Legacy Of Ashes

Tim Weiner’s 2007 tell-all history, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, angered the CIA upon its release, though it was critically acclaimed. Winner of the 2007 National Book Award for Nonfiction, Legacy of Ashes differs from preceding texts exploring the same political issues in that it is the first to be entirely on the record. Weiner uses no anonymous sources, lending further credibility to his work. Every person is named, every quote is attributed, and every claim is rooted in fact. After combing through 50,000 government documents and conducting three hundred interviews (ten of which were with former directors of the CIA), Weiner presents the little-known facts that have contributed to what he feels is a “first-rate spy service” for “the most powerful country in the history of Western civilization.”

It is important to note that Legacy of Ashes is extremely controversial. The CIA has publicly announced its disapproval of the book on several occasions, deeming it an “unbalanced” point of view. The main source of conflict between Weiner’s analysis and the CIA is, actually, quite simple: Weiner sees failure where the CIA sees success.



Weiner tracks the movements of the CIA from World War II until post-September 11. He begins with national intelligence before the CIA’s creation, when the Office of Strategic Strategies (OSS) oversaw all spying operations for WWII. However, its demise was imminent after a terrible performance report, and President Harry S. Truman disbanded it in 1945.

Following the disbandment of the OSS, Brigadier General John Magruder and Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy went against Truman’s wishes to not create another agency. They created the Strategic Services Unit to complete OSS’s incomplete missions as they felt threatened by the Soviet Union.

Two years later, the Central Intelligence Agency was formed under the National Security Act. Its purpose was vague and no one really knew the true mission of the CIA. It was intended to handle covert operations or analysis, but some people felt it was not capable of handling both, causing a major divide that still existed upon the book’s publication in 2007.



The muddied and unclear mission statement resulted in a major hit for the CIA, one that many are unaware of today. The CIA took advantage of the Marshall Plan, a program intended to help the European Nations recover financially after WWII. Instead, the CIA took millions of dollars to fund émigré groups with the intention of spying on the Soviet Union and its satellites. These groups comprised people who left their country for another due to political differences or turmoil. When the Soviet Union found out about these émigré groups, agents tracked down each individual and hundreds were killed.

Disaster plagued the CIA, even as it publicly celebrated “successes.” Some of those wins included helping overthrow the government of Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954, both inevitably leading to more conflict. Weiner argues that these weren’t worth celebrating. Additionally, CIA official James Angleton confided religiously in his drinking pal Harold “Kim” Philby, who ended up being a mole. Arrogance within the agency led to grave mistakes, such as not predicting the first Soviet atomic bomb in 1959. Though there were very few things to be proud of within the CIA at this time, Weiner argues that the government worked diligently to present these years as the CIA’s golden years.

In reality, he posits the CIA’s halcyon days were rare. He theorizes that there were only two true instances of peace and happiness. The first was when CIA Director Richard Helms chose not to hide the harsh realities of the Vietnam War from President Johnson. The second was when Robert Gates took over as CIA Director after the Berlin Wall fell, ultimately reconfiguring it to make a more organized and efficient system leading to smarter decisions.



Aside from these two time periods, the CIA continued to make mistakes and not accept responsibility. The first major criticism against the CIA came from Allen Dulles, who ironically helped create the agency, and Secretary of Defense James Vincent Forrestal in 1948. Many more critiques followed as the CIA continued to make fatal mistakes. Weiner delves into a story proving the ignorance of high-ranking officials and the clouded vision of the CIA. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Robert Gates—then-President Bush’s Deputy National Security Advisor—was told about the invasion by a friend at a picnic. This aligns with Weiner’s main critique of the CIA: it repeatedly failed to inform higher authority figures, such as the President, of its intentions, leading to inevitable conflict and overall greater issues.

This instance is just one of many that Weiner presents to further his argument against the CIA’s reputation. Although a lot of Weiner’s prose is dense, it is well researched and journalistic, allowing his readers to make their own educated judgments.