The CIA: Fact and Fiction? - with Tim Weiner

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.

This event is co-sponsored by the Marines' Memorial Association.