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Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

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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. Read more

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Anchor; Reprint edition (May 20, 2008)


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Paperback ‏ : ‎ 848 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0307389006


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 08


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.51 pounds


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 1.72 x 8 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #28,466 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #5 in U.S. Immigrant History #28 in National & International Security (Books) #43 in Political Intelligence


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • Eye-opening, thought-provoking, inconclusive - just what you'd expect from spy business exposition.
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA is a somewhat loose, roughly chronological compendium of events, activities, and leaders associated with the US Central Intelligence Agency from its inception in 1945 through 2007. Information for the work appears to have been gathered from numerous primary and secondary sources, including conversations with former members of the CIA, politicians, and a number of unclassified documents with some declassified just prior to the first publication of the book in 2007. Taken at face value, this New York Times reporter’s work shocks the reader in two ways. First, we are given to believe that the bulk of the efforts of the CIA from 1945 to 2007 were failed operations resulting from incompetent and bungling leadership within the agency. One comes away thinking the entire enterprise of U.S. intelligence gathering and covert operations is a series of one mis-guided, unmitigated disaster after another. The reader is treated to a litany of stories about ineffective and/or ignorant leadership, politically-motivated subterfuge, in-fighting, and downright deliberate deception and deceit on the part of the CIA with, and between and among others in the executive branch (presidents, vice presidents, and cabinet members), members of the military establishment, congress, and the state department. Second, this reader was appalled at the extent of CIA-sponsored “interventions” which are redolent of the highest degree of hypocrisy and duplicity in the violations of norms national sovereignty. Contemporary allegations of Russian interference in the United States election process through social media tampering seem quaint compared with the dozens or hundreds of episodes of interfering with foreign governments and societies; directly and indirectly destroying and/or supporting (sometimes both at the same time!) political actors and systems of governance in countries around the world. Dispensing propaganda and operating Radio-Free Europe pale against charges of assassination, coups, and para-military incursions, and full-blown (or at least partial) direct, but unacknowledged, military invasions. Justification for this no-holds-barred approach to intelligence gathering, counter-intelligence, espionage, and counter-espionage (and apparent counter-counter espionage, etc.), was the mission to combat, conquer, or at least contain the largely Soviet-engineered spread of communism. The net result of most of the work of the CIA seems to amount to an abhorrent waste of money, thousands of lives (CIA and surrogate foreign agents), layered on top of a litany of characters – at the highest level of government – engaging in all manner of excess, self-dealing, over-wrought ambition, and hubris with extremely little of benefit to the national security of the United States. The recurring themes of excesses, poor stewardship, lives lost needlessly, and infighting, bureaucratic incompetence, and weak, or at best ignorant, leadership throughout the CIA’s history is disheartening. Regarding the work itself, I must acknowledge and applaud Weiner’s effort to tackle such a difficult subject, especially one in a domain in which obscuring and obfuscating information is the modus operandi and where a good bit of the evidence is based on declassified information (at least those fragments of the total store of data the government has allowed to be declassified), together with conversations and dialogs with many who may have an ax to grind, a legacy to protect or promote, along with a fair amount of unsubstantiated stories, opinions, and conjectures. The reader must accept at the outset that only a partial story can be viewed and that much more (some at least as horrific as was exposed in the book itself), lies beneath the surface and veil of necessary, or at least claimed necessity for, secrecy to protect national security interests. The author pulls no punches in indicting the rank and file of politicians, military personnel, and civilian actors, showing culpability on both sides of the aisle of American politics. However, his wagging finger displays a hint of partisan slant at times. The journalistic reporting work of “facts,” to the extent the information reported can be considered as such, is punctuated with normative interjections, assessments, conclusions, and declarations that are mostly facile and unwarranted, or at least unproven. Clearly short on analysis, the work fulfils its ostensibly expository purpose, shedding light on the darker side of U.S. national security efforts. Legacy of Ashes points to the many challenges and obstacles facing those tasked with ensuring national security at all costs, including recruiting, training, and deploying spies and covert operations personnel (while keeping “moles” or foreign spies out of the ranks). Weiner points out the inherent paradox of the intelligence business that relies on methods, techniques, and programs of deception, disinformation, and mis-direction that run counter to principles underlying the U.S. Constitution, U.S. law, and likely that offend the moral and ethical sensibilities of a large part of the American electorate. The CIA Director role has shown to be a revolving door counting more than 30 different individuals (counting interim or acting directors) in its 73 year existence. Weiner notes this in his book and describes the challenges that such churn in leadership cause. By my count, the CIA director role has been filled by 12 or 13 career military officers, 7 academics, 5 lawyer/diplomats, 1 senator, and 2 business people (industrialist McCone, and oil man George H.W. Bush), with the remaining dozen or so individuals being career civil servants. One could argue that the bias towards military and civil service backgrounds is less suited and ill-matched to the requirements of leadership in such an organization as the CIA with such a mission as the CIA’s than that of an experienced and successful business person who knows how to set up and operate a sustainable operation. Granted the spy business is categorically different than making steel and setting up telecom infrastructure (McCone), and pumping oil (Bush), but sound command, control, and communication organization principles still apply. My opinion aside, it is clear from the book that the CIA has been in a constant state of identity crisis: Who are we? What is our mission? How should we organize and operate? What should we do/not do? How are we positioned vis-à-vis the Pentagon, the state department, the executive branch, the judiciary, Congress, etc. Has anything changed at the CIA in the decade since the Legacy of Ashes was published? I would like to see a follow-on work that scrapes together enough scraps about the CIA’s most recent decade to get some insight. I may have to wait another few years or longer before more documents are declassified to learn more. One could conclude from reading this work, assuming what is written accurately reflects the apparent doings, mis-doings, and state of disarray of the CIA, that the U.S. cannot possibly do the kinds of clandestine work, espionage, covert operations, etc. required to ensure the national security of our country given the values and structure of the our culture and system of governance. Perhaps the failures and shortcomings of the CIA imply reversion to old-fashioned, “hard-power” methods of geopolitical influence to avoid fighting an enemy with one hand tied behind our back. Exercising more severe “soft-power” methods for example economic sanctions may not be a substitute for hard power, but can certainly augment an arsenal of military and clandestine efforts. The rules of engagement for applying hard-power have historically been clearer when America’s leaders and people appeared to have the “stomach for war.” There is much complexity, guesswork, and difficulty in attempting to discern intentions when using military power, but the world of clandestine work is perhaps more-so burdened with these same challenges and is thus more prone to mis-calculation. Arguably, the focus of CIA efforts since the turn of the century is on non-state actors, i.e., terrorist groups and less on the designs of imperialist nations (Russia, China). Also, maybe Jimmy Carter was onto something in his efforts during his administration to direct at least some of the CIA’s resources towards addressing humanitarian crises around the world (as Weiner describes Carter’s direction to CIA leadership to sabotage apartheid in South Africa). Who knows if our CIA resources could have intervened in the Rwanda crisis of 1994 – perhaps half a million lives could have been saved. Is North Korea on the CIA’s radar? How about the dire situation in Syria and the Kurds in northern Iraq abandoned by the U.S. after deposing Saddam Hussein? Food for thought. Definitely worth a read. But you may end up hearing a little inner voice whisper outlandish speculations: “Is the author of Legacy of Ashes secretly on the CIA payroll?” or “Does he have a secret bank account in Switzerland being filled with Russian rubles for every word he writes that disparages the CIA?” Or maybe the KGB just wants me to believe the former and the CIA the latter, or vice versa. Hmmm… ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2018 by Gregory A. Bonadies
    • Espionage and democracy are incompatible
Tim Weiner gives a sweeping account of the full six decade history of the CIA. As his title "Legacy of Ashes" implies, it is a chronicle of blunders and incompetence occasionally interspersed with success. A constant theme throughout the book is the clashes of strong egos, of individual ambition taking precedence over national interest. This is a problem throughout the bureaucracy. The natural brakes on bureaucracy are the Congressional checkbook, oversight and rivalries from above and elsewhere in the bureaucracy, and public opinion informed by a diligent press. Bureaucrats everywhere try to hide their failings. When the mission itself is clandestine, they can be unusually successful in doing so. The CIA is split into a Directorate of Operations and a Directorate of Intelligence, responsible for covert actions and espionage respectively. The DO received most of the funding through the early history of the CIA, and because of its activist charter got the agency into its gravest difficulties. Under its first long-term director, Allen Dulles, it developed a passion for regime change. Installing the Shah in Iran was the most sparkling success. Along with regime change, it was fascinated with political assassination. Presidents were fascinated by the opportunities which a clandestine service presented for carrying out activities outside the law, or at least at its limits. They often directed the CIA to do things that its management would rather not have done, and they often asked for intelligence that was impossible to acquire given the CIA's resources. The tension resulted in a lot of lies being told. Presidents and Congress were told what they wanted to hear rather than the truth. Agency directors, especially those from the outside, seldom got the whole truth from their underlings. Even station chiefs often ran their own operations without informing their superiors. And, the superiors often did not want to know the details; they did not want to have to lie out right when called before their higher ups. Castro was an especially attractive target for assassination. Weiner chronicles several schemes to wipe him out. He does not say that Kennedy's assassination was directly due to Castro, but he does say that the CIA withheld a great deal of information from the Warren Commission investigating the assassination, and suggests that they would have come to different conclusions had they had all the facts. Other bungled covert operations included the Bay of Pigs, our operations against Sukarno in Indonesia, Iran Contra, the many failures to eliminate bin Laden between the time of the embassy bombings in Africa and 9/11. We embarrassed ourselves by association with skulduggery in Chile, the Diem assassination in Vietnam, and murderous regimes throughout Africa and Latin America. The failures on the intelligence gathering side were equally great. The fundamental problem that has dogged the agency since its inception is that they have never had agents who speak foreign languages and are willing to live under cover in foreign countries to collect human intelligence. Weiner claims that we were almost uniformly unsuccessful in placing agents in the USSR, China, Vietnam, Cuba and Islamic nations. The intelligence we were able to gather came from foreign intelligence agencies, communications intercepts and other electronic sources. The fact that we did not know what was going on lead to many failures. We did not understand the USSR and its intentions, so we vastly overrated the threat. We constantly overrated the danger of merely neutral countries going over to the communists, leading us to support regime changes that installed right wing thugs. In my travels through South America I am amused at the patronizing, sometimes contemptuous familiarity with which almost everybody speaks of the CIA. La see-ah. When those regimes fall, as in Nicaragua, Honduras, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic, we reap a harvest of resentment. Weiner does not delve deeply into the motives of moles and traitors, but he does offer ample evidence that our counterintelligence has been consistently weak. The Soviets penetrated the CIA with some regularity, and our agents were neutralized. As a consequence, spying for America has been extremely dangerous for Soviet citizens and Muslims. The focus of the book is primarily on the US. Weiner does not go into the extent of the real threat posed by, for instance, left-wing guerrillas in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil during the 1970s. The regimes we supported were repressive, and our CIA perhaps out of control, but there was a real enemy, a fact which Weiner tends to understate. No personality comes out of the book untarnished, but Weiner clearly views some of his subjects as more intelligent and having more integrity than others. Presidents Eisenhower, Carter, Ford and George H. W. Bush come out looking pretty good. John and Bobby Kennedy relentlessly pushed the CIA to unconscionable acts. Nixon, George W, and Lyndon Johnson did likewise. Among the CIA directors, Richard Helms and George Tenet come out looking fairly good; William Casey, Allen Dulles, and Porter Goss come out looking bad. Weiner has a long list of sources, and one suspects that good sources got favorable treatment. The major conclusion of the book are that running an espionage service is inconsistent with the freedoms inherent in a democracy. Weiner says in his conclusion that an occasional terrorist attack is probably the price we must pay for maintaining our individual liberties. A conclusion I draw is that there are no altruists in government. People seek power for its own sake and sometimes their own enrichment. The unaccountable power that came with service in the CIA was attractive to a number of unprincipled characters from its very first days, with the veterans of the OSS. Will ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2011 by Graham H. Seibert

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