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Ashes and Blood

I get book review from Powell's Bookstore every day in my email. The one about the CIA book is so right on, I was going to link to it. For those who are wondering, I'm really not a computer whiz. The link was huge and took you to my email. But I am a whiz at copying and pasting. This Doug Brown, who I assume is not my Doug Brown from the LA Times, hit that nail on the head. You do end up respecting NO One. Nobody. When a presidential candidate says that he/she has experience with international affairs, consider that it is probably not as good as your experience. Whatever that is.

And You Thought NASA Was Screwed Up A Review by Doug Brown

Tim Weiner's excellent account of the CIA has already won many kudos and plaudits, including the National Book Award. There's not much I can add to that, other than to say folks really should read this book. After the film Syriana came out I read Robert Baer's See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism, as the credits of the film stated it was loosely based on Baer's book. That book gave a pretty unflattering view of the CIA as an agency out of touch with the intelligence happening on the ground. Weiner shows that Baer only had a tiny fragment of the picture of the CIA's irrelevance and incompetence.

The CIA was originally established to be the president's newspaper, an agency to inform U.S. policy makers of what was happening in the world. Unfortunately, it was formed by the folks who had worked the OSS in World War II, and they wanted to keep playing cloak and dagger. Quickly the agency fragmented into intelligence and clandestine services divisions, which communicated little with each other and liked each other less. Meanwhile, presidents showed little interest in the day-to-day output of the intelligence side. Only a couple of CIA directors have had the privilege of meeting the president with any regularity -- and some only met with presidents once or twice in their entire term in office.

Legacy of Ashes will shoot down any illusions you may still harbor of the Kennedys (Jack and Bobby) being noble upright citizens. They were the ones who got the CIA into the political assassination business, and ramped up the activities of the clandestine service. And they were utter failures at it (futile attempts to assassinate Castro, Bay of Pigs, etc.). After Kennedy's assassination, the CIA withheld information from the Warren Commission, triggering a thousand conspiracy theories (most of which give the CIA far too much credit and power).

Experience with the CIA in previous administrations gave Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld very low opinions of the agency. This disdain was part of the intelligence failure that led to Iraq. A larger part was the CIA's longstanding practice of telling presidents what they thought the administration wanted to hear. Very little data, mostly questionable, became "slam dunk" certainty when filtered through the CIA. And Osama bin Laden is either dead of old age or still out there somewhere.

It is very disconcerting that the last remaining superpower's intelligence agency has worse maps of Belgrade than Powell's Books does (hey, maybe we should run the country!), and those maps are used to select bombing targets. Most people at the CIA don't speak foreign languages, so communications between and within other nations go untranslated. Every director has been despised by the agents in the trenches. Fractionalized, marginalized, and far too often just plain wrong, Weiner's CIA doesn't bear any resemblance to the all-powerful agency depicted in films and spy novels. Eisenhower's description of the CIA during his term provides the books title: a Legacy of Ashes indeed.

Jeanne, Bob and I went to see In Bruges last night. What a good movie. Am I wrong in thinking that Colin Farrell is a bright young man? I hope this was all acting. He was denser than the magical fog of Bruges, dense as a fence post. People have complained about all the socially incorrect language. But fence posts are not empathetic to those around them. He was spot on. And Ralph Fiennes and Brendan Gleeson were equally good.

I wanted to see it because I had always wanted to go to Bruge. Bruges is photographed very well, you can see why someone would want to visit. I heard it is about hit men, so I knew there would be violence. Yep, there was a lot of that. Almost drove Jeanne under the seat. Sorry. It's also a black comedy. I could hear Bob laughing throughout the non-bloody parts. But even the bloody parts were interesting. I hid my eyes a bit, but you really can't miss the end. Did I say this is well written? Yep. It sure is. I'm so happy that the WGA is back to work. Please, producers and directors, please respect the work of these people. Your movies are sheit (how do Dubliners spell that) without a well-written script. Fortunately, the writer directed this script, so what's on the page is on the screen. Brilliant.

The CIA and Other Crimes

I have been cooking like crazy. It's been quite a bit of fun, seeing what recipes I can come up with for the esoteric ingredients I've been buying. The fresh ginger muffins on the right were the result of buying two hands of ginger at the Chinese market I went to in order to find chicken feet to make a really good demi-glace. This is gelatinous chicken broth reduced to its next to nth degree. The nth degree is called glace. The muffins went immediately into awaiting mouths. The demi-glace was packaged for the freezer, to be used at some later date when I need good quality chicken stock.

And I've been listening as I've cooked. Legacy of Ashes is a tough book to read. What a bunch of shameless boobs. The CIA chiefs, the Presidents who used their services, and all the self-serving men in between. Were we safer with Clinton, who never talked to these people and never sought any intelligence (what he sought instead is well known) or with all the others who thought they were getting reliable intelligence? There were Burma Shave sized signs going down the road to self-destruction, which said that the USSR had no money or ability to do any harm to us. They were great at disinformation and skullduggery. But that's only part of this very long story. It's all painful. But we should all know about our employees. The CIA works for us, right? How are they representing us? Are the effective? Can you fire them? Well, no. But you should read this anyway.

Do we all agree that I needed something light after that? Kill The Messenger is about a bicycle messenger who has difficulties. Lots of difficulties. It was your standard pulp mystery. I enjoyed it. One thing that was really fun is that as a guy on a bike in LA, the messenger, JC, knew all the streets that are around The Times building. It takes place between Chinatown and the court buildings. What fun. Sure people are getting killed and awful stuff is happening. But the kid takes the Gold Line; a shoot out takes place across from the Biltmore; he lives in Chinatown.

And speaking of The Times. :) Sigh. I'm trying to move on. I went to Lee, Hecht, Harrison - an employment service - to help me with my resume. The Times offered me their services. I think if I was looking hard for a job that I would really enjoy this service. So, I should be moving on, but I will be going to The Times tomorrow to see what havoc Sam Zell has wrought. They should be announcing the new editor today or tomorrow. My life is so peaceful these days. I can't imagine that my friends are enjoying much peace. That's sad.

UVWXYZ

We don't have far to go until this series is over. U is for Undercover, V is for Vigilence, W is for Wrong, X is for Xanadu, Y is for Yesterday, Z is for Zygote. When I started this series and was probably at C (1986), Adrian and I were walking through Old Town Pasadena, making up names for subsequent books. It was such a fun moment that I continue to read the series, even though my interest in waning. That's the memory that makes me smile, not the memory of Kinsey Milhone, the book's protagonist.

She's okay. In T is for Trespass, stuff happens, it isn't too violent, people are interesting. In other words, good for the genre. This one has a sneaky care-giver who was left out in the morals distribution. It's hard to see when people are doing evil when they are doing something you don't want to do. Reminds me of people in all those sub-low paying jobs. They aren't evil, but they appear to be doing something we don't want to do; or something we don't want to pay for.

Which reminds me, I voted today. I registered Republican a long time ago. It's so I could vote for good people in the primaries so I'd really have a choice in the general election. I found that I was doing battle with myself this time. I don't have anything against these men like I did Baby Bush. They may not think exactly as I do, but they aren't ignorant and vile. So I should have changed my party. It hurt too much having the lady call out that I was a Republican when I was getting my ballot. I wonder if those good Democrats who got their ballot just before I got mine thought that I had voted for Bush/Cheney in the last election. Noooooooooooooooooo.

I also finished one of my one-off books. Let Me Go is about a mother-daughter relationship. It's a true story. The mother was a death camp prison guard and good Nazi girl. She was a rotten mother and deserted her two children to take on this role. They met one between the end of the war and this final story, when the mother is in her 90's. At the previous meeting, she ignored her grandson and wanted her daughter to try on her death camp uniform. I think this woman was sick.

I'm not thrilled at my relationship with my mother, especially near the end of her life, but this book makes me realize what a gem I had. Being a good mother is a tough thing to do. The mother in this book never tried. All she ever wanted to do was to be a good and faithful Nazi. Yuckers. But it is a good book.

Went to a super bowl party at Sandra's house. Eric and I decided that we would throw one next year when I'm in Virginia. I'm looking forward to that. I understand they have a new big TV and their house is very well set up for parties. I baked banana cupcakes, little ones with a dallop of cream cheese frosting on top. Now that I have time to bake, I don't have groups of people to eat the food. Adrian and I surely don't need that. I'll think of something, some way to bake and not eat the results.

Jeanne and I saw The Diving Bell and the Butterfly yesterday. That was a hard movie to watch, but it was so well done that I can understand its high acclaim. This part of being temporarily retired is fun. We had lunch first, found a great fish grill in the vacinity of the theater. Num. We talked about good things to eat that are good for you. That inspired me to cook a butternut squash and bean salad for dinner. I liked it, but Adrian didn't like the squash part. Oh well. Eating healthfully isn't always easy.