C-span After Words

Legacy of Ashes.
The History of the CIA
by Tim Weiner. Random House.



For the last sixty years, the CIA has managed to maintain a formidable reputation in spite of its terrible record, burying its blunders in top-secret archives. Its mission was to know the world. When it did not succeed, it set out to change the world. Its failures have handed us, in the words of President Eisenhower, “a legacy of ashes.”

Randomhouse

C-span After Words: author Tim Weiner interviewed by David Ignatius



Tim Weiner provides us with an interesting set of informations, the book is fairly readable, but not for what it does tell but for what it doesn't......and all its pretentious interpretations. Tim Weiner is the ultimate "insider" or gatekeeper, a man who could seat for hours, drink beers & chat with former CIA Director. How credible, how objective ?. Regarding the so called "CIA crown jewels", Tim Weiner believes that, the so called crimes of the CIA were in fact the fault of the President, who was the one calling the shots, ordering the agency to conduct itself like the brainchild of the defunct Gestapo. Not bad Tim. Later on he completely contradicts himself by saying," the only crimes of the CIA was to keep the President uninformed...". So according to his twisted logic, the CIA is only responsible for being the toy of a nefarious president, who in fact turns out to be himself the victim of the CIA secrecy ,in regard to covert operations....the president being the one calling the shot, while the CIA leadership considers him an instrument of their own...

Difficult to find someone even barely intellectually dishonest as Tim Weiner. But thanks to Weiner & his astonishing mass exercise of stonewalling & white washing for the CIA, it feels good to see that concocting a fraud is still a great journalistic tradition,

While escaping any accountability for his flawed work, Weiner's book is amazingly intellectually unchallenging.