Tim Weiner – Legacy of Ashes
From the fall of 1998 onward, “the United States had the capability to remove Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan or to kill him,” but it quailed when it came time to pull the trigger. A few paragraphs later, Weiner recounts the unfortunate bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1992. Another failure on the part of the CIA: it had wanted to target the Yugoslav Federal Directorate of Supply and Procurement. Then, on handover to the current president Bush, Clinton is to have warned him by saying “your biggest threat is bin Laden.” Bush has denied ever hearing those words.
TIm Weiner‘s history of the American Central Intelligence Agency paints a rather unflattering picture of an agency beset by problems and unable to perform its duties. Created in the era of Truman in the mid 1940′s, the CIA was to assist the American president with the coordination of intelligence from around the world. It was never intended to become an organization of spies. The agency falters from the start and is directed by the whims of its head and the wishes of the president. Ironically, the author points out that a secret agency’s successes tend not to be noticed, whilst its failures are publicized widely. For those interested in key historical events such as the Bay of Pigs situation, Nixon‘s Watergate and the Vietnam war, there is plenty of material in this book.
Weiner has researched his book well. There are 600 pages of text, followed by roughly 300 pages detailing references and notes. It’s not always a rivetting read – there are many areas in the text swamped with detail. These are often tedious to absorb and add little to the information gleaned.
Covering 60 years of the CIA all the way to Saddam Hussein‘s capture and the 9/11 terror attacks, Legacy of Ashes is topical and interesting. Care should be taken that the text is not interpreted as a collection of conspiracy theories. I believe most of the text to be a fairly accurate representation of historic events, though it is highly possible that certain elements have been embellished.
As a factual historic account of a superpower’s inability to function this is an eye-opener. Unfortunately for all of us, this agency has not learned from its mistakes.
