Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • With shocking revelations that made headlines all across the country, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Tim Weiner gets at the truth behind the CIA and uncovers why nearly every CIA director has left the agency in worse shape than he found it, and how these profound failures jeopardize our national security.
"For anyone interested in the CIA or American intelligence since World War II.” —The Washington Post
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Century • The precursor to the New York Times bestseller The Mission
For years, the CIA has managed to maintain a formidable reputation in spite of its terrible record, burying its blunders in top-secret archives. Its mission was to know the world. When it did not succeed, it set out to change the world. Its failures have handed us, in the words of President Eisenhower, “a legacy of ashes.”
Now Pulitzer Prize–winning author Tim Weiner offers a definitive history of the CIA—and everything is on the record. LEGACY OF ASHES is based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA itself, and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans, including ten Directors of Central Intelligence. It takes the CIA from its creation after World War II, through its battles in the cold war and the war on terror, to its near-collapse after 9/ll.
Here is the hidden history of the CIA: why eleven presidents and three generations of CIA officers have been unable to understand the world; why nearly every CIA director has left the agency in worse shape than he found it; and how these failures have profoundly jeopardized our national security.
"For anyone interested in the CIA or American intelligence since World War II.” —The Washington Post
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Century • The precursor to the New York Times bestseller The Mission
For years, the CIA has managed to maintain a formidable reputation in spite of its terrible record, burying its blunders in top-secret archives. Its mission was to know the world. When it did not succeed, it set out to change the world. Its failures have handed us, in the words of President Eisenhower, “a legacy of ashes.”
Now Pulitzer Prize–winning author Tim Weiner offers a definitive history of the CIA—and everything is on the record. LEGACY OF ASHES is based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA itself, and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans, including ten Directors of Central Intelligence. It takes the CIA from its creation after World War II, through its battles in the cold war and the war on terror, to its near-collapse after 9/ll.
Here is the hidden history of the CIA: why eleven presidents and three generations of CIA officers have been unable to understand the world; why nearly every CIA director has left the agency in worse shape than he found it; and how these failures have profoundly jeopardized our national security.
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Community Reviews
When I imagine the CIA, I cannot help but image a shadowy organization expertly wielding power just outside of view. The notion these folks are good at what they do just comes with my mental image.
This book takes the opposite point of view. Weiner argues that over 70 years, the CIA has cultivated an excellent reputation and a terrible record. He then sets about laying that record to bare.
Note that the book won the National Book Award for Non Fiction in 2007 and is popularly regarded as well-researched and thorough. That said, there are detractors including the CIA itself that allege questionable selection of facts and a point of view driven narrative. I will not weigh in on the factual debate, only to say (a) the author clearly does has a point of view; (b) it would be a better book with a more objective tone; (c) he makes reference to enough things in the public record that his point of view cannot be discounted.
I will try to summarize the book's argument and then I will give it a structure that perhaps the author would agree with: 1) 40's-50's birth as Truman's news service and Eisenhower's spy agency; 2) 60's - 80's set backs and evolution as a (questionably effective) force against communism; 3) 90s - 00s loss of purpose (no Soviets) and any semblance of an ethical high ground (torture and black ops sites become widespread and well known).
The point of this book.
The author argues intelligence requires capable people to understand the minds of those in other countries through cultural understanding, commitment, language skills, commitment to live and blend into other environments, and finally espionage which emerges from all of the prior things.
He then painstakingly detail show America’s CIA has not only not done these things but has seldom really tried. The agency has ping ponged between an extra-legal ops unit: fixing elections, supplying arms, overthrowing governments, and a reporting service, collecting information from behind a desk and writing largely uninformed reports. Neither were effective at the CIA’s core task - providing actionable intelligence to those in power to provide for national defense. Finally the agency transformed into an (ineffective) international police force deputized with the right to torture prisoners, which was neither its purpose nor its core capability.
Weiner seems to think we do need an intelligence service and there is nothing wrong with having one in a Democracy, though it's tricky. When elected officials cannot be informed in a Democracy, you are walking a slippery slope. Despite that, he would like us to have one, he would just argue we never have and it's not clear we've ever particularly tried.
1) Birth.
America built the Central Intelligence Agency because it felt it needed one, rather than because it understood how to build one, had a design for what it was trying to achieve, or had identified someone capable of running such a group.
How the agency came to be, in a democracy, is important. First, by law it was given almost unlimited powers tied to funding with essentially no oversight. Once this decision was made and placed into law, Congress effectively washed its hands of the consequences. Second, each President seems to have used the agency in a different way: Truman as an information bureau, Eisenhauer as a paramilitary wing. Suffice to say, this made it impossible to do the long term work required to build an effective organization. Its directors shared similar whipsawing understanding of the Agency’s goals and appropriate methods, sometimes at odds with their direct reports (e.g., General Smith’s continued efforts to reign in Dulles’s operations group) and sometimes at odds with their President.
Several important areas were never addressed in law and appear to have been 70+ year squabbles within the agency itself: (1) should the agency focus on operations or on analysis; (2) should the agency be subservient to or independent of policy as created by the state department; (3) from where could the agency source qualified intelligence officers, given the US lacked any institutions with a culture of successful espionage.
40s – established as Truman’s news service, nascent and trying to keep OSS alive
50s – obtains unlimited funding as part of marshall plan. transformed into Eisenhower’s int’l operations force, Install Shah of Iran and overthrow Nicaragua both poorly planned successes that lead to add’l authority. Eisenhower cannot get control, legacy of ashes
2) Setbacks and evolution
During this period the CIA reaches the height of its power as an international force and uses that power primarily try to subvert communism. The author's most interesting observation is that while the agency engaged in operations in a staggering variety of geographies, it failed to really understand the position of Russian communism, which was a failing economic regime. This is a compelling point. Would an agency schooled in empathy and cultural understanding have come up with a different way to understand and check Russian communism? Retrospect tells us it was weaker than anyone really understood at the time. I found this to be among the more compelling challenges the author put forward in the book, particularly given understanding and combating this one antagonist comprised the CIA's primary objective for more than half of its existence.
Then the author describes a litany of failures across the three decades.
60s – Transformed again by Kennedy (hundreds of operations) and then the Vietnam war. Station chiefs become independent fiefdoms using individual authority to operate clandestine services abroad.
70s – Largely run by Kissinger and then given a ‘white hat’ approach by Carter. Bungle Indonesia leading to half a million civilian deaths, support the Khmer Rouge
80s – Iran contras, arming Islamic terrorists to fight against Soviets. Inadvertently lays the groundwork and arms the future network of Islamic terrorists that continue to destabilize the Middle East.
3) Loss of purpose
90 – Agency loses its purpose without a clear enemy to fight (fall of the Soviet Union). Lose almost all local espionage capability, becomes a fleet of desk-bound bureaucrats.
00s – completely dysfunctional, second rate personnel. Miss 9-11, wrong about weapons in Iraq, turned into an extra-legal police force in Iraq
Quotes I liked:
"In covert actions you always have to think of the end game and we have seldom really done that."
"Of course we are cashing some of the arms - someday the US won’t be here and we will have to go on fighting."
"All intelligence work is contingent on human understanding and it is difficult to build an organization of more than say 40 people that can have that as its aim."
“You should never chalk up to conspiracy what you can reliably attribute to stupidity. Because stupidity is a much more powerful force in the course of human events."
This book takes the opposite point of view. Weiner argues that over 70 years, the CIA has cultivated an excellent reputation and a terrible record. He then sets about laying that record to bare.
Note that the book won the National Book Award for Non Fiction in 2007 and is popularly regarded as well-researched and thorough. That said, there are detractors including the CIA itself that allege questionable selection of facts and a point of view driven narrative. I will not weigh in on the factual debate, only to say (a) the author clearly does has a point of view; (b) it would be a better book with a more objective tone; (c) he makes reference to enough things in the public record that his point of view cannot be discounted.
I will try to summarize the book's argument and then I will give it a structure that perhaps the author would agree with: 1) 40's-50's birth as Truman's news service and Eisenhower's spy agency; 2) 60's - 80's set backs and evolution as a (questionably effective) force against communism; 3) 90s - 00s loss of purpose (no Soviets) and any semblance of an ethical high ground (torture and black ops sites become widespread and well known).
The point of this book.
The author argues intelligence requires capable people to understand the minds of those in other countries through cultural understanding, commitment, language skills, commitment to live and blend into other environments, and finally espionage which emerges from all of the prior things.
He then painstakingly detail show America’s CIA has not only not done these things but has seldom really tried. The agency has ping ponged between an extra-legal ops unit: fixing elections, supplying arms, overthrowing governments, and a reporting service, collecting information from behind a desk and writing largely uninformed reports. Neither were effective at the CIA’s core task - providing actionable intelligence to those in power to provide for national defense. Finally the agency transformed into an (ineffective) international police force deputized with the right to torture prisoners, which was neither its purpose nor its core capability.
Weiner seems to think we do need an intelligence service and there is nothing wrong with having one in a Democracy, though it's tricky. When elected officials cannot be informed in a Democracy, you are walking a slippery slope. Despite that, he would like us to have one, he would just argue we never have and it's not clear we've ever particularly tried.
1) Birth.
America built the Central Intelligence Agency because it felt it needed one, rather than because it understood how to build one, had a design for what it was trying to achieve, or had identified someone capable of running such a group.
How the agency came to be, in a democracy, is important. First, by law it was given almost unlimited powers tied to funding with essentially no oversight. Once this decision was made and placed into law, Congress effectively washed its hands of the consequences. Second, each President seems to have used the agency in a different way: Truman as an information bureau, Eisenhauer as a paramilitary wing. Suffice to say, this made it impossible to do the long term work required to build an effective organization. Its directors shared similar whipsawing understanding of the Agency’s goals and appropriate methods, sometimes at odds with their direct reports (e.g., General Smith’s continued efforts to reign in Dulles’s operations group) and sometimes at odds with their President.
Several important areas were never addressed in law and appear to have been 70+ year squabbles within the agency itself: (1) should the agency focus on operations or on analysis; (2) should the agency be subservient to or independent of policy as created by the state department; (3) from where could the agency source qualified intelligence officers, given the US lacked any institutions with a culture of successful espionage.
40s – established as Truman’s news service, nascent and trying to keep OSS alive
50s – obtains unlimited funding as part of marshall plan. transformed into Eisenhower’s int’l operations force, Install Shah of Iran and overthrow Nicaragua both poorly planned successes that lead to add’l authority. Eisenhower cannot get control, legacy of ashes
2) Setbacks and evolution
During this period the CIA reaches the height of its power as an international force and uses that power primarily try to subvert communism. The author's most interesting observation is that while the agency engaged in operations in a staggering variety of geographies, it failed to really understand the position of Russian communism, which was a failing economic regime. This is a compelling point. Would an agency schooled in empathy and cultural understanding have come up with a different way to understand and check Russian communism? Retrospect tells us it was weaker than anyone really understood at the time. I found this to be among the more compelling challenges the author put forward in the book, particularly given understanding and combating this one antagonist comprised the CIA's primary objective for more than half of its existence.
Then the author describes a litany of failures across the three decades.
60s – Transformed again by Kennedy (hundreds of operations) and then the Vietnam war. Station chiefs become independent fiefdoms using individual authority to operate clandestine services abroad.
70s – Largely run by Kissinger and then given a ‘white hat’ approach by Carter. Bungle Indonesia leading to half a million civilian deaths, support the Khmer Rouge
80s – Iran contras, arming Islamic terrorists to fight against Soviets. Inadvertently lays the groundwork and arms the future network of Islamic terrorists that continue to destabilize the Middle East.
3) Loss of purpose
90 – Agency loses its purpose without a clear enemy to fight (fall of the Soviet Union). Lose almost all local espionage capability, becomes a fleet of desk-bound bureaucrats.
00s – completely dysfunctional, second rate personnel. Miss 9-11, wrong about weapons in Iraq, turned into an extra-legal police force in Iraq
Quotes I liked:
"In covert actions you always have to think of the end game and we have seldom really done that."
"Of course we are cashing some of the arms - someday the US won’t be here and we will have to go on fighting."
"All intelligence work is contingent on human understanding and it is difficult to build an organization of more than say 40 people that can have that as its aim."
“You should never chalk up to conspiracy what you can reliably attribute to stupidity. Because stupidity is a much more powerful force in the course of human events."
I enjoyed reading this book a great deal because it explains American history from after WWII until about 2007-08 with the benefit of documents that have been declassified and other information that has been uncovered. It presents a different account than the original explanations at the time (some of which was false).
It may be (or may not be) overly harsh towards the CIA, but it didn't strike me as biased against either political party. As a liberal, I felt somewhat more forgiving towards the George W. Bush administration after reading this book. It is a sobering look at flawed US intelligence and its effect on foreign policy. Definitely worth reading.
It may be (or may not be) overly harsh towards the CIA, but it didn't strike me as biased against either political party. As a liberal, I felt somewhat more forgiving towards the George W. Bush administration after reading this book. It is a sobering look at flawed US intelligence and its effect on foreign policy. Definitely worth reading.
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