With the recent acknowledgment of its own questionable activities from the 1950s to the 1970s, is the Central Intelligence Agency a buffer of freedom against dangerous foes, or a malevolent conspiracy to promote American policy abroad? In his new book, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, author Tim Weiner examines the first sixty years of the Central Intelligence Agency and its covert actions overseas. A two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner for national security reporting, Weiner has covered the CIA for the last 20 years, and for the last 13 years at The New York Times.
To chart some of the Agency's never-revealed clandestine operations across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, his book is compiled from more than 50,000 documents from the CIA, the White House, and the State Department; "on the record" interviews with ten former Directors of Central Intelligence and over 300 CIA officers; oral accounts from American diplomats, spies, and presidential aides; and, travels to Afghanistan, the Sudan, and Guyana- World Affairs Council of Northern California
Bio
Nancy Jarvis
Nancy Jarvis is Senior partner with Farrand Cooper, P.C., San Francisco, where her practice includes high-technology clients headquartered in Asia. Before practicing law, she was a foreign policy editor at MIT Press. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, she is a former chair of the World Affairs Council of Northern California.
Tim Weiner
Tim Weiner is a reporter for The New York Times. He has written on American intelligence for twenty years, and won the Pulitzer Prize for his work on secret national security programs. He has traveled to Afghanistan and other nations to investigate CIA covert operations firsthand.