Review: Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is a very interesting, no holds barred, unflinching look at the history of the CIA from cowboy post WWII days of William J. Donovan and his protégé Allen Dulles through the bloody lapses of the Cold War on through intelligence failures of Bin Laden and Iraq. The book brings us appropriately to the newly sculpted CIA under Porter Goss as the first Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the last Director of Central Intelligence following the passage of the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, which abolished the DCI position.

Well researched and documented it is almost sad and it feels achingly unpatriotic to have the CIA's flagrant and recurring disasters and misuses from Nixon to Bush analyzed in detail. Afterward, I felt I was waxing philosophic. This isn't about American especialism (we must have the greatest spy organization) but about human nature, I think. Any nation as rich and powerful as ours would grow a clandestine origanization as elaborate (witness the classic KGB and the cyber-stealing Chinese), but will there ever be a society with the wisdom to use it as a potent shield and accurate spear without wasting the lives of citizens and would-be allies?



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