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| Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA | 
 enlarge | Author: Tim Weiner
Publisher: Anchor
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy New: $9.25
You Save: $7.70 (45%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (131 reviews)
Sales Rank: 1696
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 848
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 1.7
ISBN: 0307389006
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.1273009
EAN: 9780307389008
ASIN: 0307389006
Publication Date: May 20, 2008
Release Date: May 20, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
With shocking revelations that made headlines in papers across the country, Pulitzer-Prize-winner Tim Weiner gets at the truth behind the CIA and uncovers here why nearly every CIA Director has left the agency in worse shape than when he found it; and how these profound failures jeopardize our national security.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 126 more reviews...
Useful September 5, 2008
Written by an experienced journalist, Legacy of Ashes is simultaneously a serious effort at a compreshensive narrative of the CIA's history and a scathing indictment of the agency's performance. Weiner's account is based on analysis of an extensive amount of documenation, including once classified CIA internal histories, and a large number of interviews of former CIA personnel, including several former Directors. Organized chronologically in a series of short chapters, Weiner traces the Agency's vissicitudes from its inception into the post 9/11 period.
Like many other National Security insitutions, the CIA was improvised at the onset of the Cold War. Its impetus came from Truman's need for reliable intelligence about the Soviets. What emerged, however, was qutie different from what Truman desired and contained systemic flaws that would haunt the CIA througout its history. While Truman wanted an intelligence service, the CIA rapidly became dominated by covert action operations. The emphasis on covert action not only came at the expense of intelligence gathering but often undercut the efforts of the State Dept. and other foreign policy actors. The agency was enmeshed in inter-departmental rivalries with the Pentagon, the FBI, and the State Department. A creature of the Preident, the CIA depended on Presidential support to maintain its bureaucratic position. This gave rise to a sometimes disastrous propensity to tell the President what he wanted to hear rather than the actual facts.
Weiner describes a remarkable number of often disastrous misadventures. Many of these are well known. The Bay of Pigs debacle, the consistent failure to assess Soviet capabilities accurately, the devastating effects of the paranoia of the long-time Counter-Intelligence Chief, James Angleton, the almost slapstick of the Iran-Contra scandel, the devastating failure to be honest in the leadup to the Iraq war, are all laid out well. What Weiner particularly well, however, is to show that this miserable performance was the agency's norm. Weiner describes a large number of horrifyingly incompetent covert operations and intelligence failures. Even apparent successes, like the overthrow of the Mossadegh regime in Iran, had adverse long-term consequences.
This book is very informative but is really high quality journalism as opposed to rigorous history. Legacy of Ashes is mainly a history of the agency's covert operations. There is little description and no analysis of the agency's intelligence analysis and no discussion of why this was such a failure. While this is a fairly long book, there is little effort to provide context. Many of the strategic failures of the CIA, particularly its role in supporting corrupt and authoritarian regimes in the developing world, were really the result of basic American policy failures during the Cold War.
Weiner makes the basic point that the CIA never fulfilled the basic purpose of an intelligence agency, to provide reliable information about the capabilities and intentions of America's foes. This lamentable fact remains true to this day.
 'Must Reading' September 1, 2008
This book or tapes should be read by anyone who recognizes the critical importance of Intelligence to those who are responsible for leading our country in the perilous enviornment we must navigate in. Unhappily, on balance, we appear to have done a pretty inadequate job to date. This book uses no annonymous sources but only CIA documents to show how bad our history has been in serving all occupants of The White House. If ever accurate information and analysis is needed it is now. Read this incredible saga.
 The Worst of The CIA August 20, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I had really high hopes for this book, having had it suggested to me by so many people, but alas, it just doesn't live up to the hype. Like any Best of/Worst of album the book is long on slick cuts, short on substance. So, Weiner hates the CIA. He regards everything that they did as being flawed by lies, deception, incompetence, folly, drunkeness. Ok. He feels that vast amounts of humna and other capital have been squandered to no good end. Ok. BUT in terms of writing the whole thing falls flat & gets lost in weird time-skips -Weiner starts to get into something interesting, then he drops it to run after a new shiny horror 3 years later, only to MAYBE come back to where he started pages and pages later, or maybe not.If you want some quick fast thin overview of CIA foulups, then probably this will be just fine. If you REALLY want any sort of informed reporting you will have to go to books that focus on particular incidents, accidents, or spheres of influence. I imagine that this book was quite the talk of the Georgetown High Drinking Set (Weiner seems obsessed with his villains' alcohol intake) for about a week, and then forgotten.
 A journalistic account of the CIA's history August 12, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
For those who are looking for a historical work on the CIA this is not their book. The author is a journalist, and the book is written in journalistic style. Good journalistic style, and probably good journalism, but this is not history.
Telling the history of the CIA, an institution that has been so intimately involved in American foreign policy, is a daunting task. Given the limitations of space, Weisner has tried to do a good job. Not sure if he has succeeded. He focuses on the anecdotic, not providing the big picture. Unless you think that the big picture is that the CIA's history is an impressive collection of blunders, with almost no successes (too bad to be true, I think). Anyway, the anecdotes are more interesting when they refer to events closer in time (and even more when they deal with the Bush II Administration). The final chapters of the book made a more engaging read.
An additional problem is that the author's opinion and point of view is too evident (thus the non-historic character of this work). He does not even try to hide his personal take on many international past events. A more nuanced approach would have been welcome.
I am not an expert on the CIA. Therefore, I do not feel prepared to opinionate about the accuracy of Weisner's assessment. But his style has pushed me a little back. I liked the book, but it could have been better. Weisner has the contacts and the information, but he lacked the skill to put together a real piece of excellent, objective and valuable research. I hope that in a second edition, he comes with a worthier work.
A Lesson July 28, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book might as well be a "how to fail" manual for any modern American bureaucracy.
In the early years the company is run by dynamic and entrepreneurial founders and mavericks who do a whole lot with very little and are driven by passion and patriotism. They come up with amazingly creative and innovative plans and solutions that actually work and save the day. A company is born.
Then a bunch of alcoholic guys show up swaggering and bragging like mavericks but without the brains or foresight- lots of people and projects die needless deaths due to gross incompetence, stupidity and lies. Lies even to the president who is making policy and war decisions. The wagons begin to circle closer to protect the tribe. On the eve of the Chinese invasion of Korea--the CIA knew NOTHING but said the Chinese would never attack. Thousands of Americans paid for that lie with their lives. The CIA was convinced Cuba would never let Soviet missiles on the island. We almost had WW3 over that little screw-up.
Then the career bureaucrats and managers show up and try to put their stamp on things. Budgets bloat. Egos inflate. Nepotism, cronyism and careering become rampant. All mistakes are carefully hidden or blamed on others. Luck (like the Iranian coup) is trumpeted as a major intelligence and covert ops success. Back stabbing, positioning, scheming, and of course the constant bragging and lying all contribute to a loss of focus on the original mission and create an echo chamber of yes men and allies at the top, with seething morale-sapping resentment, fatigue and bitterness in the ranks. Everyone is just waiting for their pensions and reading newspapers/blogs each morning to gather intelligence. Critical data on Vietnam is suppressed for political reasons.
Then comes Mr. Clean-it-all-up from outside the company. Everyone hates him. Paranoia, backstabbing and lies and bitter rivalries emerge. The agency starts making mistakes like assassinating or bombing the wrong targets, spying on their own citizen, flooding problems with millions of dollars as a "solution," They new guy fires a bunch of people that don't share his views, and he leaves within a couple years with a promotion to the state department, a cabinet position or hey-maybe even president. Since the CIA warlords can't hire or convert people that actually speak foreign languages they just payoff warlords around the world to do their dirty work. Payrolls included at various times: The Shah of Iran and his corrupt sister, the King of Jordan, The warlords in Sudan now performing genocide, Noriega, a two-bit assassin named Saddam Hussein, a terrorist that blew up 77 Cubans on an airplane, opium warlords in Laos,etc etc etc.
The company is then left in the hands of a bunch of naive, inexperienced, RCG interns brimming with ideas and energy but scarred by premature jading. For a brief moment, an entrepreneurial and can-do esprit de corps grips the troops. Congress or the board of directors steps in the fix what is hopelessly broken and installs- a guy who ends up being charged with conspiracy, fraud, money-laundering and fixing million-dollar contracts for his friends in the beltway.
At some point- the Soviet Union collapses- but nobody is even aware of it.
The amateurs left over are promoted beyond their abilities and end up kidnapping, torturing and killing people on accident in their efforts to "get ahead." The lifers resign in disgust. Private intelligence-gathering start-ups sprout all over Washington. Outsourcing spirals out of control. The brain drain becomes a brain vacuum. All new CIA hires adopt the 5-year plan: Get in, make connections, get out, and get paid.
At the end of the day, billions and billions of dollars were wasted on pretty much nothing constructive.
So much for Wild Bill Donovan's legacy.
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