Legacy of Ashes Audiobook By Tim Weiner cover art

Legacy of Ashes

The History of the CIA

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Legacy of Ashes

By: Tim Weiner
Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
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Buy for $30.76

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National Book Award Winner, Nonfiction, 2007

This is the book the CIA does not want you to read. For the last 60 years, the CIA has maintained a formidable reputation in spite of its terrible record, never disclosing its blunders to the American public. It spun its own truth to the nation while reality lay buried in classified archives. Now, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Tim Weiner offers a stunning indictment of the CIA, a deeply flawed organization that has never deserved America's confidence.

Legacy of Ashes is based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA. Everything is on the record. There are no anonymous sources, no blind quotations. With shocking revelations that will make headlines, Tim Weiner gets at the truth and tells us how the CIA's failures have profoundly jeopardized our national security.

©2007 Tim Weiner (P)2007 Blackstone Audio Inc.

Accolades & Awards

National Book Award
2007
Los Angeles Times Book Prize
2007
Los Angeles Times Book Prize National & International Security National Book Award Politics & Government United States Intelligence & Espionage National Security Freedom & Security Middle East Iran Espionage War Vietnam War Thought-Provoking Americas Military Imperial Japan Inspiring

Critic reviews

"Absorbing...a credible and damning indictment of American intelligence policy." ( Publishers Weekly)
"A timely, immensely readable, and highly critical history of the CIA, culminating with the most recent catastrophic failures in Iraq." (Mark Bowden, author of Blackhawk Down)
Comprehensive History • Detailed Research • Excellent Narration • Fascinating Revelations • Well-documented Evidence

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It is easy to take a select number of anecdotes of failure and paint a big picture that the CIA was a huge waste of resources and that it failed to prevent or predict every big event to happen in the previous 65 years of world history, but I believe that they succeeded. How they succeeded through happenstance was to prevent the cold war from turning hot. They did this by building relationships and communication links with the USSR and with our allies during the Cold War.

The CIA may have missed predicting certain major events in world history over the previous 65 years, but the nature of military and political intelligence is not clairvoyance. An intelligence analyst is not a fortune teller. I'll even bet that within the organization there were people who made adequate and very accurate predictions for the major events that the CIA is accused of missing, but the nature of reporting to U.S. Presidents and other politicians is political. This means that the reporter tells the politician what they want to hear. If you go telling them what they don't want to hear, wrong or right, you will be replaced.

So don't blame this Agency for failures that it is not responsible for. Blame the culture surrounding the Office of the Presidency, and that of the Congress. Therein lies your problem.

They suceeded believe it or not

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Ok, so it won a Pulitzer. The research is there, no doubt. Very good job doing the research. However, note that the title is "Legacy of Ashes" - it's got an angle from the very beginning, and the book sets out to substantiate this opinion. The books swings from epic failure to epic failure, and even if there is a successful mission, the moral burden and the consequences are presented in a way that even successes can be perceived as failures in their own way.

I am far from a CIA basher, but I find that even though and even if all the content is correct, I'm somehow being fed a cynic's presentation and negative viewpoint.

The narrator's voice gets droning after a while.

it won a pulitzer....

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This book tells us just how lucky this country has been over the past 60+years with a so-called spy agency that couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time. It's even more scary to think that our so-called leaders in Washington have been using the CIA for their own political agenda and totally deceiving the American public. Are you surprised? Have they found the WMD's yet? Read the book and find out why they never will.

Truth is better than fiction!

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As a 35 year-old reading this book, I found it fascinating learning about what happened in the inner workings of the CIA before I was born. Some of what you read hear contradicts what you learned in school, other tales are just simply unbelievable. This book shows you what we are capable of doing in the name of freedom.

Excellent Book

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Well researched and crafted critique of the CIA from its inception in the 1950s. While critical, the analysis is always fair and credit is given where credit is due. The tone is that of a parent who knows a child is failing to live up to their full potential. Worth the time to read for anyone interested in an honest evaluation of the CIA.

A thought-provoking analysis of America’s intelligence capabilities

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