Former CIA Agent Once Played by George Clooney Explains Why He Quit DC and Is Holing Up in the Rockies | | AlterNet

We talked about his latest book, "The Devil We Know," an intelligence analysis of Iran that suggests everything in the popular discourse in the US about Iran is wrong. It's the sort of intelligence that likely would have been ignored if published inside the agency. The US, offers Baer, should engage with Iran, a great power in the Middle East, the heir of the Persia of antiquity that is invested in a historical memory the American spy apparatus can't be bothered to understand. The US should come to a detente with Iran's rulers, recognizing them not as madmen intent on destruction but as players in the world of realpolitik - not so very different in their intent than the United States. Iran, says Baer, has abandoned its penchant for funding terrorism against the US. Altogether this is a big-hearted argument, almost heroic, given the carnage visited on the CIA by the mullahs during Baer's years in Beirut, the friends killed by Iran, the chaos spread by Iran. The book in that sense is a peace offering in spite of the awful past - a recognition of historical memory and an attempt at an answer to it.