THE SECRET WAR AGAINST HANOI

An impressively researched and readable account of the use and misuse of covert activity against Hanoi during the Vietnam War. In 1961, President Kennedy decided to step up covert activity against the North Vietnamese government. In the wake of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, he placed this extensive campaign in the hands of the Pentagon, rather than the CIA. The resulting product was the Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observation Group (MACVSOG). Based on interviews with military officials and recently declassified documents, Shultz (International Politics/Fletcher School, Tufts Univ.) details the origins, successes, and failures of MACVSOG. Tasked with inserting agents into the North, waging psychological warfare, and mounting covert naval and reconnaissance operations, MACVSOG became a casualty of inconsistent policy goals, unrealistic expectations, interagency rivalry, and bureaucracy. It cultivated its own share of mishaps too. Most agents inserted either did not make it back or turned out to be double agents. Shultz points out, however, that despite MACVSOG’s inability to achieve its announced goals, it managed to derail much of Hanoi’s resources to counterespionage activities. This distraction, Shultz argues, should be the main purpose of such activity; it is the misunderstanding of the role and capabilities of covert operations that has hampered the effectiveness of most covert activity to date, including that of MACVSOG. Shultz does a thorough job of untangling the twisted chain of command behind this secret war and in analyzing the rationales behind what often seemed irrational directives. He is so meticulous in this pursuit, in fact, that he often leaves the reader wandering in similarly marshy territory. A detailed study that sheds much light on the functions of special operations and the difficulties of waging war in Vietnam. Don—t expect to be engaged in any moral debate on covert operations or the Vietnam War. Shultz’s message is pragmatic: If you—re going to do something, do it right.