Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. New York:
Doubleday, 2007. 702 pages.
Tim Weiner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times,
has put together "the first history of the CIA compiled entirely from
firsthand reporting and primary documents." The 155 pages of end notes
are impressive, and the book itself contains over 700 real names. "This
book is based on my reading of more than fifty thousand documents, primarily
from the archives of the CIA, the White House, and the State Department;
more than two thousand oral histories of American intelligence officers,
soldiers, and diplomats; and more than three hundred interviews conducted
since 1987 with CIA officers and veterans, including ten directors of
central intelligence." (page xvii)
Because of Weiner's preference for original sources, there are huge
gaps in his coverage. There is almost nothing on the JFK assassination,
the 1965 coup in Indonesia, the CIA's domestic spying during the 1960s,
its mind-control experiments, the network of foundations that funded labor,
cultural, and media efforts, its involvement with Operation Condor in Latin
America, or the emergence of CIA cover institutions such as the National
Endowment for Democracy. But what remains amounts to the broadest history
of the CIA ever published. Unfortunately, Weiner seems more concerned with
CIA incompetence than with the rank immorality of it all.
ISBN 978-0-385-51445-3
Extract the names from this source
Back to search page