The Progressive: Torture, Drones, and Hollywood: A Former CIA Operative Talks

Baer: I don’t trust American intelligence. You look at the torture report from the Senate: People inside the CIA are saying that it doesn’t work, and we’re getting the information not from torture, but simply from questioning people.

The effectiveness of the program was exaggerated in the Senate, House and White House, as well, so as an organization I don’t think you should trust the CIA on this. And when [CIA Director John] Brennan comes out and gives that lukewarm endorsement of torture it told me the whole story––he didn’t flat-out say it saved lives. That’s how it was presented around [Washington].

And I don’t trust them on drones. When they say it’s broken the back of Al-Qaeda, I really doubt that. We’ve probably sown chaos with drones, killed lots of innocent people. But we certainly didn’t bring an end to war. The intent of assassination is to avoid war and preserve force, neither of which we have done. We are deeper into the Middle East than when we started.

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Our armed presence in the Middle East hasn’t made us safer. It’s our armed presence in the Middle East that has led to 9/11. When we get involved in the Middle East we always make things worse. . . On 9/11 Sweden wasn’t attacked, we were, because we intervened. Our intervention in Iraq and Syria is making Israel less safe.