an airliner, hit the [[Pentagon]]. I spent a career in the CIA trying to orchestrate plots, wasn't all that good at it, and certainly couldn't carry off 9/11. Nor could the real pros I had the pleasure to work with."<ref>http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1692518,00.html </ref>
  
 
==Iran==
 
==Iran==
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==Lockerbie Bombing==
 
==Lockerbie Bombing==
 
{{FA|Lockerbie Bombing}}
 
{{FA|Lockerbie Bombing}}
On August 23, 2009, Robert Baer claimed that the CIA had known from the start that the bombing of [[Pan Am Flight 103]] had been orchestrated by Iran, and that a secret dossier proving this was to be presented as evidence in the final appeal by convicted [[Libya]]n bomber [[Abdelbaset al-Megrahi]]. According to Baer, this suggests that Megrahi's withdrawal of the appeal in return for a release on compassionate grounds was encouraged to prevent this information from being presented in court.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2009/08/23/cia-spook-says-megrahi-was-freed-before-appeal-humiliated-justice-system-78057-21618329/ |title=CIA Spook say Megrahi was free before appeal humiliated justice system |publisher=Sundaymail.co.uk |date= |accessdate=2010-06-05}}</ref>
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On August 23, 2009, Robert Baer claimed that the CIA had known from the start that the bombing of [[Pan Am Flight 103]] had been orchestrated by Iran, and that a secret dossier proving this was to be presented as evidence in the final appeal by convicted [[Libya]]n bomber [[Abdelbaset al-Megrahi]]. According to Baer, this suggests that Megrahi's withdrawal of the appeal in return for a release on compassionate grounds was encouraged to prevent this information from being presented in court.<ref>http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2009/08/23/cia-spook-says-megrahi-was-freed-before-appeal-humiliated-justice-system-78057-21618329/ </ref>
  
 
==Saudi ambassador==
 
==Saudi ambassador==
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Baer recently wrote an online forward to ''[[Hoodwinked (book)|Hoodwinked]]'', by [[John Perkins (author)|John Perkins]], on [[Amazon.com]]:
 
Baer recently wrote an online forward to ''[[Hoodwinked (book)|Hoodwinked]]'', by [[John Perkins (author)|John Perkins]], on [[Amazon.com]]:
 
<blockquote>
 
<blockquote>
"I wasn't twenty pages into Hoodwinked when I realized Perkins nailed it. What got us into the mess we're in today, the worst recession since the Great Depression, is the same grotesque capitalism cum corruption we shoved down the throat of the Third World since the end of World War II. (Yes, the Third World's elites were cheerfully corrupted.) We, and the rest of the West, learned the trick of selling unneeded infrastructure, services, over-sophisticated weapons—stuff that could never benefit anyone other than the people who lined their pockets. And yes, Perkins is right, the international economists and press were handmaidens to the thievery. It was all fairly routine until 9/11, when the real gorging started. Tell the people their roof is on fire and they'll give you whatever you ask for. Between 2001 and 2009 the Department of Defense budget increased 74 percent, and that is not to mention the hundreds of billions of dollars in related contracts. Nigeria on the Potomac. Perkins is quick to state he doesn't believe in a grand conspiracy theory. Few of the people who call the shots have ever met each other. They don't have a playbook other than a couple of fraudulent economists like [[Milton Friedman]] and the others who worship at the altar of deregulation. No, what they have in common is an obsession with the winner takes all. Perkins's message isn’t going to be popular. We're a country invested in a system in which five percent of the world's population consumes 25 percent of the world's resources. It's a system we're trying to sell to the world, only we don't mention that we'll need five planets to sustain it. Perkins isn't the pessimist I am. He says we can save the world if we green it—and, of course, start telling the truth to each other. Otherwise we end up a [[banana republic]] like the ones we know so well how to despoil."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=192532014042 |title=Niet compatibele browser |publisher=Facebook |date= |accessdate=2010-03-18}}</ref></blockquote>
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"I wasn't twenty pages into Hoodwinked when I realized Perkins nailed it. What got us into the mess we're in today, the worst recession since the Great Depression, is the same grotesque capitalism cum corruption we shoved down the throat of the Third World since the end of World War II. (Yes, the Third World's elites were cheerfully corrupted.) We, and the rest of the West, learned the trick of selling unneeded infrastructure, services, over-sophisticated weapons—stuff that could never benefit anyone other than the people who lined their pockets. And yes, Perkins is right, the international economists and press were handmaidens to the thievery. It was all fairly routine until 9/11, when the real gorging started. Tell the people their roof is on fire and they'll give you whatever you ask for. Between 2001 and 2009 the Department of Defense budget increased 74 percent, and that is not to mention the hundreds of billions of dollars in related contracts. Nigeria on the Potomac. Perkins is quick to state he doesn't believe in a grand conspiracy theory. Few of the people who call the shots have ever met each other. They don't have a playbook other than a couple of fraudulent economists like [[Milton Friedman]] and the others who worship at the altar of deregulation. No, what they have in common is an obsession with the winner takes all. Perkins's message isn’t going to be popular. We're a country invested in a system in which five percent of the world's population consumes 25 percent of the world's resources. It's a system we're trying to sell to the world, only we don't mention that we'll need five planets to sustain it. Perkins isn't the pessimist I am. He says we can save the world if we green it—and, of course, start telling the truth to each other. Otherwise we end up a [[banana republic]] like the ones we know so well how to despoil."<ref>http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=192532014042</ref></blockquote>
  
 
==Publications==
 
==Publications==
Line 47: Line 67:
 
* ''[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307408671 The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower]'', Crown Publishing Group, September 2008 ISBN 0-307-40864-7
 
* ''[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307408671 The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower]'', Crown Publishing Group, September 2008 ISBN 0-307-40864-7
 
* ''[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307588149 The Company We Keep: A Husband-and-Wife True-Life Spy Story]'', Crown Publishing Group, March 8, 2011
 
* ''[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307588149 The Company We Keep: A Husband-and-Wife True-Life Spy Story]'', Crown Publishing Group, March 8, 2011
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* ''Secrets of the White House'', 2015.
  
 
===Films===
 
===Films===

Latest revision as of 08:03, 6 August 2021

Person.png Robert Baer   PowerbaseRdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
(spook)
Robert Baer.jpg
Experienced CIA operative
Born1952-07-01
Los Angeles
NationalityAmerican
Alma materGeorgetown University, University of California, Berkeley
InterestsLockerbie bombing
American author and former CIA operative; some very interesting stuff, some suspected misdirection.

Robert Booker "Bob" Baer (born 1 July 1952) is an American author and former CIA operative. Robert Baer worked for the CIA's Directorate of Operations for more than two decades and spent most of his career in the Middle East, with postings in Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq as well as Tajikistan, India and Europe. An Arabic speaker, he was considered one of the best on the ground field officers in the Middle East.[1]

Robert Baer is currently TIME magazine's intelligence columnist and has contributed to Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.[2] Baer is a frequent commentator and author about issues related to international relations, espionage and US foreign policy with a particular focus on the Lockerbie bombing.

Early life

Baer was born in Los Angeles, raised in Aspen, Colorado, and aspired to become a professional skier. He spent many years of his childhood with his mother in Europe before returning to the US. After a fairly poor academic performance during his first year at high school, his mother sent him to Indiana's Culver Military Academy. In 1976 he graduated from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service (where then-future CIA director George Tenet was a classmate). While a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, he applied to the CIA's Directorate of Operations (now the National Clandestine Service). Upon admittance to the CIA after graduating, Baer engaged in a year's training, which included a four-month paramilitary course and several foreign language courses.

He is fluent in Arabic, Persian, French, German and his native English. He is also conversant in Russian, Tajik, and Baluch.

Career

Baer has publicly acknowledged that he worked field assignments in Madras and New Delhi, India; Beirut, Lebanon; Dushanbe, Tajikistan; Morocco; and Salah al-Din in Iraqi Kurdistan during his twenty-one years with the CIA. During the mid-1990s, Baer was sent to Iraq with the mission of organising opposition to Iraqi president Saddam Hussein but was recalled and investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for allegedly conspiring to assassinate the Iraqi leader.[3][4] While in Salah al-Din, Baer unsuccessfully urged the Clinton administration to back an internal Iraqi attempt to overthrow Hussein (organised by a group of Sunni military officers, the Iraqi National Congress' Ahmad Chalabi, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's Jalal Talabani) in March 1995 with covert CIA assistance. Baer quit the Agency in 1997 and received the CIA's Career Intelligence Medal on March 11, 1998.

Baer wrote the book See No Evil documenting his experiences while working for the Agency. The C.I. Desk: FBI and CIA Counterintelligence As Seen From My Cubicle, by Christopher Lynch (Dog Ear Publishing), describes parts of the contentious CIA pre-publication review process for Baer's first book. In a blurb for See No Evil Seymour Hersh said Baer "was considered perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East." In the book, Baer offers an analysis of the Middle East through the lens of his experiences as a CIA operative.

Through his years as a clandestine officer, he gained a thorough knowledge of the Middle East, Arab world and former Republics of the Soviet Union. Over the years, Baer has become a strong advocate of the Agency's need to increase Human Intelligence (HUMINT) through the recruitment of agents. Baer, long a supporter of the theory that the PFLP-GC brought down Pan Am Flight 103, has recently begun to promote the theory that Iran was behind the bombing.

In 2004, he told a reporter of the British political weekly New Statesman, regarding the way the CIA deals with "terrorism" suspects, "If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear - never to see them again - you send them to Egypt."

September 2001 attacks

Full article: 9/11
A video by James Corbett

In the months after 9/11, Baer expressed skepticism of the US government's official narrative, writing in The Guardian "[D]id bin Laden act alone, through his own al-Qaida network, in launching the attacks? About that I'm far more certain and emphatic: no."[5] However, in 2007 he stated, "For the record, I don't believe that the World Trade Center was brought down by our own explosives, or that a rocket, rather than an airliner, hit the Pentagon. I spent a career in the CIA trying to orchestrate plots, wasn't all that good at it, and certainly couldn't carry off 9/11. Nor could the real pros I had the pleasure to work with."[6]

Iran

In June 2009, Baer commented on the disputed election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iranian President and the protests that accompanied it. "For too many years now, the Western media have looked at Iran through the narrow prism of Iran's liberal middle class – an intelligentsia that is addicted to the Internet and American music and is more ready to talk to the Western press, including people with money to buy tickets to Paris or Los Angeles; but do they represent the real Iran?"[7]

Lockerbie Bombing

Full article: Lockerbie Bombing

On August 23, 2009, Robert Baer claimed that the CIA had known from the start that the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 had been orchestrated by Iran, and that a secret dossier proving this was to be presented as evidence in the final appeal by convicted Libyan bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. According to Baer, this suggests that Megrahi's withdrawal of the appeal in return for a release on compassionate grounds was encouraged to prevent this information from being presented in court.[8]

Saudi ambassador

Following reports of an attempt by Iranian agents to assassinate the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the United States, Baer told die Zeit that he doubted that Iran was behind the attempt since there seemed no obvious motive and Iran had been more careful in past collaboration with terrorists.[9]

Books and media

Baer's books See No Evil and Sleeping with the Devil were the basis for the 2005 Academy Award-winning Warner Brothers motion picture Syriana. The film's character Bob Barnes (played by George Clooney) is loosely based on Baer. For this role, Clooney won a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. To better resemble Baer, Clooney gained weight. When Baer learned of this, he was inspired to get back into shape.

For the past two years, Robert Baer has worked closely with the director Kevin Toolis and Many Rivers Films, a Channel 4 production company in the UK, to present four authoritative documentary series, Cult of the Suicide Bomber I, The Cult of the Suicide Bomber II and Cult of the Suicide Bomber III on the origins of suicide bombing. Cult of the Suicide Bomber I was nominated for an Emmy in 2006. In 2008 Baer presented Car Bomb – a film history about the weapon.

Baer was interviewed in the Robert Greenwald documentary Uncovered: The War on Iraq. He was also one of the main participants in the 2009 documentary film Lockerbie Revisited by Dutch film director Gideon Levy.

Baer recently wrote an online forward to Hoodwinked, by John Perkins, on Amazon.com:

"I wasn't twenty pages into Hoodwinked when I realized Perkins nailed it. What got us into the mess we're in today, the worst recession since the Great Depression, is the same grotesque capitalism cum corruption we shoved down the throat of the Third World since the end of World War II. (Yes, the Third World's elites were cheerfully corrupted.) We, and the rest of the West, learned the trick of selling unneeded infrastructure, services, over-sophisticated weapons—stuff that could never benefit anyone other than the people who lined their pockets. And yes, Perkins is right, the international economists and press were handmaidens to the thievery. It was all fairly routine until 9/11, when the real gorging started. Tell the people their roof is on fire and they'll give you whatever you ask for. Between 2001 and 2009 the Department of Defense budget increased 74 percent, and that is not to mention the hundreds of billions of dollars in related contracts. Nigeria on the Potomac. Perkins is quick to state he doesn't believe in a grand conspiracy theory. Few of the people who call the shots have ever met each other. They don't have a playbook other than a couple of fraudulent economists like Milton Friedman and the others who worship at the altar of deregulation. No, what they have in common is an obsession with the winner takes all. Perkins's message isn’t going to be popular. We're a country invested in a system in which five percent of the world's population consumes 25 percent of the world's resources. It's a system we're trying to sell to the world, only we don't mention that we'll need five planets to sustain it. Perkins isn't the pessimist I am. He says we can save the world if we green it—and, of course, start telling the truth to each other. Otherwise we end up a banana republic like the ones we know so well how to despoil."[10]

Publications

Books

Films

External links

References

  1. "BBC Panorama profile of Robert Baer"
  2. "Robert Baer – Authors – Random House"
  3. Ignatius, David (2002) Not a job for Kissinger, Washington Post. December 20, 2002.
  4. Turner, Michael A. (2006) Why Secret Intelligence Fails (revised edition). Potomac Books: Washington DC. ISBN 1-57488-891-9
  5. The Guardian: See No Evil. January 11, 2002.
  6. http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1692518,00.html
  7. Robert Baer "Don't Assume Ahmadinejad Really Lost", Time website, June 16, 2009
  8. http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2009/08/23/cia-spook-says-megrahi-was-freed-before-appeal-humiliated-justice-system-78057-21618329/
  9. "Warum sollte Iran so ein Risiko auf sich nehmen?" Zeit Online, 2011-10
  10. http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=192532014042
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