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Special Agent, Vietnam: A Naval Intelligence Memoir

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Douglass H. Hubbard Jr., born in 1945, joined the Naval Investigative Service Office in Washington, D.C. and became an agent. With dreams of catching spies, he volunteered for service in Vietnam. "I was 23," he writes. "The world was my apple." It was 1969; that year U.S. troop strength would peak at more than half a million. He chose Da Nang.

His story, and that of many of the two dozen Naval Intelligence civilian special agents who also served in Vietnam, is told in "Special Agent, Vietnam: A Naval Intelligence Memoir" ($26.95 in hardcover from Potomac Books). Hubbard stayed in Vietnam for three year-long tours, the most of any Naval Intelligence Service (NIS) agent.

Hubbard notes the passage of time has taken its toll on the agents who served there. Some have died, memories have clouded; he writes that "it fell to me, more than four decades after the first agent deployment (in 1962), to tell as much of that story as possible."

The Navy refused "to confirm or deny the existence of all the documents and photographs that we had written and submitted," so Hubbard has instead relied on interviews with surviving agents, his own memories and publicly available information. The book includes helpful maps, photographs of the agents and a glossary of seemingly numberless military acronyms. The result is a careful study of the role of NIS agents in South Vietnam until the fall of Saigon in 1975. Hubbard's language is measured, but there is passion behind the words.

He investigated allegations of drug use among troops, suicides, rape, mail fraud, smuggling, spying and the death of Australian entertainer Catherine Ann Warnes (whose stage name was Cathy Wayne) in 1969. She "had been shot while performing with her troupe at the staff and officers' club" at a base in Da Nang. (A Marine sergeant was eventually arrested.)

Then there was "fragging," the use of a fragmentation grenade to cause mayhem or settle personal scores. Hubbard writes that "the small M26 frag packed a huge wallop. Its high-explosive charge was wrapped by strands of serrated stainless-steel wire, fragments of which traveled at several thousand feet per second on detonation -- providing a kill radius of about 15 meters."

Some cases were motivated by racial tension, such as the one in 1970 involving Pvt. Ronald McDonald, USMC, who, Hubbard writes, "may well have been a product of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's social engineering plan to fill vacancies in the armed forces by lowering entry standards." McDonald managed to obtain a British 36 "Mills Bomb" fragmentation grenade to use against an officer he felt had insulted him. The grenade went off, the officer survived, but McDonald got 80 years. One of the agents who worked the case told Hubbard in an interview, "They led this guy away in handcuffs, but he was still giving the black power salute."

After his time in Vietnam, Hubbard left the NIS to explore business ventures. He returned to Vietnam in the late 1990s and found much of the destruction had disappeared. "A visitor to Vietnam who knew the country during the war will probably at some point ponder about what difference America's brave attempt to rescue South Vietnam made. As I stared out over the verdant rice paddies in the former demilitarized zone ... I was prompted to think that, despite a preponderance of altruism, we had mattered very little in the context of Vietnam's two millennia of history."

Copyright 2006 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

Special Agent Vietnam was an exciting look into the top secret world of naval security and intellegence during the
Vietnam conflict. The author describes various things the Navy and Marine Corps enlisted community were
into and how he solved military criminal cases against this community. He gives background as to how the
term "fragging" started and who ultimately was behind it. Though the author ultimately had to multi task
he remembers a lot of detail as to how he gathered evidence and went about interigating whitnesses.

I wish the author would consider writing a book about the US Army CID Special Agents and solving
crime in the military and gang investigations also.

In his book "Special Agent Vietnam" (and in his book "Bound for Africa"), author Douglass Hubbard Jr. has educated me on the sensitive balance between war and peace. I have learned in general that civil societies must play out their aims and diplomacy. Citizens not happy (or those abused by) with any particular governments status quo, can "fight" (argue for)/advocate for any societal needs and causes, by going through established or otherwise appropriate societal channels (like legal/political/other manners), instead of resorting to things such as "terrorism" (on their own or through their or outside governments or other entities).

In his books, author Hubbard Jr. teaches history, geography, science, sociology, and more. Furthermore, Hubbard Jr. gives readers a glimpse of an unconventional life and a personal story.

Readers from all walks of life can enjoy and learn from this book. Special Agent Vietnam is a book I'll read again and again. I consider myself a liberal on most issues and by reading his books, Douglass Hubbard Jr. has helped to bridge a gap of mine, which is my perception of the balance of war and peace.

From David Wilson, MSW (social worker) and 20 year military (retired) veteran

A surprising review of some interesting cases and what the day to day investigations involved. Reading about memorable Investigators such as Tom Brannon proved a great read. The author provided excellent insight into many aspects of the war that were uknown to many. I rcommend this book.

Tom Del Torre

This book details one man's tour and those of others he interviewed. It shows what happened at the lowest level of their work but shows little of what resulted from their work.
I would very much like to contact the author about a Navy LtCmdr or Cmdr Van Horn or Van Hook who was in Viet Nam who might be known to him. I need to contact this man to tell him I accomplished a joint service mission he gave me, when I was a Army SP5.

The book is an historical account of the activities of the Naval Investigative Service in Vietnam. The personal stories of the author and many other agents assigned to Vietnam were most interesting to read. As a former Special Agent with both the NIS and DIS, many familiar names appear in the narrative. If you like "war stories" and have been in the business, you should read this book.

Let me start out by saying unequivocally, Special Agent, Vietnam is a wonderful book. It tells a story unique in naval history - granted a small piece of naval history - but one which has never been told before. It is a story about a group of idealistic young men, volunteers all, who were thrust into the middle of an unpopular war forty-odd years ago. Young men who were sort of betwixt and between civilian and military status. They wore camouflage fatigues but devoid of any rank insignia. They carried an issued sidearm, a Smith & Wesson .357 revolver, an anachronism in a world of AK-47's, M-16's, and other exotic instruments designed to kill. But, most important of all, and what made them special, was that they carried credentials identifying them as a civilian Special Agent, Naval Investigative Service (NIS), at that time a law enforcement and counterintelligence organization known to few outside of the Navy and Marine Corps commands they served.

The story of NIS in Vietnam began in the very early 1960's as the intensity of the war ratcheted up, and as the number of Marines and naval personnel increased in country so did criminal activity and the need for intelligence information. This book, therefore, is more than just a history of a small cadre of young men who toiled under extraordinary and sometimes very frustrating conditions. It mirrors in microcosm the whole history of the American involvement in this sad little country and a sadder war, from its beginning to its ignominious end. Special Agent, Vietnam provides an insider's view of the Vietnam War, written with the knowledge and grit that could come only with service in the back alleys and battlefields of The Nam.

Those of us who served as NIS agents in Vietnam have our stories to tell and Mr. Hubbard has put it together for all of us, bringing back memories, both good and bad, of that period in our country's history. This book is well worth reading.

Carl Sundstrom, Former NIS Agent, DaNang, Vietnam, 1969 - 1970

This book obviously tells it like it really was: the uncertainties, frustrations and unusual challenges of a unique group of men working to accomplish the counterintelligence and investigative missions in war-time Vietnam. And what a work place it must have been. The author's 36 months of continuous service as a Special Agent certainly qualify him to tell this warts-and-all story, including the chaotic aspects - command indifference and a military justice system frequently in disarray. Good reading for anybody with an interest in the intelligence world and the lessons to be learned from these stories.

I recommend his book (I thoroughly enjoyed & learned much reading his book *****!). So please consider ordering it for yourself and please email/pass this on to others and to especially any active duty folks and vets you may know (please send this info up and down your "chain of command" :-). The author worked as an Naval Investigative Service (NIS) special agent in Vietnam for three years as the youngest and longest serving agent during the war there (that agency is now called NCIS...), so as you can imagine during wartime, besides this being a great personal story on the people there, this is a very interesting look at the war as you may have never dreamt the war to be...:

The best word to describe this book is "limp". Chapter after chapter and vignette after vignette end with virtually no result or conclusion. A bunch of Naval Intelligence guys running around Vietnam hoping to gain some intelligence or to solve some criminal act by U.S. Navy or Marine Corps personnel -- only to have most of the situations they describe end up with "we wrote a report but it never went anywhere". For example, numerous fragging incidents are describe, but few if any culprits are caught -- as if it made a difference in the outcome of the war.

The book is long on the difficulties of getting around Vietnam as a single operative, but short on any insight on what these men did or what they added to our forces there.

This is just another group of people trying to get their sliver of the war out there. Not worth the money.