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The History of the CIA
Doubleday
July 2007
On Sale: June 28, 2007
720 pages ISBN: 038551445X EAN: 9780385514453 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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. Its mission was to know the world. When it did not succeed, it set out to change the world. Its failures have handed us, in the words of President Eisenhower, βa legacy of ashes.β Now Pulitzer Prizeβwinning author Tim Weiner offers the first definitive history of the CIAβand everything is on the record. 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. 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. Tim Weinerβs past work on the CIA and American intelligence was hailed as βimpressively reportedβ and βimmensely entertainingβ in The New York Times. The Wall Street Journal called it βtruly extraordinary . . . the best book ever written on a case of espionage.β 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.
 Media BuzzAll Things Considered - December 7, 2007 Morning Edition - July 10, 2007 Fresh Air - NPR - June 28, 2007
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