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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: $10.08
You Save: $6.87 (41%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  129 reviews
Sales Rank: 2734
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
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 124 more reviews...
 The Worst of The CIA August 20, 2008
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.
Overpowering July 28, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
No exagerations and no fabrications.
That's the way it is with the CIA.
A profound digging into the mechanism and operational structure of the agency.
Overpowering.
A great deal of information.
Hot!
Weiner's bias doesn't surface until you are already sucked in July 23, 2008
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
For the first two thirds of Legacy, the author applies an agnostic and universal critique of the OSS and CIA. This bumbling agency never really did any intelligence gathering, they were wrong more than right and they were always infiltrated by counter spies. The reader begins to trust Weiner as a fair and balanced historical critic of every Presidential administration until James Earl Carter.
Unlike earlier presidents, Carter used the CIA for socially pure purposes. He sided with the Communists to remove imperialist white governments in Africa. Weiner praises Carter - our nation's worst president - even though the African countries he "saved" are now in economic ruin. He gives Carter a pass on the hostage taking in Iran. Iranians were only expressing their anger over the matter of the Shah, after all.
The one President who stood down the Soviet Union is portrayed as a senile old bafoon who "fell asleep during CIA briefings after eating some jelly beans". The condemnation continues under GHWB and GWB as the reader would expect at this point. Weiner rightly attacks recent Preidents for focusing on Communism while the Soviet Union was already in collapse. He doesn't seem to accept the premise that anything the US or CIA did during the cold war had any positive impact on fostering that collapse.
Weiner used his book as an opportunity to skewer Oliver North and Reagon over Iran Contra after he'd earned the reader's confidence by appearing to be "fair and balanced" for the first 300 pages.
The author seems to have done a well researched and factual report of events. His interpretation is, however, open to criticism in my mind.
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