Legacy of Ashes

The History of the CIA

By: Tim Weiner

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki

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)

They suceeded believe it or not

It is easy to take a select number of anecdotes of failure and paint a big picture that the CIA was a huge waste of resources and that it failed to prevent or predict every big event to happen in the previous 65 years of world history, but I believe that they succeeded. How they succeeded through happenstance was to prevent the cold war from turning hot. They did this by building relationships and communication links with the USSR and with our allies during the Cold War.

The CIA may have missed predicting certain major events in world history over the previous 65 years, but the nature of military and political intelligence is not clairvoyance. An intelligence analyst is not a fortune teller. I'll even bet that within the organization there were people who made adequate and very accurate predictions for the major events that the CIA is accused of missing, but the nature of reporting to U.S. Presidents and other politicians is political. This means that the reporter tells the politician what they want to hear. If you go telling them what they don't want to hear, wrong or right, you will be replaced.

So don't blame this Agency for failures that it is not responsible for. Blame the culture surrounding the Office of the Presidency, and that of the Congress. Therein lies your problem.

it won a pulitzer....

Ok, so it won a Pulitzer. The research is there, no doubt. Very good job doing the research. However, note that the title is "Legacy of Ashes" - it's got an angle from the very beginning, and the book sets out to substantiate this opinion. The books swings from epic failure to epic failure, and even if there is a successful mission, the moral burden and the consequences are presented in a way that even successes can be perceived as failures in their own way.

I am far from a CIA basher, but I find that even though and even if all the content is correct, I'm somehow being fed a cynic's presentation and negative viewpoint.

The narrator's voice gets droning after a while.

Truth is better than fiction!

This book tells us just how lucky this country has been over the past 60+years with a so-called spy agency that couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time. It's even more scary to think that our so-called leaders in Washington have been using the CIA for their own political agenda and totally deceiving the American public. Are you surprised? Have they found the WMD's yet? Read the book and find out why they never will.

Excellent Book

As a 35 year-old reading this book, I found it fascinating learning about what happened in the inner workings of the CIA before I was born. Some of what you read hear contradicts what you learned in school, other tales are just simply unbelievable. This book shows you what we are capable of doing in the name of freedom.

Great history, well narrated

The book itself is simply great. Stefan Rudnicki's voices changes are fun as he takes on the entire cast of post-WW2 politicians, CIA chiefs, and spies. I would listen to the whole thing again.
After listening to it, I know why Weiner won the Puilitzer for it. It is better than any spy novel. If you long suspected that the US is over its head when it comes to international relations, this book will help you understand why.

Mistitled

Title should be 'A History of the CIA' and not 'The History of the CIA'. It's just one slice of the pie. An interesting slice to be sure, but certainly not 'THE' whole pie. Despite the misleading packaging, I'm glad I read it.

No good, just the bad and the ugly

This is not a complete history of the CIA but an exhausting catalog of its many missteps, failures, and errors in judgment and execution. The author uses recently declassified material and extensive interviews with former CIA and government officials as source material for the review. The sometimes comic and often tragic mistakes aren't placed in historical context or examined in great detail (each episode could be its own book) but there is enough to keep you interested and to show the patterns of individual and institutional behavior. It is a sad story and a cautionary tale of the limits of our ability to have good "intelligence". Those interested in a cure will be disappointed; this is a book documenting failures not proposing solutions.

Secret Agents with Dunce Caps

When I think about the CIA, I think about secret agents, spies and James Bond. I don't think about the agency being so puzzling and lost. I was looking forward at reading "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA" to get to know more about the secret government agency, but instead, I read all about blooper missions and how poorly that the CIA is run.

Not too sure how accurate the material is presented in the book, but some believed that man never landed on the moon either.

Tim Weiner writes so many failures about the CIA, that it becomes too unbelievable. When you turn on the news these days, all you hear about the world is going to doom and nothing good is happening. As I kept reading, the CIA is a big joke and never applauding the agents that are serving out nation. I just wanted to know more about the good side of the agency, but the CIA is like a dumb kid in the corner, with a dunce cap.

they must be good sometimes

In this book, it is very difficult to find positive events or task that the CIA performed, but I assume that they must have done a few things that benefited our country.
I guess it is the people, more so than the idea behind the CIA that makes this book such an indictment of that agency.
Makes me think of the bad apple affecting the whole bunch while the CIA's stance is that only the negative is acknowledged and the positive is un-noticed.
I would recommend the book for serious listeners that want information that may shed some light on current affairs

Compelling and eye-opening

Probably the most comprehensive history I have found to date. The narrator is engaging and I now possess a more nuance understanding of the agency, and its effects in time and space.