Legacy of Ashes

All-powerful, brilliant, decisive, ruthlessly effective ... this is the image of the CIA as portrayed in countless films and novels. It is wrong.

This shocking book, based on thousands of declassified documents and interviews with agents at all levels, shows the reality behind the glamorous myth: a blundering, chaotic and dangerously incompetent organization, so ineffective it was nicknamed ''Can''t Identify Anything'' by Nato forces. In a story of botched coups, missed targets, lost operatives and fatal errors, Tim Weiner shows how the CIA now poses a threat not only to the security of the US, but the world.