Former operative slams CIA

Few people know more about how the CIA operates on the ground than former agent Robert Baer, one of the agency’s top field operatives of the past quarter-century.
An Arabic speaker, Baer spent most of his career running agents in the souks and back alleys of the Middle East, before becoming disillusioned with what he saw as interference by Washington politicians in the CIA’s efforts to root out terrorists.
He believes that at precisely the time when terrorist threats were escalating globally, the agency that should have been monitoring them was being “scrubbed clean” instead.
I put it to him that since 9/11, the cost of being complacent has been recognised and that the CIA is now getting its hands dirty again.
“Yes,” says Baer, “but in the wrong direction.
“It is totally reactionary,” he insists. “It’s like they woke up on 9/11 and just started shooting at anybody and anything.”
To give just one example, he says that what is referred to as “extraordinary renditions” – the controversial practice of secretly spiriting suspects to other countries without due process – is not only wrong, but often counterproductive for gathering intelligence.
“They are picking up people really with nothing against them, hoping to catch someone because they have no information about these [terrorist] networks.”
According to Baer, what happened after 9/11 was a kind of knee-jerk reaction by the CIA, taking in thousands of contractors and dispatching everybody they could, at the expense of real expertise and experienced operatives.
This desperation, he says, led to a “do anything approach” and “that’s why we ended up with Guantanamo and arresting a lot of people that were innocent.”

David Pratt, Sunday Herald
http://www.sundayherald.com/48036