Legacy of Ashes

The History of the CIA

By: Tim Weiner

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki

Length: 21 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

National Book Award Winner, Nonfiction, 2007

This is the book the CIA does not want you to read. For the last 60 years, the CIA has maintained a formidable reputation in spite of its terrible record, never disclosing its blunders to the American public. It spun its own truth to the nation while reality lay buried in classified archives. Now, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Tim Weiner offers a stunning indictment of the CIA, a deeply flawed organization that has never deserved America's confidence.

Legacy of Ashes is based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA. Everything is on the record. There are no anonymous sources, no blind quotations. With shocking revelations that will make headlines, Tim Weiner gets at the truth and tells us how the CIA's failures have profoundly jeopardized our national security.

©2007 Tim Weiner (P)2007 Blackstone Audio Inc.

Critic reviews

"Absorbing...a credible and damning indictment of American intelligence policy." ( Publishers Weekly)
"A timely, immensely readable, and highly critical history of the CIA, culminating with the most recent catastrophic failures in Iraq." (Mark Bowden, author of Blackhawk Down)

Mind-blowing account of an ineffective agency

This book is just stunning. It offers a comprehensive account of the "covert action" missions of the CIA since its establishment post-World War II. Billions of dollars were spent over 60 years and countless agents and innocent civilians lost their lives. However, at the end of the book the author has trouble coming up with a single successful mission. It's Mad Men style arrogance with nothing to show for it.

With such colossal intelligence failures as the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, the failure to predict the end of the cold war and fall of the Berlin Wall, failure to predict 9/11, and the nonexistent WMDs in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the arrogance and needless secrecy of the CIA are impossible to defend.

The book is a good read, although on occasion you get lost in the various missions and the activities of agent X and spy Y. Rather than a chronological account, the author might have considered a different way to organize the material.

Andy

A compelling read (listen). A historical insight into America's CIA involvement in the world.

Too many details

A lot of this book should have been placed into footnotes. This is a story everyone should know, but the author did not order the details in terms of their significance. Minor crimes often get as much verbiage as major crimes. This detracts from the message of this book,it is an important message nonetheless.

so much information about how foolish the cia is

very in depth. lots of great quotes. need to really pay attention to absorb all this great info.

Criminal organization

Excellent, well researched documentation of incompetence and criminal activity by the CIA. This type of organization cannot be tolerated by a free society. I expect to purchase additional books by this author.

What’s the word for “enthralling disappointment”?

I really enjoyed this one.

As a young-ish American, I knew of the bad press surrounding the CIAs activities in the last decade— extraordinary rendition and all that— but only had a vague notion of its activities before 2001. In truth, I always believed the CIA would be an incredible place to work, to do good work that mattered.

This book shattered all of those illusions.

To be honest, this book is so negative toward the CIA that it’s hard to imagine the author doesn’t have a deep-seated, abiding reason for being so clearly biased. But then, it’s also clear that the CIA has been an unhinged, unmonitored, unmitigated disaster almost since its formation. Wiener presents a lot of evidence that an organization that’s well-funded, not given clear objectives, and often ignored will do exactly what you expect.

At every chapter of this book, I couldn’t help but feel deep disappointment that the CIA could never really carry out their “intended” mission, and yet somehow managed to insinuate themselves into (or directly create) every major issue we’ve dealt with as a country since their founding. But I couldn’t wait to hear what went wrong next. Like a car crash in slow motion.

The book does end with some good questions. In particular: how can any agency founded on covert operations function in a republic? And in a time when globalization is increasingly westernizing the world, how can the US effectively train personnel in the specifics of local customs, language, and politics?

All in all, an enthralling listen.

Great eye opening read

Would you listen to Legacy of Ashes again? Why?

I would listen to this again and have listened too this more than once. There is so much information and so many stories that every time I read it I pick more and more.

What did you like best about this story?

I loved the level of detail and how it helped to give my a better picture of what happened in the past and how it helped shape the present and future.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

It made my in awe at points and laughing at others.

Any additional comments?

Read this book if you love history, or spy stories, or just want to know what is going on in the world. It is a great read.

Clearly A One-Sided, Op-Ed Piece

While the title "Legacy of Ashes" smells of negativity, I thought there would be some high points, praising the CIA rather than merely telling of its mistakes. Unfortunately, this was not the case. After the first few chapters I came realize that nothing positive would be said about the organization, and I adjusted my expectations to enjoy the book more. There are perhaps four paragraphs in the entire book that speak of a good mission or good decisions from leaders and, if memory serves me correctly, one of the victories was purely circumstantial, putting no check in the CIA's win column as it simply fell in their lap. It was fantastic, though, to find how missions were conceived and carried out from the CIA's formation.

It's interesting, too, that the footnotes and references going with incomplete quotes and numbers are in the back of the book. If you skip to the back of the book to read the notes, you find that many quotes and numerical estimations came many years after the occurrences, taken by oral interviews with directors and employees that did not like each other, as Mr Weiner explains. So, using this sentence as an example of how folks are quoted in the book, "statements were inherently negative."

I would not call the book The FULL History of the CIA so much as Mr Weiner's selective opinion about it. And, while he researched a lot of information, writing a book called Legacy of Ashes meant that he looked only for failures and no victories.

It's always great to listen to Stefan Rudnicki, though, and he narrated wonderfully!

Great! Well read and informative.

While the jist of the book is too highlight the overall failures and shortcomings of the CIA, the book does well to steer clear of conspiracy theories and the "unknown". If you're tired of the books that praise the organization to an unholy level of divinity then this will be the Yang to that Yin. A good addition to any collection.

Meticulously researched

If the subject interests you it is the definitive work. Much was released post 2000 that author draws from. Proof that the US should be on an apology tour, particularly in Latin America.