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Operation Chaos: The Vietnam Deserters Who Fought the CIA, the Brainwashers, and Themselves
An untold Cold War story: how the CIA tried to infiltrate a radical group of U.S. military deserters, a tale that leads from a bizarre political cult to the heart of the Washington establishment
Stockholm, 1968. A thousand American deserters and draft-resisters are arriving to escape the war in Vietnam. They’re young, they’re radical, and they want to start a revolution. Some of them even want to take the fight to America. The Swedes treat them like pop stars—but the CIA is determined to stop all that.
It’s a job for the deep-cover men of Operation Chaos and their allies—agents who know how to infiltrate organizations and destroy them from inside. Within months, the GIs have turned their fire on one another. Then the interrogations begin—to discover who among them has been brainwashed, Manchurian Candidate-style, to assassinate their leaders.
When Matthew Sweet began investigating this story, he thought the madness was over. He was wrong. Instead, he became the confidant of an eccentric and traumatized group of survivors—each with his own theory about the traitors in their midst.
All Sweet has to do is find out the truth. And stay sane. Which may be difficult when one of his interviewees accuses him of being a CIA agent and another suspects that he’s part of a secret plot by the British royal family to start World War III. By that time, he’s deep in the labyrinth of truths and half-truths, wondering where reality ends and delusion begins.
371 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 13, 2018
42 people are currently reading
611 people want to read
About the author
Matthew Sweet
48 books26 followersMatthew Sweet is an English journalist, broadcaster, author, and cultural historian. A graduate of the University of Oxford, where he earned a doctorate on Wilkie Collins, he has contributed to The Oxford Companion to English Literature and served as a film and television critic for The Independent on Sunday.
Sweet has written extensively on British cinema, most notably in Shepperton Babylon: The Lost Worlds of British Cinema (2005), a history of Shepperton Studios and the early British film industry, which was later adapted into a television documentary. His other books include Inventing the Victorians (2001), which challenges common misconceptions about the Victorian era, and The West End Front (2011), a history of London’s grand hotels during World War II. He has also explored Cold War intrigue in Operation Chaos (2018).
A prominent broadcaster, Sweet has presented numerous BBC television and radio programmes, including Silent Britain, Checking into History, and British Film Forever. He is the host of BBC Radio 3’s Sound of Cinema, which examines film scores and composers, and has been a regular presenter on Free Thinking (formerly Night Waves). His BBC Radio 4 series The Philosopher's Arms explores philosophical themes before a live audience.
A lifelong Doctor Who fan, Sweet has written several audio dramas and short stories set in the Doctor Who universe and has presented numerous documentaries on the series, including Me, You and Doctor Who for the 50th anniversary. He has also conducted in-depth interviews with key figures from the show for its DVD and Blu-ray releases.
Sweet has written extensively on British cinema, most notably in Shepperton Babylon: The Lost Worlds of British Cinema (2005), a history of Shepperton Studios and the early British film industry, which was later adapted into a television documentary. His other books include Inventing the Victorians (2001), which challenges common misconceptions about the Victorian era, and The West End Front (2011), a history of London’s grand hotels during World War II. He has also explored Cold War intrigue in Operation Chaos (2018).
A prominent broadcaster, Sweet has presented numerous BBC television and radio programmes, including Silent Britain, Checking into History, and British Film Forever. He is the host of BBC Radio 3’s Sound of Cinema, which examines film scores and composers, and has been a regular presenter on Free Thinking (formerly Night Waves). His BBC Radio 4 series The Philosopher's Arms explores philosophical themes before a live audience.
A lifelong Doctor Who fan, Sweet has written several audio dramas and short stories set in the Doctor Who universe and has presented numerous documentaries on the series, including Me, You and Doctor Who for the 50th anniversary. He has also conducted in-depth interviews with key figures from the show for its DVD and Blu-ray releases.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
October 25, 2019
In 1969 and 1970, I worked in the Central News Department of Sweden's public broadcasting network. A journalist there kept asking references to my working for the CIA. At first these comments seemed relatively serious, but they gradually developed into good-natured ribbing.
What I suspect he knew, but that I didn't at the time, was that among the hundreds of Vietnam War deserters and later draft resistors were US intelligence agents operating under a CIA program called Operation Chaos. Matthew Sweet's book begins as an attempt to unmask these agents. In this he does not succeed, but he chronicles their result: sewing so much suspicion and paranoia that the radical end of the movement turned on itself, eating its young.
So paranoid did the movement become that it became ripe for a takeover by that spinner of cocomamie conspiracy theories, Lyndon Larouche. It became a cult.
The cult fed on enemies. The earliest was Nelson Rockefeller, but he was replaced by Queen Elizabeth II and then, in one of many examples of the deserters biting the hands that fed them, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme.
The movement, under the guise of the European Workers Party, generated so much hate propaganda against Palme that, following his assassination on the last day of February, 1986, two of its leaders were suspected of the crime. (That this line was never properly pursued is due to the incompetence of the investigating team, which focused on a shadowy Turkish organization to the exclusion of all other lines of inquiry, but that story is told elsewhere.)
In a tale full of conspiracies, what's remarkable is that the pair, Clifford and Kerstin Tegin Gaddy, after years in the Larouche organization, ended up in responsible positions in the US. Clifford Gaddy spent years as a Russian expert with the Brookings Institution, and co-authored a seminal work on Vladimir Putin with Fiona Hill, a British academic who later became a national security advisor on Russian affairs to President Trump.
To read this book is to descend into a maelstrom of conspiracy theories bordering on insanity--and perhaps crossing it. It's a fascinating study that, at the end, has no resolution. But that point is not the destination, but the journey.
My greatest criticism of this work is that if one does not know the full story, one comes away believing that all deserters and draft resistors who made their way to Sweden were revolutionaries, criminals, or drug-addled dropouts. That is not the case. Many learned Swedish, got degrees from Swedish universities, and became academics, journalists, or other professionals. There is a greater story to be told, and while that is not the purpose of this book, it suffers from not acknowledging it.
What I suspect he knew, but that I didn't at the time, was that among the hundreds of Vietnam War deserters and later draft resistors were US intelligence agents operating under a CIA program called Operation Chaos. Matthew Sweet's book begins as an attempt to unmask these agents. In this he does not succeed, but he chronicles their result: sewing so much suspicion and paranoia that the radical end of the movement turned on itself, eating its young.
So paranoid did the movement become that it became ripe for a takeover by that spinner of cocomamie conspiracy theories, Lyndon Larouche. It became a cult.
The cult fed on enemies. The earliest was Nelson Rockefeller, but he was replaced by Queen Elizabeth II and then, in one of many examples of the deserters biting the hands that fed them, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme.
The movement, under the guise of the European Workers Party, generated so much hate propaganda against Palme that, following his assassination on the last day of February, 1986, two of its leaders were suspected of the crime. (That this line was never properly pursued is due to the incompetence of the investigating team, which focused on a shadowy Turkish organization to the exclusion of all other lines of inquiry, but that story is told elsewhere.)
In a tale full of conspiracies, what's remarkable is that the pair, Clifford and Kerstin Tegin Gaddy, after years in the Larouche organization, ended up in responsible positions in the US. Clifford Gaddy spent years as a Russian expert with the Brookings Institution, and co-authored a seminal work on Vladimir Putin with Fiona Hill, a British academic who later became a national security advisor on Russian affairs to President Trump.
To read this book is to descend into a maelstrom of conspiracy theories bordering on insanity--and perhaps crossing it. It's a fascinating study that, at the end, has no resolution. But that point is not the destination, but the journey.
My greatest criticism of this work is that if one does not know the full story, one comes away believing that all deserters and draft resistors who made their way to Sweden were revolutionaries, criminals, or drug-addled dropouts. That is not the case. Many learned Swedish, got degrees from Swedish universities, and became academics, journalists, or other professionals. There is a greater story to be told, and while that is not the purpose of this book, it suffers from not acknowledging it.
May 22, 2018
I'm a big fan of Matthew Sweet's work prior to this book so I my expectations were high. Plus prior to publication, the subject matter seemed so interesting that I was pretty sure I was going to like this book. And I was right. It's bloody marvellous.
It's sub-title - 'The Vietnam Deserters Who Went to War Against the CIA, the Brainwashers, and Each Other' - tells you the basics about what this book is about. It is the story of men who deserted from the American armed forces over Vietnam.* Then it is the story of the bizarre and dark paths their stories take. Not all of them escape those dark paths. Some of them do though.
This is a tale of politics and paranoia. People are drawn into groups, fall out of groups and fight each other verbally and - occasionally - physically. People find leaders to follow so of whom seem more batshit crazy than others. I'd never heard of Lyndon LaRouche until I read this book. There's a man who seems to have his head screwed on entirely the wrong way around. It's LaRouche who is the villain of this book. He is Donald Trump crossed with David Icke, although there is something dark and ugly about his approach to people and politics. Orwell talked in 1984 about double-think. LaRouche and his acolytes appear to be able to treble and quadruple think. Believing in the basest nonesense.
Indirectly this book did one thing. It made me question how I've come to believe what I have come to believe and whether I too have become part of a cult that doesn't have a name or a leader but allows me to accept a truth that I am comfortable with. Perhaps we should question more but when we start making up answers based on what we would like to be true rather than what is actually true then we are lost. Modern politics seems to have taken on a distinctly LaRouchian spin. A fact is no longer a fact but our feelings about that fact.
There are some good people in here though who got lost (or were made lost) and sometimes came back. Read it. It's brilliant.
*This motivation seems less strong in some of the deserters than others.
It's sub-title - 'The Vietnam Deserters Who Went to War Against the CIA, the Brainwashers, and Each Other' - tells you the basics about what this book is about. It is the story of men who deserted from the American armed forces over Vietnam.* Then it is the story of the bizarre and dark paths their stories take. Not all of them escape those dark paths. Some of them do though.
This is a tale of politics and paranoia. People are drawn into groups, fall out of groups and fight each other verbally and - occasionally - physically. People find leaders to follow so of whom seem more batshit crazy than others. I'd never heard of Lyndon LaRouche until I read this book. There's a man who seems to have his head screwed on entirely the wrong way around. It's LaRouche who is the villain of this book. He is Donald Trump crossed with David Icke, although there is something dark and ugly about his approach to people and politics. Orwell talked in 1984 about double-think. LaRouche and his acolytes appear to be able to treble and quadruple think. Believing in the basest nonesense.
Indirectly this book did one thing. It made me question how I've come to believe what I have come to believe and whether I too have become part of a cult that doesn't have a name or a leader but allows me to accept a truth that I am comfortable with. Perhaps we should question more but when we start making up answers based on what we would like to be true rather than what is actually true then we are lost. Modern politics seems to have taken on a distinctly LaRouchian spin. A fact is no longer a fact but our feelings about that fact.
There are some good people in here though who got lost (or were made lost) and sometimes came back. Read it. It's brilliant.
*This motivation seems less strong in some of the deserters than others.
January 10, 2020
I’ve read some pretty bizarre books, but this one has to be pretty close to the top. At its root it’s a story of paranoia fueled by world events and cultish group think. We all know that the late 60s and early 70s were turbulent times, but this strange story about strange people with strange ideas even pushes the envelope for those crazy times. The author does impressive research on some very secretive and cagey people, some who have reached respectable levels in society. He ends up getting caught up in a web of strangeness. While the group of Vietnam War deserters are trying to figure out an infiltrator from the CIA, Swedish security services, and the KGB, they also end up getting infiltrated by an American huckster whose cult persists to this day. They all believe they have discovered the infiltrator, but they can’t agree on who it is. The book begins and ends on a perplexing note, but not on account of lack of effort from the author.
September 15, 2020
I was looking forward to reading this because the Vietnam War was so much a part of my youth and I had several American friends trying to avoid being drafted. And it’s an interesting and little known story. Unfortunately, Matthew Sweet’s research and range of interviews are too extensive and the book becomes a welter of characters and events which lacks a clear timeline or narrative thread. In the end, the actual Operation Chaos organised by the CIA plays a small part. Instead, the book is dominated by the deserters and draft dodgers who came together in the late 60s and early 70s in Stockholm and their subsequent conversion into weird conspiracy theorists.
This part is certainly very relevant in today’s world of ever more outrageous online conspiracy theories but spending a couple of hundred pages with out and out nutcases becomes wearying (does anybody else believe that Queen Elizabeth 2nd is an evil devil-worshipper secretly controlling the whole world ?)
This part is certainly very relevant in today’s world of ever more outrageous online conspiracy theories but spending a couple of hundred pages with out and out nutcases becomes wearying (does anybody else believe that Queen Elizabeth 2nd is an evil devil-worshipper secretly controlling the whole world ?)
November 13, 2019
I'm probably going to have to read it again just to absorb half of what I read. This story is absolutely batty, and I love it.
July 26, 2018
I never get tired of frauds, cults and crackpots. (Or tired of reading about them, anyway.) So I mostly dug this freewheeling tour of a certain slice of curdled nineteen-sixties idealism. Sweet's a British journalist, not a historian, so this isn't the most rigorous of work, nor does it live up to its subtitle. The CIA really barely figures into the story, except in the imaginations of the various paranoid deserters, chancers and drifters who populate its pages. The book is REALLY a breezy, informal history of infamous American nutbar Lyndon LaRouche and his cult, which I was happy to read about for a couple of hundred pages. So: not scholarly, full of speculation and snark, but plenty of fun.
April 3, 2018
Brainwashing was the catchy idea behind the Manchurian Candidate. A creative novel that inspired hordes of bull artists like Matthew Sweet.
October 14, 2019
The book is just a soup of words. There is nothing there except a deep hole whithout end or meaning. The author's quick and chootic way of writing only makes it even worse.
November 15, 2020
‘Operation Chaos’ sees Matthew Sweet attempting to trace the unlikely paths of a group of US military deserters and draft-resisters who escaped serving in the Vietnam war and ended up in Sweden, where some were welcomed as heroes. But that’s only the start of a story that takes in revolutionary politics, CIA counter-subversion operations, factionalism, paranoid conspiracy theories, accusations of brainwashing and the assassination of the Prime Minister of Sweden. And still that barely scratches the surface of this remarkable tale.
It’s a fascinating history of a very strange kind of counterculture indeed - the tale of the deserters and their time as a cause celebre in Sweden would probably fill a book in itself, but Sweet follows some of these figures down various paths, which bring some of them into the orbit of one Lyndon LaRouche, probably best described by his Wikipedia entry as ‘American political activist, convicted fraudster and accused cult leader’. It’s here where the story gets truly astonishing, as LaRouche’s cult - I don’t think it’s controversial to describe it as a cult - takes some of the individuals involved down some very strange, and very dark, alleys indeed.
The author does a very good job of trying to piece together what is by its nature a very tangled web, filled with suspicion, paranoia and uncertainty over possible CIA infiltration, which lends things an almost darkly comic edge - particularly when the book gets into LaRouche territory, with his claims of brainwashed Manchurian Candidate-style assassins - an easy way to denounce anyone who didn’t enthusiastically embrace LaRouche’s schemes. Anyone expecting definitive answers or a sense of resolution will not find it here, but that’s not really the point - the journey, rather than the destination, feels like the point of this book. And it’s quite the journey. I was absolutely hooked on this, and couldn’t put it down til I’d finished. Highly recommended.
It’s a fascinating history of a very strange kind of counterculture indeed - the tale of the deserters and their time as a cause celebre in Sweden would probably fill a book in itself, but Sweet follows some of these figures down various paths, which bring some of them into the orbit of one Lyndon LaRouche, probably best described by his Wikipedia entry as ‘American political activist, convicted fraudster and accused cult leader’. It’s here where the story gets truly astonishing, as LaRouche’s cult - I don’t think it’s controversial to describe it as a cult - takes some of the individuals involved down some very strange, and very dark, alleys indeed.
The author does a very good job of trying to piece together what is by its nature a very tangled web, filled with suspicion, paranoia and uncertainty over possible CIA infiltration, which lends things an almost darkly comic edge - particularly when the book gets into LaRouche territory, with his claims of brainwashed Manchurian Candidate-style assassins - an easy way to denounce anyone who didn’t enthusiastically embrace LaRouche’s schemes. Anyone expecting definitive answers or a sense of resolution will not find it here, but that’s not really the point - the journey, rather than the destination, feels like the point of this book. And it’s quite the journey. I was absolutely hooked on this, and couldn’t put it down til I’d finished. Highly recommended.
February 25, 2022
This is a complex and often confusing tale of conspiracy, CIA infiltration, paranoia and - well, who knows what, exactly. If that's the sort of thing you like - and I'm afraid I'm the sort of person who finds the phrase 'Fair Play for Cuba Committee' strangely soothing - you'll probably enjoy it. There's a very large cast of characters but if you've ever had any interest in the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy assassination, or Watergate, a lot of the peripheral personalities will be familiar. It deals essentially with a group of deserters/draft resisters/fellow travellers who removed themselves from the Vietnam war to Sweden in the late sixties. So far so straightforward. It soon gets more complicated. Certainly if you've ever noticed that anyone involved in grassroots left wing agitation is inclined towards splitting (a la the People's Front of Judea v the Judean People's Front), this book will confirm it. It's a fascinating exploration of the way charismatic people can manipulate those around them, and also evidence that brainwashing doesn't need drugs or wires or loops of film or any technology at all, really, it just needs people to keep shouting at you. Conceived and written between 2014 and 2018 it also contains a lot of references to things that are extremely zeitgeisty here in 2022 and by zeitgeisty I mean disturbing and prescient. Anyway, it's not as much fun as Inventing the Victorians or Shepperton Babylon but I do really like Sweet's writing and he unrolls an intensely conmplex story with as much clarity as anyone could.
October 30, 2018
It is rare for me to go into a history book, particularly recent history, with so little knowledge of the subject matter. I can honestly say that almost everything in this book was both new to me and surprising, in some cases shocking. The whole Vietnam-deserters-taking-a-right-turn-to-Lyndon LaRoche-cultists things was quite unprecedented or me! Thrilling, funny,scary, and absolutely wild, this story involves everyone you can think of, including Jane Fonda, an assassinated Swedish govt minister, and the KGB. The LaRoche parts in particular would ring bells with anyone who watched the documentary Wild Wild Country (about an almost exactly contemporaneous cult of another kind).
Fascinating look at a messing, complicated, confusing, and very weird corner of history.
Fascinating look at a messing, complicated, confusing, and very weird corner of history.
May 12, 2021
This is firmly in the wacko and conspiracy shelf but I guess that it is all true. I didn't know anything about the Vietnam Deserters who fled to Sweden and the story soon descends into cult programming, Manchurian candidates, the hunt for the murderer of Olof Palme, the LaRouche cult - of which I knew also nothing - and the crazy machinations of the European Workers Party and their wacko conspiracies.
I plowed through this as an audiobook, it's interesting, well researched but such a bizarre story that I was just glad it was over in the end. All I can say is that they lived in interesting times. To make the most of it I would need to reread it, take notes and look up all the characters and events to get a grip on the background history of the period.
I plowed through this as an audiobook, it's interesting, well researched but such a bizarre story that I was just glad it was over in the end. All I can say is that they lived in interesting times. To make the most of it I would need to reread it, take notes and look up all the characters and events to get a grip on the background history of the period.
May 9, 2024
I thought it was fun. It's all over the place, understandably. I was hoping for a deeper dive into the parapolitics of the late 60s and how it carries through up until today, but the second half of the book is a lot of minutiae about a character that a handful of members found themselves committed to. The theory, psychology, and politics were fun in the beginning, but the author essentially equates them with the Larounchean mumblings that find probably more attention that Maoism, Marxism, etc. In that way, I understand other criticisms of the book in this reviews here. The author seems like a jerk, perfectly British
May 13, 2021
Really not sure what this was but this really was a chore to finish. The story is undeniably interesting and I know I am in the minority but despite any tidbit that might interesting on any given page I often found it easy to not turn that page and put the book down.
Again I have a strong feeling this was me and feel I should revisit this in the future.
The subject matter is incredibly interesting.
Again I have a strong feeling this was me and feel I should revisit this in the future.
The subject matter is incredibly interesting.
January 20, 2025
Couldn't wish for a better book on the subject! The author shows the Vietnam deserters in fine perspective, from the first heady days to the bottoming-out and onwards, which in way too many instances meant getting in with Lyndon LaRouche, and here the volume takes on MAJOR shine, filling out the gaps I didn't even know existed in many of my recent reads. Greatly recommended, since in addition Sweet can write.
November 30, 2017
I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
Interesting subject that I was unfamiliar with until I read this book. Great research, but I did not engage with this book as much as I thought I would. I would still recommend reading this book, especially if the subject resonates with you.
Interesting subject that I was unfamiliar with until I read this book. Great research, but I did not engage with this book as much as I thought I would. I would still recommend reading this book, especially if the subject resonates with you.
October 29, 2019
A tale which begins as a straightforward story and gradually descends into a strange world of anti-establishment weirdness, filled with claim and counter claim, disturbed characters, and plain nutters.
The book is superbly written and draws you into a grey netherworld of political agitation, distrust, subversion and paranoia.
A quite extraordinary tale, hypnotically written.
The book is superbly written and draws you into a grey netherworld of political agitation, distrust, subversion and paranoia.
A quite extraordinary tale, hypnotically written.
May 30, 2023
Interesting to read through the linking of deserters to different factions and organisations, and to how some of those involved have impacted the conspiratorial world of today. But I struggled to follow the narrative and the linking of individuals. I put some of this down to reading on an ebook, as referring to the list of protagonists at the start would have helped.
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October 21, 2020Refraining from rating as I am not really sure what I just read. I kept getting lost while reading this book and as one of the main subjects says to the author at the end. "I'm still not really sure what your book is about".
August 30, 2022
This is a fantastic book about a little corner of the 60’s/Vietnam War experience that I was not previously aware of. Sweet’s research into the topic is formidable, and the story he presents here is winding and highly entertaining.
July 9, 2018
Sweet narrative of Vietnam deserters and CIA brainwashing is a muddled affair. He often rambles off topic and makes weak connections.
November 10, 2019
I give up. Unfinished. The book is a jumble and very difficult to follow. Alas. The subject matter is interesting.
August 26, 2020
lacked focus and felt scattered.
September 2, 2023
No le ha cogido el punto. No me interesó nada desde el principio.
Lo he encontrado poco ordenado y al final no hay hilo conductor.
Lo he encontrado poco ordenado y al final no hay hilo conductor.
August 20, 2024
Fascinating shaggy dog tale about deserters in Sweden, the CIA, and Lyndon LaRouche.
March 12, 2025
Could have been a lot better if the author had really been interested in his subject. Stick to Dr Who mate.
June 11, 2025
Phenomenal storytelling of a little-known history. Sweet’s writing style is winding and chaotic at times (very complex sentences populate this book), but riveting and enlightening nonetheless
October 14, 2025
Got a bit confusing and by the final third I couldn't work out which character had been a deserter or what Operation Chaos was. But the first two thirds were really interesting.
June 1, 2018
So there was definitely a breakdown for me between the synopsis and the actuality of what this book was. It turned out to be more entertaining but less informative than I had hoped.
It starts with the intrepid four and then others to follow, as they desert the Vietnam war and exile to Sweden, a country with no extradition to the US at the time for this action. We are introduced to an organization called ADC (American Deserters Committee) an extreme left group lead by Michael Vale, a suspected CIA mole.
The evolution of this group was crazy as disinformation, paranoia, and conspiracy theories run rampant. I feel this is a fitting real life spy story for the uncertain times we are living through.
Thank you to the publisher for providing me with this arc available through netgalley.
It starts with the intrepid four and then others to follow, as they desert the Vietnam war and exile to Sweden, a country with no extradition to the US at the time for this action. We are introduced to an organization called ADC (American Deserters Committee) an extreme left group lead by Michael Vale, a suspected CIA mole.
The evolution of this group was crazy as disinformation, paranoia, and conspiracy theories run rampant. I feel this is a fitting real life spy story for the uncertain times we are living through.
Thank you to the publisher for providing me with this arc available through netgalley.
December 18, 2019
Lots of names, characters and organizations to try and keep track of in this complex story about Vietnam War deserters in Sweden who fought the CIA, brain washers and themselves. After reading i wasn’t sure how to feel about most of the people - Sad? Heroic? Justly punished?
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews