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Of Spies and Lies: A CIA Lie Detector Remembers Vietnam

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John Sullivan's "Of Spies and Lies" is a fascinating account of wartime CIA intelligence operations in Vietnam that should be required reading not only for students of the Vietnam War, but also for anyone interested in the current war on terror. John's discussions of the difficulties an intelligence agency faces in recruiting penetrations of a difficult and dangerous enemy organization and his descriptions of problems caused by the shortage of officers with the requisite language and area knowledge bear disturbing similarities to headlines we see in the press every day. It is another illustration of the old saw that "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
John's book provides a unique window into life in the CIA's Saigon Station. His description of Agency operations in Vietnam ranges from the controversy surrounding our best penetration of the Viet Cong leadership to the polygraphing of local employees over the disappearance of a few slices of ham at a party (an incident I remember quite well). John also gives unprecedented insights into the important role the Agency's requirement for polygraph vetting plays in keeping case officers, who work daily in the murky waters of spies, fabricators, and con-men, on the straight and narrow road of the pursuit of the truth. CIA polygraphers like John helped lead the way in the development of a systematic vetting process for use in the conduct of clandestine intelligence collection operations. The book illustrates how that process works and how, when the process is ignored or distorted, the entire system can quickly break down.
I served with John in Saigon Station and know his reputation as one of the Agency's best. As a former Saigon Station officer, some of his criticisms of personnel and procedures in Southeast Asia are painful, but their accuracy is incontrovertible. I highly recommend this book.

The book starts out one story at a time and some times the thought is "why tell me about a broken desk cover" but at the end you know more about what it was really like in Laos and Vietnam. John was known as the man who would tell the truth to those in power. Now he shares it with the rest of us.

As we see the formulation of a new "homeland security agency" it is a reminder to us that the best way to get good results is pay attention to every step of the process. Our Vietnam operation had great support and many poor operations with the information results (even the good information) seeming to get lost on the way to those who needed it. The lesson I see is that all of the details are important. Bottle necks can kill.

John has written a journeyman's account of his four years as a polygraph operator in Vietnam . It is a somewhat confusing account of that time,for even another insider,in that all but a few of the names mentioned , and there are many many names mentioned, are contrived aliases . I was there all of the time and knew John quite well(I thought), and even I am having a hard time connecting the real names to the given aliases. I am amusedly miffed at John's claim that he did not know a staffer above the grade of GS-10 who spoke Vietnamese as I had been in-country for ten years by the time John arrived and worked closely with John on a number of cases.Also, although a very small point, John notes in two places that he or others were delayed going from the American Embassy to Tan Son Nhut Airport because they got caught up in traffic on Cong Ly Boulevard in Saigon . It has been a long time since the war but I am fairly sure that Cong Ly Boulevard was a one-way street heading into Saigon not out of town.It is therefore likely there are other factual errors that crept into this account. John was an excellent polygraph operator who tended to gossip a bit too much and really did want management to look to him to report on how things were going in the field.These are human failings, and are understandable but at times unforgivable. I am glad John wrote his memories of the war and managed to get published this very insiders account of his fours years in Vietnam and Cambodia. It brought back a lot of memories. I recommend the book for anyone truly interested in the Vietnam War.

As an ex-CIA polygraph examiner who served for four years in Vietnam, John Sullivan traveled throughout much of Indochina while performing lie detector tests in support of the US war effort. Over a quarter of a century later, Sullivan's memoirs tell the story of a man who, trained by a spy agency to unearth deceit, embarks upon a mission to a Cold War hotspot where he discovers deception and incompetence to be as perennial as the grass in the Vietnamese countryside.

While Sullivan makes it clear from the beginning that he did serve with a number of good men in Vietnam, he expresses astonishment at the degree of operational ineffectiveness (or just plain irresponsibility) on the part of many CIA personnel in Saigon Station and outer lying regions, which strangely enough became a backwater for 'problem' officers despite the country's exceptional strategic importance to US policy makers.

In reference to the author's tradecraft, Sullivan makes three worthwhile points about polygraph testing:

1) "Polygraph is about 92 percent art and 8 percent science."
2) "The fact that intangibles cannot be quantified or scientifically measured challenges the claim that polygraph is a science. I do not believe that it is possible to put a percentage on the reliability of polygraph testing, but under optimal conditions, it is very reliable."
3) Even if a subject registers as being deceptive on a polygraph, "unless an admission is obtained, the final determination is frequently what we refer to as a scientific wild-ass guess (SWAG)."

Although I would have enjoyed hearing more detailed discussions of Sullivan's expertise, I understand that there are limits as to how much can be openly discussed regarding his specialty. Nonetheless, this book scores a high mark in that it enables readers to walk away with a better understanding of both the Vietnam War as well as polygraph testing.

This book is so good I have added it to the select list of intelligence reform books recommended by the Council on Intelligence.

As a former clandestine case officer, I had never had strong feelings one way or the other about polygraph operators, but this book has persuaded me that the best of them have earned an absolute place at the high table--this book should be required reading for every wanna-be case officer (most of them too young to have ever managed payroll or held a truly stressful job on their own), and they should not be allowed to pass out into the field until they fully appreciate the value of a mature polygrapher.

The entire book is a gem. While I do not relish factual and temperate evidence that our clandestine operations in Viet-Nam were largely a sham; that we were the useful idiots to local authorities using us as a cash cow and tool of vengeance on their personal enemies; that most of our officers were drunk or adulturous or incompetent or all three at once; that our top agent really did not have the access he claimed to have but was simply a high-quality channel for his uncle to sell information collected from various local and mostly open sources--all this is depressing. It is also instructive.

Other low points include the pettiness of Office of Security and Directorate of Operations officers, the excessive influence of selected prior military flag-level contract officers who manipulated or suppressed information; and the wholesale abdication of financial management at the local level to Vietnamese paramours who robbed us blind.

High points in the author's story include Air America, which never let him down in getting him in and out of places so far forward toward danger I had no idea polygraphers operated that tactically; a few really great case officers who tried to do the right thing; and the basic decency of this one human being, whom I take to be the norm for agency employees world-wide rather than the exception.

Viet-Nam brought out the worst in the CIA's operational service, and I have often thought to myself that Viet-Nam is where the DO learned to launder money, run drugs, and leave ethics at the door. I applaud the author for articulating, in a no-nonsense manner, "ground truths" about Viet-Nam that could be used to instruct those being sent to Afghanistan, the Philippines, and back into Africa. To the best of my knowledge, there is no other book by a polygrapher that covers this topic of "spies and lies," and this book is therefore an instant classic and collectible, absolutely essential for any manager or student of intelligence operations.

... the book is very worthwhile and certainly the most authoritative tome on actual use of the polygraph in intelligence operations. And I've had a lot of respect for its author for the last 30 years, after having interpreted for him in Vietnam.

As a history major who took courses on the Cold War in college, I can say with certainty that this book would be invaluable and highly instructive to anyone who reads it.

As an Intelligence Analyst I have come to appreciate the work case officers like John Sullivan have done in service of their country. This book should be required reading for all polygraphers and case officers.

As an officer in the military, I have come to realize that many of the lessons learned from Vietnam have been applied in today's armed services. The book points out low-points in the CIA that can be used to improve (if not already) current operations.

His style of writing makes it easy to follow, and allows the reader to get a good glimpse of CIA operations in Vietnam through the eyes of an honest, hard working, dutiful man.

Anyone who has any interest in Vietnam, whether for school, occupation, or hobby, must read this book to get the full picture.