The United States' policies on Saudi Arabia, Baer argues, are built upon the delusion that Saudi Arabia is stable—that both the country and the flow of its most precious commodity can continue on indefinitely. Sustaining that delusion is the immense amount of money (estimated at $19.3 billion in 2000) exchanged between the two partners: the U.S. buys oil and sells weapons, Saudi Arabia buys weapons and sells oil. Oil and the defense contracts underpinning its protection bind these two countries together in such a way that when Saudi Arabia falls—a fate Baer feels is absolutely certain—the U.S. falls too. Perhaps not all the way down, but, if we don't curtail our dependence, he argues, a failure in Saudi Arabia could have catastrophic consequences for the United States.

Our relationship, however, continues unabated—even as the corrupt royal family bleeds the Saudi treasury, Wahhabist extremism heats up, and Saudi Arabian citizens kill American citizens in acts of terror. Baer maintains that we must look at Saudi Arabia with a more objective lens and examine the foundations of that country, since they are, in some sense, the foundations of our own.

Robert Baer was part of the Central Intelligence Agency for twenty-one years; for most of that time, he worked for the Directorate of Operations in the Middle East as a field officer. He is the author of See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism. His article for The Atlantic is adapted from his new book, Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Its Soul for Saudi Crude, to be released in July.

We spoke by telephone on May 20.

—Elizabeth Shelburne

How did you come to be involved in the CIA?

It's a bit of a mundane process applying and getting hired. I actually just called the federal center in San Francisco. I was curious, and it was a bit of a prank in a way. I was living there, I'd finished college, and I was working part-time. They set up an interview for me, gave me a couple tests, and about six months later I was in, to my surprise.

So you just called as a prank and this ended up being something that you did for twenty-one years.

Well, you know, it was in the news a lot back in '75 and '76. I definitely never considered it seriously. I didn't even know what a spy was; I didn't like spy movies. But it was curiosity more than anything, I suppose. And I never thought I'd get in, and I never thought I'd stay in. Twenty-one years later, I was still in.

How did you decide to write a book about Saudi Arabia? How much time did you spend there? You mention that you know the Saud family—do you know any of them personally? Where does your knowledge about them come from?

I've visited Saudi Arabia, but I've never served there on a tour. I've always looked at Saudi Arabia and the phenomenon of Sunni fundamentalism from the periphery, where it is easier to see these people, to meet them. Because in Saudi Arabia, and this is one of the problems, you just can't walk into a mosque and sit down and start talking to the clerics. And you can't just drive around the country, going to Medina and Mecca—they're off-limits to Americans, unless you're Muslim. I'm like someone who followed the Soviet Union from the outside. But I've spent twenty-five years in the Middle East—I've met members of the royal family, I've talked to Saudis.