Bae - Bag

Baer, Robert. See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism. New York: Crown, 2002.

According to Gellman, Washington Post, 17 Mar. 2002, "Baer leaps from these pages as a zealous and creative man, courageous to the brink of recklessness, and altogether lacking the political and diplomatic judgment that an intelligence agency needs at the top. What the book does well is provide a spy's-eye view of CIA intrigues by one of the agency's best. And it makes a persuasive case, with much amusing evidence, that the CIA lost interest in the skills Baer had to offer....

"Baer can write authoritatively on one page and with cartoonish fancy on another.... [He] adds an intriguing chapter to the literature on the Clinton administration's betrayal of Iraqi coup plotters in 1995. But he undermines the reader's trust with assertions that then-national security adviser Anthony Lake masterminded an FBI investigation meant to punish Baer for his role. No one who knows the mutual loathing between Louis Freeh and the Clinton White House will buy that."

Peake, AFIO WIN 31-02, 5 Aug. 2002, and Intelligencer 13.2, finds that See No Evil is "a memoir of disillusionment written in a positive style, not the bitter tone of those who wrote because they could not cope with the demands of the clandestine life.... Baer's comments on the tradecraft of espionage as practiced on the ground ... will enlighten historians and laymen interested in the profession.... This is a fine memoir, one of the best ever written." To Berkowitz. IJI&C15.4, this book "is a great read." The author "is direct and honest ... and tells a good story."

Clark comment: I enjoyed reading Baer's See No Evil. The words flow in a spritely fashion from the page, and Baer certainly touched plenty of potentially important events in less frequented parts of the world. Much of what he writes rings true whether or not the reader is familiar with the details of each episode he spotlights. That does not mean, however, that he has captured the "capital T" truth.

Baer's view is that of the classic field operative -- essentially, "if politics/Headquarters/ Washington hadn't screwed it up, we could have pulled it off." It is true that too often those making the decisions back in Washington do not share the field operative's intimate knowledge of the situation on the ground. But it is just as often true that the person in the field has little understanding of the factors at play beyond his/her vision.

Baer complains that some Headquarters-based personnel considered him a "cowboy." From reading his memoirs, I have to conclude that they were correct. I would argue, however, that the CIA and the United States need a few such cowboys, although we probably should not put them in charge of things.

[CIA/C&C/DO; CIA/Memoirs]

Baer, Robert. "Wanted: Spies Unlike Us." Foreign Policy 147 (Mar.-Apr. 2005): 66-70.

"The CIA must cultivate foreign sources, reward service overseas, and tap America's top students to once again get good information on enemies of the United States."

[CIA/00s/05/Gen]

Baer, Susan. "Tenet Survives Despite CIA Woes." Baltimore Sun, 6 Feb. 2002. [http:// www.baltimoresun.com]

"[I]f anyone was likely to take the fall" for the events of 9/11, "it would be Tenet. Yet,... few are pointing fingers at him. Instead, lawmakers have seen Sept. 11 as a government-wide breakdown, with plenty of blame to go around. And far from being ousted,... Tenet has emerged as a key architect of the war on terror."

[CIA/DCIs/Tenet; Terrorism/02/War]

Bageant, Joe. "The CIA's Secret War in Tibet." Military History (Feb. 2004). [http://www.historynet.com/magazines/military_history/3025986.html]

"[T]he Tibetans did not simply let the Chinese roll over their country in 1951. For almost 20 years afterward they fought a long, bloody war of resistance.... [T]his largely unknown struggle ... got support from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, which sponsored secret training camps and made arms and equipment drops to aid horse-mounted herdsmen against the bombers and artillery of the largest standing army on the planet."

[CA/Tibet]

Baggett, Candace S. "Fourth Amendment -- Absent Exigent Circumstances, Prior Judicial Authorizatiom of Electronic Surveillance of United States Citizens Abroad Is Constitutionally Required: Berlin Democratic Club v. Rumsfeld, 410 F. Supp. 144 (DDC 1976)," Texas International Law Journal 12, no. 2-3 (Spring-Summer 1977): 362-369. [Calder]

[Overviews/Legal/Gen]

Baggett, Charlie. "Intelligence and Information Systems Security: Partners in the Information Age." NMIA Newsletter 11, no. 1 (1996): 9-12.

Remarks by the Director of Information, National Computers Systems Security, NSA/ISSO, at Defense Intelligence Status conference, Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, DC, on 8 December 1995. "At their current stage of development, our Defense and National Information Infrastructures offer minimal defense against unauthorized access and use.... Last year, more than 260 unclassified DoD computer systems were known to have been penetrated by outsiders.... As information systems security and defensive information warfare move from a passive to a more active posture, intelligence will become increasingly critical to their success."

[GenPostwar/InfoWar][c]

Baggett, Lee, Jr. "C3I Requirements within the Atlantic Command." Signal 42 (Jun. 1988): 31-32.

[MI/Overviews]

Bagley, Tennent H. "Bane of Counterintelligence: Our Penchant for Self-Deception." International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 6, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 1-20.

The focus here is deception and its interplay with self-deception. A number of cases are discussed.

[CI/90s; GenPostwar/Deception/Gen]

Bagley, Tennent H. Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.

Clark comment: My review of Bagley's book is carried in Journal of Cold War Studies 11, no. 2 (2009): 137-139

Ignatius, Washington Post, 11 Apr. 2007, says that Bagley "has gathered strong evidence" that Nosenko "could not have been who he initially said he was; that he could not have reviewed the Oswald file; that his claims about how the KGB discovered the identities of two CIA moles in Moscow could not have been right."

For Knight, St. Petersburg Times, 18 May 2007, the author "spends most of his book marshalling evidence of Nosenko's inaccuracies and inconsistencies," but "overlooks circumstances that might explain at least some of the discrepancies." The reviewer concludes that, in the end, "Bagley’s book fails to make a convincing case that Nosenko, who was finally exonerated by the CIA in 1977, was a fake defector."

Gordievsky, Spectator, 19 May 2007, calls this "perhaps the most amazing non-fiction spy book that has ever appeared during or after the Cold War"; it is written by "one of the most respected and knowledgeable experts on Soviet espionage." The author claims "on almost every page that much of what has been written up to now, stated and even asserted under oath by CIA officials, is in fact naive, utterly insensitive, blindly biased, [and] unprofessional." Gordievsky asks: Has Bagley succeeded in proving "that he was right and the Agency was wrong" about Nosenko? His answer: "A new generation of intelligence historians, analysts and operatives, who must read this very exciting book, will have to answer this and many other important professional questions."

In a review that shows how deeply the Nosenko debate continues to burn in the CIA soul, McCoy, CIRA Newsletter 32.2 (Summer 2007), dismisses this book as the author's attempt "to justify the mishandling of the only important operational assignment he had in 22 years of employment in the Clandestine Service." The reviewer accuses Bagley of resorting "to the same transparently invalid analytical methodology as was used in the original case he made against Nosenko." McCoy argues that "the case against Nosenko, and the painful, unprofessional, fundamentally illegal, disposition of it was actually inspired and stage-managed by [James] Angleton." Bagley, "Letters," CIRA Newsletter 32.4 (Winter 2007): 37-38, takes grave exception to this reviewer's comments and reiterates his argument that Nosenko was a KGB plant.

Thomas, NYT, 3 Jun. 2007, finds Bagley's account "a provocative new look at one of the great unresolved mysteries of the cold war.... Readers will need to be able to adapt to the mind-set of a counterintelligence officer sifting through the odd coincidences, connecting the dots, to fully appreciate and grasp the case against Nosenko. But this game of real-world Clue is worth it."

To Chapman, IJI&C 21.1 (Spring 2008), this is "a powerful book.... It is the best detailed account of the incredible capabilities of the Soviet Union's KGB." The reviewer seems to accept the author's presentation as the last word in the Nosenko matter (referring to the "ultimate vindication" of Angleton and others). He is particularly distressed by "the CIA's vilification and denigration of Bagley."

Wilson, Proceedings 134.2 (Feb. 2008), is of the opinion that "[t]he strength of this work is not that it sets the record straight or clears any names associated with the Nosenko file per se, but rather that it explains in minute detail the complexities, pitfalls, risks, impact of individual personalities, and potential controversy associated with most counterintelligence operations and investigations."

For a defense of the CIA's position, see: Richards J. Heuer, Jr., "Nosenko: Five Paths to Judgment," Studies in Intelligence 31, no. 3 (Fall 1987): 71-101. In Inside CIA's Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency's Internal Journal, 1955-1992, ed. H. Bradford Westerfield, 379-414 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995). [Available as a 300 kb (vice 2.6 mb thanks to Kathrine M. Graham/NMSU) pdf file at: http://intellit.muskingum.edu/alpha_folder/H_folder/Heuer_on_NosenkoV1.pdf]

[CIA/60s/Gen; CIA/Angleton/Related; CIA/Memoirs]

Bagley, Tennent H. "Treason in the KGB: New Facts from Inside." International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 5, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 63-75.

The IJI&C editor notes that "some of Mr. Bagley's comments and observations have been overtaken by events," but the article was published for "its general insights." The focus is on Maj. Gen. Oleg Kalugin and his split with the Soviet leadership.

[Russia/ColdWar]

Bagnall, J. J. "The Exploitation of Russian Scientific Literature for Intelligence Purposes." Studies in Intelligence 2, no. 3 (Summer 1958): 45-48.

The amount of available Soviet scientific literature increased significantly from 1947 to 1956. The Air Force and the CIA both have ongoing efforts to exploit this material. There are also efforts outside the intelligence community, including bibliographic guides, specialized indexes, and abstracting services.

[OpenSource/Gen]

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