Today, the intelligence community is run by generals, "the Pentagon had crushed the CIA, just as it had vowed to do sixty years before." We of a certain age remember President Eisenhower's departing warning: "We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence…by the military-industrial complex." By 2006 too many of the best and brightest among CIA officers were resigning to work for the private companies such as Blackwater and Total Intelligence Services.
In an "Afterword" Weiner outlines steps that must be taken by the new President because the halcyon days of the CIA exist primarily in the myth created by the CIA. The new President must restore principles to our conduct, renounce torture, reinstate habeus corpus, close Guantanamo, close the secret prisons, limit state secrets privileges, and return constitutional checks and balances to national security. The CIA must hire bright men and women who can speak various foreign languages and who look like and come from the countries where there is the greatest need for assets on the ground. As I wrote this paragraph, the morning newspaper led with stories about Guantanamo and the restoration of habeus corpus, proving that Weiner is prophetic indeed.
In an "Afterword" Weiner outlines steps that must be taken by the new President because the halcyon days of the CIA exist primarily in the myth created by the CIA. The new President must restore principles to our conduct, renounce torture, reinstate habeus corpus, close Guantanamo, close the secret prisons, limit state secrets privileges, and return constitutional checks and balances to national security. The CIA must hire bright men and women who can speak various foreign languages and who look like and come from the countries where there is the greatest need for assets on the ground. As I wrote this paragraph, the morning newspaper led with stories about Guantanamo and the restoration of habeus corpus, proving that Weiner is prophetic indeed.
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"The only way to know the mind of the enemy is to talk to him, and that is the job of spies. If we cannot speak the language, we cannot understand the people and the political forces we seek to contain and control. Without that understanding, the CIA cannot be what its creators hoped, a source of truth to serve those in power."
Legacy of Ashes won the 2007 National Book Award for Nonfiction. The trade paperback edition has a new "Afterword" that contains information from "recently declassified, never-before-seen documents." Weiner says this book is not the whole truth because nobody knows the whole truth, but everything in it is the truth. It is a comprehensive, well-written history of the CIA, and it is frightening to think that our primary intelligence gathering agency has performed so badly over the years.
Legacy of Ashes won the 2007 National Book Award for Nonfiction. The trade paperback edition has a new "Afterword" that contains information from "recently declassified, never-before-seen documents." Weiner says this book is not the whole truth because nobody knows the whole truth, but everything in it is the truth. It is a comprehensive, well-written history of the CIA, and it is frightening to think that our primary intelligence gathering agency has performed so badly over the years.
