That every quote is also on the record is a testament to his skill and also, thankfully, to the transparency that endures in the American political system.' -Steve Coll, author ofGhost Wars 'Legacy of Ashes, like all first-rate histories, is not only richly informative but provocative and insightful. Terrifically entertaining.' -The New York Times 'The best.ever written on a case of espionage.'-The Wall Street Journal 'The epigrammatic style, hard edge and caustic bite of a first-rate detective novel.' -Chicago Tribune 'Tough, fair-minded.exceptional in the annals of spy literature for not citing a single anonymous source.' -Playboy, 'Tim Weiner has read widely and dug deeply to produce this marvelous and convincing history of the CIA across six decades. the best book ever written on a case of espionage.' Here is the hidden history of the CIA: why eleven presidents and three generations of CIA officers have been unable to understand the world why nearly every CIA director has left the agency in worse shape than he found it and how these failures have profoundly jeopardized our national security. The Wall Street Journal called it 'truly extraordinary. Tim Weiner's past work on the CIA and American intelligence was hailed as 'impressively reported' and 'immensely entertaining' in The New York Times.

It takes the CIA from its creation after World War II, through its battles in the cold war and the war on terror, to its near-collapse after 9/ll.

LEGACY OF ASHES is based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA itself, and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans, including ten Directors of Central Intelligence. Its failures have handed us, in the words of President Eisenhower, 'a legacy of ashes.' Now Pulitzer Prizewinning author Tim Weiner offers the first definitive history of the CIA-and everything is on the record. When it did not succeed, it set out to change the world. For the last sixty years, the CIA has managed to maintain a formidable reputation in spite of its terrible record, burying its blunders in top-secret archives.

Cia ashes