Legacy of Ashes reads like a thriller in reverse. It's sort of a secret history of the CIA. But instead of the agency being filled with highly skilled assasins and operatives with their hands on the levers of power in foreign countries, everyone in this book is incompetent or worse. Weiner takes the standard account of the CIA, the paranoia that fueled so much postmodern fiction, and gives it to us from the other side. The only thing this dismissive account lacks is a control group. I'm left wondering whether all spies are this incompetent when you really look at their accomplishments or whether Weiner can show us a spy agency that he wishes the US had.
That's a question, by the way, I just don't know enough about MI6 or the Mossad to know whether we're being short-changed or maybe spies just aren't all they've been cracked up to be. We know that the Soviets and the East Europeans had some scary abilities but it isn't fair to compare our spies with those from a police state. Or maybe it is.