Robert Booker Baer (born July 11, 1952) is an American author and a former CIA case officer who was primarily assigned to the Middle East. He is Time's intelligence columnist and has contributed to Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Baer speaks eight languages, won the CIA Career Intelligence Medal and is a frequent commentator and author about issues related to international relations, espionage, and U.S. foreign policy. He hosted the History reality television series Hunting Hitler. He is an Intelligence and Security Analyst for CNN. His book See No Evil was adapted by the director Stephen Gaghan and used as the basis for the film Syriana, with George Clooney playing Baer's character.

Early life
Baer was born in Los Angeles. At the age of 9, his parents divorced and he moved to Aspen, Colorado, where he aspired to become a professional skier. After a fairly poor academic performance during his first year at high school, his mother, a wealthy heiress, took him to Europe where they traveled throughout Europe including Paris during the 1968 riots, Germany, Prague during the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, and Russia.

Career
Baer worked field assignments, starting in Madras and New Delhi, India; and subsequently in Beirut, Lebanon; Damascus, Syria; Khartoum, Sudan; Paris, France; Dushanbe, Tajikistan; Morocco; the former republic of Yugoslavia, and Salah al-Din in Iraqi Kurdistan during his 21 years with the CIA. During the mid-1990s, Baer was sent to Iraq with the mission of organizing opposition to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein but was recalled and investigated by the FBI for allegedly conspiring to assassinate the Iraqi leader.

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.

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."

He retired to Silverton, Colorado.

Commentary
In January 2002, Baer wrote about the events of the September 11 attacks 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." He later 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."

In 2008, video interviewed 'live' by 'We Are Change.org' in Los Angeles about pre-9/11 intel, Baer exclaimed: "I know the guy that went into his broker in San Diego (on September 10th) and said, 'Cash me out, it's going down tomorrow'...His brother worked at the White House!" 

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?" 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.

Baer has long been a supporter of the theory that the PFLP-GC brought down Pan Am Flight 103. Later he began to promote the theory that Iran was behind the bombing. On August 23, 2009, 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.

Personal life
Baer has been married twice. He has two daughters and a son from his first marriage, to a State Department secretary. His second marriage  was to fellow CIA operative Dayna Williamson.

Books and media
In 2015–2017, Baer has appeared on Hunting Hitler (2015–2017), and JFK Declassified: Tracking Oswald.

Robert Baer has never written or promoted a book with the title "The Secret of the White House", but a fabricated interview with him about promoting this book in Canada has been circulating on the web since 2012. In this fabricated interview the USA were accused of having caused the collapse of Yugoslavia.

Media

Books
 See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism, Crown Publishing Group, January 2002, .
 Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude, Crown Publishing Group, July 2003, .
 Blow the House Down: A Novel, Crown Publishing Group, 2006, .
 The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower, Crown Publishing Group, September 2008 
 The Company We Keep: A Husband-and-Wife True-Life Spy Story, Crown Publishing Group, March 8, 2011
 The Perfect Kill: 21 Laws for Assassins, 2014
 The Fourth Man: The Hunt for a KGB Spy at the Top of the CIA and the Rise of Putin's Russia, Hachette Books, May 2022

Films
 The Cult of the Suicide Bomber
 Cult of the Suicide Bomber II
 Cult of the Suicide Bomber III
 Car Bomb
 Syriana

Television
 Hunting Hitler, History (2015—2018)
 JFK Declassified: Tracking Oswald, History (2017)

See also
 William Francis Buckley
 John P. O'Neill
 Imad Mughniyah

References

External links
 

1952 births
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American novelists
American Cold War spymasters
American male non-fiction writers
American male novelists
American political writers
American spies
Cold War spies
Counterinsurgency theorists
Counterterrorism theorists
Culver Academies alumni
Guerrilla warfare theorists
Historians of espionage
Historians of the Central Intelligence Agency
Living people
People from Aspen, Colorado
People from Silverton, Colorado
People of the Central Intelligence Agency
Post–Cold War spies
21st-century spies
Psychological warfare theorists
Terrorism theorists
Walsh School of Foreign Service alumni
War on terror
21st-century American memoirists
로버트 베어(Robert Baer, 1952년 7월 1일 -)는 CIA의 전직 작전관이자 작가이다.

콜로라도주 아스펜에서 자란, 로버트 베어는 원래 프로 스키 선수를 지망했었다. 고등학교 초의 성적이 좋지 않자 어머니는 그를 군사학교로 보냈다. 1976년, 베어는 조지타운 대학교 외교학부를 졸업하고 캘리포니아 대학교 버클리에 들어간 후, CIA의 작전 본부(Directorate of Operations; DO)의 작전관을 지원한다. CIA에 들어가서는 4개월의 준군사작전 훈련을 포함한 1년간의 훈련을 받았다.

1976년부터 1997년까지 21년간 CIA 작전본부 소속으로 인도, 레바논, 수단, 프랑스, 이라크, 타지키스탄, 보스니아 등에서 근무하며 중동지역 전문 요원으로 경력을 쌓았다.

1995년 CIA의 비밀 공작을 통해 이라크의 사담 후세인 정권 전복을 지원할 것을 클린턴 행정부에게 촉구하다 실패한 후, 베어는 CIA를 사직하였다. 그는 See No Evil을 써서 CIA서 일하는 동안의 경험을 글로 남겼다. 이 책은 2005년 워너 브러더즈의 영화 Syriana로 만들어지기도 했다.

베어는 CIA 요원으로 지냈던 자신의 경험에 비추어 본 중동 분석을 제시한다. 그의 정치적 신조는 다소 불분명하며, 그는 보수주의와 자유주의 양쪽 관점을 모두 보이고 있다.

CIA 경력

1976년 
 CIA 입사, 비밀 활동 부문 작전관(Clandestine Service, Operations Officer) 채용

1977? ~ 78년 
 작전본부 근동국(Near East Division) 소속으로 최초 해외 근무.인도 파견. 처음에는 마드라스 기지.후 뉴델리 지국
 마드라스 근무 중 인도 군에 파견(군사 고문?)된 모 아랍국가(시리아?) 장교 Sami 관계 구축 .포섭 시도 무위

1981년 
 본부 귀국. 아랍어 연수 코스 과정 시작 (2년짜리. 현지 실습 과정 포함. 튀니지)

1983~1985년 
 아랍어 코스 수료.
 83. 4 베이루트 미 대사관 폭파 사건.
 83.8 중동 모 전초기지 부임. 해당 지역 근거 레바논 정보 수집 베이루트 해병기지 폭파 사건(83.10) 베이루트 CIA 지국장 빌 버클리 납치사건 (84.3) 등 해당 사안 관계 정보 수집, 현장 조사

1985년 
 85.1 수단 하르툼 지국 부임(지국장 밀튼 비어든 Mealton Bearden)
 85.5 본부 전보 (리비아 반체제 인사-무슬림 형제단 계열 인사 접촉 관계 보안 문제) 아프리카 국 근무

1986년 
 86.1 미중앙정보부 테러대책센터 (Counter-Terrorism Center; CTC) 배치
 86.2 아사드 암살 계획 관련 시리아 무슬림 형제단과 독일에서 접촉
 86.8 레바논 베이루트 지국 부임. 헤즈볼라 억류 인질 구출 및 시리아, 이란, 시아파, 팔레스타인계 테러 조직 관계 정보 담당

1988년~1990년 
 88. 프랑스 파리 지국 부임(지국장 찰스 코건 Charles Cogan)

1990/91년? ~ 1992년 
 모로코 라바트 지국 부지국장

1992년~1994년 
 타지키스탄 두샨베 지국장
 92.10~93.1 정정불안에 따른 두샨베 지국 폐쇄에 따라 일시 키르기스스탄 거주.
 93.1 두산베 지국 복귀

1994년 
 본부 복귀. 근동국 이라크 작전단 부단장(Deputy Chief of Iraq Operations Group).

1995년 
 95.1 북부 이라크 파견. 후세인 전복 비밀 공작 지휘
 95.3 쿠르드족 봉기 계획 무산. 본부 귀국 (암살 기도 혐의 관계 FBI로부터 조사)
 그 후 중앙유라시아국 남부(작전)단 부단장(Deputy Chief of South Group)으로 중앙 아시아 및 카프카스 8개국 담당. 해당 부서 재직 중 카스피 해 파이프라인 건설 계획 석유업자 로저 탐라즈(Roger Tamraz)와 접촉. 탐라즈와 당시 NSC 러시아 우크라이나 유라시아 담당관 쉴라 헤슬린(Sheila Heslin) 사이의 대립에 연루.

1996년 
 남부(작전)단장(Chief of South Group)

1997년 
 97.12 CIA 사직

책 
 See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism , Crown, 2002, 
 Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude, Crown, 2003, 
 곽인찬 역, 악마와의 동침: 워싱턴과 사우디 왕가의 추악한 거래, 도서출판 중심, 2004년,

영화 
 Syriana - See No Evil을 원작으로 헐리우드 스타 조지 클루니가 로버트 베어를 재구성한 인물로 등장하는 영화
 다크 아일랜드 - 터프 역

외부 링크 
 Guardian지의 See No Evil 발췌(영문)
 PBS Frontline과의 인터뷰(2002년 3월 22일, 영문)): 이란 문제 관련
 BuzzFlash.com과의 인터뷰(2003년 9월 12일, 영문): 사우디/이라크를 중심으로 한 중동문제 관련
 Syriana 시사회장에서 chud.com과의 인터뷰(2005년 11월 20일, 영문): 중동문제 전반 관련
 BBC3와의 인터뷰(영문): CIA의 고문/취조 관련
 The Cult of the Suicide Bomber

1952년 출생
살아있는 사람
미국의 정치 작가
미국의 소설가
미국의 역사가
CIA 요원
유격전 이론가
심리전 이론가
대분란전 이론가
냉전기의 간첩
탈냉전 시대의 간첩
로스앤젤레스 출신
조지타운 대학교 동문
20세기 작가
21세기 작가
테러와의 전쟁