Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA Reviews

• Should Be a Four, But Overly Harsh Review Calls for Balance

  
  By A1S8AJIUIO6M9K on 2007-07-22
  While I would normally take away one star for a failure to provide useful policy context (the Presidents and their staffs were as much to blame for all these fiascos, and in his eagerness to do primary research, he appears to have completely missed some very important facts as stated in the varied memoires), on balance this is a tour d'force. See my lists for a diversity of other recommended reading.
  
  In two specific instances, the lack of context casts the CIA more negatively than it merits. The Indian nuclear test was missed in large part because the Pentagon was controlling the satellites and focusing them almost full time on Iraq. In Afghanistan, CIA not only performed heroically in establishing the geospatial foundation for precision air strikes, but it also had eyes on Bin Laden for four days, with Rumsfeld in one instance allowing the Pakistanis to evacuate 3000 Taliban and Al Qaeda, and General Franks in another refusing to put Rangers around Bin Laden, claiming it would take weeks. With such idiocy (or deliberate support for Al Qaeda) at the policy level, CIA can hardly be blamed for everything.
  
  The author makes no mention of the reality that CIA was Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC, nor does he review, as I do in The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption, both the long history of presidential and congressional commission dismay over CIA's lack of language skills and open source access and collegial relations with the Pentagon, and the fact that policy is always, invariably, responsible for as many high crimes, misdemeanors, and errors and omissions that comprise the massive betrayal of the public trust that the federal government has come to represent these past fifty years. See The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World and The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
  
  On Dick Cheney, who escapes notice in this book, but whose disdain for the CIA is now somewhat more understandable to me, see my review and explicit list of 23 impeachable offenses that the book documents, offenses that should have seen Cheney removed from office two years ago. I refer to Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency.
  
  While Eisenhower's condemning "legacy of ashes" is in the title, the better bottom line comes in the body of the book: "A harvest of lies and a complete lack of intelligence." Elsewhere the book abounds with hubris and arrogance, blindness, a propensity to slander and assassinate (ineptly). The CIA was "ham-handed and free-wheeling."
  
  The author draws on varied sources to characterize the clandestine service as skilled at "gross overstatement joined with grotesque incompetence." The essence of the book and CIA's continuous record of bluster and failure is ably captured on page 126, "Cloaked yet flamboyant--that was the CIA under Allen Dulles. It was a place 'where truly clandestine practices were compromised" while 'analysis was clothed in an atmosphere of secrecy that was unnecessary, frequently counterproductive, and in the long run damaging,' Cline thought."
  
  A few gems:
  
  * Truman wanted a global newspaper, not a cloak & dagger
  * Truman was trumped by his own Pentagon, which wanted a spy service
  * CIA directors routinely lied to presidents
  * Most DCI's left CIA worse off than before
  * FBI has more agents in NYC than CIA has case officers around the world
  * From the beginning CIA repressed democracy, loved dictators and corruption
  * Russians and Cubans have consistly broken all CIA efforts to penetrate (indeed, when all Cubans were doubled, two of my clandestine classmates had the pleasure of appearing on Cuban TV after being covertly filmed "in the act")
  * Thousands (sic) I believe hundreds of thousands, have died because of CIA complicity, errors, incompetence, or plain amorality.
  * CIA brought into the USA 100 Nazis every year, the maximum allowed them
  * CIA delusional, failed mission after failed mission (but all got promoted)
  * P 53: "At CIA, an order is a departure point for a discussion."
  * CIA funded hundreds of "morally reprehensible suicide missions."
  * CIA constantly fell for fabricators, con men, and double agents
  * CIA's scorecard in penetrating Manchuria: 101 killed, 111 captured. ALL.
  * CIA has had clandestine prisions in Germany, Japan, and Panama, "like Guantanamo only worse." Now they have others elsewhere.
  * CIA all too quickly adopted the tactics of its enemies.
  * Never, ever, has CIA had a sufficiency of linguists.
  * When Iran took the Embassy, the CIA Station consisted of four officers, not one of whom spoke Farsi. The Iranians were offended.
  * It was CIA that put the Bathists and ultimately Saddam Hussein in power.
  * CIA's support for "strongmen" inspired populist insurrections.
  * CIA suffered from cultural myopia, complete lack of languages, and antiquated information technology
  
  This book destroys Allen Dulles for all time.
  
  There is more but I recommend buying and purchasing this book, because as I write this America is in the midst of what may be the gavest Constitutional crisis of our time--an impotent Congress is allowing Dick Cheney to operate "without limits" in ways that are absolutely and unquestionably in clear violation of the Constitution in multiple ways.
  
  As I put the book down, ignoring some of my notes for lack of word count, I saw two with which to end this review.
  
  Robert Gates: "Adjust or die." This book puts the final nail in the CIA coffin.
  
  The author did not say, but my reading of the book creates the following note:
  
  US Government a Ship of Fools, with immoral Presidents asking incompetent spies to be equally immoral, while pathetically inept Members of Congress stood idly by, the occasional commission notwithstanding.
  
  Good people trapped in a very bad system where the pathologies of power nurture ideological fantasy and treason against the Republic.
  
  Five other books (see lists also):
  None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam
  Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars
  On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World
  Of Spies and Lies: A CIA Lie Detector Remembers Vietnam
  Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers
  
  
  

• Too Reliant on 'Company History'

  
  By A2BYKSTBMRNDL2 on 2007-07-17
  Tim Weiner's new book provides some succinct summaries of key moments in CIA history. The style is light, very readable and often amusing. For people unfamiliar with CIA history there is much to learn here.
  
  There are however serious problems. The book masquarades as a muckraking attack on the Agency, but, IMO, this is deceptive. Yes the book is critical of the Agency, but mostly about cats long out of the bag. The effect is to lend creedence to the authors version of some much more contested events. Because the author relies so heavily on information from CIA sources and CIA historians, this creedence is unwarranted.
  
  Notable examples include anything to do with the Kennedy Administration. Weiner's verison of the Bay of Pigs, somehow manages to blame everything on Bissell, and omits massive amounts of detail suggesting there was an attempt by the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to force Kennedy's hand and order a full scale invasion in 1961.
  
  David Talbot, in his excellent book Brothers, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, points out that many Kennedy bashers have one thing in common: they rely heavily on the buck passing and outright lying of Richard Helms and his media-friendly minion Sam Halpern. Weiner's book is a new case in point.
  
  Some have commented on how well document they think this book is. I find the opposite is true. Compare the documentation that Larry Hancock presents in support of Someone Would Have TalkedSomeone Would Have Talked: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Conspiracy to Mislead History. These standards are miles appart, perhaps quite litterally were we to compare odometers!
  
  In other areas, Weiner seems too intent on puting a bungeling, keystone cop type of interpretation on the wacky antics of the Agency. Other authors might justifiably use the word terrorism, when applied to CIA interventions in places like Guatemala and Indonesia. Weiner is too quick to leave thes hell-holes once the new dictatorship is established. The result is that the reader never fully grasps the amount of deaths the US is directly responsible for. In many of these countries, the CIA's invovlvement only began with the coups. They created paramilitary networks in Guatemala and El Salvador that were centralized under the presidents. This centralization of violence was the work of the efficient CIA, not a bunch of bungeling keystone cops. In Indonesia, the CIA direcly aided in the killing of between 750,000 and 1.25 million people. If there is a more censored history of genocide, its doing great work! Weiner's book downplays these numbers, and completely avoids the issue of CIA involvement in the bloodbath.
  
  Most historians agree that John McCone was something of a figurehead at the agency, while the real power was exerted by the the Helms-Shackley faction, without the shipbuilder knowing what was going on. Certainly there was much ado about Cuba that McCone was unaware of. None of that is in Weiners book. McCone comes accross as perhaps the most able leader in agency history. Trouble is he was in fact its most powerless, with possible competition form Stansfield Turner. This gets really bizarre when Weiner turns McCone into the hero of the Cuban Missile Crisis and makes the Kennedys seem more akin to Curtis Lemay.
  Kennedy insiders like Ted Sorenson would certainly disagree:
  
  I believe that CIA director John McCone preferred the air strike
  Invasion option to the blockade/quarantine option. And it was
  those two choices that we finally came down to. But he was
  careful to offer policy recommendations only when requested by
  the president and to keep the CIA's role primarily as one of
  gathering the facts.(CNN interview, 1998)
  
  Weiner's view of McCone as diametrically opposed to Sorenson's: McCone is presented as the savior during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Sure he is entitled to disagree with most historians, but he better offer more sources than the self-serving CIA documents he uses. He is on equally shaky Langley ground when he asserts that JFK directly ordered the assassination of Castro. This question is subject to intense debate in 2007, with so much new material recently being analyzed. If Weiner wants to assert that JFK directly ordered the Castro hit, he needs a lot more backup. He also completely ignores the pressure that Kennedy was under from the JCS, and much of the corporate media, which was directly trying to undermine his Cuba policy. He does not mention Kennedy's history of using a two-track policy, of exploring military options with the CIA and JCS, while simultaneously exploring peaceful solutions via backchannels to Laos, Vietnam, and Cuba. Weiner's account of Kennedy and the CIA is vacuum packed, straight from Langley.
  
  This brings us to another point. Weiner does very little to help us understand how the CIA works with other political and economic forces to shape our foreign policy. Close relations with defense contractors are never mentioned. Close ties with companies favoring direct intervention by the US to keep wages at starvation level are also barely metioned if at all (What no United Fruit?) What about ties to newspapers like Mr. Weiner's own New York Times. To his credit, Weiner does acknowledge these ties-- in just one paragraph! He fails to even begin to explore how these very direct ties actually affected policy. Perhaps it would be a bad career move.
  
  Weiner's book masquerades as muckraking. It isn't. Its primary problem is that it relies far too much an Agency sources, particularly those associated with the mendacious Mr. Helms. These sources are used in precisely the most damning moment in the history of the Agency. At this point it might serve the reader to look up the meaning of the intelligence term "limited hangout".
  
  It is worth noting that this book is so anti-Kenndey as to make even Seymour Hersh blush. Just what one would expect from his Weiner's Langley sources. ( Seriously, look at the mans notes and note just how much is from CIA papers. This does not mean that all CIA reords are false. Of course not. I am simply stating that there is a very severe imbalance here. The strategy seems to be, if the Warren Commissin no longer holds watter-- and it certaily doesn't as Columbia University history professor Alan Brinley points out in a recent review of Talbot's book-- lets switch to making it look like Kennedy deserved what's coming. One is free to argue this, but again, the sourcing has to be much more convincing; there needs to be much less reliance on an agency with a majic bullet to grind.
  
  

• A Degree of Truth

  
  By A2MYKB0GE6OD8Q on 2007-08-10
  As Tim Weiner makes clear in the first pages of this book, the driving force for the creation of CIA was to establish a clearing house where all intelligence information available to the U.S. could collated, vetted, and organized into coherent knowledge. And as he also makes clear this mission was subverted and overshadowed from the start by the culture of the veterans of the WWII Office of Strategic Services (OSS) who dominated the early CIA. These veterans were far more comfortable with covert action and clandestine collection of intelligence than desk bound intelligence analysis. So from the time of its creation to the present, the Directorate of Intelligence (analytic shop) has existed in the shadow of the Directorate of Operations (DO). Virtually every CIA Director from the beginning has focused on one or all of the following: initiating DO operations; cleaning up messes left by DO operations; or reorganizing the DO to do a better job.
  
  This book is a case in point. Although ostensibly about CIA as an institution, the book really focuses on DO and its alleged failures. This fascination with the DO by journalists, Presidents, and CIA Directors has allowed the analytic arm of CIA to atrophy from almost the very first. Yet the many failures and embarrassments that Weiner has chosen to chronicle in this book are as much the fault of DI as DO.
  
  Now this book is essentially a massive and well written critique of CIA and especially the DO. For the most part it is pretty accurate, but as CIA has pointed out in a rather pitiful rebuttal of the book, it is not entirely fair and balanced. For example, in 1998 India exploded a nuclear weapon to the utter surprise and amazement of the entire U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). Weiner jumps on the CIA in particular for its failure to predict this event. What he did not mention was the fact that India used its considerable knowledge of the workings of the U.S. Intelligence System to develop and execute a masterful denial and deception program. Further, India has a world class counter-intelligence service that makes collection of secret intelligence in India a very dicey proposition in the best of circumstances. True CIA was guilty in this instance of mirror imaging and failed to creatively use a number of clues available from secret and open sources, but it also had a really tough nut to crack, As Weiner chronicles the many missteps that CIA has made, he would be more credible had he also gone into a bit more detail about the impressive obstacles faced by CIA operations officers. In the end this is a fascinating book that accurately chronicles a part, but not the entire CIA story.
  
  
  

• A first- rate richly sourced thought- provoking study

  
  By AHD101501WCN1 on 2007-07-12
  The incident which gives this book its title reveals something essential about its tone and direction. At the end of his two - terms of office President Eisenhower called into his office, the former legendary OSS officer and director of the CIA Allen Dulles, and said to him point- blank. " After eight years you have left me , a "legacy of ashes." In other words the institution whose task it was to provide vital intelligence to the U.S. Executive on world - affairs had not done its job. Eisenhower was concerned about what legacy would be handed on to his successor, President Kennedy. And surely enough some months later 'The Bay of Pigs' fiasco occurred in great part because of the faulty plan and information provided by the CIA's Richard Bissell. Bissell believed an infiltrating semi- Army of 1600 would easily defeat Castro's sixty- thousand troops. The result was the Kennedy Administration's first major disaster.
  The two - sides of Intelligence work, the gathering of information, and the undertaking of covert operations are generously surveyed in this work. Weiner a long- time reporter for the NY Times devoted twenty- years to this book, and in the course of it read through fifty- thousand declassified CIA Intelligence documents. He also interviewed ten former directors of the CIA.
  He points out errors made all along the way. Frank Wisner at the beginning ignored 'intelligence gathering' and sent during the Korean War thousands of hired agents to suicidal behind- the- enemy- lines operations. In the Bay of Pigs fiasco and in numerous other operations the CIA instead of providing hard, truthful contradictory analysis essentially worked to politically support a prior decision of the Executive branch. Speaking 'truth to power' has not been its essential strong point.
  Weiner understands the difficulty of having a spy agency in a democracy where there is always a certain discomfort regarding covert operations. His argument is nonetheless not about the wrongness of having such an Agency in a Democracy, but rather about the too frequent failures of judgment and action.
  This book is extremely rich , providing new insight into a great share of American post- war history. It touches upon almost all the major conflicts. It also chronicles CIA successes wherever they have occurred, It is not in other words a one- sided politically motivated bashing of the Agency but rather a thoughtful, informative, challenging study that may provide valuable guidance as to how the Agency should be reformed to better confront the many security challenges the U.S. is facing today.
  
  

• Well Sourced And Insightful History

  
  By A133TJ4WGTUF76 on 2007-07-06
  Just got finished reading LOA and was immediately impressed with the scholarship of Tim Weiner's account of the CIA. Weiner provides extensive support for his sources and paints a picture of the CIA as an agency that cannot come to grips with its mandates and constantly justifying its existence through questionable tactics.
  
  This book shines in its vivid accounts of the agency from 1950-1970, covering its inception after Truman, its founding under Ike and bumbling under Kennedy/LBJ and Nixon. The reader leaves with an understanding of the CIA central role in American Foreign Policy during the time and its subsequent downfall.
  
  Would have liked more information from the Clinton and Bush 43 administations. Doesn't really get in depth with the CIA's role in picking up on the growing omen of terrorism. (The book briefly mentions Oklahoma City and the 1993 WTC bombing). I assume this may be because documents from these incidents have not yet been declassified.
  
  All in all this book gives a great snapshot at how the CIA came to be and where its future lies.
  
  
• A brilliant and immensely important book
  By A3JA7MBAIZDSCA on 2007-06-29
  If you want to understand the mess made by the Bush Administration in the conduct of US foreign policy since 9/11, read this book. What it tells us is that ... the secretive, half-baked worldview of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al is nothing new. Rather it is the product of decades of US attempts to change the world, without first attempting to understand it. It's beautifully written. Did the impending release of Legacy of Ashes provoke the CIA to release its "Crown Jewels" the day before?
  
  
• a flawed book about a deeply flawed agency
  By A3VY1QHFJF0Y7H on 2007-07-13
  This is a very long book about a very long history of incompetence at the CIA. While there have been other books written about just how much the CIA resembles the Keystone Cops, such as Mike Ledeen's "Terror Masters" book written several years ago, Weiner has put together a laundry list of bumbling that is most telling. As Ledeen says, the CIA has become an agency with the efficiency of the Post Office and the intensity of the Agriculture Department. (Or was it the other way round?)
  
  Given Weiner's employer's revulsion of anything resembling protecting national security, I was surprised to see so many of the bi-partisan misdeeds by the CIA revealed in this book. Of course given Weiner's contacts at the CIA, he knew that the "Family Jewels" report would be published sooner rather than later, so that the revelations regarding the massive number of orders from JFK and RFK to illegally spy on newspaper reporters and others would be published in any event. But in looking at the book and the number of the CIA's massively stupid blunders over the years, the book does show that this agency is an equal-opportunity embarrassment to anyone in a policy position, regardless of the political party in power. While Weiner tries to be "neutral" as much as he can, he obviously is unable to disguise his true colors by giving fairly frequent passes to Democrats and bad grades to Republicans. But in spite of his bias, the book does reveal many facts, even if Weiner tries to shade them, so that the book is more of an indictment of an agency that is probably beyond repair. Sadly, Weiner does not really get into the institutional barriers that prevent a true shake-up of the prima donnas at the agency who have never been in the field but sit at their desks at Langley pontificating about subjects they know so little about that they have to suggest their equally clueless and unemployed husbands go on assignments which they are unqualified to perform properly.
  Weiner does acknowledge some limited successes in operations and analysis, but the number of successes vs. failures are further proof of just how defective this agency is. Sadly, there are some truly great patriots and heroes who have worked and even given their lives at the agency, but they are massively outnumbered by extraordinary incompetents.
  Weiner says he is concerned about the agency's inability to support the only remaining super-power with a matching super performance of a first-rate intelligence agency, but his reporting over the years has shown that he relies on the shoe clerks at the agency who keep him supplied with secrets so that he can get front page coverage at the Times.
  If you read this book, be prepared to spend a lot of time shaking your head at just how inept an organization the CIA is. And of course this agency is no different than any other in DC, such as the State Department, where Congress dictates and delimits, but is never willing to take responsibility for the legislation that kills any possibility of risk taking in an agency where risks are the name of the game in order to be effective. It is no wonder that most Presidents have tried to find ways of going around the agency than getting lost if the quagmire of reforming it.
  I suspect that this book will not really go very far since it labels JFK, LBJ and prominent Democrats to be criminals by ordering the CIA to break the law and spy on Americans without any congressional oversight or authorization. If too many people read this book with an open mind, it would show that Nixon was just an amateur in this game compared to his predecessors. And of course that would not be a good thing for those who can't handle the truth. If you wonder how someone like George Tenet ( and his unintentionally telling exposé on his abysmal appointment and retention ) can be picked to run an agency that he admitted he was essentially unqualified to command, this book will give you a bit of a peek into the stomach of the whale. It is not a pretty sight.
  
  
  
• The perfect lack of intelligence agency for an insipidly stupid president
  By A13FBTZ8SO8T3D on 2007-07-25
  The sad thing is I knew a number of operatives who were quite successful, one in fact so much so that his house was torched by KGB. He had brought in from the cold the senior most ranking Soviet bloc spy from Bulgaria. The other supplied the money for a number of successful events.
  Unfortunately, as this book makes clear, such victories pale by comparison to the colossal blunders that the CIA may never live down. What good is a spy agency if they can't get the job done right and in a timely manner. Unaccountable to anyone, they proceed to spend money and pursue an agenda with impunity, regardless of the progeny, good or evil, or as this book implies stillborn, it bears. From Dulles on, it is a carnival of Yalies, aristocrats, two bit carny hucksters and plain old slobs who earned the sobriquet of the gang that couldn't shoot, never mind straight. Central Impotent Agency is more the moniker.
  One would have to take the notes on face value and assume that the author has done his job as much as possible, given the Agency's reluctance to look in the mirror. Valerie Plame might have reason to be glad she is out of such a dysfunctional unit.
  Historically, succeeding Presidents from Eisenhower up until Reagan and Bush I (who was on staff and the genius behind both Noriega and Hussein) realized that the Agency could not be counted on for anything that resembled accuracy. So much so that first Carter and then Clinton opted to begin cutting funds for a pork barrel boondoggle unless they could actually achieve soimething. Would that every department in the US government were held to such a standard. Not likely, especially post-Pinocchio. It strikes you as astounding that given the first attempt on the World Trade Towers in the early 90's (never mind the Gulf War), that the Agency had so few Arab cultural and linguistics experts in Langley or on the ground. Recognizing a sucker when they saw one, doubles for the nefarious Islamist miscreants have played the Agency for the rubes they are. Ever wonder what the Chinese and the Indians think?
  Of course the fortunes of the CIA would radically change with the ascent to power of the Fool who would be King. The Agency and Alfred E. Bush seem to enable each others' worst qualities. The book is unsparing in its criticism, both what is written in black and white and what lies beneath the surface. Thus when you see Matt Damon or Jeffrey Wright as CIA shepherds, in fact it is only a movie. In this book the operatives of the CIA are more like Peter Faulk and Alan Arkin. Daniel Craig and Sean Connery may be fictional dreams of MI5, but to its credit, the Brits have actually managed effectively to pursue their national security interests, ferreting out vis a vis Smiley type operations the doubles, and working to undermine those who would undermine them.
  We live in a new world where Al Qayeda is a bit like SPECTRE: an elusive mastermind with significant resources seeks to undermine balances of power, sectors of security while stroking whatever the white cat is for him in the Pakistani mountains. Don't bet your neighbors dog that the Agency will ever worm him out. Hopefully there is a real life Daniel Craig among the Brits. As Eisenhower stated so long ago, what the CIA has to contribute is a legacy of ashes. The Roman Empire's pet dog can't smell.
  
  
  
• a bad book
  By AKBBZYUG0B2OB on 2007-12-05
  Three reviews that need to be noted:
  1. Jeffrey Richelson wrote a review that is available online criticizing Weiner's book for concentrating solely on covert action and ignoring two major fields of intelligence--collection and analysis not to mention counterintelligence.
  2. Christopher Andrew wrote a critical review in the British press that was also scathing.
  3. Nicholas Dujmovic, a CIA historian, shows that Weiner's overly praised research was faulty from the start, including the title of the book itself which Weiner takes from a quote from President Eisenhower but mistakes the subject of the quote. Dujmovic shows that Weiner repeats this mistake throughout the book. His most relevant criticism is that while Weiner claims to have done a lot of research, it is meaningless if he misuses his sources as he does so much throughout the book. Dujmovic's review can be found at the CIA's public website.
  
  While Weiner claims to have interviewed lots of people, his notes indicate an over-reliance on non-CIA observers. Imagine writing a book about the State Department and quoting more CIA officers than State Department officers and you get the idea.
  
  The sad truth is that this book will sit on bookshelves and be cited as a source. Weiner won the National Book Award for non-fiction when it should have been for fiction.
  
  
• Legacy of Ashes- The never never land of the CIA
  By A4L6HE1B182O1 on 2007-07-29
  This is a well researched and well written book. It takes you from one misadventure to the next. I had a hard time putting it down. (I am glad I finished it before the last Harry Potter book arrived.)
  The author shows that it is well nigh impossible to have a clandestine service doing covert operations that do not go out of control. In an open society can you have an institution which has to have deniability but when called to account, lies to cover up its misdeeds? How do you prevent operatives in the field from defining the "national interest" in their own way, especially if the internal controls are weak?
  
  Tim Weiner has shown that in the CIA, it could not be done. Almost from the beginning of the agency, the covert operations had long range consequences that were calamitous for the national interest.
  Examples abound: bringing down the government of Iran and installing the Shah, being blind to the excesses of his brutal regime; our whole involvement in Central America, incl. installling and backing ruthless anti-democratic dictators, earning us the hatred of millions of people; encouraging the overthrow of President Diem in Vietnam, and Salvador Allende in Chile; and of course, relying on very shaky evidence that became the "slam-dunk" intelligence on WMDs in Iraq that justified our "removal" of Saddam Hussein. Each episode is well told.
  
  Just as egregious were the intelligence failures: the unrealistic estimates of success of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba; the wildly over estimated missile strength of the Soviet Union; the continued belief in the monolithic Communist threat, long after the Soviet-Chinese rift; the total failure to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union or the falll of the Berlin wall; the support of the Afghan resistance with weapons and money without realizing that these could and would be turned against us; the failure to adequately see the rising threat of Islamic extremists and the terrorism coming out of that; and of course, the hand ringing and failure to uncover the 9/11 plot.
  
  The structural problems are massive, and the internal culture of the CIA so ingrained, there is no way to change the agency by tinkering or adjusting things here and there. That's all been tried by various previous directors. Realizing that the agency for all practical purposes is no longer functioning, most of the top analysts have abandoned ship for the private sector, leaving behind an even more inexperienced crop of young agents with low morale, and devoid of critical foreign language skills. The agency is floundering, overshadowed by the military intelligence agenies which get about 80% of the funds spent on intelligence. I agree with Tim Weiner: the CIA has no credibility left, so let's abolish it, and start all over again.
  
  It is a good read, for those who care about America, it is a must read if you are interested in what was done in our name by an agency that had no effective internal or external controls, and which at times was either ignored or flagrantly misused by various presidents.
  
  
• Weiner never says: How would HE have fought the Cold War?
  By A1TWH3KD5YJQHM on 2008-04-04
  It seems odd to say, but the biggest problem with this lengthy, detailed, heavily researched book, is what it leaves out. Weiner's book repeatedly raises questions it fails to answer.
  
  Detail is devoted to the drunks, the screw-ups, the mediocre and the out-of-control cowboys who best seem to fit his thesis, as well as his New York Times-reporter view of reality. But frequently some CIA official is introduced to the reader as sterling, as one of the best, as a rock of espionage with much to his credit.
  
  Detail is devoted to every secret failure and public fiasco and, no doubt, there were many. But, if there were so many sterling agents, what were they doing all that time? If they had successes - could we hear a little more about them? Weiner pays lip service to a few things that go right in the CIA's tormented history, but frames them repeatedly as exceptions that prove the rule. Were there more of them? If so, why didn't he write more evenhandedly? If there weren't - then how were so many of his characters sterling, upright figures of espionage? Or is he just buttering up his sources? It certainly didn't hurt the Bob Gateses and Dick Helmses to get so cozy with Weiner. They come off sounding pretty good as a result.
  
  One aspect of the book, and of one major dilemma faced by the CIA for six decades, reminds me of an old doctor joke:
  
  Surgeons know nothing and do everything.
  
  Internists know everything and do nothing.
  
  Psychiatrists know nothing and do nothing.
  
  The endless rivalry and competition for the CIA's identity between covert operations, on the one hand, and on classic espionage, intelligence gathering and analysis on the other, is a lot like this. The covert ops guys are seen as cowboys who know nothing about foreign countries but go in and overthrow their governments. The analysis guys, meanwhile, are people with much information at their fingertips, but biased against action because it may jeopardize sources, or tip delicate balances that only they and a few State Department mandarins understand.
  
  His real unanswered questions are these. Is the CIA doing the right or wrong things, and ineptly or competently? Is it wrong to overthrow a government, as lots of liberal New York Times readers would tend to think? Or only wrong to fail and get caught, as those on the right might think? Weiner wants it both ways; he finds them both inept and evil, but if they're ineptly evil - wouldn't that be a good thing?
  
  He faults the agency for its Cold War delivery of big bags of money to friendly politicians in key countries, like Italy. But this seems to me like a fundamental weapon, highly preferable to wars or coups, and delivering major bang for the buck in terms of keeping Italy from going Communist when it mattered.(I know Weiner is used to writing for New York Times readers, who may not comprehend that that's actually a good thing.)
  
  In hammering the agency particularly hard for the Dulles years of the early Cold War, Weiner doesn't cut it enough slack for the daunting task it faced. They had to start an agency from scratch; develop the kind of intelligence one might generally expect only after working patiently planting the seeds for ground sources for decades; and meanwhile do all this at a time when the world was seen as falling to an alien and dangerous ideology, which was gaining ground everywhere. The Soviets took Eastern Europe in 1945. Spent the next couple of years subverting any return to democracy and installing Communism. China fell to Mao in 1949. North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950. The Communists, thanks to Klaus Fuchs, Julius Rosenberg and Ted Hall, had the bomb. The entire underdeveloped world was in play with homegrown socialists, communists and revolutionaries consuming most of the oxygen. Was it unreasonable to think they'd end up creating hostile, anti-American, one-party states whenever they had the chance?
  
  It is less unfair to criticize the agency for its failures to develop deep sources over time. It doesn't sound like they didn't try; there's only so much one can do spying on a closed society locked down tight; but they failed to predict nearly every major development on the world scene.
  
  It is fashionable to attack James Angleton as paranoid, to fault him for singlehandedly destroying our ability to spy on the Soviets for two decades. But he'd been the closest unwitting ally of the worst double agent in history, Kim Philby. He obviously had abiding respect for the KGB's abilities to double people and to play very subtle spy games. Proof of this is scattered richly throughout this very book - like all the blown efforts to insert anti-Communist agents into Eastern Europe, given away by Philby as well as traitors in their own ranks.
  
  Countless good agents continuing into the present day are blown by moles, by double agents, by warlord collaborators out on the frontier who turn out to be working for both sides, and so on. Weiner wants the CIA to learn from experience, but faults them for doing exactly that. Angleton may have been an extreme example, but Weiner never answers how the CIA should instead be deciding which walk-in Soviet spies to trust, and which to distrust. He doesn't answer how we can better spy on closed countries, better prevent foreign intelligence from cleaning our clocks or better influence other countries, particularly if our spies need to become Boy Scouts.
  
  We don't trust Arab Americans to work intelligence if they have families in the Middle East? Maybe this is a lesson learned the hard way during the Cold War. Their relatives are vulnerable to threats and violence in most Middle Eastern countries. Why wouldn't ruthless adversaries use this to squeeze our agents?
  
  I can't fault Weiner's research, or bringing the agency's whole history into perspective. The agency use of secrecy to cover up its history of failure is probably the book's greatest single contribution.
  
  I can, however, fault his wiseass, know-it-all tone, and his failure to offer answers for the questions he raises about the Agency.
  
  You know so much, smart guy? Then tell us: How would YOU have fought the Cold War?
  
  
• Intelligence as Misnomer
  By A3H86VWLHHG96C on 2007-09-09
  This is a very thoroughly-researched and well-documented history of the CIA, from its inception in 1947 to the present day. The author, Tim Weiner, is a New York Times reporter who has covered the agency for many years. His book is based on more than 50,000 documents from the CIA archives, many of them recently declassified. It is stronger on events that happened more than, say, twenty years ago, since documents on the last two decades still remain classified.
  
  This is primarily a history of the CIA's failures, and the list of failures is very long. Even some of the agency's rare successes ultimately end up as unintended consequences. The outright failures were failures of intelligence, events that the agency was unable to foresee such as the Soviet explosion of the atomic bomb, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and, more recently, the 9/11 attacks. Failures to predict the future are somewhat forgivable since they are crimes of omission or just plain incompetence.
  
  The author tells us that the CIA's mission from the beginning was problematic. It has the duel task of collecting intelligence and conducting covert operations. This combination is a dangerous mix in that it will end up corrupting the integrity of both. Many of the covert operations such as the Bay of Pigs were undeniable failures. But many of the so-called successes such as aiding Islamic warriors against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan or installing the Shah in Iran turned out to be very short-lived. The unintended consequences or "blowback" have come back to haunt in a very big way. This is not to say that the CIA is responsible for the current state of Iran or Afghanistan, that would be giving them too much credit. The emphasis of this book is about the CIA's ineffectiveness.
  
  Weiner seems more concerned about the incompetence of the agency than their immorality. Unlike the post-Watergate screeds against the CIA calling for its termination, this author wants to build a better agency. This is laudable. Anyone who thinks the United States does not need an intelligence agency is living in a dream world. Whether we need covert operations is still an open question. The morality of these operations need to be discussed before they can be conducted.
  
  Weiner's first step in building a better agency would be hiring competent personnel who speak the language and know the history and culture of the country where they are stationed. (Read Amazon reviewer and former spy Robert D Steele, who has written at great length on this subject.) The current practise of hiring political cronies to foreign stations would be laughable if it weren't so tragic. Weiner's account of the student takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979 is a good example. They captured William Daugherty, head of CIA station. They accused him of masterminding a vast spy network in the Middle East. In reality Daugherty had only worked for the agency nine months and didn't speak the language. No intelligence there.
  
  In the back of my mind I can't help thinking that the agency must have gotten some things right, and that Weiner is only giving half of the balance sheet. It must be noted that failures make good reading, and that the prevention of a disaster or a terrorist act does not. In any event, this book is a good read and hopefully it will make the agency more circumspect about its future operations.
  
  
• Graphic history of the CIA--replete with a telling of its failures
  By AQQLWCMRNDFGI on 2007-08-25
  After eight years as President, Dwight Eisenhower was frustrated with the CIA. He concluded that it was not working right. He observed to CIA Director Allen Dulles that (page 167) "I have suffered an eight-year defeat on this." He went on to note that he feared that he would (page 167) ". . .leave a legacy of ashes" to his successor.
  
  This is a book about the CIA, from its beginning to its sad failures in Iraq. It depicts an organization that had some very talented and some very poor people in charge. According to the author, Tim Weiner, it seemed to make no difference what the quality of the leadership was; the CIA continued to struggle and would often "get it wrong." His basic contention and the thesis of the book (page xiii): "It [the book] describes how the most powerful country in the history of Western civilization has failed to create a first-rate spy service. That failure constitutes a danger to the national security of the United States." A primary example is 9/11. The latter chapters of the book describe how more and more information began developing suggesting a dramatic event to be orchestrated by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda. But the CIA did not have the ability to turn this mounting evidence of an action by Al Qaeda into something concrete enough to try to prevent the event beforehand. The book described near desperation by the CIA as it became increasingly convinced that something was going to happen--but having no clue when or where.
  
  One issue--the perpetual struggle between two different charges given the agency: covert operations and gathering of intelligence. The two often ended up in conflict. Much of the time, failures in intelligence doomed covert operations. E.g., lack of knowledge of the situation on the ground in Cuba doomed the Bay of Pigs invasion.
  
  Another issue. The poor track record in intelligence. The CIA tried to inject spies into other countries. However, the intelligence agencies of other countries often infiltrated cells developed by the CIA and either destroyed them (if the book is right, hundreds of willing allies of the United States were killed as a result) or fed back misinformation or "turned them" to serve as double agents. Examples mentioned include efforts in Poland and the old Soviet Union.
  
  Any book as grim as this sends off some warning bells as I read it, making me wonder if the person is bending over backwards to do a "hatchet job." However, Weiner's uses of sources (including internal reports) and interviews with many former CIA directors provide some pretty convincing basis to his arguments.
  
  The book, though, also notes that President after President misused the CIA for political purposes, pressured the CIA to tell them what they wanted to hear. The value of "speaking truth to power" has not characterized many American Presidents--whether Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, or George W. Bush.
  
  Clearly, there have been successes--think of the CIA's role in Afghanistan as the Northern Alliance was able to defeat the Taliban (at least on the short run), a tale given rather short shrift by Weiner. He spends more time on other failures in Afghanistan.
  
  But even some of the instances that many trumpet as successes, the overthrow of governments in Iran and Guatemala, did not make things any better in those regions in the long run. Indeed, the CIA interventions (which appear to have succeeded only by good luck rather than great planning) put dictators in place, who were pretty rough on their own people. Is that a good measure of success?
  
  There are some strained arguments here and there. At one point (as other reviewers have noted), her bemoans those times when there is a mass exodus of experienced agents. However, if the agency's track record were so miserable, so what? At another point, he accuses the CIA of not having the guts to go after bin Laden in Afghanistan, even though taking him out may have led to the deaths of many civilians (e.g., pages 472-473). Such deaths have made the American efforts in Afghanistan more difficult, alienating the people. And if the intel were not good in the first place (and it often was not good, according to Weiner), the deaths would not have been compensated for by killing bin Laden himself.
  
  But this is a powerful book. While his approach is quite negative, the documentation is pretty solid and it is striking how many former Directors of the CIA have a critical take on the agency that they once headed. Worth looking at and thought-provoking.
  
  
  
• So many errors that the CIA Press Office put out a rare press release
  By A1NK0UOK4BGA82 on 2007-07-14
  I read Legacy of Ashes as soon as it was released since it drew from some factual information from the family jewel disclosures of my generation. As a former CIA and Intelligence Community official, I was shocked at the amount of erroneous information and the bias displayed by Tim Weiner in bashing CIA. In the academic world, I am used to CIA bashing, so I wrote a couple of Amazon reviews and deleted them, since my employment agreeement with CIA requires me to obtain prior approval of anything that I publish that relates to my knowledge of classified CIA activities and I could not be specific as to why this book is just wrong on many points.
  I am pleased the CIA public affairs office (yes, sadly CIA has a public affairs office) issued a rare press release on August 6, 2007 pointing out some of the gross mistakes in Legacy of Ashes:The History of CIA. I recommend that you read that explanation on the CIA website before wasting your money on this book.
  
  
• A disgrace
  By A2BZCXR71CT6H2 on 2007-08-13
  I am sorry I purchased and read this book. I figured out early on that it was a political hatchet job, and poorly written to boot.
  So many stories of outrageous incompetence and waste and wrong headedness - all unsubstantiated.
  
  Such hatred for our country this man must have to write such stuff.
  
  
• superficial re-hash of old material
  By A3HGJTBQW9X97T on 2007-08-26
  Admittedly it would be difficult to write a "history" with only limited access to important material. Weiner belabors the real or imagined failures of CIA, a popular whipping boy of journalists, skipping over large and important developments. For example, Stansfield Turner, is scarcely mentioned. His inadequacy was quickly evident to intelligence professionals, yet he fired hundreds of competent mid-level case officers, resulting in a shortage of linguistically qualified officers in the 1980s, forcing the Agency to retain the likes of Aldrich Ames.This was so widely known, Weiner should not have missed it.
  
  
• Too jounalistic
  By A2HQO2MS1SKNXX on 2007-10-05
  While Legacy of Ashes provides interesting bits of information regarding the CIA's distant and recent past, it is not good history because it provides almost no context for the events that it describes. It leaves one with the impression of a CIA populated by comic book bad guys, lunatics and clowns.
  
  In the Second World War and the period immediately thereafter, having been forced out of a self-imposed hiatus from dealing with the rest of the world, the United States had come face-to-face with totalitarianisms and the unparalleled carnage they had wrought. We learned of the Nazi death camps, the victims of communism in countries that were grist for the Soviet mill and, as time went on, untold millions who died for Mao's Marxist experiments in China. It should be no surprise that those who witnessed the slaughter and destruction that followed what appeared to be a triumphant march of ideology would be able to justify extreme measures to slow it down. This central reality gave rise to dramatic changes in the U.S. military including the build-up of a nuclear arsenal, the Marshall plan, communist "witch hunts", the space program, and the CIA. In short, the world was a very different and much more dangerous place than we had imagined, the U.S. was the only major western nation left intact, and we were struggling to find effective ways to deal with existential threats.
  
  Unfortunately, very little of this context is provided in Legacy of Ashes. Too often we are left with nothing but the operational details of failed efforts to accomplish - what? The CIA and/or the White House wanted to overthrow Guatemala and Iran or assassinate Castro because personalities were enamored of covert operations?
  
  That so many efforts were poorly thought out or poorly executed can be instructive, but, again, not without more context. Although rarely mentioned, the Soviets were engaged in covert operations around the world, including assassinations, coups and the arming and training of some stunningly unsavory characters. Were the Soviets more successful? If so, why? Is there something about our national character or form of governance that makes us preternaturally unable to succeed in the arena of covert operations and intelligence? In recent years the United States appears to have reached a consensus view that many of the types of efforts to which the early CIA devoted enormous energy should not be a part of our arsenal. Is this view correct in light of the very different types of threats we now face? Unfortunately, these important topics are not considered in any depth in this book.
  
  Finally, I was left to wonder whether the author's reliance on primary and secondary documents and interviews with former CIA staff led him to accept their biases even as he criticized the agency. In particular his treatment of Vietnam seems insufficiently critical of conclusions reached by CIA analysis. For example, his treatments of Diem and the role of the Buddhist monks are facile and superficial. And I was surprised by his apparent acceptance of the notion that the war was not winnable because of the size and strength of the Viet Cong and that the Tet offensive provided evidence of this. In fact, the Tet offensive was a catastrophic military defeat for the Viet Cong which left it routed. It never again played any significant role in the war which became increasingly conventional, right through the Easter offensive in 1972, which the ARVN with U.S. air power defeated, and the final invasion in 1975 which saw Soviet tanks rolling through Saigon. But the author appears to accept the CIA's contemporaneous assessments over those of subsequent history.
  
  While the author has clearly put a great deal of work into this volume, it is more of a greatly expanded news article - heavy on details while short on context - than the history of the CIA that the nation needs, and may have to wait many years to get.
  
  
  
• Soft critique of the CIA by a CIA fanboy
  By A3BNZ3HM6NSM6D on 2007-12-26
  I bought this book without thinking (my bad) because Time magazine picked it as one of their 10 best nonfiction books of the year. I also noticed that it said "Winner of the Pulitzer Prize" on the front cover. How could I go wrong? Easily, it turns out.
  
  First of all, this book didn't win the Pulitzer; the author did (shame on them for not simply saying something like "by Pulitzer-winning author, Tim Weiner). Labeling aside, I was quickly overcome by how quickly and completely Weiner glosses over key events such as the Church Committee and the Company's involvement in things like the JFK assassination and 9/11.
  
  For those of you new to CIA history, the Church Committee (a U.S. Senate committee from 1975) pulled a huge amount of dirty laundry out of the CIA's washing machine. Although many key activities of the CIA remained hidden, it was still an astonishing series of revelations that included things like numerous assassination plots (some successful) and illegal actions taken against U.S. citizens domestically (e.g., wiretapping and behavior modification). Weiner, however, only mentions this period in passing over a few pages. Mostly, he describes it as an annoyance to the government and details how the CIA effectively kept going after a minor personnel shuffle.
  
  I won't get into too many details on JFK or 9/11 as those are better covered in other books (The Assassinations by DiEugenio et al., and Debunking 9/11 Debunking by Griffin). However, I will say that Wiener is such a Company spokesman that the CIA's actions to derail Jim Garrison's case against Clay Shaw aren't even mentioned once. The coverage of 9/11 is many times worse. First, Weiner briefly warms up the tired old meme that EVERY U.S agency that could have easily prevented the attacks that day simply goofed. Give me a break! That type of failure simply does not happen and Weiner's hatchet job (less than 2 pages on 9/11 out of a 702 page book) speaks volumes that his book, sadly, does not.
  
  Weiner further embarrasses himself in his post-9/11 coverage by painting George Tenet (not to mention Colin Powell) as a proud man who allowed Bush and company to bully him into taking America to war on faulty intelligence. Call me crazy, but it's really hard to imagine that Tenet's CIA, funded to the tune of roughly $30 billion annually, is going to just kowtow to someone like GWB without there being another play caller (or callers) in the wings that both serve. Regardless, either Weiner is missing the obvious conspiracy or is simply willing to excuse a trillion-dollar war because Tenet was too proud of a man . Is Weiner a New York Times columnist or the next Hemingway?
  
  The NYT comment was on purpose. I'm not a Times-hating conservative, but the NYT's commitment to uncovering the truth in Washington is about the same as my commitment to learning dead languages. Keep in mind that Carl Bernstein (of Watergate reporting fame) uncovered deep connections between the CIA and both Time and the NYT (among many others) more than 30 years ago. Until people like NYT reporter Tim Weiner start printing unvarnished facts about the subjects they report on, I guess Bernstein's warnings will continue to go unheeded.
  
  On balance, I gave this book 2 stars because it covers a lot of ground and would honestly make a good primer for someone just starting out in researching this area. Keep in mind that you will never find an authoritative book on CIA history because such a book would simply attract too much negative attention. The truth can only be tangentially glimpsed once you read about 30-50 books on American political and military history. Then you will start to see the outlines of the CIA and its true legacy of ashes.
  
  
• A Phoenix From The Ashes?
  By A1UBELZ7KJCE4Z on 2007-08-02
  Pulitzer Prize winning NY Times reporter Tim Weiner has produced the first and only history of the CIA based entirely on archives and documents. It's grim reading.
  
  Weiner's writing style thankfully divides the book into short, easily digestible 5-10 page subsections within 20-30 page Chapters. Direct quotations from ex-CIA Directors, US Presidents, Agents and documents provide the factual skeleton upon which Weiner's prose builds tissue and muscle. And blood. Lots of blood.
  
  The 1953 CIA anti-Mossadegh coup in Iran shows how bribery and brute force thuggery toppled a democratically elected Islamic government for U.S. oil interests. 54 years later, Iran and America are implacable enemies with the Bush regime desperately seeking any possible justification to preempt them as they did to Iraq. Iran, obviously, has sponsored major terrorist and militant strikes on the US and remains extremely suspicious and hostile.
  
  Speaking of Iraq, the CIA allowed Cheney to twist them into false WMD reports, failed to contradict Bush-Cheney's bogus Iraq-9/11 link, did not anticipate the ferocious insurgency and saw one of its WMD undercover agents, Valerie Plame, get outed by vengeful Republicans craving blood for her husband Ambassador Joe Wilson's skeptical take on Bush's phony "yellowcake" in Niger speech.
  
  The monstrous incompetence of the CIA was driven home on 9/11 and Weiner traces the origins of CIA impotency to its inception. Blind, fanatical anti-Communism rather than sober, objective intelligence gathering are part of the CIA's DNA.
  
  GOP Presidential hopeful Dr. Ron Paul has called for elimination of the CIA so as to end its subversion and the consequent blowback from angered nations and individuals.
  
  Certainly, this nation must have a top tier intelligence service. But the CIA's failure to foresee the collapse of Communism, its foolish funding of fanatical Muslim anti-Soviet mujahadeen at the expense of moderates like the slain Ahmed Shah Massood, its inability to predict Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and the Pearl Harbor catastrophe of 9/11 really show the need for a New CIA.
  
  Perhaps a truly new intelligence agency, one that collects and collates critical information from America's rivals and enemies can arise out of the ashes of this CIA.
  
  
• A Pessimistic Burial Oration for American Intelligence and Covert Operations Run by the CIA
  By A1K1JW1C5CUSUZ on 2007-08-07
  In the James Bond movies, James Bond saves the world virtually single-handedly. He often gets high-tech gear from Q and military backup coordinated by the CIA after the agents follow him until Bond locates the bad guys. Based on Legacy of Ashes, those movies are closer to the truth than I had thought.
  
  In Mr. Weiner's extensive look at recently declassified documents, the CIA has always been the gang that couldn't shoot straight when it came to covert operations. To make up for that, the agency has apparently been quite good at keeping secret its bungles and shameful episodes . . . and proclaiming victory in public. The main problem has been that this gang has usually been pursuing its own agendas, disconnected from American policy and political oversight. And the agency liked covert operations so much that it rarely took intelligence gathering seriously.
  
  The blame isn't only the agency's; there's plenty of blame to go around. Presidents in particular were addicted to the idea of quickly supplying covert efforts when something was happening that they didn't like. When that urge came over them, the CIA was called in.
  
  You probably know some of the story, just from reading the newspapers and watching television (such as when Aldrich Ames was arrested, the missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the lack of coordination over paying attention to evidence of the impending 9/11 attack).
  
  What shocked me (and I don't shock easily) was how many thousands of people were sacrificed or harmed in programs that never worked. For instance, the CIA believed for decades that it could send dissidents back to their home countries and set up resistance efforts (as the OSS had done in France during World War II). Essentially everyone who was sent back for this purpose to many countries was quickly found and executed. While there is a wall at CIA headquarters for those who died in the line of duty, these sacrificed agents were largely ignored so that someone could have the stupid idea to do it all over again.
  
  So where are we now in gathering intelligence? We don't have much of an idea of what's going on anywhere except where we buy information from other intelligence services or after we invade the country. That's not good enough in a world where nuclear proliferation is real and loose nukes are a real risk.
  
  And where are we in covert action? We are probably still bribing any politician or military leader who wants our money. We coordinate and run lots of offshore prisons where we and those we hire can torture people who might be terrorists to their heart's content.
  
  It's a discouraging picture. And one that's not likely to be changed any time soon.
  
  I didn't grade the book higher because Mr. Weiner seemed to be skimming the surface in many cases, failing to get into the nuances of why things happened. I compared, for example, his account of Jack and Bobby Kennedy in working with the CIA to what is described in the book, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years by David Talbot. Legacy of Ashes comes across as oversimplified and incomplete by comparison to the Brothers book. For instance, there's no hint of the CIA's possible involvement in the two Kennedy assassinations in Legacy of Ashes.
  
  The book would also have been improved by exploring the organizational theory reasons why the CIA has had problems. You can't change an organization's leadership and charter as often as has happened with the CIA and not make a mess. Combine that with the need to hold many secrets and it's likely that institutional reform will lag behind the rate by which new problems can develop.
  
  I also think this would have been a better book if it had contained the context of how well those who have had good intelligence (such as the old Soviet Union) used what they knew. In the case of Stalin, the intelligence coups didn't do much good because he didn't trust the information or want to act on it . . . except for stealing technological secrets.
  
  What should the United States do now?
  
  It may be a good idea to continue with the current administration's preference for private contractors to gather and interpret intelligence. Then, the role of the CIA could become evaluating the effectiveness of such contractors and foreign intelligence service offerings. That's probably a role it could do reasonably well . . . at least until we have a new president who will inevitably go off in a whole new direction.
  
  
  
  
• Trying to Control the World without Understanding It
  By A1CKUIHJROJFCM on 2007-08-21
  National security bureaucracies seem like they are never able to escape the personalities and characteristics of their founding elders. For the FBI, that is J Edgar Hoover and his disdain for spooks and spycraft. The CIA has Allen Dulles, and his penchant for covert operations and indifference to intelligence. Weiner documents Dulles watching baseball on TV while not even pretending to listen to an intelligence briefing being given. Out of this grew an agency that meddles in the affairs in nation after nation, without understanding the people, language, culture, history and politics of their targets. Even low level intelligence to support operational details for covert operations was often overlooked. Never mind the big picture, the Soviet Union, where the CIA was almost completely blind and easily duped by their counterparts.
  
  Tim Weiner has written a devastating history of the CIA which shatters the glossed over myths of an omnipotent agency that won the cold war by valiantly spreading democracy and freedom for the oppressed peoples of the world. Quite the opposite is true. The CIA allowed the covert operation tail to wag the intelligence gathering dog, resulting in colossal failures that lead to many deaths. Even the "successes" later turned around to produce serious blowback for the U.S. The 1953 coup installing the Shah of Iran ultimately led to resentment in Iran, the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis. The success in Afghanistan against the Soviets and the failure to see the growing fundamentalist threat fertilized the ground there for Al Qaeda. Indonesia and Bay of Pigs are among the examples Weiner gives of outright failures due to poor intelligence.
  
  Along with a recent work by John Prados, Safe for Democracy, Legacy of Ashes is ground-breaking in showing the poor relationship between the CIA and the White House, the conflict between intelligence gathering and covert operations, and the resulting failures abroad. Throughout the agency's history there are examples of feeding the President with what they want to hear, and the President ignoring intelligence which does not support their world view or a covert op in the works. When intelligence is not shared, politicized, or ignored, the White House and CIA inevitably produce foreign policy disasters. The cowboys always win, and inevitably screw things up. And neither Democrat nor Republican presidents score any better than the other in really getting a good grip on covert ops. The pattern becomes clear when these examples are documented in a single volume.
  
  To the CIA's credit, it was not the driving force behind many operations. It was the White House that pushed for plots against Castro and overthrowing Allende in Chile. Richard Helms comes across as cautious in recommending covert ops, yet buckles to pressure from Nixon and Kissinger. Surprisingly Carter and Kennedy were hawks when it came to using covert operations, each starting more operations than their predecessors. Reagan handed the keys to the reckless Bill Casey, who was an agency outsider put in charge.
  
  This is a good read, faster paced and not as dry as other books with a similar subject matter. There are a lot of other books where more details of a particular operation or period that can be found, but there are new tidbits here worth reading even for persons who are well read in the subject area. Legacy of Ashes provides a larger context and a cohesive piecing together of the detailed stories and personalities. It makes me want to re-read some of the other dusty volumes on the shelf, looking for conclusions I may have missed without the broader picture.
  
  Though Weiner avoids the more conspiratorial accusations against the CIA, this should not be shrugged off as soft "limited hangout" history. Ashes is not an indictment of assassinations, drug smuggling, and torture. It doesn't need to be. Weiner stays well within the history that can de documented, with extensive interviews and substantial documentation. This material is quite damning, and could even be used as an argument for giving the agency's covert operations capability the hatchet, or maybe turning the agency into a newspaper for the president - which is what Harry Truman wanted in the first place. Maybe then we could try to understand the world before trying to change it to suit our needs.
  
  
• worth reading
  By A26AZ371EZ8KEF on 2007-09-14
  This is a book well worth reading, the product of a professional reporter who has covered intelligence issues for twenty years. Some critics of the work complain that Weiner's story is unrelentingly negative, and it is not an upbeat story. But the critics rarely call into question what he does say rather they want to point the light in a different corner and highlight some successes.
  This country paid twice for never having formed a national intelligence service - we paid at Pearl Harbor and we paid when we formed the CIA with no idea of how to do it right.
  Weiner is somewhat weak at tying his narrative events to a background worldview that might explain some of the CIA's thinking for younger readers but that doesn't really excuse the naivete and ineptitude of the organization.
  Had the CIA been formed in a quieter more stable time it might have grown slowly into what it should have become. But the CIA was created after one world cataclysm, the second World War, and in the midst of a nascent apocalyptic era, the Cold War and the Nuclear Age. And the company was founded by Ivy League buccaneers who, like adolescent boys, were seduced by the James Bond school of espionage.
  It is a sad, cautionary tale about the American tendency to address problems too late, throw money at them, then not pay attention to what ensues.
  The book will easily explain why the US is so despised in a wide swath around the world where the CIA created an inflamed resentment of the US that we are still dealing with today.
  
  
• Don't waste your money
  By A3RTIS7OK2DPLY on 2008-05-06
  Once again Tim Weiner shows his bias and hatred against the intelligence community (and the U.S. in general) by cherry-picking data to support his theories of government ineptitude. He hasn't a clue as to the true dealings of the intelligence community (as it should be, even with the continuous leak of ongoing operations and activities by members of Congress). Tim Weiner needs to stick to interviewing spies like his buddy, Aldrich Ames (with whom he lied to jail officials in order to secure a personal interview even though Ames was under protective restraint to keep from divulging sensitive aspects of an ongoing investigation and prosecution). If nothing else, hopefully books by Weiner will confuse our adversaries as to our true capabilities.
  
  
• Interesting compendium...one painful flaw
  By A1PBF07LLS9FLS on 2007-07-25
  However depressing, I thought this book was easy to read and was a necessary review of the agency with a "great reputation but lousy record" (I paraphrase one comment in the book).
  
  I am giving it to a friend (a few years younger than I and who has limited memories of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon years) and I think he will appreciate it.
  
  At the very end, however, I was *really* disappointed by the simplistic treatment of George Tenet's role in leading us to the Iraq fiasco. Sure, insofar as Tenet was the leader of the agency under this particular book's spotlight, he deserves the skewering he receives. But, reading the final pages of the book, you could almost believe that Tenet crashed through the White House gates and begged Bush/Cheney to invade with his "slam dunk" analysis.
  
  In short, I feel like the book, in its intent to indict Tenet, completely ignores the single-minded determination of the Bush/Cheney crowd to invade and to then prop up their decision with whatever stooges and falsehoods were available. Let's not forget Bush's State of the Union speech -- mouthing known uranium lies. And if Tenet was the fall guy, why were Bush/Cheney/Libby so driven to discredit credible critics (Wilson) of what was most defintely *not* found (and known to Bush/Cheney before that address?
  
  Anybody who thinks that this pack of arrogant maniacs wasn't determined to invade -- and were somehow simply mislead to do so just by Tenet -- is wearing a very thick bag over their head.
  
  Perhaps the author would be straying outside of his mandate if he "went political" at the end of this book, but, if we are going to think about admitting this book to the shelves of "serious history", the single-minded focus on Tenet at the end would give me very serious second thoughts.
  
  
  
  Oh, and Boyce Hart should learn how to spell.
  
  
• THE GREEK CONNECTION
  By A1AV5442X4JJJS on 2007-08-01
  This is an excellent book and the best book so far on the history of the CIA.
  Tim Weiner has done an excellent research and that is why someone has to wonder about chapter 32 of his book. In this chapter he ignores the main source that ties the Nixon administaration to the Greek dictatorship. Weiner explains in his book that there was a Greek conection to the Watergate affair. The connection is as follows:
  In the Fall of 1968 a prominent Greek journalist, Elias Demetracopoulos, informed the then Chairman of the Democratic National Committee Larry O'Brien, that the Greek CIA, which was exclusively financed by the American CIA, had given $549,000 to the Greek-American businessman Tom Pappas, a very close friend of Nixon, who in turn donated the money to the Republican party!
  Many American scholars believe that the reason for the Watergate break in, years later, was to find the damaging information that Demetracopoulos had given to O'Brien.
  Tim Weiner is mentioning the entire story in his great book but, conveniently and perhaps purposely, forgets to mention the key player of this story who was none other than Elias Demetracopoulos.
  
  
• An Incredible Book!
  By A22RY8N8CNDF3A on 2007-08-02
  "Legacy of Ashes" is the record of the first 60 years of the CIA. It describes how the most powerful country in the history of the Western civilization has failed to create a first-rate spy service. The CIA concealed its covert actions to most, lied about failures to Eisenhower and Kennedy, and then went on to miss the 1978 Iranian revolution the overthrew the Shah.
  
  The CIA's main goal during the Cold War was to steal Soviet secrets by recruiting spies, but its best ten spies were all volunteers and were captured by Moscow - mostly betrayed by officers of the CIA's Soviet division. Meanwhile, it also missed the fatal illness of its main enemy. While the agency bled the Soviets by pouring billions into Afghanistan to help fight the Red Army occupiers, it also failed to see that the Islamic fighters its supported would soon turn on the U.S., and when that understanding came, failed to act or convince others to do so.
  
  During the Clinton years the CIA had fewer agents abroad than the FBI had in New York City - little wonder that 9/11 was a surprise. Finally, it handed the White House false reports on the existence of mass destruction weapons in Iraq.
  
  All this and more (eg. how the CIA led the overthrow of Iran's elected government in the 1950s via paid mobs, thereby earning citizen long-term distrust; several overthrows of the government in Guatamala; an attempt to overthrow the Syrian government) - not through extrapolation of a few second-hand facts and opinions, but via innumerable first-hand quotes from those that were there.
  
  
• Fairly biased view of CIA history
  By AIK7I9BYWV9Q1 on 2007-08-26
  This history of the CIA does touch on the agencies well known failures which have been repeated throughout a number of exposures, hearings and the like. It barely acknowledges any success in the agencies history. In fact the author places the need for the 2005 intelligence consolidation act solely at the feet of the CIA when in fact the act was based on a recommendation of the 9/11 Commission which cited a failure to share and act on information, primarily on the FBI's part as the main intelligence failure before 9/11.
  
  The book also does a great job of ignoring any CIA success. The development of world leading eavesdropping tools which negated any Soviet or eastern bloc tools and allowed for primacy in electronic monitoring. The penetration of the Eastern Bloc at the highest levels including the Senior Aide to Poland's Chief of Staff which allowed for the rise of Solidarity. And let's not forget that the worst spies in U.S. history worked for the FBI, NSA and Naval Intelligence respectively.
  
  So if you think the CIA has been a total failure then you will enjoy this book. If not you are better off finding something better to take your time with.
  
  
• Disappointed
  By A3KFUKNZ90YSD8 on 2007-12-30
  I looked forward to this account of history, for I had never read anything on the history of America's clandestine agencies. At first I was amused at the early days of American intelligence post WWII. However, I soon began to realize that this was a diatribe against the CIA and the current President Bush. In one instance referring to Bill Casey's attitude upon assuming the mantle as Director of the Agency he writes, "[l]ike Bush (not the father), he thought the CIA embodied the best American values. And, like the Soviets, he reserved the right to lie and cheat." This is but one example disbursed throughout the book and the history of how the Author contemporizes the perceived failures of the CIA with Bush. I can accept his views but not throughout the entire book. It began to appear to be a rant on the CIA, Bush and the war in Iraq. Furthermore, I cannot believe an accurate history can be compiled on de-classified documents, recollections by politicians or ex-CIA employs with attitudes. Moreover, the Author leads us through one debacle after another as if this agency is and was a complete failure and that spying is sullied by the notion of deception, i.e. "... lying and cheating." I think the "Keystone Gestapo" would fit well into his portrayal of the CIA or liken them ALL to Nixon's "Plumbers." I would have preferred a better balance approach. He could have trashed them better this way while his approach leaves one in doubt.
  
  
  
• A very interesting and needed account
  By A2Z4KA3EFQWZOX on 2007-07-25
  For too long the CIA has both been blamed for all the world's problems(i.e, the U.S is responsible for every terrible event in the world from Communist China to Stalin, Pinochet and beyond), and at the same time the CIA is seen to be completely incompetant. This book merely elaborates on this theme while finally putting to bed the idea that the CIA is all knowing and controls the world.
  
  There are two points on which the book does not bear itself out. Dulles is given a great deal of criticism, he is even accused of judging the importance of information by its wieght. This is in fact not true. The CIA under Eisenhower and Dulles was the CIA that future directors always looked back on as its shining moment. It was this time when it atually suceeded at fomenting revolution, at establishing coups and stopping Communist expanision. The re-establishment of the Shah in Iran, the Guatamalan work, all of it was successful and it took place under Dulles.
  
  The book also claims to finally 'prove' that the CIA fabcricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and yet it still doesn't explain how all the damage was created to the boats involved.
  
  Nevertheless the book is a needed remedy to the perception that the CIA is competant and that it actually accomplishes anything. A very important history that goes a long way to shattering the myth that the CIA has accomplished very much in its long life and given its huge budget.
  
  Seth J. Frantzman
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Money and guns make the world go 'round
  By A3SX56PTD8YB8 on 2007-08-05
  To measure the change in public attitudes toward the CIA, consider two TV programs: "I Spy" from the 1960s and "The Simpsons." The former, starring Robert Culp and Bill Cosby as the consummate daring, bright covert defenders of Western culture, inspired awe and reverence for the organization. The latter, by contrast, regularly rips national security agents for their cluelessness, reminding me of the series of cop jokes that came out of Russia near the end of the Soviet period.
  
  Tim Weiner's coverage of the CIA from post-OSS days to the present reinforces the current trend to view the agency as a group of bunglers. Even in their "successes," Iran in '53, Guatemala in '54, and Chile in '73, when they helped topple democratically-elected governments on behalf of American oil, agricultural, and mining interests, respectively, the CIA botched the jobs, ensuring the undying enmity of the people in those regions. Weiner documents these hard-driving, hard-drinking cowboys providing chronically inadequate information from the world's hot spots. Kept in business by our belief in the domino theory and fear of communism, the CIA doled out an almost limitless supply of what corrupt leaders worldwide love the most: money and weapons. Such gifts opened doors that would otherwise have been impenetrable, as agents - some of them the best and brightest Ivy League graduates - understood little about an area's language and culture. Citing CIA hubris, Weiner draws parallels between American involvement in Vietnam and Iraq. He discusses CIA support for the mutual slaughter of Iraqis and Iranians, for Bin Laden in Afghanistan against the Russians, and describes the odd sense of loss for the agency after the Berlin Wall fell. The book ends with a discussion of the failure to protect the nation against the 9/11 attacks, the manipulation of intelligence that led to the Iraq war, and the current administration's lack of confidence in the CIA by shifting billions of dollars into the hands of private security contractors.
  
  A major failing of the book is its sketchy focus on the Kennedy years, with little regard for the nuances in the conflict with Cuba and almost nothing said about possible CIA involvement in the assassinations of JFK and RFK.
  
  
  
  

• The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
• The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War
• Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games
• Tree of Smoke: A Novel
• The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy)