Spies and Commandos: How America Lost the Secret War in North Vietnam (Modern War Studies)
Conboy and Andrad? relate how, from 1964 to 1972, the Defense Department oversaw one of the longest-running covert paramilitary operations in U.S. history: the army's Studies and Observation Group (SOG) in Vietnam. The American-trained SOG units conducted cross-border missions to disrupt enemy activities, rescue downed U.S. pilots, train agents and conduct psychological operations designed to undermine morale in Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam. According to the authors, nearly all of the SOG missions were unsuccessful; virtually all the Vietnamese commandos sent into North Vietnam, for example, were killed or captured. Drawing upon extensive research and interviews, Conboy (Shadow War) and Andrad? (Ashes to Ashes; Trial by Fire)--an analyst of South Asia and a U.S. Army military historian, respectively--have constructed a readable, almost mission-by-mission account of the SOG operations, from the policy decisions of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to the experiences of the agents themselves. The authors also offer a reasoned analysis of why the program was, as they say, "doomed from the start." The main factors were "political constraints," "a lack of understanding of the enemy" and the fact that "blind missions into closed communist societies did not work." The book's most riveting sections are the many suspenseful accounts of cross-border missions--complete with names, dates, places, acronyms, code names and a detailed cataloguing of weapons and espionage equipment used by the spies and commandos. Photos, maps not seen by PW. (Mar.)Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.