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Cash on Delivery: CIA Special Operations During the Secret War in Laos

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Without a doubt, the book, Cash on Delivery, presents an important behind-the-scenes perspective of a dedicated CIA officer, one who worked in a hot spot of the Vietnam War. The author unselfishly shares his experiences and thoughts about the work that is done in the gathering of intelligence in a dynamically changing, cross-cultural environment.

The book is an unvarnished `lessons learned' account, without reading like a training manual. Many of our decision makers would do well to assume the role of `student', and review the lessons that are presented in the book.

The author was a high school classmate of mine. When I heard about his book, I immediately ordered a copy. The previously unknown, to me, facets of his career have made for fascinating reading. Maybe we will have something to talk about, other than the weather, at our next class reunion?

He was also a military police officer in Vietnam. I am a Fort Gordon-trained military policeman, who served at Panmunjom, Korea, in 1966-'68, working around soldiers of both Koreas. From my cross-cultural military experience, the author's account rings true.

Since an earlier Amazon review presents many of the important details in the book, I'll provide my perspective of the events noted in the book. The final chapter, "Speaking Truth to Power - Lessons Learned", is properly positioned as a final chapter for the book. It stands as an after-action assessment of the author's considerable experience in the craft of gathering intelligence. Individuals with a low tolerance for situations of uncertainty need not apply for the job. Neither should they serve as overseers of the intelligence gatherers.

The gathering of intelligence, of putting two and two together, is difficult under most conditions. In a cross-cultural environment, where language and mannerisms have no common foundation, the task is an almost incomprehensible undertaking. In the complete job description, include the condition of a daily work environment where the standard mortality tables do not apply, and it is easy to see that very special personalities are needed for such clandestine assignments.

The work of such individuals is not to be taken for granted. While the whimsy of politicians may guide the need for intelligence gathering, it should not guide the selection of those who are sent to gather intelligence. Our country's future should depend on more than merely faddish political events.

The book is easy to read, with a minor error or two in the first printing, e.g., in a footnote reference to STOL. Retired college professors can be picky readers, but it was an absolute pleasure to read a candid account of a someone who set high standards for his work. Given the growing number of uncertainties that we face, there is a demonstrated need for those who understand the process of resolving uncertainty. Perhaps a decision-maker, or two, will read this book, and will discover some `answers', just sitting there, awaiting discovery in a fascinating account of our recent history.

Author Thomas Leo Briiggs shares an account of about the CIA's involvement in the nasty little secret war going on in Laos during the Vietnam War. It is told with the authority of having been there and done that himself. His book, "Cash On Delivery: CIA Special Operations During The Secret War in Laos" is an education in what really happened there. To some degree, it gives some very astute observations and insights on how we could do these same kind of secret operations better in the future. In the last chapter of his book, the author points out the many lessons and things that were learned from that long ago experience that could be of huge and practical benefit to today's anti-terror wars around the world.

The book becomes most interesting for me when he talks about POW Eugene DeBruin, a civilian employee of Air America. He was captured after being shot down over Laos in September 1963 - while dropping rice out of the back of a C-46 for that country's government. Briggs details how they tried to find evidence of him still being alive and being held in captivity years later. He was never returned after the war ended. He became one of those many MIAs that just simply vanished with no accounting even though there is a photo of him as a POW. The story of what they did along with all the background information was very well written by the author. This could have become a boring history book but instead it is entertaining; even though it is loaded with lots of facts and data.

Briggs takes this untold history along with his own personal experiences and weaves them together into well written tale of spies, wars, and intelligence gathering. There isn't another book like this one out there that captures first hand accounts of what was really going on there. This story needed to be told and it needs to be read!

I served with the author in the clandestine service, saw the galley of this book in its early form, and was delighted when I received a copy of the finished book in the mail.

This is an absorbing detailed reference work, professional lessons learned document, "oral history" of the hidden war in Laos and Cambodia, and above all a patriotic "after action" report that should be--but has not been--absorbed by both Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Special Operations Forces (SOF) "leaders" and program managers.

Portions of the book are somewhat numbing in *necessary* detail, and other portions of the book gave me goose bumps. The book is something of a counterpoint to Blond Ghost, about Ted Shackley and his war in Laos, the most famous quote being his deputies, "We spent a lot of money and got a lot of people killed," Lair remembered, "and we didn't get much for it."

I take this officer at his word, and have absolute confidence in this book and its details. The two most important points:

+ CIA Special Operations Group (SOG) officers are program managers, and are NOT in competition with SOF "direct action" A, B, and C Teams.

+ Done right, ONE CIA SOG officer with TEN interpreter/assistants can manage THREE HUNDRED indigenous intelligence collection or guerrilla precision attack personnel. The interpreters have to be co-located with teams that can be reached in person or by radio.

The book is gripping from both a "here's what happened" reality depiction of the minutia of CIA SOG at its best, and "dumb-ass bureaucracy strikes again" all too familiar litany of errors of management.

For myself, the most important lesson, one that is also communicated in Jim Wirtz's The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War (Stemme) and War Without Windows, is that at the human intelligence (HUMINT) level in sustained combat and infiltration operations, the intelligence failure is NOT at the collection level, but rather at the country team level (failure to share) or HQS level (failure to analyze, connect dots, and disseminate to rest of government.

I learn for the first time of multiple successes in cross-border snatches of North Vietnamese Army (NVA) prisoners, of successful interdictions called in by non-combatant road watchers, and of a priceless SIGINT interdiction site for Ho Chi Minh trail intercepts discovered by one of the teams that was never properly reported to the National Security Agency (NSA).

The final chapter, "Speaking Truth to Power--Lessons Learned" is the one I will summarize, and the most important, but only in the context of reading the entire book and for those that do not know the author as I do, absorbing the righteous nature of his account. This is the real deal.

01 US officers FLUENT in the local language are an essential means of recruiting individuals all too worried about "false flag" recruitments and betrayals by others posing as CIA principal agents.

02 Core lessons on building a sustainable SOG presence that produces reliable results are readily available in this book and elsewhere but getting the "NOT INVENTED HERE" stonewall in AF and Somalia and Yemen.

03 Neither CIA managers for SOF leaders understand the distinction with CIA SOG as a program management and collection function, and SOF direct action options.

04 CIA needs SOG but has trashed it (for AF, retirees had to be recalled, see those accounts, that do NOT contain the level of detail this book does, at Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander and First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan.

05 The new CIA SOG--if and when--must be populated with people who have deep military experience and ideally combinations of civil affairs, military police, and special operations experience. Putting young people that have not had that background into CIA SOG leads to disasters. The author pointedly mentions the CIA deaths in Afghanistan when the prison riot killed a new CIA officer fresh from SOF who never learned how to manage prisoners, to include search and disarm.

06 CIA SOG cannot be the "knuckle draggers" of the past, where all that was wanted was the ability to fly helicopters, shoot straight, and blow things up. CIA SOG officers *must* be fully trained clandestine case officers with a full grip on tradecraft, *and* also be intelligence analysts able to make the most of what they touch where the rubber meets the road--this is especially true now that we have CIA "Stations" that are hollower than ever before, and often out of touch with local realities.

07 CIA suffers from a crisis of leadership. Enough said, Leon Panetta has been sucked into the vortex, CIA is worthless for the foreseeable future.

08 Contract fraud and abuse at CIA is much, much more of a problem than I had realized, in part because normal case officers (C/O) like myself tend to handle, at most, $100,000 a month, while CIA SOG program managers and CIA IT and others can manage millions. Dusty Foggo, a GS-12 when we served together in Panama, comes to mind.

09 Directorate of Operations (DO) records at CIA were, at the time the author retired, in total disarray. I do not think they have improved, and learned myself the hard way that the DO refuses to modernize, and refuses to be serious about indexing what they know. In one small program I ran, after calling up all names for a specific target and seeing that many of the names I had reported from overseas were not there, I was given an annuitant who went through all the hard copy files, and we went from 300 names to 3,000--the clerks in the basement had been refusing for over a decade to "index all names" as instructed.

10 Chiefs of Stations (COS) are not properly evaluated, this will get worse now that there are conflicts between CIA and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). I myself failed all COSs world-wide for failure to meet DCI priorities on the Nicaraguan target in the Bill Casey era, and I know the author is correct on this point--COSs are hiding behind their myth, and NOT producing.

I put the book down with a smile--great author, great book, highly relevant and very professionally-presented information. This book should be a reference work in all the war colleges, and if CIA ever gets serious about having a global clandestine and covert operations service, there as well.

Other books I recommend on this era:
Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam
The Tunnels of Cu Chi: A Harrowing Account of America's "Tunnel Rats" in the Underground Battlefields of Vietnam
Decent Interval: An Insider's Account of Saigon's Indecent End Told by the Cia's Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam
In Search Of Enemies

And of course my own books, beginning with On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World (2000).

I found this book very interesting. His background and the first part of the book did not endear him to me personally, but his analysis and reflection brought me back in. His ability to reflect on his many years of service should be valued.

A gripping account of CIA activities in Laos during the Vietnam War, written by one of the officers who ran these operations. Briggs presents in easily readable form details not previously made public and thought processes of those making decisions, ending with a valuable 'lessons learned' segment certain to be useful to those who follow in his footsteps. A 'must read' for today's officers, or they are destined to repeat mistakes made in the past.

Numerous books have appeared in the past 15-20 years about the CIA's so-called "secret war" in Laos-- including a recently declassified official Agency history. Insofar as I am aware, however, none of these have focused to any extent on operations in the southern Laos panhandle. Most of them dwell on the struggle up north for control of the Plain of Jars. And until this book, none provided a detailed breakdown of how the indigenous Lao guerrilla teams were organized, how their indigenous team leaders were selected, or on the day to day work of the CIA case officers who managed them. So Cash on Delivery gives us a fresh and unique look at the struggle for Laos. I appreciated it very much.

The balance of the narrative focuses on the tactical day to day work carried out from Pakse Base to insert various types of indigenous Lao guerrilla teams into the Ho Chi Minh Trail for roadwatch, sabotage and prisoner-snatch operations. It's a fascinating read, relating the story of often mundane day to day case officer work but punctuated throughout by accounts of the grave dangers confronting CIA Paramilitary Case Officers (PMCOs) and also the personal bravery by those CIA Officers and their indigenous charges. It also details the exceedingly brave actions by contract personnel of the several Agency proprietary airlines, by US Air Force Ravens (forward air controllers), and by uniformed pilots and air crews of the US Air Force and Navy-- all working with CIA as one team in an effort to tie up mainforce North Vietnamese Army units and to interdict their resupply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And regardless of what anyone thinks about the effort in Laos, it was a resounding strategic success whereby no more than about 50 CIA officers and their indigenous Laotian tribal units led the effort to tie up two full People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) infantry divisions from 1961 until 1975. The CIA's very successful efforts in Laos only became untenable after the Nixon Administration signed the peace accord with Hanoi and withdraw its support for the South Vietnamese government. With the seizure of southern Vietnam by the PAVN in April 1975, the situation in Laos (and neighboring Cambodia) was no longer tenable.

I think the level of detail on team organization, team numbering system and myriad landing, or "Lima" sites upcountry might quickly cause the eyes of the general reader to glaze over. For the student of counterinsurgency, or those of us with first-hand experience in Indochina, however, such detail is terribly interesting. Fortunately, the author includes a map of his theater of operations designating the locations of the action; without it, a general reader unfamiliar with the geography of Laos would quickly get lost.

Of particular note are the several examples provided to illustrate how the author worked hard to improve intelligence collection during his tour in Laos. This is an important point, especially for the general reader, who might not be able to discern the difference between civilian paramilitary case officers of the CIA and the special forces of the Pentagon. The crystal clear difference always has been that while both are capable of training planning and executing special operations behind enemy lines, only CIA officers are specially trained and certified as Core Collectors. Thus, while they are training, they are also recruiting sources.

The final chapter, "Speaking Truth to Power" hit home and I found myself agreeing with nearly all that the author has to say about senior management failures, a growing risk-averse culture at Langley, political interference and the creation of needless and mindless bureaucratic "reforms" (like the creation of the National Intelligence Director) that have not only failed to reform anything but have made things much much worse. I also agreed with the author's position on the purpose and role of CIA's Special Operations Group.

My only disagreement lies with the author's contention that CIA mis-used its SOG teams in the opening volley of the War on Terrorism following 9-11-01. The author is correct that our Jawbreaker teams did take on the role normally reserved for US military special forces teams. But surely he knows that in the immediate aftermath of 9-11-01, the US military had no action plan to get its personnel inside Afghanistan, while CIA/SAD/SOG and CIA/CTC already had a plan on the shelf, enabling our PMCO's to insert and immediately begin organizing tribal resistance to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. It took the US Army weeks to get its teams even to the staging areas in the "stans" north of Afghanistan and then they discovered that their Army helicopters did not have the altitude or power to airlift the Army Triple Nickle teams over the Hindu Kush range and into the Panshir Valley. CiA, on the other hand, was equipped with Russian-built MI-17s-- a jet powered work horse with the ability to fly over the Hindu Kush. And in the end, CIA had to send its MI-17s out to pick up the Army special forces units and deliver them to theater. Were mistakes made? Sure, including some fatal ones. But the reality at the time was that when CIA had the only game-plan in town the President used his authority to send the CIA to war.

The author may not have been in a position to know just how much angst this caused Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who had to sit and watch the military sit idly by on the sidelines for weeks while Agency personnel were already bringing the war to the enemy. But of this I am certain: Mr. Briggs, as a seasoned paramilitary operations officer, remembers the old saying that, "WHEN AMERICA IS IN PERIL, THE PENTAGON BEGINS PLANNING WHILE THE CIA GUYS GRAB A WEAPON AND JUMP ON THE TRUCK."

My point is that CIA had the only viable Special Operations capability in Aghanistan in the early days. As time went on, the Agency PMCOs settled back into their traditional roles as program managers, training indigenous units, training indigenous police and the like-- and recruiting sources.

There is some unnecessary redundancy throughout the book. The author explains that he wrote the book over many years, which partially explains these redundancies-- but a good edit and final proof would have eliminated this problem. Perhaps in the next edition?

All in all this is a fine book and I would recommend it enthusiastically to anyone interested in the perspective of an experienced and respected CIA street officer. Clearly, as is often said inside the Velvet Prison, Tom Briggs was "one of us."