Robert Baer

This article is about the secret service agent Robert Baer. For the actor see Robert Alexander Baer , for the music teacher Robert Bär .

Robert "Bob" Booker Baer (born July 11, 1952 in Los Angeles County ) is a former employee of the US intelligence service CIA . He is the author of several books in which he documented his experience in the service of the CIA.

Life

Baer grew up in California until the age of 9 , when his mother, a politics professor at UCLA , separated from his father and traveled with the child through Europe and Russia. In 1964 they moved to Aspen , Colorado , where Baer dreamed of a career as a professional skier. After poor academic performance, his mother sent him to the Culver Military Academy , a boarding school in Indiana . According to his own statements, he later attended 12 different universities. 1976 Baer graduated from the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University ; he studied Chinese at the University of California at Berkeley .

Baer joined the CIA in 1976. Immediately after joining, he completed a year-long training course, which included four-month paramilitary training. During his work, he was deployed in northern Iraq , Dushanbe , Rabat , Beirut , Khartoum , Paris and New Delhi . His job was to infiltrate organizations like Hezbollah and Al Qaeda ; he became operations manager. In addition to his native English, Baer speaks fluent Arabic , Persian , French and German .

In 1997 he left the CIA after unsuccessful attempts to get the US administration under Bill Clinton to support the uprising against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein . When he left, he was awarded the Career Intelligence Medal. In his 2002 bestseller See no Evil (Eng. The decline of the CIA ), Baer documented his experiences while working for the CIA.

Baer's works See No Evil and Sleeping with the Devil provided the basis for the film Syriana, which was completed in 2005 . The film character Bob Barnes (played by George Clooney ) was modeled on Robert Baer. In 2005, Baer co-wrote and presented the documentary The Cult of the Suicide Bomber, which was nominated for an Emmy the following year . He presented the program "Hunting Hitler" on the History Channel , in the German version "Hitler's Flight - In Search of Hitler".

Publications

• See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism. Crown Publishing Group, 2002, ISBN 0-609-60987-4
  • Extract the Guardian , 12 January 2002
  • The decline of the CIA. A CIA agent's investigation report. Bertelsmann, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-570-00676-X ; Goldmann, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-442-15256-9
• Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude. Crown Publishing Group, 2003, ISBN 1-400-05021-9
  • Interview with BuzzFlash, September 12, 2003
  • The Saudi connection. How America sold its soul. Bertelsmann, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-570-00807-X ; Goldmann, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-442-15334-4
• Blow the House Down: A Novel. Crown Publishing Group, 2006, ISBN 1-400-09835-1
• Secrets of the White House

Web links

• Robert Baer in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Literature by and about Robert Baer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Interview with Neil Docherty for the PBS telecast Frontline, March 22, 2002
• Interview with Devin Faraci on CHUD.com, November 20, 2005
• Omid Memarian, "US and Iran Share an Equal Monopoly on Violence" IPS News, January 23, 2009

Individual evidence

1. ^ California Birth Index, 1905-1995. The birth of Robert Baer. Retrieved December 29, 2018 . 
2. ^ Electa Draper: Ex-CIA Middle East field officer a man in demand. In: The Denver Post. August 15, 2006, archived from the original on October 25, 2015 ; accessed on December 23, 2018 (English). 
3. ^ Harry Kreisler: Dealing with Iran. (pdf) Conversation with Robert Baer. July 28, 2009, p. 2 , accessed on December 23, 2018 (English): “Georgetown and frankly, at eleven other universities. We tended to move around a lot. " 
4. ^ The state of Yugoslavia stood in the way of the US strategic draft. Ex-CIA agent Robert Baer on the strategies of the CIA during the war in Yugoslavia. Retrieved December 23, 2018 .