Looking at the title of the book under review, one may be excused if the reader takes it to be an account of the Ashes – the popular cricket Test series played between England and Australia. But it soon becomes clear that the doings (or rather undoings) of the United States' top secret agency, are certainly not cricket (pun intended). As the author, Tim Weiner, a New York Times reporter, who has written about the CIA and American intelligence for over 20 years says, its mission was to know the world. When it did not succeed, it set out to change the world, and “its failures have handed us, in the words of President Eisenhower, ‘a legacy of ashes.'” The same president is quoted as saying in the chapter ‘ham-handed operations of all kinds': “If you go and live with these Arabs, you will find that they simply cannot understand our ideas of freedom and human dignity. They have lived so long under dictatorships of one kind or another, how can we expect them to run successfully a free government?” Weiner, a Pulitzer Prize winner for his work on secret national security programmes, says, “The CIA set out to answer that question by trying to convert, coerce, or control governments throughout Asia and the Middle East.” He goes on to say that the agency saw every Muslim political chief who would not pledge allegiance to the United States, in the words of Archie Roosevelt, the chief of station in Turkey and a cousin of Kim Roosevelt, the CIA's Near East czar, a “target legally authorized by statute for CIA political action.” Weiner says, ‘'The agency swayed them when it could. But few CIA officers spoke the language, knew the customs, or understood the people they sought to support or suborn.” Emma Lazarus' famous poem titled The New Colossus, which is engraved on a tablet within the pedestal on which the Statue of Liberty stands, closes with the lines: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!' In reality, today the United States is creating more tired and poor masses, homeless people – millions of refugees around the world – dimming, lowering and even hiding the lamp, and the New Colossus is becoming (to quote Emma with apologies): “… the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; The United States keeps its storied pomp while she cries with silent lips.'' In the book, Weiner says, “(President) Reagan knew little more about the CIA than what he had learned at the movies. But he pledged to unleash it, and he was good to his word.” The CIA was supposed to be the eyes and ears of the American presidents. Out of inefficiency and the urge to say what the presidents wanted to hear, it has failed in its prime duty. Previous and successive presidents have used it brutally for narrow, self-serving ends. While America talks of spreading democracy, the method it follows are demonic. While it justifies its actions as based on truth, in reality they are based on lies supported as truth by the CIA. “The one crime of lasting consequence has been the CIA's inability to carry out its central mission: informing the president of what is happening in the world,” writes Weiner. The United States had no intelligence to speak of when World War II began, and next to none a few weeks after the war ended. General William J. Donovan, the commander of the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS), told President Truman in August 1945 that all major powers except the United States have had permanent worldwide intelligence services, reporting directly to the highest echelons of their Government. “It never has had and does not have a coordinated intelligence system,” said Donovan, to which Weiner adds, “Tragically, it still does not have one. The mission of the CIA, above all, was to keep the president forewarned against surprise attack, a second Pearl Harbor.” According to Weiner, Truman, who was catapulted into the White House by the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945, knew nothing about the development of the atomic bomb or the intentions of his Soviet allies. He needed information to use his power. All Harry Truman wanted was a newspaper. In a letter that Truman wrote to a friend years later, he said that the President had no means of coordinating the intelligence from around the world. When the new CIA arose from the ashes of the OSS, Truman wanted it to serve him solely as a global news service, delivering daily bulletins. “It was not intended as a ‘Cloak & Dagger Outfit!' It was intended merely as a centre for keeping the President informed on what was going on in the world,” Truman wrote, and insisted that he never wanted the CIA “to act as a spy organization. That was never the intention when it was organized.” “His vision was subverted from the start,” writes Weiner. He says that as the technology of espionage expanded its horizons, the CIA's vision grew more and more myopic. “Spy satellites enabled it to count Soviet weapons. They did not deliver the crucial information that communism was crumbling. The CIA's foremost experts never saw the enemy until after the cold war was over,” he adds. Weiner says that the challenge of understanding the world as it is has overwhelmed three generations of CIA officers. Few among the new generation have mastered the intricacies of foreign lands, and almost every director general of central intelligence since the 1960s has proved incapable of grasping the mechanics of the CIA. Most have left the agency in worse shape than they found it. Their failures have handed future generations, in the words of President Eisenhower, a ‘legacy of ashes.' We are back where we began sixty years ago, in a state of disarray.” He hopes that the book may serve as a warning, and adds that no republic in history has lasted longer than three hundred years. “This nation may not long endure as a great power unless it finds the eyes to see things as they are in the world. That once was the mission of the Central Intelligence Agency,” he says. The book is an interesting and immensely informative reading, based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA, the White House, and the State Department; 2,000 oral histories of American intelligence officers, soldiers, and diplomats; and 300 interviews conducted since 1987 with CIA officers and veterans, including 10 directors of central intelligence. Yet, Wisner, modestly says, “What I have written here is not the whole truth, but to the best of my ability, it is nothing but the truth.” The book is as heavy as the subject that it deals with, but the reader can emerge more knowledgeable about the world, and the US in particular, than when he started, wishing and praying for a saner America, and prompted to say, “God save the world.” __
