Questionable Intelligence

If you have an opinion on America's involvement in Vietnam, if you have only a vague notion of Indochina's modern history, if you caught just five minutes of Missing in Action 2 on TV the other night and realized it was based on an actual war, then you must read Richard Shultz's The Secret War Against Hanoi.

I read at least two books of war narrative a year, but rarely do I recommend one. In casual conversation, war/espionage titles are generally perceived as being one of two types: 1) apochryphal derring-do looking for a movie deal, and 2) overdone conspiracy theory. Schultz's book is neither.

As early as 1961, JFK wanted to beat North Vietnam at its own game of covert tactics and guerrilla warfare. But when the CIA failed to deliver the expected results, the entire operation was transferred to the Pentagon -- with disastrous results. As the CIA was well aware, organizing covert activity within a totalitarian system is all but impossible, irrespective of any moral or political considerations. What was more problematic, however, was that the "mainstream thinking" of the Joint Chiefs saw little to no value in clandestine operations.

Shultz is not the first historian to make the point, but special attention is paid to the Geneva Accords, specifically their prohibition against foreign forces entering Laos. Washington, at least initially, honored the agreement; Hanoi did not. The result was the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the unfettered movement of Vietcong and NVA forces into South Vietnam. When the U.S. did finally act against the trail, its efforts were so limited and so predictable (and so late) that Hanoi easily devised effective counterneasures.

Published in 1999, the book makes no obvious connections to the war on terror, but touches on some difficult questions as to what a free society can and should expect of its intelligence agencies. And as a bonus, one comes away with a sense of the irony surrounding the nomination of a general as head of the CIA. Of course, General Hayden's most relevant experience comes from his years with the NSA, but such a pick would have been unthinkable in the wake of the Vietnam War.