‘The Secret War Against Hanoi: The Untold Story of Spies, Saboteurs, and Covert Warriors in North Vietnam’

In 1963, dissatisfied with the CIA's weak subversive operations against North Vietnam, President John F. Kennedy turned control over to the Pentagon and demanded results. Over the next eight years, the Special Operations Group (SOG) executed a wide array of covert activities that included carrying out psychological warfare through a fabricated guerilla movement, and manipulating North Vietnamese POWs and kidnapped citizens. Ultimately, this covert war would have both spectacular and disastrous results.

Richard H. Shultz, Jr., the country's leading expert on the activities of the SOG during Vietnam, presents a comprehensive account of the largest and most complex covert operation executed by Washington during the Cold War. In The Secret War Against Hanoi, Schulz draws on newly declassified documents and interviews with SOG officers and senior policymakers to unveil the SOG's covert activities, and explore their implications for the broader war effort.

Richard H. Shultz, Jr., is Director of International Security Studies Program and Associate Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law Diplomacy.

"This is an enormously important book, meticulously researched ... The future security of the United States and our allies will depend in large measure on how well we have learned the lessons set forth in The Secret War Against Hanoi." -- Caspar W. Weinberger, former Secretary of Defense