Robert and Dayna Baer on Living As CIA Spies

Ex-CIA spies Robert and Dayna Baer visited Palo Alto Tuesday night to promote their newly released book, .

Living a life most of us only see in movies, Robert recounted to an audience of more than 100 at Cubberly Community Theatre about how he tried to assassinate Saddam Hussein in the late 1990s.

“I pulled the trigger on Saddam,” he said. “At the last minute, the (White House) joint chief of staff found out about it. I was told not to call my lawyer.

"Anytime you hear that, you’re in trouble,” he said to a roomful of laughter. Eventually, he and his team got exonerated, he said.

Robert said he thinks Osama bin Laden is dead. “It’s just a hunch. He hasn’t been on tape since 2007. Where did the guy go? The chief of staff says he’s disappeared. I think he’s dead.”

Robert's books, See No Evil and Sleeping with the Devil, became the basis for the 2005 Academy Award-winning Warner Brothers film Syriana, starring George Clooney.

When Robert first joined the CIA, he was 23 years old. They told him he was going to lie about his name, where he lived and what car he drove. “You enter a parallel existence,” he said. Your life of lies and deception begins on day one, said both Robert and Dayna Baer. “And you better remember your lies,” Robert said.

The CIA culture forces you to alienate yourself from the people you once knew and loved, Dayna said. At the time she joined the CIA, she was married to someone outside the “cult,” she said.

“I could not tell him where I went or what I was doing,” she said. “It is easy to see how there is no way to keep a relationship together, or friends together, or even family—because you just go away.” Her first marriage eventually failed.

The Baer couple met in the 1990s on a covert assignment to track Hezbollah operatives in Sarajevo, Bosnia. When Dayna first saw Robert, he drove a conspicuous-looking lime-green car with “Orangine” written down the side, she said. “At that point, I had definite concerns for my team and my team’s safety,” she said to resounding laughter.

While the Baers recalled their life filled with adrenaline and adventure, they said they also became increasingly disenchanted with the life of spying. Their book describes their odyssey.

“You’re doing all these cool things. You think you’re making a difference,” Robert said. But when they quit and came back home, they found they had lost their families. “You just can’t go away and find 'em. You lose what’s important.”

The event was hosted by . The Baers live in California with their 3-year-old daughter, whom they adopted from Pakistan.