Ex-CIA agent says Cheney “damaged the CIA more than anybody has”

Robert Baer

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Robert Baer, the retired CIA field officer whose bestselling memoir, See No Evil, formed the basis of the 2005 motion picture Syriana, has said that former Vice President’ Dick Cheney “damaged the CIA more than anybody has, including the press or the Department of Justice”. Speaking on PBS’ The Tavis Smiley Show, Baer claimed that Cheney was the leading proponent of the CIA’s torture program, which the Bush Administration “invented as we went along”, and which never provided any critical intelligence. Baer said that in some cases FBI interrogators resorting to torture tactics extracted false leads from detainees. Baer, who was sent on CIA missions in India, Lebanon and northern Iraq during his 21-year career, said that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan is a winnable war for the US. But the intelligence component in both wars must be investigated, said Baer, since “there are 100 people that died in [US] detention [and w]e still don’t have the answers of how they died, who killed them. We have to go after people like Cheney”, said the former CIA operative, “the people that started this program. We have to hold people accountable for war crimes”.