how it really was.....before and after Tenet..

The title comes from Dwight Eisenhower "...you are leaving me a legacy
of ashes...."

http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/038551445X

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
by Tim Weiner

snip

Most Helpful Customer Reviews:

Should Be a Four, But Overly Harsh Review Calls for Balance, July 22,
2007
By Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States)

While I would normally take away one star for a failure to provide
useful policy context (the Presidents and their staffs were as much to
blame for all these fiascos, and in his eagerness to do primary
research, he appears to have completely missed some very important
facts as stated in the varied memoires), on balance this is a tour
d'force. See my lists for a diversity of other recommended reading.

In two specific instances, the lack of context casts the CIA more
negatively than it merits. The Indian nuclear test was missed in large
part because the Pentagon was controlling the satellites and focusing
them almost full time on Iraq. In Afghanistan, CIA not only performed
heroically in establishing the geospatial foundation for precision air
strikes, but it also had eyes on Bin Laden for four days, with
Rumsfeld in one instance allowing the Pakistanis to evacuate 3000
Taliban and Al Qaeda, and General Franks in another refusing to put
Rangers around Bin Laden, claiming it would take weeks. With such
idiocy (or deliberate support for Al Qaeda) at the policy level, CIA
can hardly be blamed for everything.

The author makes no mention of the reality that CIA was Flawed by
Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC, nor does he review, as
I do in The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, &
Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide,
Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption, both the long history of
presidential and congressional commission dismay over CIA's lack of
language skills and open source access and collegial relations with
the Pentagon, and the fact that policy is always, invariably,
responsible for as many high crimes, misdemeanors, and errors and
omissions that comprise the massive betrayal of the public trust that
the federal government has come to represent these past fifty years.
See The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped
Our World and The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End
of the Republic (The American Empire Project)

On Dick Cheney, who escapes notice in this book, but whose disdain for
the CIA is now somewhat more understandable to me, see my review and
explicit list of 23 impeachable offenses that the book documents,
offenses that should have seen Cheney removed from office two years
ago. I refer to Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American
Presidency.

While Eisenhower's condemning "legacy of ashes" is in the title, the
better bottom line comes in the body of the book: "A harvest of lies
and a complete lack of intelligence." Elsewhere the book abounds with
hubris and arrogance, blindness, a propensity to slander and
assassinate (ineptly). The CIA was "ham-handed and free-wheeling."

The author draws on varied sources to characterize the clandestine
service as skilled at "gross overstatement joined with grotesque
incompetence." The essence of the book and CIA's continuous record of
bluster and failure is ably captured on page 126, "Cloaked yet
flamboyant--that was the CIA under Allen Dulles. It was a place 'where
truly clandestine practices were compromised" while 'analysis was
clothed in an atmosphere of secrecy that was unnecessary, frequently
counterproductive, and in the long run damaging,' Cline thought."

A few gems:

* Truman wanted a global newspaper, not a cloak & dagger
* Truman was trumped by his own Pentagon, which wanted a spy service
* CIA directors routinely lied to presidents
* Most DCI's left CIA worse off than before
* FBI has more agents in NYC than CIA has case officers around the
world
* From the beginning CIA repressed democracy, loved dictators and
corruption
* Russians and Cubans have consistly broken all CIA efforts to
penetrate (indeed, when all Cubans were doubled, two of my clandestine
classmates had the pleasure of appearing on Cuban TV after being
covertly filmed "in the act")
* Thousands (sic) I believe hundreds of thousands, have died because
of CIA complicity, errors, incompetence, or plain amorality.
* CIA brought into the USA 100 Nazis every year, the maximum allowed
them
* CIA delusional, failed mission after failed mission (but all got
promoted)
* P 53: "At CIA, an order is a departure point for a discussion."
* CIA funded hundreds of "morally reprehensible suicide missions."
* CIA constantly fell for fabricators, con men, and double agents
* CIA's scorecard in penetrating Manchuria: 101 killed, 111 captured.
ALL.
* CIA has had clandestine prisions in Germany, Japan, and Panama,
"like Guantanamo only worse." Now they have others elsewhere.
* CIA all too quickly adopted the tactics of its enemies.
* Never, ever, has CIA had a sufficiency of linguists.
* When Iran took the Embassy, the CIA Station consisted of four
officers, not one of whom spoke Farsi. The Iranians were offended.
* It was CIA that put the Bathists and ultimately Saddam Hussein in
power.
* CIA's support for "strongmen" inspired populist insurrections.
* CIA suffered from cultural myopia, complete lack of languages, and
antiquated information technology

This book destroys Allen Dulles for all time.

There is more but I recommend buying and purchasing this book, because
as I write this America is in the midst of what may be the gavest
Constitutional crisis of our time--an impotent Congress is allowing
Dick Cheney to operate "without limits" in ways that are absolutely
and unquestionably in clear violation of the Constitution in multiple
ways.

As I put the book down, ignoring some of my notes for lack of word
count, I saw two with which to end this review.

Robert Gates: "Adjust or die." This book puts the final nail in the
CIA coffin.

The author did not say, but my reading of the book creates the
following note:

US Government a Ship of Fools, with immoral Presidents asking
incompetent spies to be equally immoral, while pathetically inept
Members of Congress stood idly by, the occasional commission
notwithstanding.

Good people trapped in a very bad system where the pathologies of
power nurture ideological fantasy and treason against the Republic.

Five other books (see lists also):
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in
Vietnam
Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam
Intelligence Wars
On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World
Of Spies and Lies: A CIA Lie Detector Remembers Vietnam
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers