Stanton, Shelby L.
1. Green Berets at War: U.S. Army Special Forces in Southeast Asia, 1956-1975. Novato, CA: Presidio, 1985. New York: Dell, 1995. [pb]
Surveillant 4.4/5 notes that the book includes an "excellent treatment of the problems attendant on the transformation of early SF [Special Forces] activity in Southeast Asia under CIA and U.S. Army auspices to a mainly U.S. Army responsibility in 1963."
2.. Rangers at War: Combat Recon in Vietnam. New York: Crown/Orion Books, 1992.
Surveillant 2.4: This is the story of Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrols (LRRPs), "mainly used for intelligence missions and small-scale raids," in Vietnam.
3. Special Forces at War: An Illustrated History, Southeast Asia 1957-1975. Charlottesville, VA: Howell Press, 1990. [Gibish]
Startzman, Shirley
K. "Seminole Mission Complete." Soldiers, Sep. 1998, 26-27.
In May 1998, NSA officials dedicated a RU-8D Seminole reconnaissance aircraft at the National Vigilance Park in Ft. Meade, Maryland. The display "represents the contributions of U.S. Army signals intelligence soldiers who risked their lives performing aerial reconnaissance missions, especially in Vietnam."
Stein,
Jeff. A Murder in Wartime: The Untold Spy Story that Changed the Course of the Vietnam War. New York: St. Martin's, 1992.
Surveillant 2.4 notes that this book concerns the killing of Thai Khac Chuyen by Green Berets and the consequences thereof as argued by the author. White, I&NS 9.3, comments that A Murder in Wartime was written "by a journalist who provides no footnotes.... [But who] was an insider, an Army intelligence case officer in Vietnam in 1969, and has been through many thousands of pages of ... material."
According to a reviewer in Proceedings 119.10 (Oct. 1993), this "story ... is neither untold, nor about spies, nor did it change the course of the war. The book's misstatements thus begin on its title page.... The incident has been related before, in Those Gallant Men, a wretched 1984 book by an Army defense counsel in the case. This new telling of the story ... is little better.... The book contains many errors and misstatements.... Most bothersome ... is the author's constant use of lengthy direct quotation of statements he could not possibly have knowledge of.... The book employs neither footnotes nor endnotes ... [and] is unreliable as history and suspect as reportage."
On the other hand, Van Voorst, Time, 19 Oct. 1992, finds that the author has produced a "tautly written volume" that "paints an exhaustively researched and heavily documented history of the murder." The reviewer's bottom line is that "[t]his is the best military morality tale since The Caine Mutiny."
Sullivan, John F. Of Spies and Lies: A CIA Lie Detector Remembers Vietnam. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002.
Clark comment: The author was a CIA polygraph examiner in Vietnam from 1971 to 1975. To the Publisher's Weekly reviewer, the author provides a "unique voice and perspective in this detailed, anecdote-heavy ... account of his service during the Vietnam War." Warren, Studies 47.1 (2003) and Intelligencer 13.2, comments that "Sullivan has explained in detail understandable to the layman how the polygraph works and how the CIA uses it.... He provides an interesting mélange of Saigon Station operations, Station management (and mismanagement), and the course of the Vietnam War in its last stages."
Butler, H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews, Jun. 2002, calls this "an interesting addition to the history of the CIA in Vietnam.... Reading Of Spies and Lies gives one the sense of despair, disorder and corruption that existed in Vietnam; unfortunately one has to wade through a great deal of irrelevant information along the way. That is of course the weakness of a personal reminiscence. Sullivan is obsessively interested in presenting himself and his craft in a good light."
For Seamon, Proceedings 128.11 (Nov. 2002), the author confuses the reader by skipping back and forth in time and by using an "abundance of CIA-concocted acronyms." Nevertheless, "the book is eminently readable." Sullivan's "character sketches, not only of his colleagues but also of high-ranking U.S. officials and military men, are often amusing and always informative."
Tanhan, George K., and Dennis J. Duncanson. "Some Dilemmas of Counterinsurgency." Foreign Affairs 48, no. 1 (Oct. 1969): 113-122.
Tidwell, William A. "A New Kind of Air Targeting." Studies in Intelligence 11, no. 1 (Winter 1967): 55-60.
"Reconnaissance techniques developed for use against the Viet Cong's hidden bases may be of historic significance."
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