See No Evil [antikvár]

bob baer is not alone. Yes, his riveting account of life in the post-cold war CIA is devastating—yet another body blow to the reputation of an intelligence agency that failed to protect America when it needed to be protected. But Baer's account of cowardly bureaucrats and indifferent officials in the White House will ring true to a very special audience—the dozens of distinguished and successful CIA operatives who have taken early retirement in recent years, in lieu of continuing to pretend that they were making a difference. I've talked to many of these men and women in recent months, and they, like Baer, are writhing with pain, anger, and frustration. Like Baer, they weren't allowed to do their job the right way, the way it had to be done to be effective. We've hit intelligence rock bottom in America. As this is being written, nearly three months after the September 11 terrorism attacks, the intelligence community still cannot tell us who was responsible, how the assassins worked, where they trained, which groups they worked for, or whether they will strike again. Did Osama bin Laden and his AI Qaeda network pull it off by themselves, as the Bush Administration constantly claims, or was at least one other Mideast terrorist group involved,as Bob Baer suggests? We don't know,but I'm betting that the facts, when they emerge, will back up Baer's instinct that the attacks in America were not solely the responsibility of someone operating out of a cave in Afghanistan. There is another way, too, of looking at See No Evil—as a recruiting poster for the spy business. We can identify with Baer's anger at the perceived foolishness and indecisiveness of top management throughout his XI