October 7, 2005

Retired CIA agent speaks to Culver

The former operative details stories
from his 21-year career to his alma mater.

By ADAM JACKSON
Tribune Staff Writer

CULVER -- Robert Baer had a surefire attention-getter for the 150 or so Culver Academies students he spoke to Thursday night.

He just told them about the time he tried to kill Saddam Hussein.

Not him, personally, but the handpicked team of Iraqi Army officers, Kurdish rebels, and assorted Saddam opponents he handpicked for the job in 1995 as part of his work as a CIA operative; a job in which he spent 21 years traveling to some of the nastiest places on the globe and doing things that could have come right out of a spy novel.

It was the stories, the attitudes, and the general distrust of the system that he picked up during that career that allowed him to enthrall his audience at the kickoff event of the Academies' Global Studies Institute lecture series, which this year aims to verse Culver students in the vagaries of national security issues.

Baer, a 1971 graduate of the Academy (who reportedly once tried to rappel down the side of the mess hall), seemed the perfect man for the job, with the mannerisms of a hip college professor who just happened to once have a corrupt Russian officer try to sell him a T-72 tank.

"Of course I'm very negative about the federal government," he admitted, drawing a chuckle from the audience. "I spent 21 years working for them, so you'll have to take everything I say with a grain of salt."

Grain of salt or not, the evening provided students with a glass-window view into the life of a man who made his living staying out of the limelight.

During his career, Baer functioned as the eyes and ears of the nation in places like Syria, Iraq, Morocco, and Lebanon. The agents he directed in the field infiltrated and reported on a laundry list of bad-guy organizations, from Hezbollah to al-Qaida.

Along the way, he developed a critical eye for his own handlers and the system they operated in. He shared those criticisms freely Thursday, from his frustration at having the rug yanked out from underneath his Saddam coup by a wishy-washy Clinton administration, to his fears for the future if America continues to follow its current foreign policy.

Indeed, when one student asked him a question about the Bush administrations difficulties in planning for disasters like 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina, she wondered if he thought the same problems would apply to possible nuclear terrorism.

That willingness to voice his opinion is now paying off for Baer. Since his retirement, he has stepped into the limelight he once shunned in favor to a cloak of secrecy. In addition to speaking engagements, he has written two best-sellers that draw upon his years of service in the CIA.

One of those best-sellers, called "See No Evil -- the True Story of a Ground Soldier in Washington's War on Terror," is coming to the silver screen later this year as "Syriana."

Culver note: The 2005-2006 GSI program has been funded by Mr. Paul J. Much '68 and Ms. Judy Fay, GP, and by Houlihan Lokey Howard and Zukin.