Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
by Tim Weiner
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Book Summary Information
Author: Tim WeinerEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2007-06-28
ISBN: 038551445X
Number of pages: 702
Publisher: Doubleday
Book Reviews of Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Book Review: Weiner never says: How would HE have fought the Cold War?
Summary: 3 Stars
It seems odd to say, but the biggest problem with this lengthy, detailed, heavily researched book, is what it leaves out. Weiner's book repeatedly raises questions it fails to answer.
Detail is devoted to the drunks, the screw-ups, the mediocre and the out-of-control cowboys who best seem to fit his thesis, as well as his New York Times-reporter view of reality. But frequently some CIA official is introduced to the reader as sterling, as one of the best, as a rock of espionage with much to his credit.
Detail is devoted to every secret failure and public fiasco and, no doubt, there were many. But, if there were so many sterling agents, what were they doing all that time? If they had successes - could we hear a little more about them? Weiner pays lip service to a few things that go right in the CIA's tormented history, but frames them repeatedly as exceptions that prove the rule. Were there more of them? If so, why didn't he write more evenhandedly? If there weren't - then how were so many of his characters sterling, upright figures of espionage? Or is he just buttering up his sources? It certainly didn't hurt the Bob Gateses and Dick Helmses to get so cozy with Weiner. They come off sounding pretty good as a result.
One aspect of the book, and of one major dilemma faced by the CIA for six decades, reminds me of an old doctor joke:
Surgeons know nothing and do everything.
Internists know everything and do nothing.
Psychiatrists know nothing and do nothing.
The endless rivalry and competition for the CIA's identity between covert operations, on the one hand, and on classic espionage, intelligence gathering and analysis on the other, is a lot like this. The covert ops guys are seen as cowboys who know nothing about foreign countries but go in and overthrow their governments. The analysis guys, meanwhile, are people with much information at their fingertips, but biased against action because it may jeopardize sources, or tip delicate balances that only they and a few State Department mandarins understand.
His real unanswered questions are these. Is the CIA doing the right or wrong things, and ineptly or competently? Is it wrong to overthrow a government, as lots of liberal New York Times readers would tend to think? Or only wrong to fail and get caught, as those on the right might think? Weiner wants it both ways; he finds them both inept and evil, but if they're ineptly evil - wouldn't that be a good thing?
He faults the agency for its Cold War delivery of big bags of money to friendly politicians in key countries, like Italy. But this seems to me like a fundamental weapon, highly preferable to wars or coups, and delivering major bang for the buck in terms of keeping Italy from going Communist when it mattered.(I know Weiner is used to writing for New York Times readers, who may not comprehend that that's actually a good thing.)
In hammering the agency particularly hard for the Dulles years of the early Cold War, Weiner doesn't cut it enough slack for the daunting task it faced. They had to start an agency from scratch; develop the kind of intelligence one might generally expect only after working patiently planting the seeds for ground sources for decades; and meanwhile do all this at a time when the world was seen as falling to an alien and dangerous ideology, which was gaining ground everywhere. The Soviets took Eastern Europe in 1945. Spent the next couple of years subverting any return to democracy and installing Communism. China fell to Mao in 1949. North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950. The Communists, thanks to Klaus Fuchs, Julius Rosenberg and Ted Hall, had the bomb. The entire underdeveloped world was in play with homegrown socialists, communists and revolutionaries consuming most of the oxygen. Was it unreasonable to think they'd end up creating hostile, anti-American, one-party states whenever they had the chance?
It is less unfair to criticize the agency for its failures to develop deep sources over time. It doesn't sound like they didn't try; there's only so much one can do spying on a closed society locked down tight; but they failed to predict nearly every major development on the world scene.
It is fashionable to attack James Angleton as paranoid, to fault him for singlehandedly destroying our ability to spy on the Soviets for two decades. But he'd been the closest unwitting ally of the worst double agent in history, Kim Philby. He obviously had abiding respect for the KGB's abilities to double people and to play very subtle spy games. Proof of this is scattered richly throughout this very book - like all the blown efforts to insert anti-Communist agents into Eastern Europe, given away by Philby as well as traitors in their own ranks.
Countless good agents continuing into the present day are blown by moles, by double agents, by warlord collaborators out on the frontier who turn out to be working for both sides, and so on. Weiner wants the CIA to learn from experience, but faults them for doing exactly that. Angleton may have been an extreme example, but Weiner never answers how the CIA should instead be deciding which walk-in Soviet spies to trust, and which to distrust. He doesn't answer how we can better spy on closed countries, better prevent foreign intelligence from cleaning our clocks or better influence other countries, particularly if our spies need to become Boy Scouts.
We don't trust Arab Americans to work intelligence if they have families in the Middle East? Maybe this is a lesson learned the hard way during the Cold War. Their relatives are vulnerable to threats and violence in most Middle Eastern countries. Why wouldn't ruthless adversaries use this to squeeze our agents?
I can't fault Weiner's research, or bringing the agency's whole history into perspective. The agency use of secrecy to cover up its history of failure is probably the book's greatest single contribution.
I can, however, fault his wiseass, know-it-all tone, and his failure to offer answers for the questions he raises about the Agency.
You know so much, smart guy? Then tell us: How would YOU have fought the Cold War?
Summary of Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
For the last sixty 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 the first 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.
Tim Weiner’s past work on the CIA and American intelligence was hailed as “impressively reported” and “immensely entertaining” in The New York Times.
The Wall Street Journal called it “truly extraordinary . . . the best book ever written on a case of espionage.” 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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