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.”
Now Pulitzer Prize–winning author Tim Weiner offers the first definitive history of the CIA—and everything is on the record. LEGACY OF ASHES is based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA itself, and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans, including ten Directors of Central Intelligence. It takes the CIA from its creation after World War II, through its battles in the cold war and the war on terror, to its near-collapse after September 11th, 2001.
Tim Weiner’s past work on the CIA and American intelligence was hailed as “impressively reported” and “immensely entertaining” in The New York Times.
The Wall Street Journal called it “truly extraordinary . . . the best book ever written on a case of espionage.” Here is the hidden history of the CIA: why eleven presidents and three generations of CIA officers have been unable to understand the world; why nearly every CIA director has left the agency in worse shape than he found it; and how these failures have profoundly jeopardized our national security.
Chapter 1. INTELLIGENCE MUST BE GLOBAL AND TOTALITARIAN
Chapter 3. FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE
Chapter 4. THE MOST SECRET THING
Chapter 6. THEY WERE SUICIDE MISSIONS
Chapter 7. A VAST FIELD OF ILLUSION
Chapter 9. CIA'S GREATEST SINGLE TRIUMPH
Chapter 11. AND THEN WE'LL HAVE A STORM
Chapter 12. WE RAN IT IN A DIFFERENT WAY
Chapter 14. HAM-HANDED OPERATIONS OF ALL KINDS
Chapter 15. A VERY STRANGE WAR
Chapter 16. HE WAS LYING DOWN AND HE WAS LYING UP
Chapter 17. NOBODY KNEW WHAT TO DO
Chapter 18. WE HAD ALSO FOOLED OURSELVES
Chapter 19. WE'D BE DELIGHTED TO TRADE THOSE MISSILES
Chapter 20. HEY, BOSS, WE DID A GOOD JOB, DIDN'T WE?
Chapter 21. I THOUGHT IT WAS A CONSPIRACY
Chapter 23. MORE COURAGE THAN WISDOM
Chapter 24. THE BEGINNING OF A LONG SLIDE DOWNWARDS
Chapter 25. WE KNEW THEN THAT WE COULD NOT WIN THE WAR
Chapter 26. A POLITICAL H-BOMB
Chapter 27. TRACK DOWN THE FOREIGN COMMUNISTS
Chapter 28. WHAT THE HELL DO THOSE CLOWNS DO OUT THERE IN LANGLEY?
Chapter 29. USG WANTS A MILITARY SOLUTION
Chapter 30. WE ARE GOING TO CATCH A LOT OF HELL
Chapter 31. TO CHANGE THE CONCEPT OF A SECRET SERVICE
Chapter 32. A CLASSIC FASCIST IDEAL
Chapter 33. THE CIA WOULD BE DESTROYED
Chapter 34. SAIGON SIGNING OFF
Chapter 35. INEFFECTIVE AND SCARED
Chapter 36. HE SOUGHT TO OVERTHROW THEIR SYSTEM
Chapter 37. WE WERE JUST PLAIN ASLEEP
Chapter 38. A FREELANCE BUCCANEER
Chapter 39. IN A DANGEROUS WAY
Chapter 40. HE WAS RUNNING A GREAT RISK
Chapter 41. A CON MAN'S CON MAN
Chapter 42. TO THINK THE UNTHINKABLE
Chapter 43. WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WHEN THE WALL COMES DOWN?
Chapter 45. WHY IN THE WORLD DIDN'T WE KNOW?
Chapter 47. THE THREAT COULD NOT BE MORE REAL
Chapter 50. THE BURIAL CEREMONY