The Secret War Against Hanoi; Kennedy and Johnson's Use of Spies, Saboteurs, and Covert Warriors in North Vietnam

New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1999. First edition [Stated]. First printing stated. Hardcover. Very good/very good. xvii, 408, [4] pages. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Index. Richard H. Shultz, Jr. (born 1947) is an American scholar of international security studies. He is a Professor International Politics at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, where he is also the director of the International Security Studies Program (ISSP). He is an expert and early scholar of insurgency, with his works including influential research on guerrilla warfare in Vietnam. He is also an expert on terrorism, intelligence gathering, internal conflicts, and low intensity conflict. Shultz has served on the Special Operations Policy Advisory Group of the U.S. Department of Defense. He has held chairs at the U.S. Military Academy, U.S. Naval War College, and the U.S. Department of Defense. Shultz has been a member of the Board to the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. His consultant work has focused on peacekeeping, counter-proliferation, and the impact of organized crime on U.S. security interests. Derived from a Kirkus Review: An impressively researched account of the use and misuse of covert activity against Hanoi during the Vietnam War. In the wake of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, President Kennedy 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 details the origins, successes, and failures of MACVSOG. Shultz points out that despite MACVSOG's inability to achieve its announced goals, it managed to derail much of Hanoi's resources to counterespionage activities. Shultz argues it is the misunderstanding of the role and capabilities of covert operations that has hampered the effectiveness of most covert activity to date. 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. A detailed study that sheds much light on the functions of special operations and the difficulties of waging war in Vietnam.