Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

"Yes. This book reads like the Keystone Kops . It’s amazing how often the CIA just blundered, going from one screw-up to the next, despite having some very intelligent people. But I once listened to Tim Weiner giving an interview and he said something very profound. He said every president since it was created under Truman has abused the CIA. Too often it’s used to prove a presumed fact, a fact that has been created for domestic political purposes, and completely queers the pitch from the outset. If you’re not encouraging conclusions that may differ from your own presumptions then you’re fated to commit the mistakes of so many American presidents and heads of state everywhere. Also, while the CIA got it wrong on the Bay of Pigs, they also got it right sometimes. A perfect example of that is the US plot under Eisenhower to overthrow Mohammad Mosaddegh, the Iranian prime minister. We’re still living with the legacy of that plot today. There was a station chief in Tehran who disputed John Foster Dulles’s notion that Mosaddegh was a Soviet stooge. He was not. He was neutral. There’s an example of the CIA calling it like it was. Ditto, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s war on Chilean president Allende. The CIA was saying, ‘No, this man is not a proxy of the Soviets. He’s popular, he’s legitimate, and we should not be seen as trying to undermine him.’ I think it is. Tim Weiner covered the hell out of the CIA and the whole national security bureaucracy. It’s very well sourced. I have a friend who works for the CIA, and she said they were very good about providing him with as many documents as he requested, to the extent possible. They were just stunned at the scathing treatment he gave the CIA. But to his credit, he asked for the documents, he gave them a fair hearing, and then he rendered his verdict. I’m very sympathetic to his notion that the CIA is abused, just like the military is abused by civilians. From Weiner’s account, the CIA was not coming up with what Cheney wanted to hear. When the vice-president makes a special trip to Langley [CIA headquarters] to sit down with senior researchers and analysts and demands to know what they’ve got on WMD, that’s a perfect example of abusing the CIA. Even the most redoubtable agent can withstand only so much political pressure. So Cheney got what he wanted."