Reviews

Publishers Weekly
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Pulitzer Prize-winner Weiner combed through the history books and recently declassified records to offer up this fascinating, comprehensive and sometimes appalling history of the Central Intelligence Agency. Weiner documents everything from the agency's formation in the aftermath of WWII to its failure to prevent the events of September 11, 2001, and every misstep, blunder and international incident in between. For an important book like this one, it's important for an audiobook narrator to have a certain gravitas, and Rudnicki has plenty. His deep, resonant voice keeps the listener riveted and is ideally suited to the serious, historical-and often grim-subject matter. Rudnicki occasionally uses accents to add flavor to the text when reading quotations, but for the most part wisely eschews this practice and simply brings Weiner's words to life. Rudnicki is one of the best narrators in the business, and he's in top form here-Legacy of Ashes is one of the best audiobooks of the year. Simultaneous release with the Doubleday hardcover (Reviews, June 4). (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved


Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

"National-security journalist Weiner supports an American clandestine espionage service but flays the one that has been in business for the past 60 years. His history of the CIA draws extensively from primary documentation, yielding lively episodes of agents and operations and the reactions to their results by CIA directors and presidents. The title quotes President Dwight Eisenhower's negative opinion of the intelligence organization, a recurrent executive complaint that prompts Weiner's analysis of the CIA's historical problems. He argues that covert action has deflected the CIA from espionage's classic function of ascertaining adversaries' secrets and intentions and, accordingly, populates these pages with covert-action fiascoes (the Bay of Pigs in 1961) and intelligence failures to avert another Pearl Harbor (one reason the CIA was created) such as 9/11. Although critical, Weiner expresses esteem for certain CIA directors, such as Richard Helms. These directors understood espionage basics, and Weiner concludes with the hope that the CIA will get back to them. Thousands of the CIA's annual applicants will seek out an institutional history, and Weiner's ably meets that need."--"Taylor, Gilbert" Copyright 2007 Booklist


Publishers Weekly
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Is the Central Intelligence Agency a bulwark of freedom against dangerous foes, or a malevolent conspiracy to spread American imperialism? A little of both, according to this absorbing study, but, the author concludes, it is mainly a reservoir of incompetence and delusions that serves no one's interests well. Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondent Weiner musters extensive archival research and interviews with top-ranking insiders, including former CIA chiefs Richard Helms and Stansfield Turner, to present the agency's saga as an exercise in trying to change the world without bothering to understand it. Hypnotized by covert action and pressured by presidents, the CIA, he claims, wasted its resources fomenting coups, assassinations and insurgencies, rigging foreign elections and bribing political leaders, while its rare successes inspired fiascoes like the Bay of Pigs and the Iran-Contra affair. Meanwhile, Weiner contends, its proper function of gathering accurate intelligence languished. With its operations easily penetrated by enemy spies, the CIA was blind to events in adversarial countries like Russia, Cuba and Iraq and tragically wrong about the crucial developments under its purview, from the Iranian revolution and the fall of communism to the absence of Iraqi WMDs. Many of the misadventures Weiner covers, at times sketchily, are familiar, but his comprehensive survey brings out the persistent problems that plague the agency. The result is a credible and damning indictment of American intelligence policy. (Aug. 7) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved


Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The CIA started off on the wrong foot in 1947 and never regained it, maintains Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Weiner (Blank Check, 1990, etc.). Presidents Truman and Eisenhower believed intelligence could prevent another Pearl Harbor by uncovering Soviet intentions, but the CIA never predicted an important Soviet or terrorist move, the author avers. The agency devotes most of its budget to covert operations, most of them bungled. Aided by an avalanche of documents declassified since 2000, Weiner offers a dismal litany of failed operations the agency did its best to cover up. Thousands of potential insurgents or saboteurs sent into Russia and its satellites, North Korea, China and Vietnam were quickly eliminated. Clumsy attempts to overthrow unfriendly (i.e. neutral) governments usually failed. Two widely praised successes—the 1953 Iranian coup that placed the Shah on the throne and the overthrow of a leftist Guatemalan government in 1954—are now considered mistakes. Suppressing news of the 1961 invasion at Cuba's Bay of Pigs was impossible, but even that disaster did not put an end to covert operations, because presidents valued them. Readers will wince at the CIA's involvement in plots to murder Fidel Castro, the brutal 1973 coup in Chile and massive spying on American protest groups. The Soviet collapse, unpredicted as usual, was a blow from which the agency has not recovered, states the author. The military has taken over much responsibility for covert action, with no greater success. Though highly critical of the CIA, Weiner makes two important mitigating points. First, democracies are not obligated to fight fire with fire: CIA money won more hearts and minds than pseudo-KGB ruthlessness, and KGB debacles contributed mightily to the USSR's decline. Second, many presidents demanded bad intelligence. Chief executives either ignored or angrily demanded recasting of such good information as the reports that North Vietnam was nowhere near defeat, Soviet missile capacity was overrated and evidence for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was feeble. Absorbing, appalling history. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.