A combination of history, analysis, investigative journalism, and
personal crusade focusing on the fate of nine US air force
personnel missing in action in Laos. Castle (At War in the Shadow
of Vietnam, not reviewed) is an accomplished historian Whose area
of expertise is the American "secret war" in Laos. A Vietnam War
veteran, university professor (National Security Studies/Air
Univ.), and former Pentagon POW/MIA researcher and investigator, he
brings unmatched qualifications to the task of telling the story of
Site 85, a secret air force radar base in Laos overrun by the North
Vietnamese army in March 1968. Of the 18 men at the base, 7
escaped, 2 were killed, and 9 remain missing. Accounting for the
missing was complicated by subsequent American bombing of the site
and by the fact that American officials were reluctant to publicize
US military actions in putatively neutral Laos. Castle makes an
impassioned case that two other factors are also involved:
Vietnamese and Lao communist intransigence - what he terms
"well-documented deceit and obfuscation" - along with the mistakes
and "duplicity" of American military officials, especially the US
Air Force and the Pentagon's Prisoner of War/Missing in Action
Office. The author does a thorough job of relating the history of
Site 85 and gives a conscientious overview of the not-very-secret
American war in Laos, concentrating on air force covert activities
directing the air war over North Vietnam. The narrative changes
direction, however, when Castle switches to the first person and
chronicles his involvement in an NBC News documentary on the
subject. He deserts his objectivity here for impassioned advocacy.
Still, Castle's impressive massing of facts shows why the fate of
nine missing Americans will likely never be learned. An unorthodox
but effective telling of what the author rightly calls an "ugly
chapter of US history." (Kirkus Reviews)
One of the Vietnam War's most closely guarded secrets -- a
highly classified U.S. radar base in the mountains of neutral Laos
-- led to the disappearance of a small group of elite military
personnel, a loss never fully acknowledged by the American
government. Now, thirty years later, one book recounts the
harrowing story -- and offers some measure of closure on this
decades-old mystery.
Because of the covert nature of the mission at Lima Site 85 --
providing bombing instructions to U.S. Air Force tactical aircraft
from the "safe harbor" of a nation that was supposedly neutral --
the wives of the eleven servicemen were warned in no uncertain
terms never to discuss the truth about their husbands. But one
wife, Ann Holland, refused to remain silent. Timothy Castle draws
on her personal records and recollections as well as upon a wealth
of interviews with surviving servicemen and recently declassified
information to tell the full story.
The result is a tale worthy of Tom Clancy but told by a scholar
with meticulous attention to historical accuracy. More than just an
account of government deception, "One Day Too Long" is the story of
the courageous men who agreed to put their lives in danger to
perform a critical mission in which they could not be officially
acknowledged. Indeed the personnel at Site 85 agreed to be
"sheep-dipped" -- removed from their military status and
technically placed in the employ of a civilian company.
Castle reveals how the program, code-named "Heavy Green," was
conceived and approved at the highest levels of the U.S.
government. In spine tingling detail, he describes the selection of
the men and the construction and operation of the radar facility on
a mile-high cliff in neutral Laos, even as the North Vietnamese
Army began encircling the mountain. He chronicles the communist air
attack on Site 85, the only such aerial bombing of the entire
Vietnam War.
A saga of courage, cover-up, and intrigue "One Day Too Long"
tells how, in a shocking betrayal of trust, for thirty years the
U.S. government has sought to hide the facts and now seeks to
acquiesce to perfidious Vietnamese explanations for the
disappearance of eleven good men.
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