Vietnam War Bibliography: Covert Warrior - Warner Smith - Memoir CIA covert warfare in SEA
Presidio 1996, 231 pages, ISBN 9-780891-415978 hardbound
From Library Journal
The shadowy influence of the Central Intelligence Agency on the Vietnam War has not been fully understood; first it assisted civilians in organizing counterinsurgency; later, the agency aided the military by collecting intelligence and producing havoc for the North Vietnamese. In all these operations, the CIA's conduit was the Vietnamese themselves, from espionage and sabotage to psychological warfare. In this memoir of his Navy hitch in Vietnam under the CIA, it is curious that Smith's only mention of Vietnamese is when he has to kill one of them on a mission. Apparently, he carried out covert operations, but his exploits seem too amazing to be true; for example, he claims that one particular mission, built around the supposition that in the mid-Sixties Soviet and Chinese cooperation aided North Vietnam, could have produced another U-2 incident. Although one can infer from details here that the author has had military experience, too much of this excitable account seems fanciful or perhaps blurred by the passage of 30 years. Entertaining but not recommended.
Vietnam War Bibliography: Covert Warrior - Warner Smith - Memoir CIA covert warfare in SEA
Presidio 1996, 231 pages, ISBN 9-780891-415978 hardbound
From Library Journal
The shadowy influence of the Central Intelligence Agency on the Vietnam War has not been fully understood; first it assisted civilians in organizing counterinsurgency; later, the agency aided the military by collecting intelligence and producing havoc for the North Vietnamese. In all these operations, the CIA's conduit was the Vietnamese themselves, from espionage and sabotage to psychological warfare. In this memoir of his Navy hitch in Vietnam under the CIA, it is curious that Smith's only mention of Vietnamese is when he has to kill one of them on a mission. Apparently, he carried out covert operations, but his exploits seem too amazing to be true; for example, he claims that one particular mission, built around the supposition that in the mid-Sixties Soviet and Chinese cooperation aided North Vietnam, could have produced another U-2 incident. Although one can infer from details here that the author has had military experience, too much of this excitable account seems fanciful or perhaps blurred by the passage of 30 years. Entertaining but not recommended.