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Naval Institute Special Warfare Series
Project Alpha: Washington's Secret Military Operations in North Vietnam
The Penetrate North Vietnam
In the early days of the Vietnam conflict, American strategists in the Pentagon, the White House, and the CIA were desperate to contain "the Communist menace." In an operation codenamed Plan 34-Alpha, covert agents from South Vietnam were recruited for dangerous land sea, and air missions.
The A Relentless Fighting Machine
Drawing on recently declassified documents, and on the first-person interviews of a man who was there, Project Alpha tells the harrowing stories of a unique breed of warrior and the daring battles they fought. A chronicle of deception, betrayal, and exceptional bravery, it is the inside account of some of the most extraoridinary operations in the history of modern warfare.
Finally, The Full Story Can Be Told.
In the early days of the Vietnam conflict, American strategists in the Pentagon, the White House, and the CIA were desperate to contain "the Communist menace." In an operation codenamed Plan 34-Alpha, covert agents from South Vietnam were recruited for dangerous land sea, and air missions.
The A Relentless Fighting Machine
Drawing on recently declassified documents, and on the first-person interviews of a man who was there, Project Alpha tells the harrowing stories of a unique breed of warrior and the daring battles they fought. A chronicle of deception, betrayal, and exceptional bravery, it is the inside account of some of the most extraoridinary operations in the history of modern warfare.
Finally, The Full Story Can Be Told.
- GenresHistoryMilitary Fiction
432 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 14, 2013
A great account of ill-conceived covert operations which achieved little other than to demonstrate the bravery of the naive young Vietnamese men who undertook these missions. This is a group which suffered some of the worst treatment dished out in the Vietnamese communist re-education camp system.
OPLAN 34A, the flawed and failed operation designed to "send a message to Hanoi," in the words of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, left a disastrous swath of human destruction and suffering in its wake. Vietnamese commandos, recruited first by the Central Intelligence Agency and then assigned to the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group (MACVSOG), were compromised in their designated mission. Out of 33 commando teams in Phase I, only 11 were on target. The rest had the same poor record.
The operation was so inadequately planned and executed that it was not even necessary to leak the teams' arrival places and times to the North Vietnamese high command. During the early 1960s, when the operation was put into effect, all that was necessary to intercept the commando teams was to await the routine nightly arrival of low-flying C-123s in the border areas of Laos and the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).
The CIA recruited commandos who were ethnic minorities in North Vietnam. They signed contracts that promised pay for themselves and allotments for their families, even in the event of capture and imprisonment. Most commandos were captured or killed, and the North Vietnamese Army forced captured team radio operators to send false reports to MACV SOG. Eventually, the American and South Vietnamese commanders acknowledged that something had gone seriously wrong.
In all, a great and superbly detailed account of this operation.
OPLAN 34A, the flawed and failed operation designed to "send a message to Hanoi," in the words of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, left a disastrous swath of human destruction and suffering in its wake. Vietnamese commandos, recruited first by the Central Intelligence Agency and then assigned to the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group (MACVSOG), were compromised in their designated mission. Out of 33 commando teams in Phase I, only 11 were on target. The rest had the same poor record.
The operation was so inadequately planned and executed that it was not even necessary to leak the teams' arrival places and times to the North Vietnamese high command. During the early 1960s, when the operation was put into effect, all that was necessary to intercept the commando teams was to await the routine nightly arrival of low-flying C-123s in the border areas of Laos and the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).
The CIA recruited commandos who were ethnic minorities in North Vietnam. They signed contracts that promised pay for themselves and allotments for their families, even in the event of capture and imprisonment. Most commandos were captured or killed, and the North Vietnamese Army forced captured team radio operators to send false reports to MACV SOG. Eventually, the American and South Vietnamese commanders acknowledged that something had gone seriously wrong.
In all, a great and superbly detailed account of this operation.
February 20, 2015
they r brave men, the reason for their failure is CIA didn't understand what communist is
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews