New Releases by Robert Baer

The explosive, never-before-told story of the thrilling hunt for a KGB spy in the top ranks of the CIA, revealing how spies blinded the US to the rise of Putin and Russia’s dangerous future, from New York Times bestselling author and former CIA officer Robert Baer We think we know all the Cold War’s greatest spy stories. The tales of America’s greatest traitors have been told over and over. However, the biggest story of them all remains untold—until now. Rumors have long swirled of another mole in American intelligence, one perhaps more damaging than all the others combined. Perhaps the greatest traitor in American history, perhaps a Russian ruse to tear the CIA apart, or perhaps nothing more than a bogeyman, he is often referred to as the Fourth Man. Blowing the lid off the biggest spy story in decades, Robert Baer tells the full, gripping story for the first time. After arrest of KGB spy Aldrich Ames, the CIA launched another investigation to make sure there wasn''t another double agent in its ranks. Led by three of the CIA’s best spy hunters, women who devoted their lives to counterintelligence, its existence was known only to a few. They began methodically investigating their own bosses and colleagues, turning up loose threads, suspicious activity, and shocking intelligence from the CIA’s best Russian asset. In the end, they came to a startling conclusion that, whether true or not, would shake American intelligence to its core, setting the stage for a cat-and-mouse game with enormous geopolitical stakes. Spies and moles may seem like bygone cold war history, but with Russia again a misunderstood belligerent power, the skeletons America would rather keep hidden are emerging, and as Robert Baer shows in this thrilling masterwork of investigative reporting, they matter as much now as ever.

Love gangsters? Secrets of the Mob is a unique look at four of the most famous gangsters in US history. You will explore the personal lives of four gangsters, Meyer Lansky, Al Capone, John Gotti, and Paul Castellano. Verified Review: Wayne *****" Great facts about the mob. If you''re looking for a good, fast, interesting read this is the book for you." Want to learn more? Add a new great book to your mob collection?Many books were written about their criminal lives and law enforcements efforts to put them behind bars. Author Jay Baer felt it was time to look at their lives differently. In Secrets of the Mob, you will learn the secrets of how these men dealt with their personal and business lives. Amazon Verified Review: Ginger ***** "Interesting compilation of tidbits of the mafia. When it comes down to it, the Mafia leaders were people like you and me with personal preferences that made them human." For example: How did John Gotti run his family? Who was Meyer Lansky’s mentor and how much was Meyer worth? What did Al Capone wear, how much did his wardrobe cost, and who was his mentor? What was Paul Castellano''s business secrets? Secrets of the Mob has much more information that you have never known until now. Learn the secrets today.

The Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse (CATE) Experiment established a standardized set of observation procedures and 72 volunteer observation teams with identical equipment along the path of the 2017 total solar eclipse. CATE successfully imaged the solar corona from 66 of the 72 observation sites resulting in a high dynamic range animation of 90 minutes of solar corona data collected by volunteer citizen science teams. A subgroup of CATE began work in the fall of 2017 to evaluate use of the standard CATE observation setup for exoplanet transit observations. Light curves and analysis of data using AstroImageJ of two well know transiting exoplanets, HD209458b (V = 7.65, depth = 1.5%) and HD189733b (V = 7.67, depth = 2.4%) are presented along with modifications to CATE telescopes required for successful exoplanet follow up observations.

Esta es la más extraordinaria, y a la vez la más real, de todas las historias de espías que jamás se hayan contado. Robert Baer -autor de Soldado de la CIA, que sirvió de base a la película Siryana- y Dayna eran dos agentes de la CIA cuyo trabajo cotidiano consistía en actuar en secreto en los más diversos escenarios del mundo, de Bosnia a Tajikistán, pasando por Beirut o Bagdad, con el fin de participar en conspiraciones, atentados, guerras civiles y asesinatos, en una extraordinaria secuencia de episodios que comienza en Damasco en 1990 y concluye en Lahore en 2008. Dayna y Bob nos hablan con naturalidad y sencillez de estas experiencias, que eran para ellos las habituales de su trabajo, y nos cuentan cómo los riesgos y las emociones compartidos acabaron uniéndoles como pareja. David Ignatius ha dicho que ésta es “la mejor historia real de espionaje que haya leído jamás: combina el riesgo y los peligros del espionaje real, con la estupidez de la burocracia que lo dirige y la dislocación emocional que produce la vida en la clandestinidad”.

We present a summary of research accomplisments on our Yellowstone project in 2011-2012. Highlighted here are our main report topics, described below, including: 1)geneteral seismicity patterns for the Yellowstone region for the past year, 2)understanding Yellowstone seismogenic structures using precise earthquake relocation, 3)crustal density changes related to the active Yellowstone volcanic system, 4)GPS campaign and permanent network, and 5)the upgraded Yellowstone Seismic Network.

Robert Baer was known inside the CIA as perhaps the best operative working the Middle East. Over several decades he served everywhere from Iraq to New Delhi and racked up such an impressive list of accomplishments that he was eventually awarded the Career Intelligence Medal. But if his career was everything a spy might aspire to, his personal life was a brutal illustration of everything a spy is asked to sacrifice. Bob had few enduring non-work friendships, only contacts and acquaintances. His prolonged absences destroyed his marriage, and he felt intense guilt at spending so little time with his children. Sworn to secrecy and constantly driven by ulterior motives, he was a man apart wherever he went. Dayna Williamson thought of herself as just an ordinary California girl -- admittedly one born into a comfortable lifestyle. But she was always looking to get closer to the edge. When she joined the CIA, she was initially tasked with Agency background checks, but the attractive Berkeley graduate quickly distinguished herself as someone who could thrive in the field, and she was eventually assigned to “Protective Operations” training where she learned to handle weapons and explosives and conduct high-speed escape and evasion. Tapped to serve in some of the world''s most dangerous places, she discovered an inner strength and resourcefulness she''d never known -- but she also came to see that the spy life exacts a heavy toll. Her marriage crumbled, her parents grew distant, and she lost touch with friends who''d once meant everything to her. When Bob and Dayna met on a mission in Sarajevo, it wasn''t love at first sight. They were both too jaded for that. But there was something there, a spark. And as the danger escalated and their affection for each other grew, they realized it was time to leave “the Company,” to somehow rediscover the people they’d once been. As worldly as both were, the couple didn’t realize at first that turning in their Agency I.D. cards would not be enough to put their covert past behind. The fact was, their clandestine relationships remained. Living as “civilians” in conflict-ridden Beirut, they fielded assassination proposals, met with Arab sheiks, wily oil tycoons, terrorists, and assorted outlaws – and came perilously close to dying. But even then they couldn’t know that their most formidable challenge lay ahead. Simultaneously a trip deep down the intelligence rabbit hole – one that shows how the “game” actually works, including the compromises it asks of those who play by its rules -- and a portrait of two people trying to regain a normal life, The Company We Keep is a masterly depiction of the real world of shadows.

La vraie histoire d’un couple d’agents secretsAu sein de la CIA, Robert Baer avait la réputation d’être l’un de meilleurs officiers traitants. Pendant des décennies, il a servi entre l’Irak et New Delhi, et la liste de ses actions est si impressionnante qu’il a reçu la Career Intelligence Medal. Sa vie personnelle a été cependant une illustration de tous les sacrifices requis dans ce domaine d’activité. Au début de sa collaboration avec l’Agence, Dayna Williamson avait pour tâche de recruter des agents, mais très vite, l’étudiante de Berkeley est allée sur le terrain. Elle a appris à manier les armes et les explosifs, à sauter d’un véhicule lancé à vive allure, à s’évader dans les pires circonstances. Son couple partit à vau-l’eau, ses parents s’éloignèrent d’elle ; elle perdit tout contact avec ses amis. Lorsque Bob et Dayna se rencontrèrent au cours d’une mission à Sarajevo, ce ne fut pas le coup de foudre. Ils étaient trop blasés l’un et l’autre pour ça. À mesure que le péril allait croissant et que leur attachement grandissait, ils prirent conscience que le moment était venu de quitter la « Compagnie ». Le couple ne comprit pas que rendre leurs cartes de la CIA ne suffirait pas à renier leur passé secret. Nous dévoilant comment le « jeu » fonctionne véritablement, ce livre est le portrait de deux êtres avides de vivre une vie normale. Qui se ressemble s’assemble dresse un tableau saisissant du monde réel des ombres, car tous les événements évoqués dans ces pages sont réels. Traduit de l’anglais par Sabine Boulongne

Over the past thirty years, while the United States has turned either a blind or dismissive eye, Iran has emerged as a nation every bit as capable of altering America’s destiny as traditional superpowers Russia and China. Indeed, one of this book’s central arguments is that, in some ways, Iran’s grip on America’s future is even tighter. As ex–CIA operative Robert Baer masterfully shows, Iran has maneuvered itself into the elite superpower ranks by exploiting Americans’ false perceptions of what Iran is—by letting us believe it is a country run by scowling religious fanatics, too preoccupied with theocratic jostling and terrorist agendas to strengthen its political and economic foundations. The reality is much more frightening—and yet contained in the potential catastrophe is an implicit political response that, if we’re bold enough to adopt it, could avert disaster. Baer’s on-the-ground sleuthing and interviews with key Middle East players—everyone from an Iranian ayatollah to the king of Bahrain to the head of Israel’s internal security—paint a picture of the centuries-old Shia nation that is starkly the opposite of the one normally drawn. For example, Iran’s hate-spouting President Ahmadinejad is by no means the true spokesman for Iranian foreign policy, nor is Iran making it the highest priority to become a nuclear player. Even so, Baer has discovered that Iran is currently engaged in a soft takeover of the Middle East, that the proxy method of war-making and co-option it perfected with Hezbollah in Lebanon is being exported throughout the region, that Iran now controls a significant portion of Iraq, that it is extending its influence over Jordan and Egypt, that the Arab Emirates and other Gulf States are being pulled into its sphere, and that it will shortly have a firm hold on the world’s oil spigot. By mixing anecdotes with information gleaned from clandestine sources, Baer superbly demonstrates that Iran, far from being a wild-eyed rogue state, is a rational actor—one skilled in the game of nations and so effective at thwarting perceived Western colonialism that even rival Sunnis relish fighting under its banner. For U.S. policy makers, the choices have narrowed: either cede the world’s most important energy corridors to a nation that can match us militarily with its asymmetric capabilities (which include the use of suicide bombers)—or deal with the devil we know. We might just find that in allying with Iran, we’ll have increased not just our own security but that of all Middle East nations.The alternative—to continue goading Iran into establishing hegemony over the Muslim world—is too chilling to contemplate.

Depuis trente ans l''Iran s''affirme comme le pays le plus puissant et le plus stable du Moyen-Orient, le seul qui ait la capacité de résister à l''Amérique. L''auteur explique comment Téhéran a planifié et réussi cette conquête du monde musulman.

Dans son premier roman, Robert Baer - agent de la CIA pendant vingt ans - restitue avec brio et une terrible précision toutes les ambiguïtés, toutes les compromissions de certaines sphères du pouvoir politique et financier américain avec les réseaux de la terreur. Quand Max Waller est viré de la CIA pour une prétendue histoire de drogue, il comprend vite que tout est lié à une photographie prise des années auparavant à Peshawar au Pakistan. Sur ce cliché, qui est la personne dont le visage a été soigneusement découpé ? La chasse à l''homme commence. Cette fois encore, sous le faux prétexte de l''affrontement des forces du bien contre celles du mal, c''est bien l''éternelle cupidité des hommes que Robert Baer met en scène.

The Yellowstone-Snake River Plain tectonomagmatic province resulted from Late Tertiary volcanism in western North America, producing three large, caldera-forming eruptions at the Yellowstone Plateau in the last 2 Myr. To understand the kinematics and geodynamics of this volcanic system, the University of Utah conducted seven GPS campaigns at 140 sites between 1987 and 2003 and installed a network of 15 permanent stations. GPS deployments focused on the Yellowstone caldera, the Hebgen Lake and Teton faults, and the eastern Snake River Plain. The GPS data revealed periods of uplift and subsidence of the Yellowstone caldera at rates up to 15 mm/yr. From 1987 to 1995, the caldera subsided and contracted, implying volume loss. From 1995 to 2000, deformation shifted to inflation and extension northwest of the caldera. From 2000 to 2003, uplift continued to the northwest while caldera subsidence was renewed. The GPS observations also revealed extension across the Hebgen Lake fault and fault-normal contraction across the Teton fault. Deformation rates of the Yellowstone caldera and Hebgen Lake fault were converted to equivalent total moment rates, which exceeded historic seismic moment release and late Quaternary fault slip-derived moment release by an order of magnitude. The Yellowstone caldera deformation trends were superimposed on regional southwest extension of the Yellowstone Plateau at up to 4.3 ± 0.2 mm/yr, while the eastern Snake River Plain moved southwest as a slower rate at 2.1 ± 0.2 mm/yr. This southwest extension of the Yellowstone?Snake River Plain system merged into east-west extension of the Basin-Range province. --Abstract.

Former CIA operative Robert Baer pushes fiction to the absolute limit in this riveting and unnervingly plausible alternative history of 9/11. Veteran CIA officer Max Waller has long been obsessed with the abduction and murder of his Agency mentor. Though years of digging yield the name of a suspect—an Iranian math genius turned terrorist—the trail seems too cold to justify further effort. Then Max turns up a photograph of the man standing alongside Osama bin Laden and a mysterious westerner whose face has been cut out, feeding Max’s suspicion. When the first official to whom Max shows the photo winds up dead, the out-of-favor agent suddenly finds himself the target of dark forces within the intelligence community who are desperate to muzzle him. Eluding a global surveillance net, Max—in the summer of 2001—begins tracking the spore of a complex conspiracy, meeting clandestinely with suicide bombers and Arab royalty and ultimately realizing the Iranian he’d sought for a decades-old crime is actually at the nexus of a terrifying plot. Showing off dazzling tradecraft and an array of richly textured backdrops, and filled with real names and events, Blow the House Down deftly balances fact and possibility to become the first great thriller to spring from the war on terrorism. Also available as a Random House AudioBook and an eBook

Presents an examination of the roots of modern terrorism and the CIA''s failure to acknowledge and neutralise the fundamentalist threat. From Baer, one of the CIA''s top field officers, this is also an interesting memoir of his education and disillusionment as an intelligence operative.

“Saudi Arabia is more and more an irrational state—a place that spawns global terrorism even as it succumbs to an ancient and deeply seated isolationism, a kingdom led by a royal family that can’t get out of the way of its own greed. Is this the fulcrum we want the global economy to balance on?” In his explosive New York Times bestseller, See No Evil, former CIA operative Robert Baer exposed how Washington politics drastically compromised the CIA’s efforts to fight global terrorism. Now in his powerful new book, Sleeping with the Devil, Baer turns his attention to Saudi Arabia, revealing how our government’s cynical relationship with our Middle Eastern ally and America’ s dependence on Saudi oil make us increasingly vulnerable to economic disaster and put us at risk for further acts of terrorism. For decades, the United States and Saudi Arabia have been locked in a “harmony of interests.” America counted on the Saudis for cheap oil, political stability in the Middle East, and lucrative business relationships for the United States, while providing a voracious market for the kingdom’ s vast oil reserves. With money and oil flowing freely between Washington and Riyadh, the United States has felt secure in its relationship with the Saudis and the ruling Al Sa’ud family. But the rot at the core of our “friendship” with the Saudis was dramatically revealed when it became apparent that fifteen of the nineteen September 11 hijackers proved to be Saudi citizens. In Sleeping with the Devil, Baer documents with chilling clarity how our addiction to cheap oil and Saudi petrodollars caused us to turn a blind eye to the Al Sa’ud’s culture of bribery, its abysmal human rights record, and its financial support of fundamentalist Islamic groups that have been directly linked to international acts of terror, including those against the United States. Drawing on his experience as a field operative who was on the ground in the Middle East for much of his twenty years with the agency, as well as the large network of sources he has cultivated in the region and in the U.S. intelligence community, Baer vividly portrays our decades-old relationship with the increasingly dysfunctional and corrupt Al Sa’ud family, the fierce anti-Western sentiment that is sweeping the kingdom, and the desperate link between the two. In hopes of saving its own neck, the royal family has been shoveling money as fast as it can to mosque schools that preach hatred of America and to militant fundamentalist groups—an end game just waiting to play out. Baer not only reveals the outrageous excesses of a Saudi royal family completely out of touch with the people of its kingdom, he also takes readers on a highly personal search for the deeper roots of modern terrorism, a journey that returns time again and again to Saudi Arabia: to the Wahhabis, the powerful Islamic sect that rules the Saudi street; to the Taliban and al Qaeda, both of which Saudi Arabia helped to underwrite; and to the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the most active and effective terrorist groups in existence, which the Al Sa’ud have sheltered and funded. The money and arms that we send to Saudi Arabia are, in effect, being used to cut our own throat, Baer writes, but America might have only itself to blame. So long as we continue to encourage the highly volatile Saudi state to bank our oil under its sand—and so long as we continue to grab at the Al Sa’ud’s money—we are laying the groundwork for a potential global economic catastrophe.

Recorded seismicity for the Yellowstone National Park region, comprising 25,267 earthquakes from November 1972 to December 2002, has been relocated using three-dimensional velocity models and probabilistic earthquake location. In addition, new coda magnitudes for earthquakes between 1984 and 2002 were computed by using an improved coda magnitude equation. Three-dimensional velocity models for earthquake location were computed by inverting subsets of highquality data of three different periods, 1973?1981, 1984?1994, and 1995?2002, for hypocenter locations and seismic velocities. Earthquakes were relocated by using a nonlinear, probabilistic solution to the earthquake location problem. Fully nonlinear location uncertainties included in the probabilistic solution allow a better and more reliable classification of earthquake locations into four quality classes. Earthquake locations show an improvement in location accuracy with time, which we attribute to improved network geometry and more precise timing of arrival times. No large systematic shifts of the relocated earthquake locations are observed, except a systematic shift of ~2 km to greater depth. The new relocated earthquake locations show tighter clustering of epicenters and focal depths when compared with original earthquake locations. The most intense seismicity in terms of number of earthquakes and cumulative seismic moment release in the Yellowstone National Park region occurs northwest of the Yellowstone caldera between Hebgen Lake and the northern rim of the caldera. Seismicity within the Yellowstone caldera is diffuse, and shallow individual clusters of earthquakes can be associated with major hydrothermal areas.

Coincident with the arrival of low-frequency, large-amplitude surface waves of the Mw 7.9 Denali fault earthquake (DFE), an abrupt increase in seismicity was observed in the Yellowstone National Park region, despite the large epicentral distance of 3100 km. Within the first 24 hr following the DFE mainshock, we located more than 250 earthquakes, which occurred throughout the entire Yellowstone National Park region. The elevated seismicity rate continued for about 30 days and followed a modified Omori law decay with a P value of 1.02 ± 0.07. For a declustered earthquake catalog, the seismicity following the 2002 DFE uniquely stands out with a significance of 30r. The increase in seismicity occurred over all magnitude bands. In general, we observed that seismicity following the DFE outlined the spatial pattern of past seismicity routinely observed in the Yellowstone National Park region. However, we found significant differences in triggered seismicity inside and outside the caldera. Earthquakes inside the Yellowstone caldera occurred preferentially as clusters close to major hydrothermal systems, were of larger magnitude, and seismicity decayed more rapidly. This suggests that either different trigger mechanisms were operating inside and outside the caldera or that the crust responded differently to the same trigger mechanism depending on its different mechanical state. Compared with other sites that experienced remote earthquake triggering following the 2002 DFE, Yellowstone showed the most vigorous earthquake activity. We attribute this to strong directivity effects of the DFE, which caused relatively large peak dynamic stresses (0.16-0.22 MPa) in Yellowstone, and to the volcanic nature of Yellowstone.

In his explosive New York Times bestseller, top CIA operative Robert Baer paints a chilling picture of how terrorism works on the inside and provides startling evidence of how Washington politics sabotaged the CIA’s efforts to root out the world’s deadliest terrorists, allowing for the rise of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda and the continued entrenchment of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. A veteran case officer in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations in the Middle East, Baer witnessed the rise of terrorism first hand and the CIA’s inadequate response to it, leading to the attacks of September 11, 2001. This riveting book is both an indictment of an agency that lost its way and an unprecedented look at the roots of modern terrorism, and includes a new afterword in which Baer speaks out about the American war on terrorism and its profound implications throughout the Middle East. “Robert Baer was considered perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East.” –Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker From The Preface This book is a memoir of one foot soldier’s career in the other cold war, the one against terrorist networks. It’s a story about places most Americans will never travel to, about people many Americans would prefer to think we don’t need to do business with. This memoir, I hope, will show the reader how spying is supposed to work, where the CIA lost its way, and how we can bring it back again. But I hope this book will accomplish one more purpose as well: I hope it will show why I am angry about what happened to the CIA. And I want to show why every American and everyone who cares about the preservation of this country should be angry and alarmed, too. The CIA was systematically destroyed by political correctness, by petty Beltway wars, by careerism, and much more. At a time when terrorist threats were compounding globally, the agency that should have been monitoring them was being scrubbed clean instead. Americans were making too much money to bother. Life was good. The White House and the National Security Council became cathedrals of commerce where the interests of big business outweighed the interests of protecting American citizens at home and abroad. Defanged and dispirited, the CIA went along for the ride. And then on September 11, 2001, the reckoning for such vast carelessness was presented for all the world to see.

Membre pendant vingt ans de la division des opérations clandestines de la CIA, Robert Baer, nous révèle le pacte terrifiant qui unit les élites économiques et politiques américaines à la famille royale saoudienne. Réseaux de financement, accords secrets, corruption... Une enquête au cœur d''un système où les enjeux, qui s''élèvent à des milliards de dollars, menacent l''équilibre de la planète.

Robert Baer, a quien se ha calificado como «el Indiana Jones de la CIA» ha sido agente durante veintiún años y ha realizado operaciones clandestinas en Irak, Afganistán, Líbano y Sudán, arriesgando con frecuencia su vida. Disconforme con la evolución actual de la Agencia, la abandonó en 1997 y decidió contar su vida como agente para denunciar la decadencia de una institución que es hoy incapaz de enfrentarse al terrorismo. Ésta es la primera vez en que un agente importante de la CIA nos cuenta la realidad de su trabajo cotidiano de espionaje, corrupción y contraterrorismo en el marco convulso del Oriente Próximo. Su relato se lee como una novela de espionaje, pero tiene, por otra parte, el interés de descubrirnos cómo ha actuado la CIA en los últimos veinticinco años, y de mostrarnos las limitaciones y la incompetencia de uno de los instrumentos esenciales con los que Estados Unidos ha pretendido gobernar el mundo.

Comment la CIA est devenue aveugle et sourde. Comment l''Amérique a sacrifié l''Agence et ses soldats. Comment les Etats-Unis risquent de perdre les futures batailles du renseignement. Voici le livre de révélations d''un ancien officier traitant qui fait trembler Washington. Liban, Libye, Soudan, Asie centrale, Irak... Pendant vingt ans, Robert Baer, de la division des opérations clandestines, a combattu sur tous les fronts de l''islamisme. Pendant vingt ans, surtout, il a lutté contre les hésitations de la Maison Blanche, les errances des politiques, les rivalités des technocrates, les manipulations du lobby du pétrole et le règne du politiquement correct. Aujourd''hui, racontant son engagement, c''est l''essor du terrorisme planétaire et l''échec des premiers services secrets du monde qu''il décrit, de l''intérieur, mission après mission. Des otages occidentaux de Beyrouth aux révoltes kurdes après la guerre du Golfe, des mafias ex-soviétiques au scandale de l''Irangate, des réseaux islamistes en Europe à l''internationale des pétrodollars, Baer dévoile la part secrète des relations entre l''Occident et l''Orient dont Al Qaïda n''est que la face émergée. Son livre, tout à la fois témoignage vécu, chronique de l''histoire immédiate et leçon de géopolitique, se lit comme un vrai thriller.