Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA Paperback – May 20, 2008

This product is encyclopedic in nature for it is extremely well referenced with over one hundred and fifty pages of reference material and five hundred and seven pages of very readable text on the history of the United States Central Intelligent Agency (USCIA).It is appalling to read and understand the history of the CIA during the 1950's revealing the incompetence coupled with outright falsehoods and inadequate briefings by Allen Dulles to President Eisenhower. It is extremely fascinating to learn Eisenhower was completely impotent to curb Dulles during his two terms.It appears according to the author, through recent released searches of documents, the reader is treated to inside information regarding the U2 shoot down, Allen Dulles incompetence, Castro Coup, and the planning of the Bay of Pigs (BOP) fiasco. In fact, the BOPs invasion is told here in color with material not previously exposed. Further on the reader is presented with the actual Cuban Missile Crisis with 2003 released audio taped material President Kennedy had installed in the White House.As the reader progresses the text it is apparent the CIA outright lies throughout its history which is very disturbing. It is a prime example of how government agencies block and distort the truth from the American peoples' representatives. If today with almost 350 million inhabitants in the country and a government three times the size of the 1960's the merging elements of Deep State can successfully manipulate the events of the last ten years, and with the present resist movement on the executive's agenda; with a smaller government it is highly conceivable The Deep State could have conspired to assassinate our 35th president, his attorney general and MLK.This book revels much that is uncovered to make the reader gasp. It is very well constructed and a labor of love for the author. High praise to Tim Weiner. It contains a table of contents broken in six parts with an excellent index, black and white photographs. The reference section is a manuscript in itself! This book may be the historic authority on the subject, CIA. The hard cover product is a little pricy, but it is worth the cost to view where the American taxpayer money has been flushed done the toilet! I invite you to come and read about the worst intelligence body ever to be created!

This is both an illuminating and frustrating book. Tim Weiner is a long-time reporter for the New York Times whose beat has been the American intelligence community. This book is engagingly written and draws on a remarkable selection of sources--including direct interviews with many involved in intelligence work and wide-ranging examination of archival materials.Weiner probably is uniquely qualified to write this book. To his credit, he names names, cites his sources, lays the materials openly on the table. I think we should, to a large extend at least, believe the tales he tells. And hair-raising tales they are. Weiner shows us that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the Central Intelligence Agency has from its beginning in the aftermath of World War II been a force for incredible evil in the world.At the same time as we learn of the CIA's mostly uninhibited zeal for murder and mayhem, generally in the context of the denial of self-determination for innumerable peoples around the world, we also learn of the extraordinary failures of the Agency. Most notably, the CIA utterly failed to gain understanding of the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War. In the first couple of decades, the CIA left the American government pretty much completely in the dark concerning Soviet activities and intentions. It's amazing and extremely distressing to realize that the entire first generation of American cold warriors, who shaped our nation in tragic ways toward domination by militarism, beat the drums of warning against the Soviet threat with absolutely no knowledge whatsoever of what was actually going on with the Soviets. It truly boggles the mind.Then, at the end of the Cold War, with the CIA continuing to feed its political masters the analyses that were desired to sustain the Cold War that had become so profitable for the American Military-Industrial Complex, our "intelligence" service complete missed the signs of the impending collapse of the Soviet system.However, sadly, the book is not nearly as good as it could have been. Weiner is a good storyteller, and he treats us to some extraordinary stories--most profoundly distressing. The sum is less than the parts, though. We mostly just get one story after another, numbing and troubling details one on top of the other. But Weiner does little to put it all in perspective. Part of the problem is how Weiner gives us some swashbuckling details about various nefarious projects such as the overthrow of governments in Iran and Guatemala, the attempt to overthrow the government of Indonesia, and involvement in the overthrow of Chile's government--but he doesn't give us much followup on the long-term devastation wrought by these actions. And he does little to connect the dots between the CIA's original violence and the blowback over time in terms of ensuing wars and conflicts (seen, most obviously, in Iran and Afghanistan).Weiner doesn't himself seem to accept the logic of the account he gives. Simply based on this book, we would have to conclude that the CIA has been hopelessly flawed from the start, embarking upon one disastrous mission after another, combining incompetence with malevolence. But in the end, inexplicably, Weiner leaves us with a pretty benign conclusion--the U.S. needs the kind of intelligence the CIA could provide for the well-being of our nation, so let's hope for constructive reform. Strangely, as he recounts the demise of the CIA in the 21st century, Weiner acts as if the earlier history included many successes--even though he has not told us of those and in fact tells stories of one failure after another.With all the shortcomings of this book, Legacy of Ashes nonetheless paints a devastating picture of American foreign policy. From its beginnings, the CIA has constantly subverted democracy both within the US and around the world.Weiner makes it clear, though with too little elaboration, that all post-World War II American presidents have been utterly disdainful of the ideals of democracy and self-determination whenever it suited their interests to "turn the CIA loose" in messing with other countries. One story I was unfamiliar with was President Eisenhower's orders that the CIA overthrow the government of Indonesia in the 1950s. Due to incompetence, the Americans failed initially; but the stage was set for one of this centuries worse bloodbaths several years later when General Suharto came into power and under his leadership (and with CIA complicity) hundreds of thousands of Indonesians were slaughtered. Weiner doesn't give us much on the followup, and doesn't mention at all a later directly related bloodbath when Indonesia massacred hundreds of thousands of Timorese.The big irony of Weiner's story, which he completely misses, is that with all its malevolence and incompetence, the CIA utterly failed in its stated task of serving American national security--yet, the sky did not fall! America didn't need the kind of "intelligence" the CIA was supposed to provide after all. The CIA's is indeed a "legacy of ashes," but its extraordinary failures did not result in severe damage to the United States. We more or less managed just fine without the CIA's "product." In fact, to the extent that America's genuine national interests have been at risk in the past sixty years, it has not so much been because of the failures of the CIA to protect us from our "enemies," but more because of how the CIA has created enemies due to its violent and destructive deeds.

This was not an easy book to read. Not because of the writing, which was superb, but because of the tragic story it tells. Overtly, it is a history of the CIA and is fascinating for that. However, I also appreciated it as a window into the American psyche and recent American history. I was familiar with many of the key figures, but only very superficially. Having lived through most of the time described, I became aware of how shallow my own understanding of events really was.

This book, Legacy of Ashes, is well written. However, the reader should read it while reading the history of other countries. The combinations of historical information gives a great insight into the of the CIA.

A follow-up book to 'Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA about the US Intelligence community is necessary and needed..