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On the nightstand

By John

I've still got a few pages left, so I'll stick with the nickel review. Fascinating, but frustrating. The first half of the book is story after story of CIA spooks getting their asses kicked by the KGB. What was it that Patton said? Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Appropriate. The history major in me was absolutely absorbed in the entrancing backstory of "the Company," but my flag-waving American side was just getting pissed. By the time I hit the Bay of Pigs, I had a pretty good idea of what it felt like to be an Arizona Cardinals fan.

That's no fault of the author's, mind you. Weiner admirably let his research do the talking, and refused to allow popular narratives to pollute what I found to be a laudably disinterested story.

I couldn't help but to think of that scene in The Matrix when I was hammering this post out. Neo and Morpheus, carrying on a conversation that would eventually lead to Neo expelling himself from the Matrix's artificial reality: Remember, all I'm offering you is the truth, nothing more.

Smart. In the movie, "the truth" sucked ass. Same thing with Legacy of Ashes. This book is smart, engrossing, and some quality history porn, but you might not like what you read.

Update Reader Jim Wise points to this damning review from the CIA, one that seriously belies my synopsis:

Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes is not the definitive history of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that it purports to be. Nor is it the well researched work that many reviewers say it is. It is odd, in fact, that much of the hype surrounding the book concerns its alleged mastery of available sources. Weiner and his favorable reviewers—most, like Weiner, journalists—have cited the plethora of his sources as if the fact of their variety and number by themselves make the narrative impervious to criticism.

But the thing about scholarship is that one must use sources honestly, and one doesn’t get a pass on this even if he is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the New York Times. Starting with a title that is based on a gross distortion of events, the book is a 600-page op-ed piece masquerading as serious history; it is the advocacy of a particularly dark point of view under the guise of scholarship. Weiner has allowed his agenda to drive his research and writing, which is, of course, exactly backwards.

History, fairly done, is all about context, motivations, and realistic expectations in addition to the accurate portrayal of events. Weiner is not honest about context, he is dismissive of motivations, his expectations for intelligence are almost cartoonish, and his book too often is factually unreliable. What could have been a serious historical critique illuminating the lessons of the past is undermined by dubious assertions, sweeping judgments based on too few examples, selective or outright misuse of citations, a drama-driven narrative, and a tendentious and nearly exclusive focus on failure that overlooks, downplays, or explains away significant successes.

The irony is that a new history of CIA is needed to fill the gap left by the now dated works of John Ranelagh (The Agency, 1986) and Christopher Andrew (For the President’s Eyes Only, 1995). Having read the book, I have to conclude that this is not it; anyone who wants a balanced perspective of CIA and its history should steer well clear of Legacy of Ashes.

There's more at the link. I'm starting to feel like kind of a jackass for calling this thing "laudably disinterested." Read the whole review.

February 2, 2008 10:26 AM Books

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https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol51no3/legacy-of-ashes-the-history-of-cia.html

Jim Wise · February 2, 2008 11:14 AM

Hmm. managed to trim out the text accompanying the link, above.

Anyhow, the above link is a review of LoA from the CIA's in-house trade journal, "Studies in Intelligence". Gives their side of the story. Not surprisingly, they're not very happy with the book, but more generally, some of the criticisms in that review seem right-on.

Thoughts?

Jim Wise · February 2, 2008 11:16 AM

Thanks Jim, updated. BTW, are you part of the Wise family that's so pervasive in the VMI community?

John · February 2, 2008 12:50 PM

No relation (that I know of) -- the Wise side of this family is out of southern Ohio.

Jim Wise · February 4, 2008 06:17 AM