I think it was impossible to understand the United States' foreign policy and the world of current events without knowledge of the history of the CIA.
Take currents events: at the time of this writing the country of Turkey was launching military offensives inside the Kurdish part of Iraq. The Kurdish area was the most stable part of Iraq. Besides fighting the Turks, the Kurds have also been fighting the Iranians on that side of the border. So how did this come to be? Did it have anything to with the Cold War?
It had everything to do with Cold War. Many years ago, the United States was aiding and arming Islamic extremist in an effort to thwart the influence of communism in the world. The Kurds took the communist side and the U.S. supported their removal. However, in the past thirty years things have changed.
The Kurds were happy to see the Islamic extremist leave. The point being that it was the Cold War that has set up this conflict with Iraq, Iran, Syria, and the region. Almost anywhere the CIA interfered with governments in the effort of fighting communism; the U.S. now struggles with them.
Tim Weiner writes a very enthralling book that breaks the myths of the CIA that has been propagated in movies, books, and television.
Legacy of Ashes was well writing and was an intriguing work that leaves the reader with an different view of American foreign policy in the past half-century.
Here are a few highlights:
The Beginning
The Central Intelligence Agency was created after World War II in 1948. The CIA came out of the Office for Strategic Services (OSS). The OSS ran covert actions against the Nazi with the British and the Russians.
The CIA was born at the beginning of the Cold War. Its main objective was to protect American interests, especially against Communism. The U.S. was never to experience another Perl Harbor. On its own the CIA was a neophyte organization. As European spy agencies had been around for centuries, the CIA had almost no idea what they were doing.
The Russians were always many steps ahead of the Americans. The CIA never got anything right about the Russians. The KBG had agents all over the CIA and they fed the CIA false intelligence since the start the agency till probably right now.
The CIA was better at strong-arming small poor countries. The CIA got results there but it later kicked back at the U.S.
A cast in point Iran
The British were taking most of the oil profits from the Iranians while the Iranians lived in squalor. The Government of Iran wanted to split the profits 50/50 with the British. The British were not keen on this, so they wanted a change of government in Iran. The U.S. did not want to take part of this as they felt the British were being unfair. However, the Korean War was starting, and Churchill put a condition on British support of the Korean War, which was, help them in Iran or they would not support the U.S. in Korea. So the CIA staged a coup against the Iranian leader. They paid to organize radical Islamic forces in Iran to act against the government. They were planting the seeds of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The CIA did overthrow the government of Iran and implemented a U.S. puppet government who ruled Iran with an iron fist, which lasted until the revolution.
Throughout the 1950’s the CIA projected a mystic sense of competence if not omnipotence. But it was not the case.
The Kennedy Assignation
The book sheds little light on the Kennedy assignation but it does shed a little light. It strongly suggests that Castro might have ordered a hit on the President for the failed assignation plots order against him by the Kennedys.
It makes it very clear that the Warren Commission was a joke. All information about the covert actions conducted by the CIA was hidden from the commission. President Gerald Ford, who was a member of the Warren Commission, made it very clear that if such information had been provided to the Commission that the outcome of the report might have been different.
As soon as the assignation happened, both Johnson and the head of the CIA thought that it was a conspiracy. The CIA order an intern report, which was kept secret, but it never completed or made a formal conclusion.
The Assignation was a bit like 9/11. Many sections of the government had files on Oswald. The FBI, CIA, immigration services all had files on him. All knew he was a threat long before the shooting and if they had shared information, it would have been clear to take him out before anything happened.
The Vietnam War
If there was any question on whether Kennedy or Johnson started the Vietnam, it was Johnson. In fact, the CIA had been running gorilla operation in Vietnam as part of its covert operations around the world. So, there was a secret war there too. It was only in the gulf of Tonkin that brought the U.S. officially in the war. U.S. warships in the gulf took at shorter length than the international waters guideline. They were listening in on North Vietnam. Vietnamese patrol boats were spotted and they were fired upon by the United States. The patrol boats shot back. The American warships maybe took a bullet of damage, but this was blown out to be an unprovoked attack on the United States. This Official CIA report was hidden until recently. Hawks in Johnson administration were set for war. In fact, most of the CIA intelligence was good during the Vietnam War, but the Johnson administration wanted facts to fit political opinion. The, if you don’t support what we think argument then you are not of the side of the U.S.A, argument raised its head. Furthermore the CIA knew early on that war was not winnable, eventfully the people in the Johnson administration took them seriously, and people like Bob McNamara got it. Of course then Nixon came in.
Nixon and the CIA
Nixon and CIA were not a good fit. Nixon stepped up the war in Vietnam on all fronts. He tore the agency apart, and when he tried to have the CIA take the fall for Watergate. The agency wouldn’t go that far for him and Nixon was forced to resign.
Enter the NeoCons
In the late part of the Carter administration, the CIA entered a new battle against communism, which was a battle via humanitarianism. The U.S.S.R. had a battle that they couldn’t win.
During this period, Paul Wolfowitz and other NeoCons would end up in the CIA and produced fictitious reports about the capabilities of the Soviet Union, which caused a 2nd red scare and produced large increases of defense spending. It created a panic which ultimately, with the Iranian Hostage situation, got Ronald Reagan elected.
CIA under Reagan
The CIA under Ronald Reagan was more of a mess. They essentially got very little right. They were unable to be helpful in events in the Middle- East. In the cold war they armed the radicals Islamic factions. At the time, a great success of the 80’s was seen as being the gorilla war in Afghanistan against the Russians.
The CIA never saw the fall of the Soviet Union coming until after it happened. It would be irresponsible to say that the defense spending of the Reagan administration was a calculated measure effort that destroyed the U.S.S.R. Certainly an arms race helped, but it was only by accident.
The hunt for Osama bin Laden – The Clinton years
Bill Clinton’s relationship with the CIA got off to a bad start. The CIA was bitter that Clinton beat their favorite son George H.W. Bush, former CIA director in the Ford administration. Bill Clinton, a son of the anti-government activists of the 60’s and 70’s had a lack of interest in the agency. In the beginning, he rarely met with them.
Sadly, Clinton was responsible for an egregious complacency with Rwanda. He was not interested and in atrocities that weren’t televised. He refused to call the events in Rwanda as genocide.
The CIA really didn’t know what to do with itself after the fall of Communism.
Eventually, they came together on a common enemy, Osama bin Laden. The last three years of the Clinton administration tried to kill Osama bin Laden. The CIA was in charge of that hit, but they failed every time. The CIA failed to act everytime they had an opportunity to act. There were many chances blown to take him out.
9/11, Iraq and George W. Bush
The CIA had been warning George W. Bush since September of 2000 when he was running for president. The CIA director warned Bush then that Terrorism was an imminent threat to the United States. Later in 2000 after the election, Bush was warned specifically about Osama bin Laden. When Bush took office, Bill Clinton told President Bush that Osama bin Laden was his biggest problem. Bush claims to have no memory of that. Throughout all the days of the Bush presidency before 9/11, the CIA fervently tried warn the president about danger to the United States, which was not a question of if but rather when. The data was clear. Intelligence agencies all over the world were warning the United States because terrorist chatter was loud and very active. Nevertheless, George Bush was just not interested, and nothing was done about it. 9/11 happened and it was no surprise to the CIA. After that the CIA jumped on the Bush administration bandwagon and manipulated intelligence to appear that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. So how did they do this? Of course, they a few guys saying exactly what the president wanted to hear , so they would structure their analysis so that it would look as if they had many sources instead of the same few informants who were defectors or others that had something to gain.
After, no WMD’s were found Bush blamed it on the CIA intelligence and made an effort to clean house at the CIA. They hired a Bush ideologue, who politicized the agency, and got rid of anyone who was considered being part of the left, like if they came on board at the time of Democratic President. Many highly qualified agents were let go.
The CIA was further run into the ground by trying to accommodate President Bush’s Faith-based agenda. Finally, it was out-sourcing that nailed another nail into the coffin of the CIA. As the government started out-sourcing, agents started leaving the agency for higher paid jobs for government contractors. (For fun look up Blackwater) It is hard for the CIA to hold on to anyone because in five years, basically when they are up to speed, they leave for higher pay.
It was interesting reading a book about the CIA. The CIA is not the omnipotent agency that is widely believed. They are neither the evil empire which is also believed by many. In fact, I was constantly amazed by how many good people that were spoken about. It was really impressive in the midst of such chaos in the world that there are people who stood up for was right and humane, and many in the CIA did that.
The CIA was often misdirected the presidents who lead them and the politics of time. Sometimes the CIA was just wrong and sometimes they were right as in Vietnam, but the politics of those in charge buried the right information.
Of course, not all information about the topics covered in this book has been released to the public. This book was written this year, so it is pretty up to date for now.
The Legacy of Ashes was clearly written and easily assessable in non-technical writings. It was engaging and thought provoking. I thought that it didn’t cast moral judgments to it. It presented in a matter of fact style, which leaves the reader the choice to make up their judgments.
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