A memoir of CIA polygraph examiner Sullivan's turbulent 1971-75
tour in Vietnam. A career CIA employee (1968-99) and current
lecturer at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security
Studies, is among the most qualified people in America to write an
intimate and frank account of the intelligence community's role in
Vietnam. Sullivan, after a five-year stint in the army, shifted
career paths and began study at Michigan State University. There,
he became disgusted with the antiwar protesters and signed up with
the CIA as a polygraph analyst. His calm and methodical approach to
polygraph testing produced notably reliable results, and as he
began to advance in the agency, his superiors assigned him to duty
in Vietnam. Sullivan details his encounters with key players in
Southeast Asia, such as Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and CIA Station
Chief Theodore Shackley, as well as various subordinate agents and
analysts who actually executed the often dangerous American
intelligence operations. He asserts that the majority of senior
policymakers often refused to acknowledge or send forward negative
reports about the war, despite the voluminous intelligence that the
US was losing ground with the South Vietnamese population. Sullivan
further recalls the depravity, corruption, and drunkenness that
pervaded the lower echelons of the Southeast Asian intelligence
community. These reactions to Vietnam complicated an already
difficult job and threw him into conflict with agents and superiors
that demanded specific polygraph results to further their
individual agendas. Unfortunately, the complexities of Sullivan's
Vietnam experience overwhelm his narrative. Rather than a
compelling mosaic about his experience, Sullivan's story reads more
like a chronicle of petty office squabbles. Too narrowly focused
for general readers, Sullivan may find an audience among CIA or
Vietnam scholars. (35 photos, 7 maps) (Kirkus Reviews)
Any serious study of the Vietnam War would be less than complete
without accounting for the CIA's role in that conflict-a role that
increased dramatically after the Tet offensive in 1968. We know
most of the details of military engagement in Vietnam, given its
greater visibility, but until recently clandestine operations have
remained shrouded in secrecy.
John Sullivan was one of the CIA's top polygraph examiners
during the final four years of the war in Vietnam, where he served
longer and conducted more lie detector tests than any other
examiner and worked with more agents than most of his colleagues.
His job was to evaluate the reliability of the agency's information
sources, an assignment that gave him a more intimate view of the
war than was afforded most other participants. In the first book to
be written by such an operative, he tells what it was like to be an
agency officer working in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos during those
chaotic years, putting a human face on covert operations that helps
us better understand why we lost the war.
"Of Spies and Lies" traces Sullivan's journey from dedication to
disillusionment while serving in Southeast Asia. Although many CIA
personnel lived better in Vietnam and made more money than ever
before, their actual working conditions hindered effective
intelligence gathering. A much larger and far more distressing
obstacle, however, was the agency's failure to send its "best and
brightest" agents to Southeast Asia. On the contrary, as Sullivan
notes, Vietnam became a kind of dumping ground for poor performers,
alcoholics, refugees from bad marriages, and other "problem
agents."
Through anecdotes and inside stories Sullivan provides new
insights into CIA culture that debunk the "James Bond" image of
clandestine operations and show how in Vietnam the seamier aspects
of that culture were allowed to grow even worse. He discusses the
roles of the CIA's three most significant players--Ted Shackley,
General Charles Timmes, and Tom Polgar--from a more personal
perspective than previously available and candidly portrays a
rogues' gallery of cheats, scoundrels, and libertines, while also
giving due credit to those who fought hard to maintain professional
standards.
One of the most frank and intimate looks at CIA operations in
Vietnam ever published, Of Spies and Lies reveals why the CIA's
efforts there were such a failure and allows a more complete
assessment of its poor performance in a losing cause.
General
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