What is the crowd's opinion of
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA?
From 3.5 billion comments
By popularity online, this product is:
52 reviews of this product found across the web:
In all seriousness I want to plug <em>A Legacy of Ashes</em> by Tim Weiner. He published it right before Obama took office, and goes through a detailed, ~700 page rundown of the history of the CIA and its many abuses. And not just abuses, but historic failures too. The CIA is a fairly incompetent organization in many ways and this book takes them to task. I highly recommend getting it or borrowing it from a library, it's a hella good read and really exposes the worst of the CIA.
And that's all before these last 12 years.
In Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, the author writes that while the USSR found it pretty easy to recruit Americans or place agents in the US, the US was comically bad at placing spies in the USSR, due to the Soviets' skill at spycraft and the Americans' difficulty in penetrating the culture.
Sorry, can't find a direct quote. That's a good book, though. Like the title implies, the CIA has more failures than successes as far as its grand projects go, e.g. regime changes and intelligence operations.
I'm reading a history fo the CIA right now (it's called Legacy of Ashes) and you start to realize the stark difference between what people think the CIA is/was and what it actually is/was.
You hear all about the skyhook and the inflatable planes but what you don't hear about are things like the fact that in the 1950s, the CIA dropped something like 500 spies (mostly foreign nationals) into Russia and China... and literally all of them were either captured or killed.
We think of the CIA as the masters of the covert operation but the vast majority of their operations were abject failures, papered over by lies so vast that even many presidents were not aware of their own CIA's failures.
Eisenhower, for all his follies, actually recognized this in his second term and tried to reform the CIA, but the thing the CIA was best at was self preservation. And they managed to survive.
You're wrong. I suggest everyone commenting in this thread, especially Americans who consider themselves to be politically informed, to read the book Legacy of Ashes by NYT reporter Tim Weiner, who used 100% named sources from the CIA and State Department's own records for the book's research. The US absolutely did support death squads and a military junta in Honduras.
u/MPLeandre01, as you can see from the replies you're getting, we very much do not teach our kids about our country's history of interventions into other sovereign nations, in the name of fighting communism or terrorism as the case may be.
You don't.
There's like 60+ years of documented blunders just like these that were declassified a few years back. The nature of the groups vary. Obviously.
A- what does a bureaucrat at the KGB have to do with Stalin? Or how does a mid level Manager compare to the Head of the CIA?
B-Did the KBG overthrow the sovereign governments of Syria (+3 more failed coups),Egypt, Iran, Guatemala or Indonesia? No that was the CIA
C-does the KGB have black sites all over the world used for torture? Nope, again that’s the CIA
D-while Bush was in charge at CIA, he oversaw Operation Condor which: “Due to its clandestine nature, the precise number of deaths directly attributable to Operation Condor is highly disputed. Some estimates are that at least 60,000 deaths can be attributed to Condor”
You should probably read this for starters:
https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006
Was reading a CIA book Legacy of Ashes - during the final days of Viet Nam, Henry took control of the CIA so that he could run covert kill squads as a last resort to try to "win".
This stuff has been going on since at least the late 40s. For years we've been fucking up governments with zero working knowledge of the underlying culture. It's been almost 80 years, and no lessons learned.
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307389006/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_0F6XCENDRTV183V5EXZ6?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
I'm pretty sure Russia/U.S.S.R has always eclipsed the U.S. in covert ops. I don't really believe you would be saying such things if you read: https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1500791604&sr=1-1&keywords=tim+weiner
From what I understand, the CIA had been running operations to assassinate Castro without Congress' consent and they thought/think that the Kennedy assassination was retaliation. They tried to cover up those operations, in part because the CIA was already in hot water with Congress and Robert Kennedy played a large role as AG in directing those ops.
See here for a good history of the CIA and this incident in particular -- https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006
the truth behind the CIA and uncovers here why nearly every CIA Director has left the agency in worse shape than when he found it; and how these profound failures jeopardize our national security. -- https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006
If you want a super interesting read into America's failures at espionage, Legacy of Ashes is a great read. We are decades behind other nations as far as infiltrating successfully and keeping our people alive.
CIA wasn't very happy with how negative the talk of Weiner was and Weiner does seem to misrepresent quite a bit of information, but a lot of the information is true as well. You have to read other books on the events described in the Weiner book to get a more "unbiased" version of events, but Weiner highlights some pretty ridiculous operations the CIA has undertaken (just read it with a critical viewpoint).
Don't get so butt hurt dude, I am not attempting to smear his character. I am simply pointing out he has made serious mistakes of judgment in the past.
If you are interested, my source is the national book award winning Legacy of Ashes. A very interesting book in which Gates tenure is examined, amongst all directors.
Seriously? How ignorant are you? The U.S. has a rich history of installing dictatorships in Latin America. Legacy of Ashes is a great, easy read on the mishaps along the way.
Hopefully it's taught alongside the CIA history Legacy of Ashes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Game
With that in mind, you can pretty much take it from there in modern terms. Think of the United States meddling with South American countries and their elections and various leadership.
But from a viewpoint of a professional author on the history of the CIA, instead of some random guy talking from an account about Shell in Nigeria (hjuman rights abuses, and also coincidentally political crimes) I would check out the book https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006/
Cheers
They also trained Al Qaeda to fight against the Soviet Union. It's a long history of backfires ... the counter culture , the crack epidemic, the middle east, it's a legacy of ash https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006
Reagan was probably our single worst President, including Trump and Biden. His administration was pretty much owned by criminal bankers (literally criminals) whose deregulation of long-standing financial rules led directly to the savings and loan crisis, Enron, the dotcom crash, the 2007 global financial crisis, and whatever's happening now. In the 80's this country turned down a financial road we've never been able to turn back from, and Reagan was asleep at the wheel while it happened.
Add to that he probably only ever got political power because of the favors he did for the FBI in ratting out his Hollywood communists friends, and then also add in that he made deals with Iran to keep Americans held hostage until his election against Carter was over, and in my opinion he's one of the biggest scumbags in US political history.
He takes credit for the fall of the Berlin wall even though his intelligence services had no idea it was happening (source for this info is a great read by the way). All he did was hand money over to his military contractor friends and then take credit for it when the USSR collapsed, despite nothing he did even influencing that collapse.
>Our intelligence community is the best in the world.
I don't think you're joking, but this statement is a joke. Read Legacy of Ashes.
If you really care, and actually give a shit, check out:
https://www.amazon.ca/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006
>legacy of ashes
https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006
Legacy of Ashes is pretty great. Also, The Watchdogs Didn’t Bark.
https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006
Note: amazon links are just for reference. Please dont give Bezos money unless its your only way of getting stuff. :)
This book (and check what Amazon suggests as related material) is a good place to start if you want more than the wikipedia shitpost version.
https://www.amazon.ca/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006
I truely hope Tim Weiner (<em>Legacy of Ashes</em>, <em>Enemies</em>) is working on a Comey biography. Or at least an update to Enemies.
>the fact that you included iraq fake intel amongst your list devalues your entire argument.
No, no it doesn't. Here's one article from Foreign Policy Journal making the case. There are many, many more. It's well-known. My point is that, in general, the left evaluates the intelligence community's credibility based on political expedience, not reality. Right now it's expedient to grant credibility.
>the only truly damning independent act i can lay directly at the intelligence agencies footsteps is being active in the drug trade to fund their black projects.
Nonsense. Here's something something from the sea of information about the CIA's history of routine abuse and deception:
https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006
Didn't mean to sound like I was complaining about the downvotes, just noting the rate at which the karma dropped.
I'm not actually convinced you're hired by the Russians, just unsure why you're taking such a hard stance for them. Especially if you're a frequent Redditor and have seen the /r/worldnews articles over the past 3 years.
I'll admit I came out of the gate a bit accusatory, but as I have read several books on US intelligence and Russian counterintelligence (the most points against Russia can probably be found in Legacy of Ashes, definitely worth a read), it's hard not to see clear ties in the way Russian intelligence operates, and the way Trump is floating between their stances in his campaign. You'll notice that he seems to change stances depending on what is most contrary or striking, and usually mentions or implies the failures of democracy.
Furthermore, Donald is a billionaire, and his party is aiming to move the national debt to 29 trillion, from 19 trillion over 10 years, which will further increase inflation by a factor of at least 1.5, making living wages even higher. This push for income disparity reflects the way Russia functions, as it is really more of an oligarchy than a functional democracy. I think it mentions in the Wiki how lots of these people have lost huge sums of money since the Ukraine sanctions on Russia too, giving more reason for the government or private individuals to want to influence US politicians. Not to mention that many ballots with votes against Putin were found shredded during the last presidential election, along with accusations of fraud and miscounting.
I don't find your position to be crazy, but with the amount of strangely ignorant and stubborn arguments I've heard over the past week, it's hard to believe that some kind of push isn't going on. I know that Russian citizens had a lot of support for Donald during the election, but it seems like a disproportionate number of people are popping up in certain subs, where certain narratives weren't really embraced before.
I understand. I'll reply when I'm off mobile.
EDIT: Okay! So...I understand that you believe principles ought to dictate policy, but I'm going to have to pop that bubble for you: while you grab a few books on Pakistan's recent history, I also want you to pick up and read with the passion of a thousand suns: Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes. This book will destroy all ebbing flames of hope that you might have had that our foreign policy is controlled by any rational human mind.
The thing about foreign service, and advancing the interests of the US, means you're going to act and behave irrationally. The world is fucked. There are too many actors on the stage, and they all have self-interests. This doesn't just effect us, it effects every one.
Phillipines had an opportunity to build a lighthouse on a reef that would have given them standings to protect their economic activity zone off their shores from Chinese encroachment. It gets stopped by the Philippines politician -- who didn't want to antagonize China, so that he could get a seat on the UN Council. He believed, I'm sure, he could effect policy if only he got on the seat, but in doing so he crippled his nation's chances to protect their interests. This happens all the damn time.
Read Henry Kissinger's On China, to learn just why we need a dick and an immoral human piece of scum like Henry Kissinger in this world. It is fucking Game of Thrones out there, man. Any cynical and unbelievable plot-hole ridden villain-thing you've seen out of Hollywood could not compare to the stupid card house that is world politics.
Not supporting the Pakistani military is akin to supporting terrorism. Is it sad? Yeah...but this has been an integral component of the human condition since we invented city-state politics. Realpolitik hitting the gym, taking anabolic steroids, and calling his lawyer over the course of the last ten decades is all that differentiates the now from the past.
Another excellent book surrounding the topic.
Legacy of Ashes is a good read about the history of failures by the CIA.
Assuming you are writing a story that takes place in Europe, I would recommend three books for you to check out.
Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner. The early chapters provides a good view of the OSS (ie. CIA's predecessor), along with its WW2 successes and failures. http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-The-History-CIA/dp/0307389006
Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs by Patrick K. O'Donnell. It has some interesting stories about the agents in the field. http://ww2db.com/read.php?read_id=390
The Secret War Against Hitler by William Casey (former director of CIA). This book is biased, ignoring blunders of William Donovan, but with that said, it should still provide you with good background info. http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-War-Against-Hitler/dp/089526563X/
Read "Legacy of Ashes" if you want to see how far the CIA can go, and that's only what we know.
Check out Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner
http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-The-History-CIA/dp/0307389006
You'll be posting TILs like no tomorrow. Awesome as an audiobook also.
The first problem you're going to run into is that no one (with good reason) wants to tell you what "works" because as soon as that becomes public knowledge, people will craft means and methods against it*. There's absolutely no value to disclosing what works aside from for public relations. So understand that.
Books like this and this are great for grasping a bit of knowledge and getting a storyline, but don't share much about the nitty gritty. I've read them both, and though I have no experience in operations in the 40s-70s, I do with what Bamford speaks of and there's quite a bit of fearmongering there. Either way, it's helpful to find the perspective of what's trying to be done. These aren't people trying to trample your friends, it's people trying to find a balance between freedom and security.
A book like this is basically just a nice story. It's a few biopics in one and the writer clearly likes the people he's writing about, so he's extremely pretty sympathetic to them. Still good for motivations and perspective, though.
These two are extremely useful because they get into that nitty-gritty that I spoke of earlier.
But as I said, it basically comes down to the balance between freedom and security. If you- like a crazy amount of redditors and young people seem to be- are way way way more interested than freedom than you are security, you're never going to like what people in the IC do. And that's your preoperative, but it seems that many people that of that cloth usually live within a secure environment and just don't really worry about. It's easy to not give a shit about heavy jackets when you live in West Maui. Moreover, the craze that I've seen in reddit is just...amazing? So many people with so little experience of education in these things that insist they know just so much. These same people will flip shit if you wander into their area of expertise acting like you know what's up when you clearly don't but...if someone's talking about CIA/NSA/FBI/etc or even just international politics in general? Suddenly they're the expert. It's weird.
*This is why I chuckle when people think the redacted portions of the 9/11 Commission Report somehow point to an inside job, letting it happen, or a vast Saudi conspiracy. The redacted portions were redacted because of classification, and things are classified to protect means and methods, 99% of the time. Sometimes technology is classified, but it's rare and I don't know much about that anyway.
> > Yeah the CIA is just super.
I don't even understand what your metaphor means anymore, re: the distributor. Saddam was a monster, and also the powerbroker for Mesopotamia. He was a monstrous asshole. And we took him out...and opened a political void into which dozens of smaller, even MORE MONSTROUS people are now rushing. It's not gone well.
It's not even about Machiavellian tactics. From a realpolitik perspective, Iraq was a total failure.
https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006
Read a book fellow random Internet guy!
https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006 -- just a of many tell all books about the history of the EVIL CIA
you need an example of western intelligence agencies deceiving people?
https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006
Quit making stuff up - time to learn the facts ... -- Wall Street, Washington DC, the US Military Industrial Complex, & the US Corporations (working together with the help of the CIA behind the scenes) are slowly & surely taking over the entire World Markets (with selective trade agreement that the average person has no understanding) and the people as well (consumers money) in those countries (and some with deadly operations)- sorry I had to reveal their long term plans ... most other countries know this already and hence, they're either with us or against us - and it's obvious which is which
See Attached
https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006
What? The CIA absolutely DID say there were WMDs in Iraq.
https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006
It's not like the CIA doesn't have a great track record at being spies.
https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006
Oh wait, NM...
Rien de nouveau malheureusement, lisez Chomsky ou l'histoire de la CIA pour comprendre les valeurs Americaines. La France n'est pas innocente non plus, mais beaucoup moins libre du coup nous ne connaissons pas tres bien les histoires sordides de nos agences de securite.
Uh the peasants are growing the opium, then it is converted to heroin in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and then distributed throughout the world. The CIA isn't running it, but you're a Buffoon if you think some of that stuff isn't passing through their control.
It's how power works in the real world.
Iran contra isn't diddly shit, I suggest you read this then come back to play.
The US spies are awful. Read about the history of the CIA.
Popular alternatives to Legacy of Ashes: The Histor...
So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love
A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra)
