It is now widely recognized that the press failed to adequately analyze the Bush administration’s evidence for going to war in Iraq. After all the agonizing post-mortems that have been conducted on this subject, one would prefer to think the problem has largely been solved.

Not so, unfortunately. A best-selling book by a top New York Times reporter that recently won the 2007 National Book Award for Non-Fiction -- and is a candidate for an upcoming Pulitzer Prize -- contains a number of gross distortions of documentary historical evidence. It also passes over relevant facts that would make for a more sophisticated argument. Surprisingly, Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA has received rave reviews and blurbs from some of America's best-known investigative reporters. But it has also drawn Bronx cheers from prominent scholars of the Agency. Among the latter are: Jeffrey Richelson of the National Security Archive, Richard Betts of Columbia University, Christopher Andrew of Cambridge University, Loch Johnson of the University of Georgia, and myself. A column on the subject by Jeff Stein, National Security Editor of Congressional Quarterly, is the most read and e-mailed story on CQ.com this week.

For some, I am one of the last people they would expect to have any criticism of a book blasting the CIA. As a scholar and former Staff Director of the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa, I have challenged CIA covert actions in Africa and elsewhere, and called on Congress to insist on better intelligence and better oversight of clandestine operations. I am sympathetic with Weiner’s critical perspective, but was shocked by the way he mishandles and slights evidence.

The main argument in Legacy is that 60 years of CIA history demonstrates its "inability to carryout its central mission: informing the president of what is happening in the world." And "where understanding failed," presidents ordered the Agency to carry out covert actions that were "by and large stabs in the dark." Much of the book tracks, and updates, previous Congressional and scholarly criticisms of the CIA, but the indictment is vastly overdrawn, threatening the credibility of the author’s case.

What Did He Say?

The very title of the book reflects a manipulation of evidence to enlist former President Dwight Eisenhower as a star witness for the prosecution.” In his last days in office," Weiner claims, Ike "came to understand that he did not have a spy service worthy of the name." In "anger and frustration," he told CIA Director Allen Dulles, "The structure of our intelligence organization is faulty." and concluded, "I have suffered an eight year defeat on this," and would "leave a legacy of ashes to his successor." This account is a gross distortion of the declassified documents Weiner examined. As I and other scholars who have looked at the documents cited by Weiner have concluded, Ike's "legacy of ashes" comment had nothing at all to do with a global negative judgment on the CIA’s performance. Rather, he was addressing the specific problem of coordinating the intelligence components of the three Military Services. Here are his exact words as recounted in the minutes of the National Security Council:

Subsequently, each Military Service developed its own intelligence organization. He thought the situation made little sense in managerial terms. He had suffered an eight-year defeat on this question but would leave a legacy of ashes for his successor.

Weiner also charges Dulles with having "disobeyed" a 1958 order from Eisenhower that "no American could be involved ‘in any operations ‘partaking of a military character in Indonesia.’" This refers to an incident in which an American pilot was shot down and captured during a covert CIA paramilitary operation in support of Indonesian rebels. The pilot was a longtime employee of Civil Air Transport (CAT), a private commercial airline secretly owned by the CIA that had been employed in Indochina, Taiwan and Laos. But the very document Weiner cites to prove Dulles's insubordination shows that Eisenhower specifically authorized participation by “private” U.S. nationals “e.g. CAT” [emphasis added] who were not official “U.S. Government personnel.”

According to Weiner, a 1971 review of the intelligence community by the Bureau of the Budget's James Schlesinger "proposed the most radical reshaping of American espionage since 1947...The CIA should be dismembered and a new agency invented to carry out covert action and espionage." In fact, this document shows the goal was to enhance the CIA’s Director (DCI)'s power by bringing military intelligence under his purview in a new agency that would be an expanded version of CIA. Schlesinger explained, "It gives still further responsibilities to the DCI…the DCI’s power will be commensurate with his responsibilities." The DCI
would also "retain the CIA's present responsibility for covert action programs." Resistance to the proposal was anticipated by Schlesinger to come only from the military services, not the CIA. To describe this proposal as one that “dismembered” the CIA is to distort it beyond recognition.

Slighting the Evidence

In his haste to justify his indictment of the CIA , Weiner frequently passes over relevant facts that would enable him to make a more sophisticated case. For example, many of the Agency’s intelligence lapses are well known. But in pounding home his conclusion that America “has failed to create a first rate spy service,” Weiner slights CIA scientific and technical achievements. Prominent authorities on this subject, including Richelson and Andrew have complained that the book virtually ignores the impact of CIA-developed satellite imagery and signals intelligence while understating that of the earlier CIA-produced U-2 spy plane. These “collection” technologies were important in revealing foreign military capabilities, supporting military operations and monitoring arms control agreements. In addition, Weiner’s assertions that the CIA bought into a “false image of the Soviet Union as a superpower” in the 1970s and “pronounced the dictatorship of the Soviet Union untouchable at the hour that it was starting to vanish [December 1988]” are largely refuted by declassified CIA documents analyzed more than a decade ago by Richelson, Johnson and others.

Similarly, the list of recognized debacles in covert action is long. But what about the Agency’s vaunted “successes” in Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Afghanistan and Japan? In discussing these ventures, Weiner adopts a negative tone but pays little attention to relevant facts, some of which might strengthen his case. Did the U.S. exaggerate the Soviet threat in these countries, as the preponderance of scholars believe? Did these programs harm relations with other nations in the world? Did they lead to excessive dependence by U.S. clients and produce ties that also limited future U.S. options? Most of these questions were raised by the Church Committee investigation in 1976. Wiener discusses none of them in any depth. In the end, he criticizes the 1953 U.S.-aided coup in Iran because “a generation of Iranians grew up knowing [about it]” and the “chaos that the Agency had created in the streets of Teheran would return to haunt the United States” a quarter of a century later. In Afghanistan, he upbraids the Agency for having “failed to see that the Islamic warriors it supported would soon take aim at the United States.” The trouble with these critiques is that they fail to connect the dots between covert action and its long-range consequences. They ignore the U.S.’s support of the Shah’s military-led modernization program that lacked any real component of political inclusion, and America’s deference toward Pakistan’s and Saudi Arabia’s policies that helped bring about the Taliban regime. As for his condemnation of the years of repression that followed military coups in Guatemala and Chile, and the “structural corruption” that persisted after decades of political action in Japan, many policy makers would acquiesce in such single country costs for the sake of “national security.” Had Weiner stopped and examined the facts underlying the national security arguments he might have buttressed his indictment of CIA covert action.

A Matter of Trust

Investigative reporting on U.S. foreign policy came into its own during the Vietnam War with Seymour Hersh’s expose of the My Lai massacre and David Halberstam’s dissection of the arrogance and ineptitude of Washington policy makers. In subsequent years, as Congress resumed its modern deference to the President, the public looked more and more to investigative journalists for information and analysis concerning distant places. They have come to populate the best seller lists, public affairs magazines and electronic media. We have high, sometimes unreasonable, expectations for them. At bottom, we trust them to hold those in power accountable.

Legacy of Ashes is, as some reviewers commented, “prodigiously” researched. It is, in many respects, a useful and engrossing work. But Tim Weiner’s handling of evidence jeopardizes the public trust that sustains investigations of government abuses and failures. Who, if not the press itself, should act to preserve that trust by holding him accountable? At the very least, they shouldn’t be throwing him prizes.

Stephen R. Weissman wrote A Culture of Deference: Congress’s Failure of Leadership in Foreign Policy and American Foreign Policy in the Congo in 1960-1964.