![]() ![]() Yet his reliance on primary sources crimps the value of the work. If, as John Lukacs suggests, the historian’s calling is not just to establish truth, but to reduce untruth, then Tim Weiner has performed a real service. Because Weiner doesn’t reference even the good books in the field, he doesn’t perpetuate the errors in the bad ones. For every good book, such as Thomas Powers’s classic The Man Who Kept the Secrets, scores of bad ones have appeared, alleging, say, that the CIA killed JFK, concocted AIDS to kill black people, or orchestrated the World Trade Center attacks. It’s a strength, because the secondary literature on secret intelligence chokes with myth and guesswork. Legacy of Ashes, he declares, is “the first history of the CIA compiled entirely from firsthand reporting and primary documents.” That is the book’s great strength, and its great weakness. Tim Weiner, who reports on intelligence for the New York Times, has written an essential but flawed book about an essential but flawed agency. ![]() Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, by Tim Weiner (Doubleday, 702 pp., $27.95) ![]()
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