A Station In The Delta

by John Cassidy

Plunging into the crossfire is Toby Busch, CIA clandestine field officer, fresh from a failed mission in Germany. Determined to leave his haunted past behind, he falls in love with a beautiful war widow from Hanoi - and learns incredulously of a planned all-out Viet Cong offensive to be sprung on Tet, the sacred New Year. To the enemy, Busch is a target. To his superiors, he is a dangerous embarrassment. From the air-conditioned, plexiglassed American preserve in My Tho, operations station in the Mekong Delta, to the chafing, treacherous shadows deep in the jungle, Busch alone must face the looming holocaust, as his life - and love - come under raging fire.

Genres: Fiction

Mass Market Paperback

First published May 1, 1979

About the author

John Cassidy is a journalist at The New Yorker and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. He is the author of Dot.con: How America Lost Its Mind and Money in the Internet Era and lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Ed Goldsmith]

A very good fictionalized story of real events. I worked with John back in 1968, in Can Tho, South Vietnam. He was the senior "P" Officer and my boss. He eventually became the ROIC for IV Corps. I spent a lot of time in the air with Air America, going throughout all 14 Provinces in IV Corps, and I can attest that this book contains a lot of facts, as well as fiction.
It should also be noted that this is NOT the same John Cassidy who worked for the NY Times. John was in his 40's when I worked with him in 1968 & 1969, and was career CIA.

[Stingray · Rating 3 out of 5]

With „A station in the Delta“ ex-CIA case officer John Cassidy provides an interesting and authentic but also very heroic, boastful and incomplete inside view into the work of the CIA in the field during the Vietnam War.
Knowing that Cassidy actually served as a case officer in Vietnam the main question the reader constantly ponders is: “Is that based on actual events?” From the very start Cassidy establishes his main characters as authentic and believable and puts them before a very factual background. The reader can very much sympathize with the professional case officer dismayed at meeting all the contracted personnel, having no clue about intelligence work. This is the best feature of the book. Readers knowledgeable about the Vietnam War and CIA operations at the time will be instantly familiar and recognize the described circumstances.
Sadly in many other areas the book has severe deficiencies. While the story repeatedly shows the main character to be the well trained professional, alarmed at the unprofessional behavior of everybody else, this hardened spy entangles himself in romantic adventures almost immediately and needlessly. Also this professional immediately assesses to have compromised operational security within his organization, no good knowledge of the enemy, no actual collection operations running and nothing to actually report on. For several weeks of the story he can only start one collection operation falling into his lap, does not act upon the leak, trains some special branch officers and has one or two PRU operations a week. This begs the question what does he actually do all day long, when he says he is working in his office? Sure enough the actions described are all closely linked to the story, but a bit more background on day to day work would have been nice and more realistic and less of his love live would have made for a better book.
In summary this book is more realistic on intelligence work than many others and provides a realistic background of the Vietnam War, but one cannot help to think the author wrote some parts about combat and the protagonists love live just as he would have liked to experience it.

[Dr. Phoenix · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting and fictional (?) account of early CIA advisers in Vietenam