Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

This book seemed right up my alley. An unabashed history of the first 60 years of the CIA, only citing direct documents and on-the-record interviews.

But then I noticed something strange in the book: It often times does not name the CIA's operations directly. It's truly baffling how much the author goes out of his way to NOT directly name the specific CIA operations he's covering.

Here's an example. Compare this direct quote...

“On Forrestal's orders, Wisner created networks of stay-behind agents–foreigners who would fight the Soviets on the opening days of World War III. The goal was to slow the advance of hundreds of thousands of the Red Army's troops in Western Europe. He wanted arms, ammunition, and explosives stockpiled in secret caches all over Europe and the Middle East, to blow up bridges, depots, and Arab oil fields in the face of a Soviet advance”

...to this Wikipedia opening paragraph.

“Operation Gladio was the codename for clandestine “stay-behind” operations of armed resistance that were organized by the Western Union (WU), and subsequently by NATO and the CIA,[1][2] in collaboration with several European intelligence agencies during the Cold War.[3] The operation was designed for a potential Warsaw Pact invasion and conquest of Europe.”

They're describing the exact same thing. And yet the word “Gladio” does not show up in Weiner's book.

Here's another example:

Compare this quote from the book....

“From his first days in power, Allen Dulles polished the public image of the CIA, cultivating America's most powerful publishers and broadcasters, charming senators and congressmen, courting newspaper columnists. [...] Dulles kept in close touch with the men who ran The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the nation's leading weekly magazines. He could pick up the phone and edit a breaking story, make sure an irritating foreign correspondent was yanked from the field, or hire the services of men such as Time's Berlin bureau chief and Newsweek's man in Tokyo.”

...to this quote from the book “Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance between the Vatican, the CIA, and the Mafia” by Paul L. Williams (2015)...

“Knowing the importance of issuing such false reports, the CIA, under Allen Dulles, initiated Operation Mockingbird in 1953. This operation involved recruiting leading journalists and editors to fabricate stories and create smoke screens in order to cast the Agency's agenda in a positive light. Among the news executives taking part were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier-Journal, and James Copley of Copley Press. Entire news organizations eventually became part of Mockingbird, including the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps Howard, Newsweek, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald, the Saturday Evening Post, and the New York Herald Tribune.”

And yet “Mockingbird” doesn't show up in the book either.

Notably neither does “Paperclip”, “Cyclone”, “Condor”, “Demagnetize”, or “Anvil”.

It does have “Nightingale”, “Mongoose”, “Chaos”, “Ultra” (instead of “MKUltra”) and “Phoenix” though. Google “Operation” and any of those words for a bit of light reading.

These are all code names for operations the CIA orchestrated within the time frame the book covers. He includes the actions covered in these operations but very obviously does NOT include a lot of the code name.

That shows me the author might be trying to obscure the actions of the CIA as much as he was trying to reveal them. Without this critical shorthand, it becomes far more difficult for the reader to conduct independent follow-up research or better directly recall the contents itself. The only reason I even noticed this issue is because this isnt my first book chronicling the misdeeds of the CIA. It's my...fourth? Fifth?

It is indefensible for the author to leave out this critical information.

The author doesn't cover the operations very thoroughly, focusing more on the office politics presidential fuckery over the last 60 years.
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Another disappointment was his take on the Kennedy assasination. Since the book is from 2007, it doesn't include the recently released reports that directly shows that Lee Harvey Oswald was an asset of the CIA. Maybe he'll release a 2nd version?

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But it wasn't all bad.
What the book shows is the insane ineptitude of the CIA since its inception. They wanted to be a spy org, then before even getting that off the ground, pivoted to focus on a covert psy-ops, funding fascists, and destabilizing countries they know very little about.

The US government would have better standing in the world if the CIA did nothing but spy and all the money for funding ops was lit on fire. Less people (on both sides) would be dead and the world would be a more peaceful place.

The actions of the CIA from its inception to present has been nothing but shabby, incompetent, and counter-productive. It's not rugged geniuses trying to stop a catastrophe, it's shmucks airdropping gold and guns to literal Nazis or trying to get people in trouble with the law to flip them into becoming spies or it's people moving heroin from A to B. That's what the CIA does. They fund fascists, give bad intelligence resulting in the bombing of civilians, fail to predict any major world event or catastrophe; basically the author showed there's nothing of value here.

Or they send spies into hostile countries, who immediately get captured or killed. And if they get captured, they're forced to call in saying everything's fine so the CIA'll airdrop supplies, literally funding the enemy.

That's if they're not actually funding extremist groups that turn around and attack the US. #OperationCycloneResultedIn911

The biggest takeaway from this book is that the argument “the CIA should be abolished” is far less extreme and far more reasonable a take than I originally believed. The org has been on life support for decades. It's been ripped apart and put back together so many times; each president has used and abused it. Mind you, I don't feel bad for how sad they feel because they, ya know, didn't predict 9/11 or were blamed for Iran-Contra or whatever, fuck em. But every section ends with how the agency is in shambles, then it moves on to another decade, and again ends with how the agency is in shambles. Just close up shop, boys. It's over.

The CIA cannot succeed in its assigned tasks because there are not enough people that are knowledgeable enough AND willing to actually work there. It's no wonder they're now trying to pivot with “woke CIA” ads.

I would recommend this book to anyone who thinks the USA is a good country who doesn't do bad things, or thinks the CIA is an overall positive organization that isn't incompetent and evil.
If you've already lost your rose-tinted glasses over the USA and CIA, then there are better books.

I read about 1/3rd of this book. Basically it portrays the CIA is the most broken organization in the US government. Maybe it's true, but it's almost hard to believe that so much could be wrong with the organization.

I found the book interesting, but sometimes mind numbing with all the names and details that I will never remember and frankly weren't interesting enough to capture my attention for the moment.