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Shultz, Richard H., Jr. The Secret War against Hanoi: Kennedy's and Johnson's Use of Spies, Saboteurs, and Covert Warriors in North Vietnam. New York: HarperCollins, 1999. 408pp. $27.50
At its core, this is a remarkably well told story of failure-heartbreaking failure to be sure, and failure despite the heroic efforts of some remarkable men to achieve success, but still failure. The U.S. covert war against Hanoi was, as this book makes clear, patently unsuccessful. That it could have been otherwise makes the story all the more compelling.
A leading expert on low-intensity conflict and covert warfare, Shultz has filled a gap that has troubled those who for decades have been trying to understand the Vietnam War. Using meticulously documented research, and writing in a reader-friendly style, Shultz lays out the history of the U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group (usually referred to simply as "SOG") from 1964 to 1972. Such a book is arguably long overdue, but classification of material and the lack of documented interviews with former SOG members crippled previous attempts. At worst, the operations of SOG have suffered gross distortions, turning one of the war's most interesting features into farce and pulp fiction. Happily, this is no longer the case. Now, using newly declassified documents, Shultz lays to rest many of the myths-including the now-infamous CNN claim that Operation TAILWIND involved killing U.S. deserters and the use of the nerve agent Sarin.
Shultz begins his tale by explaining how an aggressive Kennedy administration, angered and humiliated by the Bay of Pigs, formally placed CIA-controlled covert operations against North Vietnam under military leadership. President Kennedy, his brother Robert, and other key advisors wanted immediate results, and they ignored the fact that a covert operation takes time to achieve its...