Legacy of Ashes review by Josh

Legacy of Ashes is an excellent, if fundamentally conservative, history of the CIA.

As you could guess from the title, the book is scathing. The CIA’s history consists of a long and unmitigated string of screw-ups and idiocy.

There’s not really any more charitable way to put it.

Some of these disasters were clearly the result of the CIA being politicized: presidents have, with rare exceptions, wanted the intelligence service to provide support for policies they’d already decided to pursue which often meant ignoring or punishing people whose work seemed to support alternative conclusions.

Others were the result of stupid policies: For instance, at the time of the publication, the CIA was complaining of an acute shortage of agents who spoke Arabic and knew about Arab culture. They also maintained a policy of not recruiting anyone with family in an Arab country. So, that kinda limited the candidate pool.

They also consistently pursued short-sighted policies with foreseeably disastrous results. For example, arming, training and organizing Al-Qaeda to make trouble for the Soviets. That probably wasn’t a great move.

I called the book fundamentally conservative because Weiner's issue seems to be to be that the CIA had done a really bad job of promoting American interests. He doesn’t necessarily think there’s anything wrong with having a federal agency whose job is meddling in the affairs of other countries and overthrowing their governments when it suits. He just thinks they should be better at it.

I have some disagreements with Weiner but the book still merits 5 stars. It’s well researched and Weiner’s views about what the agency “should” need don’t blind him to what it actually has been. Indeed, his empathy with the basic aims of the organization allowed him to get access to sources and create a far more comprehensive picture than anyone to the left of him could have managed.