Our soldiers died fighting the wrong country....SAUDI'S are the REAL terrorists that attacked NYC....
Agent Turned Author Defies CIA
MSNBC
Wednesday 04 June 2003
Robert Baer has rankled the CIA by disclosing ‘secret intelligence information’ in his new book.
And he’s not changing a word. PLUS, Is John Ashcroft ducking the press?
June 4 — The CIA is demanding that a celebrated former agent remove passages from an
upcoming book that claims that high-ranking members of the Saudi royal family have been involved
in political assassination plots and the training of Chechen rebels with apparent ties to Al Qaeda.
THE CIA HAS CONTENDED in a letter to the ex-agent-turned-author, Robert Baer, that one
passage about the alleged assassination plots contains “secret intelligence information” that can’t
be disclosed without violating the terms of a secrecy agreement he signed when he joined the
agency in 1976.
But Baer told NEWSWEEK he has no intention of complying with the CIA’s demands.
“Basically, I’m just defying them,” Baer said in an interview. “I don’t see where they have a leg to
stand on—unless the First Amendment is totally gone.”
In fact, unbeknownst to the spooks at Langley, their objections may already be irrelevant—at least
if their main purpose is to keep the sensitive information about the Saudis out of the public
domain.
In a letter faxed to Baer on May 30, C. Bruce Wells, acting chairman of the CIA’s Publications
Review Board, strongly admonished the author that until the dispute about one of the passages
was resolved, “you should not show this material to anyone not authorized to see it,” according to
a copy of the letter obtained by NEWSWEEK.
But just as that warning was being sent, Baer’s publisher, Crown, a division of Random House,
was mailing out review copies of his book. Although the review copy includes some blacked out
portions requested by the CIA, it also includes the very passages about the alleged Saudi
assassination plots and terrorist training that the agency appears to regard as most objectionable.
The controversy over Baer’s book, entitled “Sleeping with The Devil: How Washington Sold Our
Soul for Saudi Crude,” could well result in a CIA lawsuit against Baer or conceivably even criminal
prosecution for disclosure of classified information, according to legal experts. It also threatens to
open up yet another front in the ongoing debate over whether the CIA and its political masters in
the Bush administration are being overly protective of Saudi Arabia in the war on terror.
The CIA is currently fighting a similar battle with the Congress, refusing to declassify major
portions of an 800-page report by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees that contains
evidence uncovered by investigators of possible Saudi government connections to some of the
9-11 hijackers.
Baer, 51, who served for years as a CIA undercover operative in the Mideast, makes even more
sensational allegations, laced with harsh language that seems designed to roil Saudi sensitivities.
He depicts Saudi Arabia as a “power keg waiting to explode” and describes the country’s royal
family as a corrupt monarchy that is “hanging on by a thread” and is “as violent and vengeful as
any Mafia family.”
One of his chief targets is Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz—Saudi Arabia’s “grim
sheriff”—who as the longtime overseer of the security forces, is the Saudi official most responsible
for working with the FBI and CIA in prosecuting the war on terrorism.
Baer depicts Nayef as largely indifferent to the terrorist threat. He recounts one incident after the
1996 bombing of a U.S. military barracks at Khobar Towers in which the interior minister stiffed
visiting FBI director Louis Freeh, repairing to his yacht anchored off the coast of the Red Sea while
the FBI chief was forced to consult with lower-level aides who knew nothing about the bombing
case.
But the specific allegation that seems to have drawn the agency’s most ire is Baer’s claim that
Nayef had twice sought to murder a leading Saudi dissident. “In the mid-1990s, [Nayef] was
behind at least two attempts on the life of Muhammed al-Massari, the leader of the London-based
Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights,” Baer writes. Baer suggests that Nayef’s aborted
assassination plot helped drive Massari, who had fled Saudi Arabia in 1994, more closely toward
the extremist thinking of Osama bin Laden.
The May 30 CIA letter signed by Wells contends that the agency’s Publications Review
Board—which vets all book manuscripts by former employees—has “confirmed unequivocally” that
the passage about the alleged assassination plots is “secret intelligence information” and is
“properly classified.” The letter also seems to imply that Baer could have only learned about the
alleged plots through his work at the CIA and that the material is therefore “subject to protection”
under the terms of his secrecy agreement with the agency.
But Baer said he learned about the plots after he retired from the CIA in 1997 and later
confirmed the information with a former Jordanian intelligence official who had knowledge of the
incidents. In addition, another former U.S. intelligence official had independently told NEWSWEEK
about the alleged plots nearly a year ago—and reconfirmed the story in an interview this week,
providing more details than are contained in Baer’s book.
According to the former U.S. intelligence official, the CIA was tipped off by Jordanian intelligence
in 1995 that one of its undercover assets, a Palestinian extremist, had been contracted by the
Saudis to assassinate Massari. At the time, Massari was living in London and, through his
Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights, was bombarding his exiled homeland with faxes,
accusing Saudi royal-family members of corruption and human-rights abuses.
“There’s no question that the Jordanians told us about the contract,” said the former U.S.
intelligence official. What especially upset U.S. officials is that this was the second time Prince
Nayef was believed to have attempted the assassination of Massari, the former official said. He
had been previously warned not to do so a year or so earlier—and was now doing so again, said
the source. “The important thing was that it happened once—and then it reappeared,” said the
former intelligence official. U.S. officials quietly passed the word to Prince Nayef that “we thought
it would be a very bad thing” if anything happened to Massari. “We never accused him [Prince
Nayef],” said the former official. “We never confronted him directly. This was embarrassing to the
Saudis, and we’re not in the business of embarrassing the Saudis.”
A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy did not return phone calls seeking comment on the
allegation. (The Saudi Embassy recently wrote a letter to The Atlantic Monthly, which has
published an excerpt from Baer’s book without the Massari allegation, accusing the author of
“fantasy” and “flat-out misrepresentations” about the kingdom.) In early 1996, the British
government—under strong pressures from Saudi officials—sought to deport Massari to the
Caribbean island of Dominica. But the government of former prime minister John Major later
abandoned the effort in the wake of protests from human-rights groups.
Another sensitive if perhaps more problematic allegation that the CIA is objecting to involves
another leading member of the Saudi royal family, Prince Salman, the governor of Riyadh. Baer
cites secret “Russian intelligence reports” claiming that in June 1998, a group of 40 Chechen
rebels “were quietly brought to a secret military camp located 75 miles southeast of Riyadh” and
“trained in explosives, hand-to-hand combat and small weapons.” Prince Salman, a brother of King
Fahd, “was the camp’s sponsor,” he writes.
Baer provided NEWSWEEK with an English translation of what he said was one Russian
intelligence document he relied on for the claim. (He says he got access to the documents as a
result of consulting work he did, after he left the CIA, for an Argentine oil company that was
competing for Caspian oil concessions.) The document cites, as the basis for the information, an
undercover informant for the Russian military who reported that there were “a little over 200
trainees in the camp” and that the students, in addition to their paramilitary training, received
intensive religious indoctrination.
“The students are taught that they are at the spearhead of a holy struggle for the purity of Islam,
against the traitors to the faith,” the document reads. “Among those named as enemies of Islam
were the leaders of the Central Asian republics, Turkey, Qatar and the United States. The trainees
are taught to be merciless toward the enemies of Islam and to be ready to sacrifice themselves in
the name of Allah.”
The Russian intelligence document also claims that graduates of the camp had been sent in the
past to Afghanistan—which was then Al Qaeda’s headquarters—as well as other countries. Citing
the information provided by the undercover informant, the report states that Prince Salman, “visits
the camp every 4 to 6 weeks under the name of Mr. Hassim.”
The intelligence report provides no other information to corroborate the informant ‘s claim. A
senior U.S. diplomat in Riyadh contacted by NEWSWEEK said the claims about the training
camp should be “taken with a grain of the salt.” The official said he was unaware of any
intelligence to support the idea that such a camp existed outside of Riyadh and that high-ranking
Saudis would be “extremely reluctant” to import terrorists onto their soil.
Asked today if he believes the claims in the Russian intelligence document are true, Baer said:
“I have no way to tell … I believe somebody in Russia believed they were true. It’s sort of like the
intelligence on Iraqi WMD. It’s not rock solid.”
Baer received widespread publicty last year for an earlier book, “See No Evil,” recounting his
career as a “ground soldier in the CIA’s war on terrorism.” He got into a wrangle with the agency
over the contents of that book, as well, and at one point the CIA even threatened to go to court to
block publication. The agency later backed off. A CIA spokesman refused to discuss any aspect
of Baer’s new book or what legal steps the agency make take. But the spokesman added the idea
that the agency was trying to protect the Saudis is “nonsense.” The purpose of the agency’s
prepublication review of book manuscripts is “to identify information for deletion only to the extent
necessary to prevent harm to national security,” the spokesman said.
A Bashful Attorney General?
Is Attorney General John Ashcroft ducking the press? At first blush, the question seems odd
given that Ashcroft is known as an inveterate news hound who never misses a chance to appear
before the TV cameras or call a press conference to announce the latest Justice Department
indictment in the war on terrorism. But this week he has been strangely silent about the Justice
Department inspector general’s report finding “significant problems” in the way the department
detained over 700 illegal immigrants after the 9-11 terror attacks and held them in harsh conditions
for months before realizing they had no connection to terrorism.
His silence drew vocal protests from reporters today when Ashcroft appeared at a press briefing
with U.S. attorneys to boast about the department’s record in the war on terrorism. After reading a
brief opening statement, in which he clicked off figures citing how the Justice Department has
issued more than 18,000 subpoenas and search warrants since 9-11 and identified “hundreds and
hundreds” of terrorist suspects inside the United States, Ashcroft rose from the table and walked
out, leaving his deputies to conduct the rest of the briefing and answer questions from the press.
Some irate reporters then interrupted the briefing and demanded to know why Ashcroft wouldn’t
stay and address the issues raised in the I.G.’s report. “The attorney general has other matters to
attend to,” said Barbara Comstock, the department’s chief spokeswoman. But not everybody was
pleased. A handful of reporters—including a NEWSWEEK correspondent facing a Terror Watch
deadline—walked out as well.
Behind the tiff are increasing tensions between top department officials and the news media.
Another Justice official later griped that major news organizations had distorted the I.G.’s report,
leaving out exculpatory information—such as the I.G.’s findings that no department official had
violated any laws in the handling of the detentions. “Why put him [Ashcroft] out there so they can
write another round of bad stories?” griped the official.
That may come anyway. Ashcroft is due to testify Thursday before the House Judiciary
Committee, and the I.G. report is expected to be front and center in the questioning. More fodder,
no doubt, for “bad stories.” |
