Customer Reviews

Perilous Missions : Civil Air Transport and CIA Covert Operations in Asia

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Many readers will buy this books for the tales of covert flights over Manchuria, North Korea and Indo-China and it certainly delievers. But of equal interest is how does an intelligence service buy and then operate a proprietary while maintaining plausible deniability. Thanks to the diligent research of the author we know the trials and tribulations involved. I'm sure most readers would think when faced with administrative difficulties the CIA would just go in and wave their magic wand and all the roadblocks dissolve. As the book point out the US government had all the leverage in the world with the Nationalist government on Taiwan and it was still a trial to keep CAT operating on the island. Also CAT's books were a nightmare for years until they got professional accounting (not something one immediately thinks about when discussing covert flights over the PRC). A must read for the serious student of intelligence.

This is a very interesting and well researched book on the origin and operations of CAT. It is sad that Dr. Leary did not live to write his planned book on Air America. This book is a great addition to the library of anyone who is interested in the Cold War and/or aviation and is a tribute to those who flew under very difficult conditions to contain Communism..

First of all I need to say that I was quite familiar with CAT, having flown on a number of their planes way back when. However, I have found that there were a lot of things about the airline that I had never heard or was aware of. This book does a wonderful job of filling in many of the blanks as well as bringing to light a lot of history to which I had never been aware. It's very interesting to see names and pictures of people I knew many years ago, which brings back many old memories. Needless to say, I'm very happy with my purchase.

The CIA's Air America became famous for its feats in Southeast Asia. This is the story of how Air America began, as a private-venture airline in China headed by Claire Chennault of the Flying Tigers. Leary tells the story of how CAT morphed into a para-military force, supporting Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist troops in their losing battle with the Communists, and eventually retreating with them to Taiwan. There it began to take on odd jobs for the U.S. military, and eventually the CIA bought a piece of it, so that CAT pilots were one day flying supplies to U.S. forces in Korea, again providing the same service for French troops in Vietnam, and between times dropping spies into China. It's a great yarn, though told with professorial precision. A reprint (no changes) of an earlier book from a university press.

I am a life member of the old CAT organization and can strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in those operations.....