Hacker News Comments on
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
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All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this book.How about "Legacy of Ashes"?https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/03...
⬐ nyolfenyou know this one is good because the cia denounced it. i started it earlier this week.⬐ _iyigCame here to post this. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. For one thing, the quality of the author’s research speaks for itself:“The book is based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA, and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans, including ten Directors of Central Intelligence.”
Legacy of Ashes does a pretty good job to that end...https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/03...
Met a guy recently and he recommended "The Way of the Knife":https://www.amazon.com/Way-Knife-Secret-Army-Earth/dp/B00QSF...
and "Legacy of ashes"
https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/03...
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I downloaded the ebook to WoTK -- reviews of it are good, but I haven't started reading it just yet.
>The CIA is the reason for most of the unstable regionsI recently read Legacy of Ashes[0], which I thought would be a sort of thrilling history of the spy game in America, but turned out to be a chronicle of blunder after blunder by the CIA. Fascinating stuff.
Having read that, I'm not naive enough to believe the cause of "most" global instability is due to the CIA; that's giving them far too much credit.
[0]http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/030...
⬐ cm3Oh, they're not alone in it but operate globally and are a repeat offender. It seems that they took over from Britain right after those started the whole two-state/one-state debacle in the middle east. Before that, Britain was the major offender. Like Britain, other offenders like France, Belgium, Spain, and the list goes on, are not as clearly and strongly involved in meddling with other nation's fates anymore. When viewed over a longer time span, one cannot help but notice the same abstract patterns, regardless of who did it. I don't know what has to happen for humanity to evolve in this regard.
> Imagine if the US Army wouldn't divulge the capabilities of a new fighter jet to the very people who were authorizing the money for its construction.No need to imagine. This happens. Covert areas of defense spending have always been conducted in the dark, often with blank checks.
The military, NSA, CIA, etc. are in the game of accumulating hidden capabilities. This is the job the American people have given them, and yes, it is a constant arbitrage at odds with, among other things, their own privacy and fiscal responsibilities.
A fascinating read on this topic, regardless of accuracy: http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-The-History-CIA/dp/030738...
⬐ scalableThere is a difference in doing things overtly and covertly. If they are doing it covertly they will probably think it through a lot more carefully, since the stakes are higher. And if some things that were previously done covertly but are now done overtly, it doesn't sound so far fetched that other things that were earlier not done at all are now done in secret.EDIT:speling
⬐ startuplulz⬐ fpp> And if some things that [were] previously done covertly but [are] now done overtly, it doesn't sound so far fetched that other things that were earlier not done at all are now done in secret.Citations?
⬐ scalable⬐ NoneI have only stated my beliefs, and have not claimed to have the facts. I base my belief on this idea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_windowNoneA much more fascinating read on this topic is Kafka's "The Castle", "The Trial" or even better Heller's Catch-22.