Rating: 
Summary: Turned out less well than the Peace Corps
Review: As each book based on declassified data comes out, the story of Vietnam and the Great American Stumble there becomes more clear. "The Secret War Against Hanoi" is particularly good in its own way. It elucidates the liberal train of thought as they were starting the war in 1961. On January 28 Kennedy had been president for 8 days. Vietnam was divided, the French were gone, and the Viet Cong were prosecuting a campaign of terrorism in the South in order to destabilize it and absorb it into the North. On that day Kennedy met with his National Security Council and listened to what was (in his view) the bad news on Vietnam: if the current conditions persisted, the South would fall to the Communists. Why a little underdeveloped country in Asia should have been of such concern to Kennedy is anyone's guess, but what is no longer in doubt is that major American involvement in Vietnam began at that NSC meeting of Jan 28, when Kennedy stated that he wanted "guerillas to operate in the North". All that followed for 13 years was built upon that one simple sentiment expressed by the new president. He wanted guerillas to operate in the North because, as he expressed it in April of that year, "We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerillas by night instead of armies by day." Kennedy was intent on fighting back in kind: infiltrating, subverting, and deploying guerillas by night. Presumably, the CIA would train Vietnamese spies and guerillas and inflict them on the North. But the Bay of Pigs fiasco happened that April, and the Kennedy brothers were convinced the fault for that lay with the CIA. Therefore they gave the job of training and inserting spies and guerillas into North Vietnam to the Pentagon, which had little experience in such operations. There followed a string of failures, where hundreds of Vietnamese spies and saboteurs were sent up north, and never heard from again. Or North Vietnamese fishermen would be hauled off to an island and treated to an elaborate charade intended to show them that a revolt against the communist government was imminent. Shultz discusses these attempts in a dispassionate tone, but one gets a growing sense of waste and futility from the narrative. Any of the career espionage people at the CIA could have told Kennedy that it was virtually impossible to plant people in a closed totalitarian society like North Vietnam, even if, as in the case of the CIA, that's your business. But to have the Pentagon take a crack at it? Well, you might as well try to get HUD to send a rocket to the moon. But Kennedy's obsession with and faith in covert action remained unabated till the day of his death. His cabinet, McNamara in particular, shared his enthusiasm. Eventually the Pentagon adopted the attitude that if you want anything done in Vietnam, you have to do it yourself. So covert actions began to include Americans, at the same time the overt effort began ramping up under Johnson. The efforts were redirected toward more practical targets, such as the Ho Chi Minh Trail (the construction of which began in 1959), but the approach was no more practical. This wasn't a "real war", according to the brightest minds in Washington; it was more of a diplomatic game. Therefore, restrictions had to be placed on the units operating against the trail builders. Special forces could not go beyond 10 kilometers into "neutral" Laos. The North Vietnamese, displaying the practicality and opportunism that became their hallmark, would then route their trail 11 kilometers from the Laos-Vietnam border. Their spies, unlike those of the Pentagon, were quite effective. It wasn't any secret that cutting off the Ho Chi Minh trail would cut off the stream of men and materiel into the South. Shultz quotes Bui Tin, the NVA officer who accepted the surrender of the South in 1975: "If Johnson had granted General Westmoreland's request to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Hanoi could not have won the war." As simple as that. Straight from the lips of an opposing officer. In retrospect, it seems like the logical thing to do: cut off the enemy's supply line. But from its very beginning on January 28, 1961, the Vietnam War was not conducted logically. Perhaps the Kennedy-Johnson crowd's truly wacky ambivalence can best be glimpsed on pages 34-35. Shultz relates how President Kennedy was "stunned" by the images of Buddhist monks immolating themselves in protest of the Diem government's repression. Diem's sister-in-law, who seems to have been a cross between Immelda Marcos and Leona Helmsley, referred to the immolations as "barbecues". At the same time, South Vietnamese generals were planning a coup. It was dawning on the government of the US that the government of its ally was corrupt and effete and repressive. So where did the Kennedy Administration choose to direct its energies? Toward Hanoi: "escalation of the covert war against Hanoi became a major agenda item. The decision was made to turn up the pressure on the North." With policy like this being made by the Best and the Brightest, one can only shudder at what a catastrophe we'd have had if our leaders had been merely average.
Rating:
Summary: Turned out less well than the Peace Corps
Review: As each book based on declassified data comes out, the story of Vietnam and the Great American Stumble there becomes more clear. "The Secret War Against Hanoi" is particularly good in its own way. It elucidates the liberal train of thought as they were starting the war in 1961. On January 28 Kennedy had been president for 8 days. Vietnam was divided, the French were gone, and the Viet Cong were prosecuting a campaign of terrorism in the South in order to destabilize it and absorb it into the North. On that day Kennedy met with his National Security Council and listened to what was (in his view) the bad news on Vietnam: if the current conditions persisted, the South would fall to the Communists. Why a little underdeveloped country in Asia should have been of such concern to Kennedy is anyone's guess, but what is no longer in doubt is that major American involvement in Vietnam began at that NSC meeting of Jan 28, when Kennedy stated that he wanted "guerillas to operate in the North". All that followed for 13 years was built upon that one simple sentiment expressed by the new president. He wanted guerillas to operate in the North because, as he expressed it in April of that year, "We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerillas by night instead of armies by day." Kennedy was intent on fighting back in kind: infiltrating, subverting, and deploying guerillas by night. Presumably, the CIA would train Vietnamese spies and guerillas and inflict them on the North. But the Bay of Pigs fiasco happened that April, and the Kennedy brothers were convinced the fault for that lay with the CIA. Therefore they gave the job of training and inserting spies and guerillas into North Vietnam to the Pentagon, which had little experience in such operations. There followed a string of failures, where hundreds of Vietnamese spies and saboteurs were sent up north, and never heard from again. Or North Vietnamese fishermen would be hauled off to an island and treated to an elaborate charade intended to show them that a revolt against the communist government was imminent. Shultz discusses these attempts in a dispassionate tone, but one gets a growing sense of waste and futility from the narrative. Any of the career espionage people at the CIA could have told Kennedy that it was virtually impossible to plant people in a closed totalitarian society like North Vietnam, even if, as in the case of the CIA, that's your business. But to have the Pentagon take a crack at it? Well, you might as well try to get HUD to send a rocket to the moon. But Kennedy's obsession with and faith in covert action remained unabated till the day of his death. His cabinet, McNamara in particular, shared his enthusiasm. Eventually the Pentagon adopted the attitude that if you want anything done in Vietnam, you have to do it yourself. So covert actions began to include Americans, at the same time the overt effort began ramping up under Johnson. The efforts were redirected toward more practical targets, such as the Ho Chi Minh Trail (the construction of which began in 1959), but the approach was no more practical. This wasn't a "real war", according to the brightest minds in Washington; it was more of a diplomatic game. Therefore, restrictions had to be placed on the units operating against the trail builders. Special forces could not go beyond 10 kilometers into "neutral" Laos. The North Vietnamese, displaying the practicality and opportunism that became their hallmark, would then route their trail 11 kilometers from the Laos-Vietnam border. Their spies, unlike those of the Pentagon, were quite effective. It wasn't any secret that cutting off the Ho Chi Minh trail would cut off the stream of men and materiel into the South. Shultz quotes Bui Tin, the NVA officer who accepted the surrender of the South in 1975: "If Johnson had granted General Westmoreland's request to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Hanoi could not have won the war." As simple as that. Straight from the lips of an opposing officer. In retrospect, it seems like the logical thing to do: cut off the enemy's supply line. But from its very beginning on January 28, 1961, the Vietnam War was not conducted logically. Perhaps the Kennedy-Johnson crowd's truly wacky ambivalence can best be glimpsed on pages 34-35. Shultz relates how President Kennedy was "stunned" by the images of Buddhist monks immolating themselves in protest of the Diem government's repression. Diem's sister-in-law, who seems to have been a cross between Immelda Marcos and Leona Helmsley, referred to the immolations as "barbecues". At the same time, South Vietnamese generals were planning a coup. It was dawning on the government of the US that the government of its ally was corrupt and effete and repressive. So where did the Kennedy Administration choose to direct its energies? Toward Hanoi: "escalation of the covert war against Hanoi became a major agenda item. The decision was made to turn up the pressure on the North." With policy like this being made by the Best and the Brightest, one can only shudder at what a catastrophe we'd have had if our leaders had been merely average.
Rating:
Summary: More a policy review than tales of individual derring-do
Review: Don't read this book expecting 408 pages detailing the adventures of individual SOG soldiers and their missions. There is really only one chapter, "Crossing the Fence" with its details of SOG operations in Laos, that fits that bill. What Shultz details, using unprecedented access to recently declassified Pentagon documents and interviews with many of the participants in SOG operations, is the complete story of the origin, operations, successes, failures, and lessons of the Studies and Observations Group. His prose may not be scintillating, he may repeat himself frequently, and the beginning of the book may bog down occasionally with flow charts of command, but Shultz isn't writing a popular history. He's writing a policy review of SOG's operations for future civilian and military leaders who may turn to covert operations and unconventional warfare to get themselves out of diplomatic binds. The final chapter of the book summarizes these lessons. Still, this book is worthwhile reading even for ordinary civilians. Those interested in espionage history will find a fascinating account of SOG's attempts to foster rebellion in North Vietnam and wage psychological warfare. Not only do we learn why the CIA could not start a resistance movement in the "denied" country of North Vietnam, a "counterintelligence state" of extreme paranoia and security, but why the inheritor of the project, SOG, was also doomed to fail and fail spectacularly. Of approximately 500 agents inserted into North Vietnam, all were killed or captured and many turned into double agents. But SOG officers experienced in espionage turned this disaster into a brilliant operation that convinced North Vietnam a massive underground was operating in their country and loyal North Vietnamese were implicated as traitors. For those wanting to know exactly what is encompassed by the term "psychological warfare", Shultz gives some idea in the chapter "Drive Them Crazy with Psywar". SOG set up a fake resistance movement with accompanying bogus radio traffic, propaganda, and blocks of ice parachuted into the jungle to melt and leave empty chutes and an uneasy feeling amongst the North Vietnamese. Shultz also tells of the few maritime operations SOG carried out against enemy targets, its sabotage efforts which included tainting caches of the enemy's rice and leaving behind tainted ammo for the VC and NVA soldiers, and its operations against the Ho Chi Minh trail. But the documentation on SOG was initially classified for a reason. Ultimately, the program was a failure, and Shultz documents how there's plenty of blame to go around. Civilian leadership in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations micromanaged the program, had unrealistic expectations for its speed and efficacy, and held the bizarre belief that covert means should be congruent with overt public policy. Military leadership at the highest levels set up SOG as a sop to civilian leaders whom they thought naively enamored of special warfare. They expected little from it, provided little by way of support, and had no plan to coordinate SOG's efforts into the grand Vietnam strategy. Shultz also points out that special ops was, far from being a glamorous, honored posting, a career stopper for a professional military man. While Shultz, of course, concentrates on SOG, I also learned a fair amount about the diplomatic, political, and military history of the Vietnam war in general. Prior to this, my only exposure to the war, in book form, had been a biography of Carlos Hathcock, the Marine sniper in Vietnam. The book is a bit slow at times, but it rewards the reader who completes it.
Rating: 
Summary: READERS BEWARE!
Review: Having been involved with Vietnam since 1945, I was always amazed by the wrong decisions of my superiors. After citing instances in my own book, The Winking Fox, I now realize that I was under the control of ignorants who unfortunately ran, not only our military, but our country! Thanks a million Richard Shultz.
Rating:
Summary: The Story of the Mythical SOG
Review: I had heard of the Studies and Observations Group as far back as the early 80s. As it the organization was so shrouded in mystery, it was hard to tell what was fact. Richard Schultz pulls the shroud away in this scholarly work and we discover the truth is stranger than fiction.
In the early 1960s, JFK directed his underlings to unleash a covert war against North Vietnam. Sort of a do to them what theyre doing to us deal. The CIA and then Defense Department create the Studies and Observations Group (SOG)and give it four primary missions. These were to insert Vietnamese spies into North Vietnam, conduct attacks on the North Vietnamese Coast, undermine North Vietnam with Psychological Warfare (Psywar), and finally to collect intelligence on and impede use of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
The author comes to the reasoned conclusion that SOG was a moderate failure. He shows the main factors in this failure to be timidity of policy makers to use SOG to its full potential out of a fear too much success would expand the war, indifference on the part of conventionally minded military leadership, a failure to incorporate SOG's unconventional war with the conventional war and effective North Vietnamese countermeasures.
Despite these fatal flaws, Schultz shows SOG did manage to provide some assitance to the war effort. In particular, the psywar program apparently drove the already paranoid North Vietnamese of the deep end and SOG recon teams on the Ho Chi Minh trail collected valuable intelligence and eliminate significant amounts of men and materiel.
The best part in my opinion was the portions relating to psywar. SOG went so far as to develop a fake resistance movement and left physical hints of its existence in interesting ways. Other psywar efforts included fake letters meant to implicate the Communist faithful in coup plots and exploding ammunition inserted into supply caches. Pretty cool stuff!
The only down side to the book is its kind of dry reading. By all accounts, SOG was the most highly decorated unit in US history. To his credit, Schultz touches on this but should have gone farther. There is no mention of Fred Zabitosky, Roy Benavides or Bob Howard (a man nominated three times for the Medal of Honor before finally receiving the award). Also, he does not quantify the success of the Ho Chi Minh Trail activities. The author tells us that recon team activities hurt and annoyed the North Vietnamese but there is no mention of exact tonnage of Communist equipment destroyed or the thousands of Communist soldiers tasked with patrolling the Trail because of SOG activities.
All and all a good, solid work. But sadly incomplete. To get the full picture, read this book in conjunction with John Plaster's "SOG".
Rating:
Summary: Can't anyone here play this game?
Review: It's not often that a particular work of history speaks directly to our immediate times. Richard Shultz has written a compelling account of the largest secret operation of the Cold War--the U.S. military's covert campaign against Hanoi during the Vietnam conflict. He lays out why the US military establishment and US policymakers alike were to blame for the complete failure of this secret effort. Shultz could well have subtitled the book, "How Not to Conduct Secret Warfare." Today's US warfighters confronting the Iraqi insurgency would do well to read this book.
Rating:
Summary: How Not to Run Covert Operations
Review: The Secret War Against Hanoi by Richard H. Schultz, Jr. is yet another example of how the higher-ups in Washington failed the soldiers on the ground in Vietnam. Schultz details the beginnings of our clandestine operations during the Vietnam War and the micromanaged progression they took under Lyndon Johnson's administration. The story of our covert actions begins immediately after John Kennedy inauguration. Kennedy convened his first national security meeting and was wholely dissatisfied with American efforts to counter North Vietnam's promotion of the Viet Cong. Kennedy insisted that the US do to North Vietnam what they were doing to South Vietnam. Neither Kennedy nor anyone else present at that meeting would know exactly what we were in for because of that directive. Schultz makes it clear that once the Pentagon was handed the responsibility for covert operations in Southeast Asia that they were almost assured of failing. The military neither wanted nor could handle the covert operations that were truly necessary to bring about the withdraw of North Vietnamese support for the Viet Cong. The army in particular was against the Pentagon's use of covert operations as a means of furthering the war effort. They believed 100 percent in conventional military methods and did not believe that special forces were going to contribute one bit to the war effort. To go along with the military's disinterest was the civilian leadership's unreasonable expectations regarding covert operations. Many members of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations did not fully grasp the difficulty of conducting successful covert operations against a "denied target" like North Vietnam. Kennedy himself believed that the CIA was merely dragging its feet regarding North Vietnam due to a lack of resources or competence or both. Too often the senior military brass left the special forces units in Vietnam out to dry with inadequate resources and staffing. They refused to staff the units with the senior level people which normally went with the important missions in Vietnam. It was something that the Pentagon wished would just go away. Coupled with the military's cold shoulder, the special operators had to deal with the bureaucratic nightmare that was Vietnam policy. If their operations requests made it through the Defense Department, they then had to travel the hallways of the State Department before final approval by President Johnson. Very little of what the special operators wanted to do ever made it all the way through Washington intact. The Secret War Against Hanoi is illustrative of the way in which democracies have trouble conducting wars that dictatorships do not. It was fear that kept special forces from even coming close to fulfilling the promise that they had in Vietnam. It was the fear of what our allies would say, what the Chinese or Soviets would do, and, most importantly to the members of the Johnson administration, what the voters would think. The Secret War Against Hanoi is not very surprising in light of what we already know about the Vietnam War. However, it does provide some good insight into how not to conduct covert operations. While the United States has not had enough success with covert operations to say that we have developed a workable method, we certainly should take the lesson away from Vietnam about what the wrong methods are.
Rating:
Summary: How Not to Run Covert Operations
Review: The Secret War Against Hanoi by Richard H. Schultz, Jr. is yet another example of how the higher-ups in Washington failed the soldiers on the ground in Vietnam. Schultz details the beginnings of our clandestine operations during the Vietnam War and the micromanaged progression they took under Lyndon Johnson's administration. The story of our covert actions begins immediately after John Kennedy inauguration. Kennedy convened his first national security meeting and was wholely dissatisfied with American efforts to counter North Vietnam's promotion of the Viet Cong. Kennedy insisted that the US do to North Vietnam what they were doing to South Vietnam. Neither Kennedy nor anyone else present at that meeting would know exactly what we were in for because of that directive. Schultz makes it clear that once the Pentagon was handed the responsibility for covert operations in Southeast Asia that they were almost assured of failing. The military neither wanted nor could handle the covert operations that were truly necessary to bring about the withdraw of North Vietnamese support for the Viet Cong. The army in particular was against the Pentagon's use of covert operations as a means of furthering the war effort. They believed 100 percent in conventional military methods and did not believe that special forces were going to contribute one bit to the war effort. To go along with the military's disinterest was the civilian leadership's unreasonable expectations regarding covert operations. Many members of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations did not fully grasp the difficulty of conducting successful covert operations against a "denied target" like North Vietnam. Kennedy himself believed that the CIA was merely dragging its feet regarding North Vietnam due to a lack of resources or competence or both. Too often the senior military brass left the special forces units in Vietnam out to dry with inadequate resources and staffing. They refused to staff the units with the senior level people which normally went with the important missions in Vietnam. It was something that the Pentagon wished would just go away. Coupled with the military's cold shoulder, the special operators had to deal with the bureaucratic nightmare that was Vietnam policy. If their operations requests made it through the Defense Department, they then had to travel the hallways of the State Department before final approval by President Johnson. Very little of what the special operators wanted to do ever made it all the way through Washington intact. The Secret War Against Hanoi is illustrative of the way in which democracies have trouble conducting wars that dictatorships do not. It was fear that kept special forces from even coming close to fulfilling the promise that they had in Vietnam. It was the fear of what our allies would say, what the Chinese or Soviets would do, and, most importantly to the members of the Johnson administration, what the voters would think. The Secret War Against Hanoi is not very surprising in light of what we already know about the Vietnam War. However, it does provide some good insight into how not to conduct covert operations. While the United States has not had enough success with covert operations to say that we have developed a workable method, we certainly should take the lesson away from Vietnam about what the wrong methods are.
Rating: 
Summary: Great information, poorly presented
Review: This book presents a lot of information I had never seen, detailing the Pentagon's covert actions in Vietnam. It's main charm is that it is well researched, using previously secret information. The book's serious drawback is that it really needed an editor. The chapters read like individual journal articles: state a theme, present the facts, conclude that you showed what you claimed initially. I am currently half way through, and every interesting fact has been repeated three times, down to identical quotation snippets. The book is not organized by group within SOG, or by timeline. A better presentation would have been shorter, and "taught the lessons of Vietnam" better.
Rating:
Summary: READERS BEWARE!
Review: This book should be required reading -- from Camp Lejeune to Fort Bragg; from NAB Coronado to Okinawa. But, beware -- its painful... Why? Because if the military is your profession -- SpecWar and Recon-types, in particular -- you may want to consider making plans to move into another field after reading the author's thoroughly documented account of how the US/South Vietnam attempted to conduct secret ops in Southeast Asia during the '60s and early '70s. The author exposes the whole sordid affair from start to finish, and in a way that makes you feel both ashamed and proud -- proud of those in the bush who put their lives on the line and ashamed of those in high places who put them in harms way without a well-defined game plan, without proper support. If you can gut-out finishing the book (I recommend you do; it will make you stronger in the long run), you'll want to take a deep breath of fresh air, pause to reflect on those comrades that never made it home, and then PT for about 12 miles...
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