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. 408 pages.

The author of this book, now at the Fletcher School, was a Reagan cold warrior who used to churn out the sort of material that misread the Soviets and brought us all closer to World War III. This book, about the Pentagon's unconventional warfare program in North Vietnam from 1964 to 1972, is more restrained and factual. There are lessons to be learned, Shultz suggests, so that tactics are more effective in the future than they were in Vietnam.

The Pentagon's program went by the name of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, Studies and Observation Group (or simply SOG). Despite his implicit approval of SOG, Shultz deserves credit for revealing officially-sanctioned SOG programs, some of which deserve to be prosecuted as war crimes. In one project, North Vietnamese POWs were released back into North Vietnam with incriminating evidence secretly planted on them, so that they would look like American agents. In another tactic, 1,000 North Vietnamese fishermen were kidnapped and brought to an island that they were told was a liberated territory in North Vietnam, and then blindfolded and brought home. The hope was that they would spread the word that there was a resistance movement underway. Fortunately, the antiwar movement made Washington increasingly skittish, and official programs such as these were eventually phased out.
ISBN 0-06-019454-5

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