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.
如果说中国的奸佞要拉去枪毙,那么美国的奸佞拉出去枪毙十次都不过分。
一个落后的资本主义保守派。
在他的眼中,status quo只不过是一种政治游戏罢了。
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这本书最让我感到震撼的,是它对于“非线性时间”的处理手法。它并没有采用传统的时间轴叙事,而是如同打碎了一面镜子,将过去、现在甚至某种近乎预言的未来片段,以碎片化的形式交织在一起。起初这种叙事方式让人感到一丝困惑,仿佛需要用更多的脑力去梳理事件的先后顺序。然而,随着阅读的深入,这种错位的时空感反而营造出一种强烈的宿命论色彩。你逐渐明白,作者的目的并非是让你去“解谜”时间顺序,而是让你去体验角色在时间洪流中挣扎的无力感。这种高难度的叙事结构,处理稍有不慎就会导致故事崩塌,但这本书却完美地驾驭了这种复杂性,让所有的碎片最终汇合成一股强大的情感洪流。
评分这本书在对环境的描摹上,展现了一种近乎病态的精准度。它构建的世界观并非是那种宏大叙事下扁平化的背景板,而是充满了生命力的、有气味的、甚至能让人感到潮湿和寒冷的真实空间。作者似乎对细节有着近乎偏执的追求,无论是老旧图书馆里书籍霉变的独特气味,还是都市霓虹灯下雨水反射出的那种迷离光影,都通过精准的词汇被刻画得入木三分。这种环境的塑造,并非单纯的烘托气氛,它本身就是推动情节发展、甚至可以说是一个“活着的角色”。很多时候,情节的突破点就隐藏在那些看似不经意的环境描述之中,迫使读者必须全神贯注地去解读那些潜藏在文字背后的暗示。这种“环境即线索”的写作手法,极大地提升了阅读的参与度和智力挑战性。
评分从文学性的角度来看,这本书的语言风格无疑是高超的。它摆脱了当前文学市场中常见的口语化、追求即时爽感的写作倾向,转而采用了一种更具韵律感和古典美的句式结构。作者在遣词造句上显示出深厚的功底,很多句子读起来需要反复咀嚼,初读时或许会觉得稍显晦涩,但细品之下,其内部蕴含的张力和美感便会逐层显露出来。更难得的是,这种高水准的文学性并没有以牺牲故事性为代价,它巧妙地将深沉的哲学思考融入到紧张的悬念之中。读完后,我感觉不仅仅是读了一个故事,更像是经历了一次关于人性、时间与选择的深度对话。这是一种需要耐心去品味,但回报极其丰厚的阅读体验,绝对值得那些追求深度阅读的爱好者收藏。
评分这本书的叙事节奏把握得极为精妙,从一开始的娓娓道来,到中段几个关键转折点的陡然加速,再到结尾处那种令人窒息的缓慢收束,每一次呼吸的切换都像是被作者精准计算过的。它不像某些悬疑小说那样堆砌大量的无关紧要的枝节来拖延时间,而是每一个场景、每一次人物间的对话,都像是一块块精确切割的拼图,最终拼凑出一个宏大而又细致入微的图景。我尤其欣赏作者在塑造核心人物时的那种克制感,没有过多的内心独白去解释角色的动机,而是通过他们细微的肢体语言、不经意的眼神交流,将人物的复杂性深深地嵌入读者的感知之中。读到一半时,我甚至觉得自己的心跳频率都跟着故事的紧张程度在波动,那种沉浸式的体验,是近年来阅读体验中极为罕见的。那种阅读完后,需要花上好一会儿时间才能从故事的氛围中抽离出来的感觉,足以证明其叙事力量的强大。
评分不得不提的是,这本书在角色驱动力上的构建是极其细致入微的。它没有依赖于突如其来的巨大外部冲击来驱动主角行动,而是将一切的动因都内化到了角色自身的创伤、信念和无法摆脱的道德困境之中。你会发现,每一个主要人物的每一次选择,无论多么出人意料,最终都能在之前铺垫的心理侧写中找到合理的根源。这种深度的心理挖掘,使得角色不再是情节的工具,而成为了故事的真正引擎。特别是反派角色的塑造,完全超越了脸谱化的恶人设定,其逻辑的自洽性和情感的复杂性,甚至让人在某些时刻对他产生一种病态的理解和同情。这种对人性幽暗角落的坦诚探索,是这本书区别于同类作品的关键所在。
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