Former Army intelligence officer and Defense Intelligence Agency analyst "Wick" Tourison unravels the tragically flawed and costly operation that according to many analysts helped trigger, the Vietnam War. Some b&w photos. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Finally, the true stories by Special Branch commandos,
By "hungxuanngo" (California, United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Secret Army, Secret War: Washington's Tragic Spy Operation in North Vietnam (Naval Institute Special Warfare) (Hardcover)
Before this one, many other books provide the one-sided view from Washington by war historians, scholars and analysts (who did not know off-hand the combat and strategic position at the time nor the moral, spirit and willingness to fight by the young and heroic Special Branch Commandos). These books were based largely from declassified War Department MACV-SOG material since 1995, with few interviews with actual SB personnel. The sacrifice these Commandos made (in secrecy from 1956 to 1975) were not told the way it deserves in these books.At Paris, in 1972, the Lost Commandos had been totally ignored by Henry Kissinger. Their American team members got released while the Vietnamese are kept 10 years or longer in prisons. Years later, these Commandos are betrayed again and cheated of the praise they deserve in many books by American writers. Finally this is one of the two books (the other is by Ken Conboy and Dale Andrade) about the secret war waged by the CIA and Colonel Ngo The Linh's Special Branch. Mr. Tourison interviewed the Vietnamese side and have made great effort to provide a more complete and accurate account of success and failure of CIA & Special Branch and SOG & Coastal Security Service. Many of these young SB Commanods died in North Vietnamese cruelest prisons. The rest spent between 15 to 22 years in hard-labor prisons until 1982. Their stories are now finally told...
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Long Overdue,
By
This review is from: Secret Army, Secret War: Washington's Tragic Spy Operation in North Vietnam (Naval Institute Special Warfare) (Hardcover)
Tourison provides a long overdue account of ill-conceived covert operations which achieved little other than to demonstrate the bravery of the naive young Vietnamese men who undertook these missions. This is a group which suffered some of the worst treatment dished out in the Vietnamese communist re-education camp system. Readers of Vietnamese should seek out the lengthy memoir "Thep Den" written under the pen name Dang Chi Binh, which covers the recruitment, training, missions, capture and imprisonment of one of these operatives. Sadly, when some of these men arrived in the refugee camps of Thailand during the late 1980s they had trouble convincing the officials screening them for refugee status that their far-fetched backgrounds were indeed true. That some small measure of financial compensation has finally been provided to this group by the United States government is a welcome gesture, but no gesture will erase the guilt of those responsible for dispatching these men to certain death or imprisonment.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Explains HOW we got into all that mess,
By A Customer
This review is from: Secret Army, Secret War: Washington's Tragic Spy Operation in North Vietnam (Naval Institute Special Warfare) (Hardcover)
I admire Tourison for revealing the truth about the Gulf of Tonkin incidents which led to an escalation of the Vietnam conflict. The book tells of the CIA's Operation Plan 34a which directed commando raids against N Vietnam which resulted in PT boat attacks against American destroyers in the gulf where they seemed to be supporting the commandos. Those attacks resulted in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which gave the president extraordinary war powers which began an all-out war, although it was never declared as such by congress. It was great to learn how the war *Really* began. Sad to say, it was started by us :-(
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