*** 'Reads like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' -James Risen, The Intercept 'A compelling account of the ongoing search for the Fourth Man... a gripping and mind-bending read' - Dr. Mark Stout, The Daily Beast For the first time ever, New York Times bestselling author and former CIA operative Robert Baer tells the explosive story of how insiders believe a KGB mole rose to the highest ranks of the CIA. In the aftermath of the Cold War, US intelligence caught three high-profile Russian spies. However, these arrests left major questions unanswered, and rumours have long swirled of another mole, often referred to as the Fourth Man. Three pioneering female veterans of counterintelligence were tasked with unearthing him. With steadfast determination and expertise, they came to a shocking conclusion, one which had, and continues to harbour, dramatic consequences for American security. In this gripping insider account, Baer tells a thrilling story of Russian espionage and American intelligence. With profound implications for the rise of Vladimir Putin and international relations with Russia, The Fourth Man is a real-life spy thriller with echoes of John Le Carre.

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.

"From the Hardcover edition."

What is the definition of assassination? Robert Baer's boss at the CIA once told him, 'It's a bullet with a man's name on it.' Sometimes assassination is the senseless act of a psychotic, a bloodletting without social value. Other times, it can be the sanest and most humane way to change the course of conflict: one bullet, one death, case closed. Assassination has been dramatised by literature and politicised by infamous murders throughout history, and for Robert Baer, one of the most accomplished agents ever to work for the CIA, it's a source of endless fascination. Over several decades, Baer served as an operative, from Iraq to India and beyond. In THE PERFECT KILL, he takes us on a wildly entertaining narrative adventure through a history of political murder, interweaving his first-hand experience and his decades-long cat-and-mouse hunt for the greatest assassin of the modern age. A true maverick with an undeniably captivating personal story, Baer pulls back the curtain to give a glimpse of the underbelly of world politics, and the quiet murderers who operate on the fringe of our society.

*** 'Reads like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' -James Risen, The Intercept 'A compelling account of the ongoing search for the Fourth Man... a gripping and mind-bending read' - Dr. Mark Stout, The Daily Beast For the first time ever, New York Times bestselling author and former CIA operative Robert Baer tells the explosive story of how insiders believe a KGB mole rose to the highest ranks of the CIA. In the aftermath of the Cold War, US intelligence caught three high-profile Russian spies. However, these arrests left major questions unanswered, and rumours have long swirled of another mole, often referred to as the Fourth Man. Three pioneering female veterans of counterintelligence were tasked with unearthing him. With steadfast determination and expertise, they came to a shocking conclusion, one which had, and continues to harbour, dramatic consequences for American security. In this gripping insider account, Baer tells a thrilling story of Russian espionage and American intelligence. With profound implications for the rise of Vladimir Putin and international relations with Russia, The Fourth Man is a real-life spy thriller with echoes of John Le Carre.

In See No Evil, one of the CIA's top field officers of the past quarter century recounts his career running agents in the back alleys of the Middle East. In the process, Robert Baer paints a chilling picture of how terrorism works on the inside and provides compelling evidence about how Washington politics sabotaged the CIA's efforts to root out the world's deadliest terrorists. Not only is this an unprecedented examination of the roots of modern terrorism and the CIA's failure to acknowledge and neutralise the growing fundamentalist threat, it is an engrossing memoir of Baer's education and disillusionment as an intelligence operative. When Baer left the agency in 1997, he received the Career Intelligence Medal with a citation that says: "He repeatedly put himself in personal danger, working the hardest targets, in service to his country." See No Evil is Baer's frank assessment of an agency that forgot that "service to country" must transcend politics and is a forceful plea for the CIA to return to its original mission - the preservation of American national sovereignty and the American way of life.

A real-life "Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Company We Keep" is a portrait by bestselling CIA operative Robert Baer ("See No Evil") and his CIA shooter wife, Dayna, of life as it's really lived by a CIA couple.