CIA II: ‘Legacy of Ashes’ Book Review

Although it may not be the best metaphor, if the Central Intelligence Agency had been a baseball team over the last 60 years, its record would be something like 5 wins and 95 loses in really big games.

Yes, the CIA has been that bad.

That is abundantly clear – and made abundantly clear in shocking detail based on impressively exhaustive research – in Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner, who covered intelligence and security issues for The New York Times.

An agency with a mandate like the CIA sometimes has to engage in illegal and immoral behavior for the greater good. That uncomfortable reality certainly is in play in the CIA torture tape destruction scandal. But while the CIA did plenty of rotten things, Weiner’s inescapable conclusion is that the agency has been extraordinarily incompetent in practically everything it has done since its creation in 1947 from the remnants of the comparatively praiseworthy Office of Strategic Services, and very seldom has been held accountable.

And saves plenty of blame for presidents and congressional overseers who have been bootlicked while they were fed a steady diet of lies and misinformation but made only half-hearted efforts to crack down, on let alone reform, the CIA.
As it is, the CIA is a considerably diminished agency both in size and mandate in its 60th year and that is not a bad thing considering how it has continuously compromised national security while failing to anticipate:

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