Quick book review:
For most Americans, the CIA is a secretive, but seemingly benign, agency of the government that attempts to gather difficult-to-obtain information for political or military use. The reality is that since WWII, the Agency has been an uncontrolled clandestine and paramilitary arm of government which operates with its own foreign policy objectives – not infrequently in direct conflict with and purposeful opposition to that of the President, military, Congress, and the will of the American people.
Since its inception, Presidents have rarely had an idea of the scope, violence, illegal dealings (arms, drugs, bribes, coups), foreign government interventions, foreign civilian deaths, subsequent global antipathy, costs and absolute failures of the Central Intelligence Agency. Congressional Intelligence Committees cannot break into the secrecy. Often, Directors of the CIA, themselves, have been unaware of major operations. Foreign branches and their directors often operate independently, following their own arbitrary and personal agenda.
Author Tim Weiner, is a New York Times reporter who has written on these topics for over 20 years, traveling abroad to pursue his stories where they take place. With 170 pages of notes and references from an assortment of documents, recordings, declassified materials, Congressional testimony, interviews, etc., his best-selling book is well documented. It serves as a rare glimpse into a dark and ugly space.
While intentions may have been very good in the late 1940s and forward to protect the American people, to fight the spread of communism during the Cold War (which was in part an American creation by handing over Eastern Europe to the Soviets at the end of WWII – a debate for another time), and to have a global awareness of threats, the CIA became something very different from an intelligence gathering agency. It became a rogue agency without control or oversight, run by the whims of Allen Dulles, his cronies, his minions, and their successors.
From innumerable coups, to failed spy operations, to illegal financing schemes, to arms/drug running rings, to whimsical murder and assassinations, to the support of tyrannical dictators, to the unintended consequences of the deaths of potentially hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians, political prisons, black site torture centers, the inception of war,…. What has taken place, often behind the scenes and completely unbeknownst to you, has not been intelligence gathering by the CIA, but rather the destruction of your security, foreign disruption and death, the elevation of global anger and resentment against the USA, the creation of terrorists, instability and destabilization of societies around the world.
Legacy of Ashes is an eye-opening opportunity to understand what certain aspects of your government do to harm you, under false pretenses, with your tax dollar, and without your consent. Instead of providing good intelligence, more often than not, the CIA intelligence reports and predictions have been 180 degree misreads of global events. The basic story of the CIA over the past 70 years has been one of “comic book fiaso,” as the author describes the Iran/Contra debacle. Of course, there must be some good that the agency has done. Whatever that might be, the seemingly endless list of harms and costs cannot justify its existence.