Scott, Peter. Lost Crusade: America's Secret Cambodian Mercenaries. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998. Scott, Peter. Lost Crusade: America's Secret Cambodian Mercenaries. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998.
An advertisement identifies the author as a U.S. Army Special Forces adviser to ethnic Cambodian Khmer Krom paramilitaries from 1968.
Clark comment: Fortunately, the author appears to be a different person than the conspiracy-oriented (fantacist?) Peter Dale Scott.
For Norman, MHQ Review, Winter 1999, the author "has found in own experience the material for a fine, honest, enduring book about a part of the Vietnam story that has remained largely untold.... The experiences of living out in the hamlets [in the western part of the Mekong Delta], in an alien culture during dangerous times, is powerfully described by Scott."
Seamon, Proceedings, Jun. 1999, finds that Scott has captured the sights and sounds of his part of the Vietnam war "with a memorable clarity that testifies to the eye and ear of a truly talented writer."
To Andrade, IJI&C 14.3, this book reflects the author's "keen powers of observation and his deep affection for the Cambodians he fought alongside.... The writing in Lost Crusade is highly literary, with a style that paints the scene rather than simply describing it."
Scott,
Peter Dale. The War Conspiracy: The Secret Road to the Second Indochina War. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972.
Covert operations are seen as part of a conspiracy to engage the United States in Indochina. This was very difficult to take seriously even then.
Smith,
Eric McAllister. Not By the Book: A Combat Intelligence Officer in Vietnam. New York: Ivy Books, 1993. New York: Ballantine, 1993. [pb]
Surveillant 3.4 identifies Smith as a "Military Intelligence Team (MIT) leader," work which "was dirty, dangerous and poorly staffed." The author gives a "close, unflinching look at combat intelligence in a brigade base camp.... To get the job done, he had to break a lot of rules."
For Naeseth, MI 20.2, the book gives "a glimpse of what life is like in a combat field environment as an MI officer."
Smith,
Warner. Covert Warrior: Fighting the CIA's Secret War in Southeast Asia and China, 1965-1967. Novato, CA: Presidio, 1996.
According to Bailey, Proceedings, Mar. 1997, the author claims to have been recruited by the CIA in 1964 as part of a unit of junior naval officers "to conduct operations in areas outside of South Vietnam." Beyond the base fact that the unit "never existed," there are "scores of factual errors" in the book. "The dumbest story in this collection of tall tales" is the author's account of a one-man mission into southern China.
Lane, Library Journal, Jan. 1997, suggests that Smith's "exploits seem too amazing to be true.... [T]oo much of this excitable account seems fanciful or perhaps blurred by the passage of 30 years. Entertaining but not recommended."
Snepp, Frank. Decent Interval: An Insider's Account of Saigon's Indecent End. New York: Random House, 1977. New York: Vintage Books, 1978. [pb] London: Allen Lane, 1980. Decent Interval: An Insider's Account of Saigon's Indecent End Told by the CIA's Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2002.
Clark comment: Frank Snepp is a former CIA intelligence analyst who served in Saigon at the end of the Vietnam war. Snepp's outrage and pain at the mishandling of the preevacuation and evacuation periods seem real. Nevertheless, his criticisms bear the mark of someone neither in a command position nor high enough up in the decisionmaking chain to know (nor in the final analysis to understand) the basis on which decisions were being made in Saigon and Washington.
Snepp's decision to publish his book without submitting the manuscript to the CIA for security review, as he was required by his employment agreement to do, brought about litigation that went all the way to the Supreme Court. The government's secrecy agreement was upheld and all profits from Decent Interval have gone to the government. As far as I can determine, the 1978 injunction that requires Snepp to submit all future writings for prepublication review remains in effect.
Decent Interval would be best read today with the following article, written by the CIA's Saigon Base Chief when Saigon fell in 1975, in hand: William R. Johnson, "Recalling Snepp's Indecent Breach of Trust," International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 9, no. 4 (Winter 1996/97): 473- 481. Johnson details what he calls "the inaccuracies and venal mendacities of Snepp's book."
Constantinides comments that the criticisms directed against Decent Interval "still leave much of Snepp's story ... intact." Nonetheless, it remains "one man's view." Pforzheimer notes that Snepp blames the CIA Chief of Station, the U.S. Ambassador, the Secretary of State, and the President for "the last disorderly days of the war and failure to evacuate many Vietnamese collaborators of the U.S." With regard to blame, Minnick, NameBase, says that Snepp's "negative portrayal of Saigon [Vietnam] station chief Thomas Polgar seems unfair given the complexity of the events." Otherwise, his "descriptions of the CIA's performance in Vietnam, particularly during the fall of Saigon, are stunning."
Commenting on the 25th anniversary edition, Berger, I&NS 20.2 (Jun. 2005), says that Snepp's account "remains one of the more important first-hand accounts of the internal workings of the US intelligence, military and political operations in Saigon and the eventual retreat in 1975."
Snepp has also published a book concerning his travails associated with publishing the first one: Frank Snepp, Irreparable Harm (New York: Random House, 1999).
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