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[0] checkbox [#] position [cover] cover [title] title Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA [author] author Weiner, Tim * [isbn] isbn 038551445X [isbn13] isbn13 9780385514453 [asin] asin [num pages] num pages 702 pp [avg rating] avg rating 3.86 [num ratings] num ratings 5,921 [date pub] date pub Jan 01, 2007 [date pub (ed.)] date pub edition Jun 28, 2007 [rating] Lucas's rating 4 of 5 stars [my rating] my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves [notes] notes Notes are private! [recommender] recommender none [comments] comments 0 [votes] votes 0 [read count] # times read 1 [date started] date started not set [date read] date read Jan 08, 2009 [date added] date added Dec 08, 2008 [date purchased] date purchased [owned] owned [purchase location] purchase location [condition] condition [format] format Hardcover [29] actions view [review] 
review This book is very good but has some fundamental problems. It is very critical of the CIA and suggests that intelligence agencies of other countries ar This book is very good but has some fundamental problems. It is very critical of the CIA and suggests that intelligence agencies of other countries are more competent, but offers no real evidence that that is the case. One legitimate suggestion is that smaller agencies in smaller countries with more limited ambitions can be more effective, and other than that the number of operations that were undermined by KGB penetration suggests that the KGB was one example of a successful and large intelligence agency. Weiner later states that it's the unresolved contradiction of running an intelligence agency in an open democracy that's at fault, but I suspect that many closed societies have even more corrupt and ineffective services. The other major flaw that runs through the entire book is that almost nothing at all good or worthwhile is attributed to the CIA. This may be true, but the book repeatedly uses the criticism of people within the CIA (but if those people aren't competent, what good is their criticism?), and portrays the agency in decline (if the agency was never effective, what peak is it declining from?), and repeatedly uses words like destruction and collapse to describe the agency under nearly every president. The central narrative of the CIA that its successes are all secret and only failures are public is most likely a myth as the book claims- some of those successes ought to have been declassified by now- but I couldn't trust this author to say. The CIA led overthrow of the Shah of Iran or the replacement of democracy in Guatemala with a brutal military government I have heard about many times before, though Weiner may be using more recently declassified documents than other accounts didn't have access to. A few other things I was completely unaware of and were very interesting: Early attempts to infiltrate the Soviet Union and North Korea that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of agents trained by the CIA. I don't quite remember but in the case of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union a mole within the CIA's operation simply told the Soviets where the planes or parachutes would land and the agents were arrested immediately and executed. Agents that appeared to survive were actually sending back reports orchestrated by the KGB. But it's not clear whether the failure was 100% or not- if even a single agent was successful, Weiner ought to say but doesn't. The conspiracy theories that plagued the agency after the assassination of JFK. JFK had advocated assassinations to be carried ought by the CIA, so it was natural for them to assume that his own death was payback from Cuba and possibly the KGB. Weiner doesn't seem to have spent much of his research accessing KGB records for this event or any other part of the book, so while he portrays the CIA as paranoid he doesn't quite exonerate those suspects either. ...more
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