Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

I read this book as part of my ongoing research into the assassination of President Kennedy. People who are viewed as experts on the JFK mystery say all roads lead back to the CIA. The assassination came through them.The great Fletcher Prouty worked with Allen Dulles at the Agency up until the time JFK was killed. There's probably two main points in Fletcher's books:1. The CIA mutated into something Harry Truman never intended when he set up the Agency after World War II.2. After World War II the United States stopped respecting the sovereignty of other countries.I would say Mr. Weiner's book is consistent with what Fletcher said. I don't think Mr. Weiner is a JFK conspiracy guy. Rather he relies on official sources such as declassified CIA documents and statements made by various people over the years. Mr. Weiner himself has conducted interviews with many famous people such as former CIA directors and even World War II general Douglas MacArthur.Once someone believes that President Kennedy was murdered by a domestic conspiracy this belief changes their perspective about anything people like Richard Helms or Lyndon Johnson said.For example:Public Record: The Gary Powers U2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviets.Conspiracy Theory: The CIA sabotaged the U2 to derail President Eisenhower's peace summit with Nikita Khrushchev.Public Record: Lyndon Johnson was tormented and conflicted about the situation in Vietnam.Conspiracy Theory: U.S. military intelligence was feeding President Kennedy and Secretary Of Defense Robert McNamara all lies about Vietnam. But they were telling Vice President Lyndon Johnson the truth about what a quagmire Vietnam had become. Johnson already knew what the end result would be in Vietnam while he was still the Vice President.Public Record: Lyndon Johnson said JFK's assassination was 'divine retribution' because of JFK's role in the death of President Diem in Vietnam and the Kennedy brothers' plots to assassinate Fidel Castro in Cuba.Conspiracy Theory: Lyndon Johnson and his Texas billionaire pals were part of the domestic conspiracy to assassinate JFK as was FBI director J. Edgar Hoover also.Public Record: I don't know what the CIA has said they were trying to do in Vietnam. I guess they claimed they were trying to save the entire world from global communism.Conspiracy Theory: There never was any real military objective in Vietnam. The goal in Vietnam was to create a bottomless money pit of military spending even if this meant putting American military service personnel into harm's way.Public Record: CIA spooks Richard Helms and James Angleton were convinced that Lee Oswald acted on behalf of the Soviets when he assassinated President Kennedy.Conspiracy Theory: Angleton was the only individual within the CIA who had the knowledge, authority, and diabolical mind required to be the mastermind of the JFK assassination and to place the blame on Oswald. When JFK got killed the Agency raised the ominous (although completely false) specter that the Soviets and Fidel Castro were behind the assassination.As I said author Tim Weiner doesn't cross the line into the conspiracy realm in this book. But even so just what he says about the CIA based on the public record isn't very flattering for the Agency.Even though Mr. Weiner doesn't say the CIA was involved with JFK's murder, he does say they did things like that and much, much worse in other countries.

A better title for the book might have been the CIA a History of Incompetence. The author does a good job of detailing how the CIA has never really been right about much. Over the decades they missed the calls on countless invasions during the cold war, the tet offensive, all the way to 9/11 yet the people responsible kept getting promoted.The book also details how the CIA throughout its history have been little more than yes men for the President. To the point where the CIA reports were changed to fit the narrative the president wanted them to fit.The reason I gave the book 3 stars was the author barely touches on some of the dark areas of the agency. Almost nothing is mentioned about the extraordinary rendition program, their supporting of some the greatest human right's violators this world has known, domestic spying, and their ventures into the world of narcotics

Very interesting book. About 3/4 of the way through I was wondering what the CIA thought of the book and low and behold they have a review of it posted on their web site - not fans! I think the author did a very credible job of digging through stacks of information. The CIA denials seemed to be mostly nitpicking versus refuting the main points of our countries disastrous spying attempts. I am surprised at how poorly they have done and how much men with big egos were able to circumvent common sense. Disastrous look at how the US Governments interfered with other countries elections to the point of assassinations yet how much every is howling in 2017/2018 about Russians interfering with US elections.

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…

This is a review for a book that really has a specialist interest audience. You must really want to read this book. The information contained within will have you questioning everything you thought you knew about recent history concerning clandestine operations and government intervention in foreign countries. The information provided will have you researching what it reveals. You will be continually asking yourself if that could really happen. I guarantee you will be stunned if you were previously unaware of the actual level of intervention of the USA on other countries affairs and more importantly their drastic failures. If you have a genuine interest in Cloak And Dagger factual events this is a required read. This book is an event. Stick with it and you will get into the mind-set of the writer. I have been used to reading detailed reports all my adult life so I found the book very enjoyable and in a format that was familiar to me. It is not a book I will be lending out. The book costs very little for the information it contains. A very good buy, in my opinion of course.

The CIA in fiction is usually portrayed as very powerful – knowing almost everything, able to manipulate almost anyone. This book completely changes that perspective. Everything in it is on the record, and many of the most scathing criticisms come from its own leaders. I was amazed at how few successes the agency's had (and how many of those were at odds with America's foreign policy). I also didn't realise how few agents the CIA ever had in the Soviet Union, for example, nor how many Soviet moles worked for the agency. Eye-opening.

An absolute revelation. Every page reveals another level of intrigue and deception - but all too often the recipient of the lies are not those one would have expected!! It has re-written my view of post WW2 history. And I'm pretty well-read. Read this book for yourself!! And tell everyone you know to do the same.

Everyone knew about the venality of the CIO's legacy of covert operations.But I had no idea of the sheer incompetence and negligence that characterise the entire history of the CIA.From leader to leader, administration to administration, the CIA was a vector for gross malpractice in statesmanship and appalling lack of consideration for allies as well as so-called enemies.Required reading.

Fantastic book full of great revelations on American politics at its most inept Thank god the myth is broken. Scary stuff revealed