Legacy of Ashes

May 18, 2011 Kemper rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, history, non-fiction, politics, spy-vs-spy, over-there, usa-usa

Attention crazy people! If you are one of those poor souls who thinks that the Central Intelligence Agency is reading your thoughts and/or manipulating your brain waves, I have good news for you. You can take off your aluminum foil hat and stop trying to pull out that tooth with the tracking device. Here it is:

The CIA is too incompetent to do any of the things you are worried about. Seriously.

After reading Legacy of Ashes, I’m amazed that we weren’t taken down by the Soviets during the Cold Wa...more Attention crazy people! If you are one of those poor souls who thinks that the Central Intelligence Agency is reading your thoughts and/or manipulating your brain waves, I have good news for you. You can take off your aluminum foil hat and stop trying to pull out that tooth with the tracking device. Here it is:

The CIA is too incompetent to do any of the things you are worried about. Seriously.

After reading Legacy of Ashes, I’m amazed that we weren’t taken down by the Soviets during the Cold War or that China hasn’t invaded and turned the US into a giant sweatshop that sews cheap clothing for its citizens or that some terrorists haven’t reduced the country to pile of radioactive rubble.*

*Kind of odd timing to read a book that bashes the CIA this much shortly after Osama got his much deserved bullet to the brain, but this book outlined how the CIA muffed multiple opportunities to kill him before 9/11 during the Clinton and W. Bush years. After repeated stories of just how incredibly bad the CIA is at actually collecting human intelligence, it’s really not that surprising that bin Ladin had been living in a posh neighborhood for years while American forces searched caves in Afghanistan.

If you read something like a Tom Clancy novel, you’ll get the idea that the CIA is really good at its job and that the occasional snafu like the Bay of Pigs or claiming that Iraq had WMD are just aberrations. Per Tim Weiner, the real story is that the for the CIA the Bay of Pigs and Iraq WMDs are the typical performance levels, we just only hear about the really big screw-ups.

After World War II and with the Cold War ramping up, America needed an intelligence service, but all Harry Truman really wanted was an agency to boil down all the information that the military and state department collected and summarize it for him daily. However, when a bunch of former OSS guys were put in charge, their brilliant idea of an intelligence service was parachuting half-trained dissidents behind the Iron Curtain to lead resistances and perform sabotage missions. Unfortunately, the people were so poorly prepared and the Soviets had already so thoroughly penetrated the Agency that they were almost all captured and/or killed. Oh, and they completely missed the Soviets developing their own atomic bomb thanks to stolen intelligence.

From the Korean War through Vietnam to missing the economic decay of the Soviet Union that caused it’s ultimate collapse, the CIA was so consistently wrong and bad at their supposed main job of gathering intelligence that it boggles the mind. Weathermen are jealous at how these guys were able to be so repeatedly and completely wrong yet somehow none of them lost their jobs over it.

The only thing that CIA seems to have been really good at was backing the most evil fucks around as long as they claimed to be anti-communist. If there was a strong arm dictator or leader of a military coup waiting to take over from a government with the slightest bit of left leanings, the CIA was there with bags of cash and support for assholes to take over countries like Iran and Guatemala , and the result has been countless deaths of innocent people and the trashing of goodwill towards America in many parts of the world.

To be fair, there’s a few parts of the book where it seems that Weiner doesn’t give them credit for the few things they did right. Accurately predicating the outbreak of violence in Rwanda or running a successful operation to help convince Libya to ditch it’s WMD programs are barely mentioned. And despite documenting how the CIA has bowed to political pressure and repeatedly told several presidents exactly what they wanted to hear, the Iraqi WMD claims are portrayed almost exclusively as an intelligence failure with little mention of poltical pressure from the Bush administration which is hard to believe.

Overall, Weiner used recently declassified internal CIA reports and histories to document a long history of spectacular failure. The book explores how a combination of politics and a bureaucratic nightmare has left America deaf and blind at the times it could least afford to be so even as the myth of an all-knowing intelligence agency has been perpetuated. Billions upon billions of dollars have been spent trying to keep tabs on America’s enemies. Frankly, we all would have been better off if the US would have used that cash to buy everyone in the world some cake and ice cream every now and then. At least maybe so many people wouldn’t hate us because how could you be mad at someone who gives you free cake and ice cream? (less)

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Dec 22, 2007 Scott rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Every American citizen

Written by a writer who has won the Pullitzer Prize for his work on National Security for the New York Times, this is the first ever comprehensive, on the record, history of the CIA. Every interview in the book is on the record, including 10 Directors and over 100 agents. With newfound access to thousands of recently declassified documents, and extensive notes, this is the best history of the CIA you're likely to read.

This is a devastating book. The experience of reading it reminded me of the e...more

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Jun 12, 2010 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars

Oddly enough, it was The Looking Glass War that early on opened my eyes to the fact that intelligence work was not conducted with the hyper-competency and machinelike efficiency with which it was depicted in most fiction. When it comes to the Western intelligence agencies, one would think, with a seemingly bottomless budget and access to vast congeries of technology, weaponry, and personnel - state-of-the-art all - there would be few secrets, allied or enemy, incapable of being swiftly ferreted...more Oddly enough, it was The Looking Glass War that early on opened my eyes to the fact that intelligence work was not conducted with the hyper-competency and machinelike efficiency with which it was depicted in most fiction. When it comes to the Western intelligence agencies, one would think, with a seemingly bottomless budget and access to vast congeries of technology, weaponry, and personnel - state-of-the-art all - there would be few secrets, allied or enemy, incapable of being swiftly ferreted out. Alas, intelligence work is ultimately reliant upon human intelligence, which means its methods will always be vulnerable to all of the frailties and follies and failures endemic to human endeavor.

Weiner depicts how this applies to the fabled CIA, ruthlessly and relentlessly, in a book that sheds light upon an appalling history of misjudgments, misdirections, and mistakes, beginning in the maelstrom final years of the Second World War, and accreting throughout the progressing stages of the Cold War and the brief starburst of relaxed tension that followed gingerly in the wake of its demise. The interagency collisions and confusions that hobbled their ability to detect the 9/11 attack in time to prevent it were entirely presaged by CIA failures in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, Cuba, and Latin America. Saddled with conflicting Directors of Intelligence and their political masters; infiltrated by communist moles that compromised and frustrated major operations; dogged by evidence of complicity in assassinations and barbaric experimentation; the one redoubtable victory over the Soviet Union that severely affected the latter's fate, that of supporting the Afghani mujahideen in their insurgency, proving a double-edged sword that cleaved its agency enablers on the rebound stroke from that which struck at the Soviet occupiers; Weiner grimly provides the details, clearly exasperated by the agency's remarkable ability to shoot itself in the foot on a steady basis.

Somewhat surprisingly, I found the end result of Weiner's book was to engender a sympathy for the organization - routinely overmatched by an enemy completely unrestrained by the legal, ethical, and political rules the agency had to operate (or at least been seen operating) within, riven by the huge egos and personalities that cast their imprimatur upon their respective departments and operations, endeavoring to penetrate alien cultures by means of methods co-mingling the military with the bureaucratic and aided by contacts who tended to either disappear or betray, so many career operators succumbed to the same bleak routine: despair and disillusionment as they realized their limitations, consolation within the bleary strictures of alcoholism, and, shockingly often, premature death by means of a self-administered bullet. For some reason, the story of Frank Wisner - a wartime agent runner who sent countless covert teams to their deaths via nighttime drops into an Albanian countryside pre-warned of their coming, and who seemed to learn little of value from this exercise in lethal futility - and his descent into insanity and suicide particularly haunted me. The anguish accumulated over years of stunted achievement is perfectly captured by his presence in a photo in the book. Amidst smiling colleagues, the balding Wisner presents to the camera a bleak gaze of nullity; he is the epitome of a shattered man. Then there is James Jesus Angleton, for ages the CIA's director of counter-intelligence, a man gifted and flawed in equal measure, likewise driven to the limits of alcohol-fueled paranoia over his inability to uncover the fabled CIA mole, a paranoia that spread like a virus to infect much of the organization. In the echoes of Weiner's condemning history, it is clear that the agency has been deficient from inception and is badly in need of a reconfiguration if ever the United States is to consistently achieve first-rate, reliable intelligence. It is the personal cost, that of so many committed men broken on the wheel of futility, that is the most stinging legacy of all.(less)

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May 29, 2008 Aaron Crossen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: americanhistory, commentary, journalism

A sprawling, fierce work of history, scholarship, and journalism. Markedly pessimistic in tone, Tim Weiner chronicles the often tragic history of America's once revered intelligence service. What he finds is that the the CIA has failed in its fundamental mission – to gather, analyze, and disseminate intelligence – for the better part of a century.

Weiner argues that the agency has suffered from and still suffers from several cancers. First is the propensity of its directors to bend to the politi...more A sprawling, fierce work of history, scholarship, and journalism. Markedly pessimistic in tone, Tim Weiner chronicles the often tragic history of America's once revered intelligence service. What he finds is that the the CIA has failed in its fundamental mission – to gather, analyze, and disseminate intelligence – for the better part of a century.

Weiner argues that the agency has suffered from and still suffers from several cancers. First is the propensity of its directors to bend to the political will of presidents and their underlings, an unfortunate tendency that culminated in the elimination of the position of Director of Central Intelligence under George W. Bush. Scant intelligence from the field was often parlayed into invincible evidence in intelligence reports for decision-makers, since that is often the only type of intelligence they would pay attention to. Reports that did not conform to a president's predetermined mindset, interests, or worldview were routinely discarded. The 'intelligence' was adjusted just to get the big boss' attention. There were precious few moments in the agency's history during which it reliably informed the president as to the goings-on in a particular part of the world.

Second is the CIA's demonstrated inability to collect good intelligence on America's friends and enemies, which are now and always have been numerous and ruthless. The agency totally fudged the call on several important events: the first Gulf War. India's nuke. The Bay of Pigs, part of a more elaborate attempt to dethrone Castro (JFK's mess, but an inherited one). It had close to no idea that Gorbachev was tearing the Soviet Union apart. The 1979 coup in Iran that deposed the CIA-installed and supported shah. Most recently, Sadaam's weapons and the ongoing insurgency. The CIA has had remarkable trouble recruiting reliable Arabic-speaking (and looking) sources to spy on the foreign governments that would most like us to sink into the ocean in much the same way that it found reliable Soviet sources difficult to come by. Weiner offers no prognostication to suggest that we are any safer now than we were under the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. If anything, the current time bodes for the worse: We cannot promise to destroy a terrorist cell in response to an attack. Our credibility in this regard has been savaged by the misguided and mishandled Iraq war.

Third is the string of poor leaders that have infected the CIA like viral bacterial over the years. First was Allen Dulles, an idiot that ruled over the CIA as it were is own personal fiefdom. A lover of covert action, he ceaselessly tried to overthrow governments using the money of the American people and the lives of others. He failed miserably every time. Eisenhower rightfully found him untrustworthy. From that point onward, the relationship between the CIA and and the White House was never fully repaired. There were others, some well-meaning idiots and some just plain idiots with a few bright ones here and there. Dave McCone, Richard Helms and George Tenet were all made some bad decisions but all wanted the best for the agency and for the United States. That none of them could really make the CIA all it could be is perhaps a testament to how broken its relationship with the executive branch was since its inception. The world's most effective intelligence services have their ruler's ear and trust. The CIA did not and does not. The end result of the efforts of its many leaders is a paralyzed relationship between the agency and the military – which, Weiner argues, would like nothing more than the agency's elimination – and civilian leadership in government.

My personal interpretation of the work is necessarily an analysis of the CIA's performance. Throughout its history, as Weiner shows, the agency devoted significant time, talent, and resources to the overthrow of leftist governments. These attempts resulted in either unmitigated failure (Cuba) or bloody success (Guatemaula). But the CIA failed to understand the unintended consequences these actions provoked. At the time they were seen as victories in the Cold War. But as Afghanistan now clearly demonstrates, many of them were pyrrhic victories. It's necessary to note that most covert actions the CIA undertakes are authorized by the president. JFK and his brother were particularly fond of using the CIA as a private paramilitary force, as were Nixon and Kissinger and LBJ. The Iran/contra scandal and hostage crisis says enough about how Reagan used and abused the agency.

I can't help but feel as though that the allure of covert action distracted the CIA and the presidents that used it from what should have been its fundamental mission: to steal secrets. The CIA's heavy hand, clearly visible is so many countries' internal affairs, clearly damaged the agency's espionage efforts. Spies need the to trust the people they're spying for. But who trusted the CIA? After all, they're just going to overthrow your government tomorrow. The CIA always walked thunderously and carried a big stick. That is not the role of an intelligence agency. Besides, the net effort of its covert efforts was rarely worth the price paid in dollars and in blood, as so many agency sources say in Weiner's brilliant book.

I do not believe the CIA is beyond repair, and indeed, I believe America needs a civilian intelligence service. Military intelligence services are useful for battle intelligence, but an independent, plainclothes intelligence service is best able to run foreign agents deliver unbiased intelligence information and analysis to the nation's decision-makers. It needs crafty spies and skeptical analysts. It still has the money and manpower to do its job: What it needs most is the trust of a president who understands that good intelligence is vital to good diplomacy.

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Oct 29, 2007 Nathan rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Dwight D. Eisenhower, were he still with us.

Shelves: history, history-politics, cia

The title of Tim Weiner's tome about the CIA, "Legacy of Ashes", is a quote taken from a comment Dwight Eisenhower made about what he was leaving behind for subsequent presidents. Ike felt he had left a broken and ineffectual intelligence agency far removed from the reality of what America needed. In "Legacy of Ashes", Weiner proves Ike right. Starting with the 1947 birth of the Central Intelligence Agency, Weiner takes us through intelligence bungle after intelligence bungle. Today, everyone is...more The title of Tim Weiner's tome about the CIA, "Legacy of Ashes", is a quote taken from a comment Dwight Eisenhower made about what he was leaving behind for subsequent presidents. Ike felt he had left a broken and ineffectual intelligence agency far removed from the reality of what America needed. In "Legacy of Ashes", Weiner proves Ike right. Starting with the 1947 birth of the Central Intelligence Agency, Weiner takes us through intelligence bungle after intelligence bungle. Today, everyone is interested in intelligence failures and the reasons behind the CIA's failure to prevent the tragedy of September 11, 2001. Reading Weiner's book makes it obvious that such failures were long in the making, and not uncommon in CIA history. The failure to predict the fall of communism is discussed in detail, as are the agency's failures in Vietnam, Laos, Iran, Iraq, Central America... Parts of the book read like a comedy bit from Catch-22, with Milo Minderbinder replaced by Dick Cheney and the Reagan administration, as the CIA simultaneously arms Iraq and Iran, simultaneously gives them each satellite information about the other's capabilities and battlefield locations, then sets them to fighting each other. Other parts of the book read like Greek tragedy. The times the US armed brutal dictators and overthrew democratically elected regimes are too numerous to count. Other surprises include the revelations of which Presidents used covert action and which Presidents used assassination as US policy. Startling secrets about JFK are revealed, as well his brother's almost criminal use of the CIA as his own personal hit squad. Several famous scandals are covered, including Iran-contra, Iraq's missing WMDs, Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missle Crisis, Watergate... If Weiner has one fault it is that he fails to qualify some of his gripes with administrations who mistrusted the CIA. He spends an entire chapter explaining why the CIA shouldn't be trusted, then he tears Bill Clinton apart for not trusting the agency. This could be seen as a fault of Weiner's writing, but this Pulitzer Prize-winning author probably suffers more for the weight of his topic than his lack of skill as a reporter. The truth is, this book - at close to 500 pages - probably could have been another 500 pages long and still not told the whole story. A fascinating read about an organization that may be past its time for retirement.

NC(less)

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Mar 30, 2009 David rated it 3 of 5 stars

The history of the CIA has always been shrouded in secrecy. Recently more and more documents have quietly been made public. With these documents an interesting and darker history of the agency begins to emerge. Time after time the agency has shown disaster, failure, and complete stupidity. Those outside the agency (often including the President) are only shown the smoke and mirrors creating a splendid and false perspective of the agency.

This history was produced to show that the agency has more...more

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Sep 03, 2007 Douglas rated it 4 of 5 stars

a blistering and exhaustively-sourced condemnation of the CIA, an agency (as Henry Kissinger put it) has a reputation of ruthless efficiency that does not in any way reflect reality, which is persistent incompetence. Not only has the CIA failed in the vast majority of its covert operations, it also failed in the most rudimentary of its functions - providing the President with accurate intelligence upon the intentions and capabilities of America's enemies.

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Dec 30, 2009 Matt rated it 3 of 5 stars

Sometimes I think the CIA is kept around just so all those old movies and Tom Clancy books will make sense. Because really, from start to finish, the Agency has proven a monumental failure.

The title Legacy of Ashes comes from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who hopelessly battled the Agency throughout his eight years in office. Undoubtedly, his inability to change the CIA was partially responsible for his famous parting shot: the military-industrial complex speech.

Author Tim Weiner agrees with...more

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Aug 15, 2008 George rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

Legacy of Ashes is founded on three premises.

1. The CIA is incompetent. The author gathers plenty of ammo to back this one up, to the point of downplaying the agency’s successes and highlighting its failures. He still makes a compelling argument that the CIA’s track record isn’t good.
2. The CIA’s dual functions – gathering intelligence and covert operations – are fundamentally at odds with each other. This is obvious: covert operations thrive on secrecy, not openness. On a more practical level:...more

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Mar 13, 2008 brian rated it 3 of 5 stars

despite being both wildly entertaining and wildly informative, this book catches a three-star rating for all that it lacks. the subject matter requires the full-on multi-volume robert caro approach... weiner's 514 pgs just can't suffice. he skims over so much, leaves out so much necessary and vital information, that as much as i enjoyed it i cannot go above three stars. moreover, i had two fundamental complaints:

1) his conclusions are waaaay too linear. okay, you're writing a book on the CIA, an...more

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Nov 03, 2007 Andres rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sonyreader

It's a very interesting read, from a historical perspective, at any rate. Some of the conclusions are suspect, at least in my eyes. One has to wonder, if the CIA was such a bungling, inept, rigid, clueless and blind institution, then why weren't we at the mercy of other countries' intelligence departments? Especially when most were, according to the author, so much better than ours was.

On the other hand, I can very well imagine it being a great piece of intelligence misdirection if everyone is c...more It's a very interesting read, from a historical perspective, at any rate. Some of the conclusions are suspect, at least in my eyes. One has to wonder, if the CIA was such a bungling, inept, rigid, clueless and blind institution, then why weren't we at the mercy of other countries' intelligence departments? Especially when most were, according to the author, so much better than ours was.

On the other hand, I can very well imagine it being a great piece of intelligence misdirection if everyone is convinced that the CIA is the Keystone Kops of the intelligence community.

What is clear to me, and was even before picking up the book, is that an effective intelligence service must be led by someone whose direction aligns with the strategy and/or goals of the Nation, has a clear understanding of the impact events can have and is willing to do things that are of an unsavory nature, to say the least, and may often cross the line of legality. Whining that the CIA has done things without Congress's knowledge or approval is naive to the utmost. Whining that mistakes were made is beyond naive, mistakes will always be made. It's how quick and efficiently you correct them that matters. This book suffers from all the whining without even a glimmer of a suggestion of how it could have been done better, because often there wasn't a clear way. From our vantage point of the present it's easy to critique past actions. We possess information and data that the main actors didn't have at the time.

I also have to wonder if there isn't a real CIA (with another name, or even no name) operating in total secret. I think the "public" CIA's cover has been blown forever, ages ago, and a real intelligence operation can only survive in the shadows. That would tidily explain why America is still at the forefront, despite what the author claims is an intelligence service that has perhaps 2 successes to point at in its 60 year history, and that has caused more harm than good to the country.

Read the book, it's definitely worthwhile, just add some skepticism and intelligence (I know how hard this is for some of you, but try) while you're doing so.(less)

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Jul 01, 2008 Lisa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Okay, so, first off, I am bias, and have to admit that. But, have to say, this book was FASCINATING. I only joined the intel community in 2005, so, can't speak to the accuracy of anything before that, but, can confirm that his coverage of everything since then is outrageously skewed. True, but skewed. Having said that, as a student of US foreign policy it was an incredibly interesting look at an entirely unexplored dimension of US policy. It put everything I studied in school in a new perspectiv...more

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Mar 03, 2009 Brian rated it 5 of 5 stars

LEGACY OF ASHES: The History of the CIA

TIM WEINER

America’s foes and rivals have long overrated the CIA. When Henry Kissinger traveled to China in 1971, Prime Minister Chou En-lai asked about the CIA. Kissinger told Chou that he “vastly overestimates the competence of the CIA.” Chou persisted that “whenever something happens in the world they are always thought of.” Kissinger acknowledged, “That is true, and it flatters them, but they don’t deserve it.” “Legacy of Ashes” is a litany of failure....more

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Mar 28, 2013 Justin Evans rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: history-etc

A five star topic, with five star research, does not a five star book make. I give Mr. Weiner one star for this 'book,' which is not a book at all. It is a collection of research notes that would be better titled "What the CIA did after the second world war to ruin the world for most people, including its own agents."

Though Weiner has done a great job of bringing them together, there's no 'organization' to the facts. The title of each chapter is a quote from someone taken from that chapter; eac...more

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Mar 13, 2013 Louise rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: cia, us-history, us-policy, natl-book-award-nominee

This book is a big bold project. Covering the history of this agency in this way might not be feasible for 550 pages.

The author discusses the shifting mission of the agency and the ongoing debate of spies vs. gadgets. He shows how the agency was not (always) rogue, since both Democratic and Republican presidents authorized some of its most controversial actions and lied about them.

Weiner shows how the CIA was founded to provide intelligence and analysis. Intelligence operations grew from droppin...more This book is a big bold project. Covering the history of this agency in this way might not be feasible for 550 pages.

The author discusses the shifting mission of the agency and the ongoing debate of spies vs. gadgets. He shows how the agency was not (always) rogue, since both Democratic and Republican presidents authorized some of its most controversial actions and lied about them.

Weiner shows how the CIA was founded to provide intelligence and analysis. Intelligence operations grew from dropping dissidents of unfriendly governments inside their borders (not at all successful) to actually toppling distrusted leaders (quite successful in the short term). Through its operations it effectively set major pieces of US foreign policy. Some of these operations were dictated by whims and biases of its leadership. Weiner portrays some of these leaders as high living alcoholics.

This agency has been costly in money and human life. Thousands have been lost in the wars the CIA started and in its intelligence failures. What would Iran be like without the CIA involvement, first in toppling Mossadeq and later strengthening the hard liners by selling them advanced weapons? The miscalculation on Russia is exemplary, had they read Hedrick Smith's The Russians, a best seller of the time, they could have predicted the USSR's ultimate implosion and saved billions in weaponry and the failed spy operations it was running. If the Fire Chief of your city made 1% of these mistakes, the Chief would be long gone.

The book has a number of shortcomings. It's a National Book Award winner, so I expected more. The story is told in a stream of vignettes. They aren't well tied together. Almost every episode (there may be 100 or so) deserves a book of its own. With so much to cover, everything is once over lightly. This is OK with high profile and well known events like the Bay of Pigs and Iran-Contra, but the less prominent episodes need more description and discussion.

Is it in the interest of space that rumors of CIA involvement in the Kennedy assassination(s) and in Iran's release of the hostages are not addressed, or does the author conclude there is nothing there? Similarly, Iraq's WMD mistake is shown as fully a CIA problem. There is no discussion of the intelligence being "fixed" around the policy by the administration.

While the book sprawls, the author does make his point. He sees the CIA as an agency that in the early days carved out a role beyond its assigned mission and has failed in both the mission and its enhanced mission. I'd be interested in a more cohesive history that includes the debate on the possibility of the success of such an agency in a democratic and open society. (less)

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Mar 13, 2013 Scott Fraser rated it 5 of 5 stars

A very well researched and referenced history of the CIA.

The only problem with this book was that it took me months to read, because I couldn't read more than a chapter or two at a time without getting incensed with the governmential incompetance and mismanagment that repeatedly undermined valiant efforts to establish a professional results-driven service.

We repeated the same bonehead actions, over and over again, with faithful and dedicated people needlessly getting killed in the process.

Don't...more

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Feb 09, 2013 Jason Phillips rated it 4 of 5 stars

Relying on recently classified sources, and over 20 years' experience of reporting on national intelligence issues, Tim Weiner writes a caustic, corrosive, and highly critical view of the history of the CIA. Like most Americans, I know the CIA from what I have seen in the movies - the reality is much, much harder to believe; much, much more frightening, and all the more shocking because of the reliability and research of Mr. Weiner.

It took me a while to get used to the style of Mr. Weiner, and a...more Relying on recently classified sources, and over 20 years' experience of reporting on national intelligence issues, Tim Weiner writes a caustic, corrosive, and highly critical view of the history of the CIA. Like most Americans, I know the CIA from what I have seen in the movies - the reality is much, much harder to believe; much, much more frightening, and all the more shocking because of the reliability and research of Mr. Weiner.

It took me a while to get used to the style of Mr. Weiner, and a while longer to grasp the notion that he was killing the CIA - absolutely killing them - in this book. While he points out (briefly) many of the CIA's successes, he hammers away, quite credibly, at the systemic failures of the CIA since its founding after WWII. I began to feel that this was an absolute hatchet job from someone with an axe to grind - I was won over by the evidence that this was not so - I spent as much time reading Mr. Wiener's bibliography, the facts derived from the first hand accounts from hours of interviews with the CIA's leaders, and Mr. Weiner's two decades of covering the CIA as a reporter.

In the end, recent evidence of CIA's failures (Iraq, 9/11), only goes to provide more support to the criticisms that Mr. Weiner lays out. The greatest failure of the CIA's history, arguably, was laying the foundation for a war in Iraq that has lasted longer than our battle against the Nazis. This failure is in much clearer context for me now after reading this book. That failure should not have been a surprise to anyone that looks as deeply into the flawed history of the CIA as Mr. Weiner. Indeed, the failure was the logical outcome of the evolution of the Agency.

He seems to care a great deal about national security issues, and his criticisms of the CIA are done in a way that begs for the reform of our intellegence community. He cries out as to the vital importance of good intelligence to our national security, and indeed makes many, many observations and suggestions as to how to fix this increasingly useless bureaucracy.(less)

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Oct 30, 2012 Terry rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, audiobook, history, non-fiction

Legacy of Ashes documents what appears to be the perpetual failures and problems plaguing the American CIA. The book begins with the organization's foundings and leads through its current crisis. The author has done extensive research and gone through thousands of documents to disprove the statement "The CIA's failures are public and victories are private" and replace it with the much simpler "The CIA has almost always failed".

After the first few chapters, the book becomes somewhat depressing as...more

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Aug 16, 2012 Electriczen rated it 5 of 5 stars

This explosive, Pulitzer Prize winning expose of the CIA is one of the most stunning books I have ever read. If there has been a botched coup, failed revoultion, political assasination, criminal enterprise, or inadequate intelligence anywhere in the world the chances are the CIA had its hands in it.

If you think the United States is safer because of the work of the Agency, think again. The CIA is a history of failed intelligence and failed covert operations that have destablized the world and mo...more

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Jul 17, 2012 Lauren Mcvey added it

Shelves: books-13-25

National Award

This book of course from the title one can tell is the history of the CIA. In this book it shows that a lot of the time the directors of the CIA leave that position with the CIA being in worse shape then when they first started there. This event can cause a problem with national security. The sole purpose of the CIA was also in this book. This book is not a short easy read. It is long but has detailed information that helps people understand the CIA more.

First off the title of this...more

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Jul 07, 2012 Jordan McPeek rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history, politics

With the many tales of incompetence and blundering and bureaucratic wrangling, the biggest impression I took from this book was that the CIA was not the home of superslick superspies like James Bond. Rather it relied on and cultivated that image to enhance its influence. In reality its successes were few and far between, and its failures and deficiencies far more spectacular. The level of confidence among Presidents was often shaky as the Agency was on a seemingly endless journey to discover its...more

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May 15, 2012 Carl Brush rated it 5 of 5 stars

When we were in Antigua, Guatemala, a great while back trying to learn a little more Spanish and soaking up the culture, a couple of people pointed out a building--a compound, really--called The School of the Americas. They said it was a CIA front operation. At the time I semi-dismissed it as a romantic notion of gringo conspiracy. After reading Weiner’s meticulously documented and compellingly written Legacy of Ashes, I know that the CIA operated all over the world often with full knowledge of...more When we were in Antigua, Guatemala, a great while back trying to learn a little more Spanish and soaking up the culture, a couple of people pointed out a building--a compound, really--called The School of the Americas. They said it was a CIA front operation. At the time I semi-dismissed it as a romantic notion of gringo conspiracy. After reading Weiner’s meticulously documented and compellingly written Legacy of Ashes, I know that the CIA operated all over the world often with full knowledge of the locals even though they were supposed to be secret.

The organization caused the slaughter thousands of agents, foreign and domestic, over the years since its founding after WWII because it was unable to keep its agents and counteragents straight. From Sukarno to East Germany to Moscow to Cuba, they sent people on missions straight into the waiting arms of armies and police who knew they were coming and what for. When they did succeed, the success was dubious--as in the case of the Iranian Shaw and Chilean Pinochet and other brutal--though anti-communist--heads of state. When they didn’t, they engendered scorn, contempt, and hatred for America worldwide. Often the only ones who didn’t know what they were doing were ambassadors in the countries in which they operated, or their own colleagues, and the president. They outright lied to presidents from Eisenhower through Bush II in order to sell intelligence they hoped would keep their budgets high and preserve their organization.

What I’ve described above is the tip of the iceberg. The title is taken from a phrase uttered by Eisenhower, who after 8 years of trying to shape and control the agency to the national good felt that he had completely failed and had left his successor a “legacy of ashes” when it came to national intelligence. Things never got any better. I never believed the notion that the CIA would have employed mafia hit men to assassinate Castro. With JFK’s blessing. But it happened just that way, though never, obviously, succeeded.

The ultimate failure, of course, was Iraq, and the worst you’ve read is not the worst that happened. It’s a disgusting and shameful piece of American history that in some ways I wish I’d never read. Combined wit the financial fiasco outlined in The Monster (see Dec 3,2010), it makes you wonder if as a country and culture we haven’t succumbed to our most venal and corrupt selves. Happy Holidays.

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Apr 11, 2012 Tom rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a very interesting, no holds barred, unflinching look at the history of the CIA from cowboy post WWII days of William J. Donovan and his protégé Allen Dulles through the bloody lapses of the Cold War on through intelligence failures of Bin Laden and Iraq. The book brings us appropriately to the newly sculpted CIA under Porter Goss as the first Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the last Director of Central Intelligence following the passage of the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Te...more

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Nov 23, 2011 Nate rated it 4 of 5 stars

This gave a fascinating window into the inner operations of the CIA. This thorough book gives a blow-by-blow factual breakdown of the CIA through the years... and it isn't pretty. Despite saying the word "clandestine" in what felt like every other sentence, the book managed to keep my interest throughout the decades that it spanned.

I would be interested in reading a book with a more positive spin, if it exists, to be able to compare and contrast the way the information could be presented. The CI...more

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Sep 09, 2011 Tony rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction-general

Weiner, Tim. LEGACY OF ASHES: The History of the CIA. (2007). ****.
This book by Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Weiner went on to win the National Book Award in 2007. The very nature and depth of its subject guarantees that you will have a heavy tome on your hands. The author approaches the subject by examing the CIA and its activities under each president. You find that there is very little continuity in the organization itself. At last count, there have been nineteen directors of the organi...more

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Jul 27, 2011 Kash rated it 1 of 5 stars

Well, I did not know much about the CIA and this book did not provide me any thing beyond what I already knew. I knew CIA was dysfunctional and inefficient. I knew CIA was full of liberal driven morons who take themselves seriously and probably don't care much about the interests of the country they serve (Check the recent Iran's NIE report for example). I also knew CIA's ability and power was exaggerated in the media and hollywood. What got me interested in this book was Tim Weiner's interview...more

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Jul 24, 2011 Converse rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: espionage, non-fiction, politics

Weiner, a journalist, has written a history of the Central Intelligence Agency from its origins up to 2007. More of the narrative is devoted to the earlier decades, which makes sense when one realizes from the asides in the text that sources on say, the Cuban Missile Crisis, were declassified only after the year 2000. The organization that is described is less a spy agency than a filibustering organization, devoted to overthrowing weak governments in poor companies, buying up politicians, setti

...more

Weiner, a journalist, has written a history of the Central Intelligence Agency from its origins up to 2007. More of the narrative is devoted to the earlier decades, which makes sense when one realizes from the asides in the text that sources on say, the Cuban Missile Crisis, were declassified only after the year 2000. The organization that is described is less a spy agency than a filibustering organization, devoted to overthrowing weak governments in poor companies, buying up politicians, setting up secret police organizations in poor countries with friendly governments such as Jordan and Haiti, and organizing rebellions against unfriendly governments in poor countries, as in Nicaragua in the 1980s. Successive presidents wanted the agency to do all of the abov e. Attempts to set up large spy or sabotage networks in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe, and north Korea invariably failed often due to communist penetration. The agents the agency did have in the communist world were volunteers, often working for allied governments. Aldrich Ames, a CIA officer, betrayed those Soviet agents the agency had in the last years of the cold war. Although often uninformed about non-state terrorism, as demonstrated in Lebanon in the 1980s, it did sometimes show skill in subverting terrorist networks as in the case of Abu Nidal. It also showed some skill in cyberwarfare, using the Soviet need for western software and computer equipment to provide them with software that destroyed a gas pipeline. The agency did have some success in technical intelligence, developing the U-2 spy plane and spy satelites.

The agency's ability to analyze intelligence has generally been poor, with the agency usually being surprised by events such as the Hungarian uprising in 1956, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the fall of the Soviet Union. As political leaders generally only wanted to hear things that confirmed their pre-existing beliefs, its debatable how much this mattered. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the agency fell into a prolonged period in which its mission was unclear.

The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency had another task, which was to lead the "intelligence community" the various other information gathering organizations, mostly in the Pentagon. This task was mission impossible. The defense department controls the budgets of most of the agencies and there was no way the CIA director could coordinate the activities of organizations with independent budgets. This task went away with the changes in the laws governing intelligence in the aftermath of 9/11. It has now been given to the director of national intelligence, which has no more prospect than the CIA director of coordinating the work of these organizations.

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Jul 18, 2011 Lyn rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a superbly reseached work and tales the shadowy tale of American foreign policy from the late 40's to the present day. But it is really a 700 page indictment of an example of how bad a government agency can be. The one thing the CIA did well was give money away, BILLIONS of dollars spent with a slim margin of return at best, a...nd at worse it became clear that the CIA had literally been conned out of hundreds of millions by other states and even individuals. But any work of journalism,...more This is a superbly reseached work and tales the shadowy tale of American foreign policy from the late 40's to the present day. But it is really a 700 page indictment of an example of how bad a government agency can be. The one thing the CIA did well was give money away, BILLIONS of dollars spent with a slim margin of return at best, a...nd at worse it became clear that the CIA had literally been conned out of hundreds of millions by other states and even individuals. But any work of journalism, to be regarded as great, must be objective and here is the problem with this book: it is such a pervasivley negative account, it reports that the CIA is so off the charts bad, that a reader wonders if Weiner is just slamming them page after page. Surely in over 60 years of service the CIA has done something right. To his credit, he documents a rebuttal by a CIA director that says essentially that their greatest successes were secret while only their many failures were known publically. This could be true, but Weiner has created a work that dramatically documents an ascerbic, scathing history of the CIA, describing them as air conditioned, comfortable bureacrats in the suburbs of Virginia and Maryland, far from the image of worldly and competent super spy that the agency wishes to be portayed. The agents and analysists may see themselves as James Bond, but Weiner describes them more like the John Malkovitch character from the Coen Brothers film Burn After Reading: inept, arrogant, ineffective, detached from reality and drunk. Presidents have privately called the agents of the CIA clowns, jerks, idiots, drunks, thieves, and liars.

Allen Dulles, one the earlies and most influential directors, used to heft a report to determine how heay it was, rather than actually reading it. He even did this in front of the author of the report, and may have blithley given it back with an instruction that it needed more, if it were too light. Later in his career he may watch a Washington Senators baseball game, ignoring the agent who was trying to brief him on some issue.

Early on the CIA used the communists against the fascists, and later sided with fascists against the communists. The CIA's battle with communism was its early raison d'etre and the fall of the Soviet Union caused many lifelong agents to mourn the passing of its foe as a sign that their time too had come.

The CIA had stumbled across early terrorsist plots by the PLO and had indications that sub-state level terror may be the wave of the future but did little to prevent the rise of the terrorists, largely due to the fact that thier credibility at the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department had diminshed to the point where the CIA had become an almost ran in terms of US foreign policy.

Some of the notoriously bad predictions of the CIA:
The Soviet Union will not invade Afghanistan
The Shah of Iran is safe from revolution
There is no liklihood of Soviet missles in Cuba
China will not invade Korea.
We are absolutely winning the war in Vietnam.
Don't worry about an embassy attack in Iran.
Iraq will not invade Kuwait. (A senior CIA official learned of the invasion from his neighbor who had seen it on CNN)
And worst of all, a case of the boy who cries wolf in 2001, as CIA officials actually had some idea of plots in existence, but the seriousness of the reports were corrupted by decades of poor intelligence and the weakened esteem at the White House and so the reports went relatively unheeded by the Clinton and Bush administrations.

With the attacks of 9/11 in 2001, the CIA's worst nightmare had been realized as the CIA had failed to prevent a second Pearl Harbor. Later on, the politics and ineffectiveness of the the agency contributed to the poor intelligence that led to the US invasion of Iraq as the CIA produced reports based upon faulty intelligence gathering, hearsay, and was essentially aimed at delivering news that Bush wanted to hear rather than telling the truth that they just did not know for sure what Iraq had in terms of WMD. Scary book if it as true as it appears.(less)

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Mar 29, 2010 Blog on Books rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As long time Angelenos, we were certainly excited to receive our invitation to Taschen Books headquarters for the new release party for their latest coffee table opus `Los Angeles - Portrait of a City.' While partying with the Hollywood elite (Diane Keaton, Hugh Hefner, Jerry Bruckheimer, David LaChappell, Rodney Bingenheimer, various politicos, etc.) and being serenaded by hometown music from the Doors, Mamas and Papas, the Go-Go's and others, we celebrated the release of Jim Heimann and Kevin...more As long time Angelenos, we were certainly excited to receive our invitation to Taschen Books headquarters for the new release party for their latest coffee table opus `Los Angeles - Portrait of a City.' While partying with the Hollywood elite (Diane Keaton, Hugh Hefner, Jerry Bruckheimer, David LaChappell, Rodney Bingenheimer, various politicos, etc.) and being serenaded by hometown music from the Doors, Mamas and Papas, the Go-Go's and others, we celebrated the release of Jim Heimann and Kevin Starr's new 572 page exhibition of the colorful photographic history of the Los Angeles basin.
In this heavyweight book, readers are treated to nearly all the glorious history of the City of Angels from it's very beginnings as an oil and orange grove mecca, thru the war years, the Hollywood years, the earthquakes, the riots and beyond. And while the book chronicles numerous LA icons (the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, Frank Gehry and the Case Study House; the famous buildings of Ciro's, the Brown Derby, the Hollywood Bowl, Capitol Records, Grauman's Chinese, the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Watts Towers, as well as the Dodgers arrival at the L.A. Coliseum, JFK's 1960 convention, RFK's assassination, OJ's car chase, Rodney King and more...) as well as the world famous personalities (the MGM players, James Dean, Cecil B. DeMille, Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, the Beach Boys, Hugh Hefner and Joni Mitchell) and artists (Billy Al Bengston, Dennis Hopper, Helmut Newton, David Hockney's pool at the Hollywood Roosevelt and clips from Ed Ruscha's masterpiece `Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966�), there are still significant gaps in the author's coverage.
One does wonder where some of the more recent luminaries of LA disappeared to within these pages. There are, for example, no photos of sports greats Sandy Koufax, Magic Johnson or NBA logo model, Jerry West, nor L.A. superstars like Jack Nicholson, Mickey Mouse or the Dreamworks triumvirate, no Johnny Carson or TV game show hosts or four time mayor Tom Bradley, and, in fact, very little or no depiction of the twin L.A. Olympics, the Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl or the most recent years of LA fame and glory (the Queen Mary, Staples Center, The Grammys, Kodak Theatre, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pink's, etc. - there are so few photographs taken since the year 2000 that the book has a dated-right-off-the-press feel.) In fact, one might have to squint to even find legends like Jack Warner and Walt Disney within these pages.
Though light on descriptive captions, Kevin Starr's text is quite comprehensive and the book does a magnificent job of referencing a reasonable number of additional L.A. inspired movies, books and records in its back page indexes, leaving anyone who wants to earn a masters degree in the city's stature with hours of resources to indulge their every whim. The English language book, which bills itself as the most complete photographic collection ever done on L.A., is translated into German and French as well. Ultimately, a fine collection, but not without some significant gaps. - [...:](less)

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Jan 29, 2010 Ira Marby rated it 5 of 5 stars

Buku teranyar di rak buku. Buku ini bener-bener bikin orang makin ngetawain Amerika. Tadinya mau beli buku Negeri 5 Menara. Nyampe Gramedia langsung disambut pemandangan Buku Merah ini. Buku Tim Weiner ini menurut saya bukan hanya membongkar kegagalan CIA, tapi juga membuktikan kalo Hollywood adalah salah satu alat pencitraannya Amerika dan Zionis. Yah liat aja film-film mereka yg menampilkan tentang kinerja CIA, seolah-olah canggih dan wah banget dah CIA itu, padahal. Cocoklah buat temen ngeteh...more

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