Customer Reviews

War Without Windows

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4 star:		(2)
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Sam Adams may be more famous as the whistle-blower on CIA and U.S. military falsification of the numbers of Viet Cong and regular North Vietnamese army personnel confronting the U.S. in Viet-Nam, but this book is the very best account I have found of the intimate details of how politics, bureaucracy, bad judgment, and some plain downright lying falsified the military intelligence process at all levels of the U.S. military in Viet-Nam.

I served with this author in Viet Nam and he very accurately describes the collateral level intelligence operations during the Viet Nam War.

A well written book about US intelligence issues during the Vietnam War. The book covers Jones' arrival in Vietnam, his assignment initially to the 519th MI Bn and then on to CICV, the interagency politics of the war, and his departure from Vietnam.

Would like to contact the author, Bruce E. Jones. My e-mail is carjim@vineyard.net. James E. Early.

This book should sit on the desk of America's leaders and its commanding generals. Although anybody with a passing interest in Vietnam knows that the enemy numbers were cooked, it is shocking to learn that it was on direct orders of the commanding officers of that time. Orders came down to downward trend North Vietnamese and insurgent units all the time, according to Porter's book. What's worse, this head in the sand approach meant that American units fighting were given enemy unit numbers that were way off -- meaning they went into the fight expecting these enemy units to be either not combat ready or not in existance.

Also of interest is the section on the My Lai, the March 1968 attack on villagers by American troops. Porter's shop was ordered to create a scam entry into their order of battle book that would effectively turn the villagers killed there into an enemy unit. Porter didn't know about it at the time and only pieced it together years later when the My Lai story broke.

It's a very interesting book and its lessons should be taken to heart by those in and out of uniform today.