Legacy Of Ashes

I don't know how much you've heard about this book, but it's a history of the CIA through about 2006. It covers 60 years pretty briskly. There were a few events that I was interested in that this book covered in a page or two (Iranian hostage crisis, Watergate), but there are more in depth books out there if I get curious. Overall, according to Legacy of Ashes the CIA has never had a lot of success in any of its missions. Even when an apparent success happens (installing the shah in Iran in the 50's) it turns out to be a failure (Iranian-American relations for the last 30 years). The author splits the blame b/w the agency and the president. If you remember after 9/11, the intelligence community took a lot of grief for depending on technology to gather information instead of using good old fashioned spies. It turns out technology is the CIA's most successful endeavor, and spies on the ground have always been a weak point. The presidents have also consistently misused the agency for covert missions that suit their political needs. Since those needs change every few years, the agency has to reprioritize its talent to areas that they may not have any expertise in. That might explain the legacy of failure, but the CIA should depoliticize itself (hard to do b/c of nebulous funding) and work on impartially interpreting the evidence it gathers. That would be a good legacy.