I just completed a pair of interesting books, Robert Baer’s The Perfect Kill: 21 Laws for Assassins, and Ben Mezrich’s Sex on the Moon.
First, Baer’s The Perfect Kill, with a little background on the author to provide some context. Baer is an ex-CIA agent and now serves as a national security affairs analyst for CNN and an intelligence columnist for Time. His expertise lies in the Middle East and he frequently appears on major news outlets to provide commentary on U.S. foreign policy and international relations. A few other interesting tidbits about Baer: he applied to the CIA in graduate school as more of a goof, but nonetheless was accepted by the agency; in the mid-90s, he unsuccessfully urged the Clinton administration to back an internal Iraqi attempt to overthrow Saddam Hussein and was later investigated by the FBI for allegedly trying to assassinate Hussein; and his book See No Evil was the basis for George Clooney’s acclaimed Syriana. As for The Perfect Kill, Baer sets out rules, or laws, for assassins and specifically assassinations to follow. With laws like “The Bastard has to Deserve It,” “Don’t Shoot Everyone in the Room,” “Own the Geography,” and “Like a Bolt of Lightning out of a Clear Blue Sky,” Baer argues that the best assassins and best assassinations are not personal or use revenge as a motive, but rather are simply about the re-balancing of power. He asserts that the perfect assassin is one who does not wear his beliefs on his sleeve and creates a facade of ignorance, maintains a back-up for everything, promotes and nurtures a terrifying reputation, always has a “fall guy” in case the plot is uncovered, does not indulge in excessive violence (only focus on the target), unilaterally makes every important decision, does not trumpet the kill, and always acts with lightning-fast speed. Baer illustrates his points using his decades-long search as a CIA agent for a notorious and elusive assassin, Hajj Radwan (an alias), throughout much of the book. While I enjoyed Baer’s stories about his time in the CIA, the second half of the book started to drag a bit, with laws that seemed redundant or even contradictory to earlier ones. In addition, the book jumped all over the place with various times and dates and did not have much of a narrative flow, and ultimately, the eventual resolution of his search for Radwan was anti-climactic and disappointing. Overall, a so-so read, although as I mentioned, some of his stories are real treasures.
Now, for Mezrich’s Sex on the Moon, who also authored Bringing Down the House, which formed the basis for the Kevin Spacey movie, 21, and The Accidental Billionaires, which formed the basis for the movie The Social Network, about the founding of Facebook. Sex on the Moon centered on Thad Roberts, an intelligent, ambitious NASA intern who, along with two accomplices, stole millions of dollars worth of moon rocks from a secure safe in NASA’s labs in Houston. The story really centers on Roberts’ life – his strict Mormon upbringing, the disowning by his family for an unforgivable act, his “reinvention” at NASA as an adventurous and charismatic character – and his motive for pulling off the heist. While Mezrich frequently focuses on the interplay between Roberts’ new persona at NASA with the shy, quiet kid he used to be, as well as the notion of Roberts’ fantasy leanings (what Mezrich terms “mental games”) with reality, it was difficult to root for such a protagonist. I know many critics of the book despised the way Roberts was portrayed, citing the fact that the story was told strictly from his perspective (this was mostly the case, although Mezrich asserted that Roberts did not receive any money for his story). Essentially, for me, I was intrigued that here is a smart (maybe too much for his own good), promising individual who had re-cast himself at NASA and seemed to possess such a bright future, deciding to steal these moon rocks (referred to as “national treasures” throughout the book) and risk throwing his entire future away. I’m not sure if I finished this book with a sense of Roberts’ true motive or intentions or whether he learned anything from the deplorable act and subsequent follow-up. I was a little shocked to learn that this too would be made into a feature film, which did not seem to rise up to Mezrich’s earlier works.