The Secret War Against Hanoi: Kennedy's and Johnson's Use of Spies, Saboteurs, and Covert Warriors In North Vietnam (Hardcover)

by Richard H. Shultz Jr. (Author) "On Saturday morning, January 28, 1961, newly inaugurated President John F. Kennedy convened his first National Security Council meeting to discuss the situation in Vietnam..." (more)
Key Phrases: covert marops, psywar program, psywar section, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
The Secret War Against Hanoi documents American covert actions in Vietnam, beginning in 1961 when John F. Kennedy decided that if Hanoi could wage a guerilla war against the South, the U.S. could do the same in the North. Dissatisfied with the CIA's initial results, Kennedy passed responsibility for covert operations to the Pentagon--which never fully supported them. For example, in an interview for this book, General Westmoreland, Commander of American forces in Vietnam, vastly underestimated the imaginative ways in which underground activities could destabilize an enemy. American covert action focused on disrupting two vital "centers of gravity": the North's own internal stability and the Ho Chi Minh Trail that ran through Laos and Cambodia. Such activities ran counter to the Geneva Accords, however, and nervous diplomats placed them under severe constraints. Permission always had to be obtained from the top, which after 1964 meant an excessively cautious President Johnson, concerned that China would be goaded into intervening openly in Vietnam as it had in Korea. The creative thinking that went into America's secret exploits reads like a racy novel, from the adroit brainwashing and release of captured fishermen to the fabrication of a phantom secret society based on a 15th-century anti-Chinese hero, plus innumerable nasty booby traps. Author Richard H. Shultz has had unusual access to prominent protagonists and to thousands of classified documents made available only to him while he researched this book. The Secret War Against Hanoi clearly lays out what was achieved and what might have been achieved by covert action in Vietnam, ending with a thoughtful analysis of lessons learned for future politicians and operatives in a post-cold war world. --John Stevenson

From Publishers Weekly
Soldiers and spies do not mix. That's the principal lesson of this alternately dry and informative analysis of U.S. covert activities during the Vietnam War. Schultz, a historian at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, uses recently declassified Pentagon documents and interviews with major players (including former defense secretary Robert McNamara) to show how secret U.S. military operations were consistently hamstrung by Washington and undercut by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The problems began in 1963, when President Kennedy took responsibility for covert action in Vietnam away from the CIA and entrusted it to the Pentagon's Special Operations Group (SOG), even though the prevailing opinion among the Pentagon brass was that espionage and covert action were a waste of time. Though there were some isolated successes, basic ineptitude and uncoordinated thinking characterized the SOG's efforts, according to the author. For example, Schultz explains how SOG officers created a radio station to broadcast propaganda into the enemy's homes: the only problem was that most North Vietnamese didn't own radios. Schultz argues that there is a place for covert activities run out of the Pentagon, but only after some far-reaching restructuring. He could have strengthened his book by including more discussions of ground-level operations and by paying less attention to bureaucratic infighting and political meddling. (Dec.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins (November 3, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060194545
• ISBN-13: 978-0060194543
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #268,568 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More a policy review than tales of individual derring-do, July 31, 2000

By	Randy Stafford (St. Paul, MN USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Don't read this book expecting 408 pages detailing the adventures of individual SOG soldiers and their missions. There is really only one chapter, "Crossing the Fence" with its details of SOG operations in Laos, that fits that bill. What Shultz details, using unprecedented access to recently declassified Pentagon documents and interviews with many of the participants in SOG operations, is the complete story of the origin, operations, successes, failures, and lessons of the Studies and Observations Group. His prose may not be scintillating, he may repeat himself frequently, and the beginning of the book may bog down occasionally with flow charts of command, but Shultz isn't writing a popular history. He's writing a policy review of SOG's operations for future civilian and military leaders who may turn to covert operations and unconventional warfare to get themselves out of diplomatic binds. The final chapter of the book summarizes these lessons.

Still, this book is worthwhile reading even for ordinary civilians.

Those interested in espionage history will find a fascinating account of SOG's attempts to foster rebellion in North Vietnam and wage psychological warfare. Not only do we learn why the CIA could not start a resistance movement in the "denied" country of North Vietnam, a "counterintelligence state" of extreme paranoia and security, but why the inheritor of the project, SOG, was also doomed to fail and fail spectacularly. Of approximately 500 agents inserted into North Vietnam, all were killed or captured and many turned into double agents.

But SOG officers experienced in espionage turned this disaster into a brilliant operation that convinced North Vietnam a massive underground was operating in their country and loyal North Vietnamese were implicated as traitors. For those wanting to know exactly what is encompassed by the term "psychological warfare", Shultz gives some idea in the chapter "Drive Them Crazy with Psywar". SOG set up a fake resistance movement with accompanying bogus radio traffic, propaganda, and blocks of ice parachuted into the jungle to melt and leave empty chutes and an uneasy feeling amongst the North Vietnamese.

Shultz also tells of the few maritime operations SOG carried out against enemy targets, its sabotage efforts which included tainting caches of the enemy's rice and leaving behind tainted ammo for the VC and NVA soldiers, and its operations against the Ho Chi Minh trail.

But the documentation on SOG was initially classified for a reason. Ultimately, the program was a failure, and Shultz documents how there's plenty of blame to go around. Civilian leadership in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations micromanaged the program, had unrealistic expectations for its speed and efficacy, and held the bizarre belief that covert means should be congruent with overt public policy. Military leadership at the highest levels set up SOG as a sop to civilian leaders whom they thought naively enamored of special warfare. They expected little from it, provided little by way of support, and had no plan to coordinate SOG's efforts into the grand Vietnam strategy. Shultz also points out that special ops was, far from being a glamorous, honored posting, a career stopper for a professional military man.

While Shultz, of course, concentrates on SOG, I also learned a fair amount about the diplomatic, political, and military history of the Vietnam war in general. Prior to this, my only exposure to the war, in book form, had been a biography of Carlos Hathcock, the Marine sniper in Vietnam.

The book is a bit slow at times, but it rewards the reader who completes it.

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The War We Never Knew, December 5, 1999

By	Benjamin F. Schemmer "zoorfu" (Naples, FL United States) - See all my reviews

Had U.S. political and military leaders backed these secret operations with less trepidation, Vietnam might well have been a success story. A revealing look at what unconventional warfare and clandestine operations can really achieve -- IF they are integrated into a cohesive warfighting strategy ...and why they will fail or backfire if prosecuted with only half-hearted support within the highest councils of our government. Richard Shultz unveils a whole new dimension of America's prowess at espionage, sabotage, and special operations in this page-turning history.

Benjamin F. Schemmer Editor-in-Chief Strategic Review

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Turned out less well than the Peace Corps, January 3, 2001

By	Timothy Ritter (Colorado) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As each book based on declassified data comes out, the story of Vietnam and the Great American Stumble there becomes more clear.

"The Secret War Against Hanoi" is particularly good in its own way. It elucidates the liberal train of thought as they were starting the war in 1961. On January 28 Kennedy had been president for 8 days. Vietnam was divided, the French were gone, and the Viet Cong were prosecuting a campaign of terrorism in the South in order to destabilize it and absorb it into the North. On that day Kennedy met with his National Security Council and listened to what was (in his view) the bad news on Vietnam: if the current conditions persisted, the South would fall to the Communists.

Why a little underdeveloped country in Asia should have been of such concern to Kennedy is anyone's guess, but what is no longer in doubt is that major American involvement in Vietnam began at that NSC meeting of Jan 28, when Kennedy stated that he wanted "guerillas to operate in the North". All that followed for 13 years was built upon that one simple sentiment expressed by the new president.

He wanted guerillas to operate in the North because, as he expressed it in April of that year, "We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerillas by night instead of armies by day." Kennedy was intent on fighting back in kind: infiltrating, subverting, and deploying guerillas by night.

Presumably, the CIA would train Vietnamese spies and guerillas and inflict them on the North. But the Bay of Pigs fiasco happened that April, and the Kennedy brothers were convinced the fault for that lay with the CIA. Therefore they gave the job of training and inserting spies and guerillas into North Vietnam to the Pentagon, which had little experience in such operations.

There followed a string of failures, where hundreds of Vietnamese spies and saboteurs were sent up north, and never heard from again. Or North Vietnamese fishermen would be hauled off to an island and treated to an elaborate charade intended to show them that a revolt against the communist government was imminent. Shultz discusses these attempts in a dispassionate tone, but one gets a growing sense of waste and futility from the narrative. Any of the career espionage people at the CIA could have told Kennedy that it was virtually impossible to plant people in a closed totalitarian society like North Vietnam, even if, as in the case of the CIA, that's your business. But to have the Pentagon take a crack at it? Well, you might as well try to get HUD to send a rocket to the moon.

But Kennedy's obsession with and faith in covert action remained unabated till the day of his death. His cabinet, McNamara in particular, shared his enthusiasm. Eventually the Pentagon adopted the attitude that if you want anything done in Vietnam, you have to do it yourself. So covert actions began to include Americans, at the same time the overt effort began ramping up under Johnson.

The efforts were redirected toward more practical targets, such as the Ho Chi Minh Trail (the construction of which began in 1959), but the approach was no more practical. This wasn't a "real war", according to the brightest minds in Washington; it was more of a diplomatic game. Therefore, restrictions had to be placed on the units operating against the trail builders. Special forces could not go beyond 10 kilometers into "neutral" Laos. The North Vietnamese, displaying the practicality and opportunism that became their hallmark, would then route their trail 11 kilometers from the Laos-Vietnam border. Their spies, unlike those of the Pentagon, were quite effective.

It wasn't any secret that cutting off the Ho Chi Minh trail would cut off the stream of men and materiel into the South. Shultz quotes Bui Tin, the NVA officer who accepted the surrender of the South in 1975: "If Johnson had granted General Westmoreland's request to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Hanoi could not have won the war."

As simple as that. Straight from the lips of an opposing officer. In retrospect, it seems like the logical thing to do: cut off the enemy's supply line. But from its very beginning on January 28, 1961, the Vietnam War was not conducted logically.

Perhaps the Kennedy-Johnson crowd's truly wacky ambivalence can best be glimpsed on pages 34-35. Shultz relates how President Kennedy was "stunned" by the images of Buddhist monks immolating themselves in protest of the Diem government's repression. Diem's sister-in-law, who seems to have been a cross between Immelda Marcos and Leona Helmsley, referred to the immolations as "barbecues". At the same time, South Vietnamese generals were planning a coup. It was dawning on the government of the US that the government of its ally was corrupt and effete and repressive. So where did the Kennedy Administration choose to direct its energies? Toward Hanoi: "escalation of the covert war against Hanoi became a major agenda item. The decision was made to turn up the pressure on the North."

With policy like this being made by the Best and the Brightest, one can only shudder at what a catastrophe we'd have had if our leaders had been merely average.