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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (32890)	6/22/2002 10:25:16 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

The leadership issue is one way to characterize it; and it's bad everywhere you look: Israelis, Palestinians, US, etc. As a result of reading an op-ed by Robert Baer that was in either the NYT or the WP a month ago, I reserved his book, "See no Evil" the memoir of his life in the CIA as a Case Officer.(Foreword by Seymour Hersh.) The op-ed pointed out that we have little or no experienced "Case Officers" on the ground anymore to investigate for the CIA. I just finished the book. The good news is that it is very readable, he tells his "yarns" well, and the story of his recruitment into the CIA in the '70s and his first assignment in India makes the book worth the time. The bad news is that, if even half of what he says if right, it is time to move out of the Washington, DC, or New York City, area. The Government hasn't got a clue at stopping these terrorists. He paints a picture of a CIA, NSC, and continuing Administrations, from Reagan on, this way. "As for me, both items added to a growing rage that I was having more and more trouble containing. Whether is was Osama bin Laden, Yasir Arafat, Iranian terrorism, Saddam Hussein, or any of the other evils that so threaten the world, the Clinton administration seemed determined to sweep them all under the carpet. Ronald Reagan and George Bush before Clinton were not much better. The mantra at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue seemed to be: Get through the term. Keep the bad news from the newspapers. Dump the naysayers. Gather money for the next election-gobs and gobs of it-and let some other administration down the line deal with it all. Worst of all, my CIA had decided to go along for the ride. Now that such horrendous neglect has come home to roost in such misery-provoking ways, I take no pleasure whatsoever in having been right." He documents four separate situations: 1) We have no "agents in place" in Europe investigating because both Washington and the Local European offices don't want to offend the European Governments. It is coming out now that the major recruitment for 9/11 was done in the German Mosques, and we have no entry to them. 2) In l991, the CIA intentionally shut down its operations in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, and ignored fundamentalists operating there. 3) In 1995, the NSC intentionally aborted a military coup d'etat against Saddam Hussein, forgoing the last opportunity to get rid of him. 4) In 1996, Osama bin Laden established a strategic alliance with Iran to coordinate terrorist attacks against the US. I highly recommend the book as "good read", and as an excellent source of material on how and what the CIA does, and why we are in so much trouble.