56 RI Bar J., No. 4, Pg. 25. Book Review Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA By Tim Weiner.

AuthorAnthony F. Cottone, Esq.

Rhode Island Bar Journal

Volume 56.

56 RI Bar J., No. 4, Pg. 25.

Book Review Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA By Tim Weiner

Rhode Island Bar JournalVolume 56, No. 4, Pg. 25 January/February 2008 Book Review Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA By Tim WeinerAnthony F. Cottone, Esq.A sole practitioner, Senior Assistant City Solicitor in Providence and Chair of the Rhode Island Disabilities Law Center*

Weeks after 9/11, our usually unquestioning President posed a question to a joint session of Congress. The question - "Why do they hate us?" - was the right one to ask. Unfortunately for our country and for the country of Iraq, the President was not genuinely looking for answers so much as employing a rhetorical device. He already had his answer, having concluded that the terrorists "hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." Had the President been less concerned with rhetoric and more familiar with at least some of the relevant events recounted in the recently-published Legacy of Ashes, The History of the CIA ("Legacy") by Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times reporter Tim Weiner, his answer might have been slightly more nuanced, or at the very least his Vice President might have had a harder time predicting with a straight face that the Iraqis would "welcome us with open arms and greet us with flowers.

The Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) dismal performance pre-9/11 and in Iraq has been recounted by others. (fn 1) Indeed, a June 2005 report of the CIA's own Office of Inspector General on CIA accountability with respect to the 9/11 attacks, which was finally declassified in late August, 2007 (safely after the midterm elections), is harshly critical of the agency's performance. (fn 2) What makes Legacy uniquely valuable is the fact that it is not confined to recent events in Iraq. Regrettably, CIA bungling has been systemic throughout the CIA's fifty-eight year history. (fn 3) The agency's chronic inability to keep the details of so-called clandestine operations secret from perceived enemies led former director Frank Wisner to adopt a rather expansive definition of the term, concluding that an operation was clandestine "as long as it was unacknowledged by the United States and kept secret from the American people." Id. at 95. And the agency's heads displayed a disconcerting willingness to lie to presidents and to the American public over the years.

Legacy is a complete, well-sourced recounting of the CIA's dismal and sordid track record from a reporter who has covered the agency for over two decades and who is the author of two other books dealing with the intelligence community. (fn 4) His most recent book remains exciting reading throughout its 516 pages of text, which is accompanied by another 101 pages of notes. Although Weiner does not hesitate to draw conclusions, he only does so after presenting a wealth of factual data. The bare facts of the story are chilling and need little elaboration, and it is a story that every American should hear.

The CIA was the brainchild of General William ("Wild Bill") Donovan who, at the outset of United States involvement in the Second World War, advised President Roosevelt that "in a global and totalitarian war . . . intelligence must be global and totalitarian." Id. at 3. (fn 5) After the War, the agency became more and more the stepchild of Allen Dulles, either acting without the benefit of an official title, as deputy director of plans (a/k/a chief of covert operations) or eventually, as director. Dulles was a man whom Weiner claimed "had an 'Onward Christian Soldiers' sense of patriotic duty" but also was "a duplicitous man, a chronic adulterer, ruthlessly ambitious. He was not above misleading Congress or his colleagues or even his commander in chief." Id. at 23-24.

Weiner suggests that part of the problem was Dulles' penchant for staffing the agency with men who, while sharing his privileged background, may not have had the best aptitude for spy work, like one of his chief...

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