February 03, 2008

Weiner touches upon almost all major flashpoints where CIA involvement was instrumental in the course of history. Much of this is done to show a pattern of systematic disorganisation, continuous failure and a failure to rectify what seemingly led up to 9/11 and Iraq.

FOR all purposes, the CIA is not just another bureaucratic arm of a fledging world power. The intelligence agency has come to represent the darker side of the American machine. Its shadowy image has helped its use as a major factor in pop culture references. However, not many useful books have been written about the organisation. Some former directors, notably Richard Helms, have written about their experiences but one can understand the lack of objective fairness in a text compiled by one of the great stakeholders of the CIA. The last major, systematic leak would have to be the Pentagon Papers, published serially in the New York Times during the Vietnam War, which went on to show, in the CIA’s own words, how the war was being lost. The void has been fully claimed by Tim Weiner, who has written one of the most impressive history lessons of modern times.

Weiner is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has spent a decade covering the Pentagon and the CIA. He has been on the ground in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan and other hot spots. In this book that deals with a clandestine agency, the edge has been provided by Weiner’s research which includes ‘my reading of more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA, the White House, and the State Department, more than 2000 oral histories of American intelligence officers, soldiers and diplomats; and more than 300 interviews conducted since 1987 with CIA officers and veterans, including 10 directors of central intelligence’. You never lose sense of how the author has used words of the CIA itself to bring the big picture to light, eliminating grey areas and personal bias to a great degree. This is exemplified by endnotes spread over 150 pages. It seems as if the whole book has been circumscribed by the ‘truth’ in quotation marks.

The book has a very distinct mission: to reveal the rise and fall of the CIA, the personalities behind it and how the CIA has failed the current generation of Americans as it was unable to prevent 9/11 or provide intelligence in the ongoing war on terror. The book tells of the Ivy Leaguers who were given the responsibility to start an intelligence service to keep Americans posted on the inner workings of the Soviets, and ends with the ageing veterans of the service trying helplessly to stave off dissolution of the agency’s authority. The CIA is shown to bear the fingerprints of the directors who steered it during its tumultuous history; the tenure of each reflecting their own personalities. From the single-minded ruthlessness of Allen Dulles to George Tenet, who wanted to make the CIA a stable career, the agency has had its share of characters that help to enrich the tale.

Weiner touches upon almost all major flashpoints where CIA involvement was instrumental in the course of history. Much of this is done to show a pattern of systematic disorganisation, continuous failure and a failure to rectify what seemingly led up to 9/11 and Iraq. While the book depicts the CIA to be more of a bribe machine than a spy game, the story of the CIA is as thrilling as any work of fiction. The book is a real page-turner which takes one through the withdrawal of the Soviets from Europe and the formation of East Germany, to major world events still shrouded in the Cold War fog: the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, all the way up to the current state of affairs. The book also provides details of the Watergate scandal and how the CIA had started infringing on the rights of ordinary Americans long before 9/11. With regards to the Afghan war, the author tells us more about what we know too well: the modern rise of Islamic fundamentalism can be traced back to America’s own designs to stop the spread of communism and then refusing to take responsibility for its actions after that war had been won.

All presidents lie, we are all aware of that, but the author makes a generous list for our pleasure based on fact as opposed to tangential speculation.

A book such as this runs the risk of becoming an info-dump; an avalanche of facts that the well-researched author throws in to inundate the

reader. Tim Weiner, however, weaves a tale of intrigue and global reach while offering detailed analysis of the main protagonists. Furthermore, every chapter flows onto the next; each new chapter beginning with an overview of the one before it. This makes the book not only academically stimulating, but a pleasurable reading experience. Weiner clearly has a talent for walk on a fine line between flagrant sensationalism and placid details.

Legacy of Ashes is one of the sharpest stabs anyone has taken at the US regime, using their own documents to reveal a side that many suspected to be dark but couldn’t quite back up with substance. Weiner concise yet comprehensive narrative is essential reading for just about anyone in the world who has been affected by America’s global designs, which is pretty much every human being on this planet.
 

Legacy of Ashes: The history of CIA
By Tim Weiner
Penguin Books, India
Available with Paramount Books, Karachi
ISBN 1-846-14046-4
702pp. Rs1,245