VIETNAM

General

F - K

Freedman, Lawrence. Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Roberge, I&NS 17.4, calls this "the most insightful work yet produced on US national security policy during the early 1960s." However, the author's "detached style takes some of the drama out of the story."

Ford, Harold P. CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers: Three Episodes, 1962-1968. Washington, DC: History Staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 1998.

The former officer in CIA's Office of National Estimates and, later, Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC) provides "a candid view of the CIA's intelligence assessments concerning Vietnam during three episodes between 1962 and 1968 and the reactions of senior US policymakers to those assessments." (Foreword, i) The episodes presented are:

"Episode 1, 1962-1963: Distortions of Intelligence";

"Episode 2, 1963-1965: CIA Judgments on President's Johnson's Decision to 'Go Big' in Vietnam"; and

"Episode 3, 1967-1968: CIA, the Order-of-Battle Controversy, and the Tet Offensive."

Anderson, Intelligencer 9.3, calls Ford's book "one of the best studies on the Vietnam War." Goulden, Intelligencer 10.2, is similarly very positive about this book, noting that the author describes the policy debates in Washington "[w]ith consummate skill."

For Shryock, IJI&C 13.4, this is an "exceptional piece of work." Three quibbles that the reviewer has with the work are that "Ford's footnotes are sometimes a mite meaty,... the index is maddeningly incomplete,... [and] there is no bibliography."

According to Bob Brewin, "Web Docs Show NSA Forecast Bloody Tet Offensive," Federal Computer Week, 2 Oct. 1998 [http://www.fcw.com], Ford's book shows that "According to Harold Ford's, CIA and the Vietnam Policy Makers: Three Episodes, 1962-1968[i]ntercepts of enemy radio communications collected and collated by the National Security Agency provided U.S. commanders in Vietnam with more than two weeks' notice of the bloody 1968 Tet Offensive.... [Ford] told Federal Computer Week that he received permission from NSA to refer to its still-classified history of NSA operations in Vietnam."

Futrell, Robert F. The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia: The Advisory Years to 1965. Office of Air Force History. Washington, DC: GPO, 1981.

Gaiduk, Ilya V.

1. The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996.

Jones, I&NS 20.3 (Sep. 2005), notes that this work explores "the extensive support offered by Moscow" to the DRV after 1964, "and the subsequent competition with the Chinese for influence with Hanoi."

2. Confronting Vietnam: Soviet Policy toward the Indochina Conflict, 1954-1963. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.

Jones, I&NS 20.3 (Sep. 2005), sees the author taking the reader "through a period when the dominant trend in Russian policy was one of disinterest toward a region where the primary role had to be played by the Chinese, except when disputes over Indochina threatened to escalate into a wider conflict with the United States.... Gaiduk has done a fine job in excavating archival sources."

Gelb, Leslie H., with Richard K. Betts. The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked. Washington, DC: Brookings, 1979.

Gibbons, William C. The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships. 3 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986-1989.

Gilbert, James L. The Most Secret War: Army Signals Intelligence in Vietnam. Washington, DC: U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, Military History Office, 2003.

Kruh, Cryptologia 28.1, says that this "expertly written text" includes over a hundred photographs of "ASA and other personnel performing their duties, from the routine to the dangerous."

For Hanyok, I&NS 19.2, this book "is well put together and illustrated." The reviewer notes that there is "[n]o need to worry about this history being an official gloss. ASA's successes and failures are recounted here." However, the book is hampered by the lack of source notes.

Gordon, Don E. "Private Minnock's Private War." International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 4, no. 2 (Summer 1990): 199-218.

Hale, Richard W. "A CIA Officer in Saigon." Vietnam. [http://www.historynet.com/vn/blciaofficerinsaigon/]

The author arrived in Saigon in June 1973, serving at the CIA's Saigon base, first. as the head of "a new external branch focused on a target of opportunity, the Hungarian and Polish members of the International Commission for Control and Supervision (ICCS)" and, after a year, as base executive officer. His story is of the last days of the the CIA's presence in Saigon, up to his departure in April 1975.

Hammer, Ellen J. A Death in November: America in Vietnam. New York: Dutton, 1987.

Hanyok, Robert J. Spartans in Darkness: American SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945-1975. Ft. George Meade, MD: National Security Agency, Center for Cryptologic History, 2002. [http://www.fas.org/irp/nsa/spartans/]

Aftergood, http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/, 7 Jan 2008, notes that this work is "an exhaustive history of American signals intelligence (SIGINT) in the Vietnam War.... Hanyok[] writes in a lively, occasionally florid style that is accessible even to those who are not well-versed in the history of SIGINT or Vietnam."

See also, Peter Grier, "Declassified Study Puts Vietnam Events in New Light," Christian Science Monitor, 9 Jan. 2008. [http://www.csmonitor.com]

Hastings, Deborah. "Secret Vietnam Group Clings to Past." Associated Press, 13 Nov. 1999.

This is a report on the Special Operations Association annual convention, held in October 1999 in Las Vegas. Although the writer probably believes that she is presenting these veterans in a fair and sympathetic manner, it is clear that she -- as is the case of all of us who never served in the Special Operations milieu -- does not understand them. A quote from Maj. John Plaster is worth repeating: These "'are the best people I've ever met in my life,' he said. 'There's not many people in this life who would genuinely give their life for yours. The only respect we had was from each other. We were never recognized.'"

Hubbard, Douglass H., Jr. Special Agent, Vietnam: A Naval Intelligence Memoir. Washington, DC: Potomac, 2006.

According to Sulick, Studies 51.2 (2007), the author "chronicles the demanding counterintelligence and criminal investigation missions of the NIS [Naval Investigative Service] through detailed vignettes of cases drawn from his own experience and interviews with colleagues." However, the work "provides more insight into NIS criminal investigations than its counterintelligence operations.... Special Agent, Vietnam brims with atmospherics that only someone with first-hand experience like Hubbard could provide."

Prout, DIJ 16.1 (2007), comments that "[w]hile this book has merit, it holds little value to an intelligence professional seeking to learn about the U.S. Navy's intelligence or counterintelligence activities during the Vietnam era. The bulk of the cases are criminal in nature, and those few intelligence cases sadly lack any meaningful detail."

Jensen-Stevenson, Monika. Spite House: The Last Secret of the War in Vietnam. New York: Norton, 1997.

Kelly, Francis J. The Green Berets in Vietnam, 1961-71. McLean, VA: Brassey's, 1991. [reissue]

King, Dan. "What Is a Promise Worth?" CIRA Newsletter 23, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 30-32.

A former CIA officer remembers the chaos and the pain of the final days of the U.S. evacuation of Saigon.

Tom Polgar, "Saigon 1975," CIRA Newsletter 23, no. 3 (Fall 1999), 21-24, offers his perspective on the trauma of the fall of Saigon. He concludes: "I am convinced those of us in Vietnam did the best we could under desperate conditions."

Krall, Yung. A Thousand Tears Falling: The True Story of a Vietnamese Family Torn Apart by War, Communism, and the CIA. Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 1995.

 

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