Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

Subject: Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA Mon Feb 04, 2008 4:35 am

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.

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

Subject: Re: Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA Mon Feb 04, 2008 9:26 pm

CovOps wrote:: * P 53: "At CIA, an order is a departure point for a discussion."

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

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