Ex-Agent Says CIA Dropped Ball

Jan. 17 -- In 1995, CIA field officer Robert Baer helped organize a rebellion in northern Iraq to topple one of the United States' worst enemies, Saddam Hussein.

To his dismay, his superiors declined to support the rebellion and he was ordered home to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. He was furious, but nothing prepared him for his reception: He found two FBI agents waiting to question him.

"They show me their credentials, read me my rights and say, 'You are being investigated under murder-for-hire statutes,'" Baer recalls. The FBI began an investigation into whether he had privately attempted to assassinate the Iraqi president — something that is illegal under U.S. law.

Baer says the charges were based on a "silly rumor" and there was never any assassination plan. He was eventually exonerated, but it took a year to clear his name. By then he had had enough.

After 21 years of service, many of them fighting terrorism on the ground in places like Lebanon, Bosnia, Syria and Sudan, Baer resigned from the agency. The failed Iraqi rebellion was not the first time he felt the CIA had missed a major opportunity.

Baer believes the CIA's excessive caution and reluctance to make more use of trained field officers like him left the United States open to the kind of terrorist attacks that came on Sept. 11.

"We basically closed down .... the CIA closed down in the '90s," Baer said in an interview with ABCNEWS' John Miller airing tonight on Primetime Thursday. "I think we are paying the bill for ignoring terrorism for all those years."

The CIA said in a statement that it had achieved "some extraordinary successes" in the war on terrorism since Sept. 11, and that they were based on the agency's long-term antiterrorism efforts. "We could not have achieved what we have post-Sept.11 if we had not been focused on the war on terrorism long before," said agency spokesman Bill Harlow.

Trained for Action

Baer joined the CIA in 1976, after studying foreign affairs at Georgetown University. He became a case officer in the agency's Directorate of Operations, the branch responsible for gathering information. The agency trained him to jump from planes and use weapons and explosives.