17. Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 123; Burton Hersh, “Dragons Have to Be Killed,” Washingtonian, September 1985, 4.
18. Del Pero, “American Pressures,” 420–428; Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 123–124; William E. Colby, “Proposal to Establish US Contact with Pietro Nenni,” memorandum, Oct. 24, 1956, CIA document obtained by author via Freedom of Information Act.
19. Tom Mangold, Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton. The CIA’s Master Spy Hunter (New York: 1991), 32–34; “The Making of a Master Spy,” Time, Feb. 24, 1975, 2.
20. Quoted in Mangold, Cold Warrior, 35; see also 36.
21. David Robarge, “Moles, Defectors, and Deceptions: James Angleton and CIA Counterintelligence,” Journal of Intelligence History 3, no. 2 (2003): 28–29; Richard Helms, with William Hood, A Look over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency (New York: 2003), 146–147.
22. Hersh, “Dragons,” 3; Mangold, Cold Warrior, 41, 49; Robarge, “Moles, Defectors,” 27.
23. Mangold, Cold Warrior, 52.
24. Victor Marchetti, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York: 1974), 211.
25. Ibid., 211–213; quoted in Robarge, “Moles, Defectors,” 30–31.
26. E. J. Epstein, “Disinformation: Or Why the CIA Cannot Verify an Arms Agreement,” Commentary, July 1982, 4; Robarge, “Moles, Defectors,” 34.
27. Helms, A Look over My Shoulder, 158; Ron Rosenbaum, “The Shadow of the Mole,” Harpers, October 1983, 47–49; Robarge, “Moles, Defectors,” 35; quoted in William F. Buckley Jr., “The Believable Need to Control Soviet Sympathizers,” New York Daily News, Sept. 8, 1981.
28. Prados, Lost Crusader, 57; Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 125; Colby, “Proposal to Establish US Contact with Pietro Nenni.”
29. Hersh, “Dragons,” 4; Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 131.
30. Quoted in Prados, Lost Crusader, 57; Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 132.
31. Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 132–133.
32. Quoted in Randall Bennett Woods, Fulbright: A Biography (New York: 1995), 77; Del Pero, “American Pressures,” 431–433; Colby, “Proposal to Establish US Contact with Pietro Nenni.”
33. Henry S. Brasher, “U.S. Got 2 Copies of Speech by Khrushchev on Stalin’s Sins,” Washington Star, Dec. 7, 1976.
34. David Binder, “56 East European Plan of C.I.A. Is Described,” New York Times, Nov. 30, 1976; Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 133–134; William E. Colby, “Proposed Approach to Pietro Nenni and the Italian Socialist Party,” memorandum, June 6, 1956, CIA document obtained by author via Freedom of Information Act.
35. Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 134–135.
36. Quoted in Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (Cambridge, MA: 2009), 49; Prados, Lost Crusader, 61.
37. Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 134; Prados, Lost Crusader, 58.
38. Prados, Lost Crusader, 59; Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 127.
39. William E. Colby to DCI, April 1, 1958, CIA document obtained by author via Freedom of Information Act; Nuti, “Opening to the Left,” 42–43, 45–47.
40. Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 139.
41. Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer, 74–75, 89.
CHAPTER 8
1. John Prados, Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby (New York: 2003), 61–62; William Colby and Peter Forbath, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA (New York: 1978), 142.
2. Zalin Grant, Facing the Phoenix: The CIA and the Political Defeat of the United States in Vietnam (New York: 1991), 84–86, 91; Thomas L. Ahern Jr., CIA and Rural Pacification in South Vietnam, Center for the Study of Intelligence, August 2001, available at National Security Archive, www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB284/index.htm, 4.
3. William Colby, Lost Victory: A Firsthand Account of America’s Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam (Chicago: 1989), 33.
4. Grant, Facing the Phoenix, 48; Records of the OSS, M1623, Roll 10, 61 ff., and M1623, Roll 8, National Archives II, Washington, DC; quoted in “National Archives Learning Curve,” www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKconein.htm.
5. Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 11–12.
6. Grant, Facing the Phoenix, 97–98; Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 3.
7. Quoted in Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 21.
8. Colby, Lost Victory, 19–20.
9. See “Saigon: A Booklet of Helpful Information for Americans in Vietnam,” United States Operations Mission (Saigon: 1958), Douglas Pike Papers, Texas Tech University Virtual Archives.
10. Howard Simpson interview, Jan. 1, 1994, Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection, Library of Congress.
11. Author interview with Barbara Colby, Jan. 5, 2007; author interview with Paul Colby, Jan. 8, 2007; Colby, Lost Victory, 21.
12. Author interview with Carl Colby, Jan. 9, 2007; author interview with Barbara Colby, Jan. 5, 2007.
13. Colby, Lost Victory, 22.
14. Curtis C. Cutter interview, Feb. 3, 1992, Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection, Library of Congress; Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 149–150; Prados, Lost Crusader, 67.
15. Colby, Lost Victory, 28.
16. Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 147–148.
17. Ibid., 148–149.
18. Colby, Lost Victory, 29.
19. Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 154.
20. Colby, Lost Victory, 34.
21. Ibid., 39.
22. Kenton J. Clymer, Troubled Relations: The United States and Cambodia Since 1870 (DeKalb, IL: 2007), 74–76; Milton Osborne, Sihanouk: Prince of Light, Prince of Darkness (Honolulu: 1994), 112.
23. Prados, Lost Crusader, 70.
24. Colby, Lost Victory, 43.
25. Author interview with John Colby, June 4, 2010.
26. Duong Van Mai Elliott, The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family (New York: 1999), 232–235; William E. Colby Oral History, June 2, 1981, LBJ Library, Austin, Texas.
27. Colby, Lost Victory, 46.
28. Ibid., 54–57; Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 32.
29. Colby, Lost Victory, 61.
30. Author interview with Paul Colby, Jan. 8, 2007.
31. Ibid.
32. Colby, Lost Victory, 63, 77; Prados, Lost Crusader, 72.
33. Quoted in Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 36.
34. Quoted in Prados, Lost Crusader, 72; Colby, Lost Victory, 78.
35. Quoted in Colby, Lost Victory, 79.
36. Prados, Lost Crusader, 73.
CHAPTER 9
1. Quoted in Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: 1983), 247.
2. Thomas K. Adams, US Special Operations Forces in Action: The Challenge of Unconventional Warfare (London: 1998), 65; quoted in Richard H. Shultz Jr., The Secret War Against Hanoi: Kennedy’s and Johnson’s Use of Spies, Saboteurs, and Covert Warriors in North Vietnam (New York: 1999), 75. Counterinsurgency was one side of the coin. The other was pacification through modernization. The Kennedy White House turned to an emerging community of social scientists who saw nation-building in South Vietnam as part of a universal process of modernization. Advances in communications and transportation, new systems of trade and commerce, modern farming techniques, Western-style education, and modern medicine would shake “traditional” peoples out of their fatalism and complacency. Unfortunately, these prophets of modernity, typified by Walt Rostow, the MIT economist who would serve on both the Kennedy and Johnson foreign policy teams, tended to ignore the histories, political cultures, and entrenched interests of the countries with which they were working. See Michael E. Latham, “Redirecting the Revolution? The USA and the Failure of Nation-Building in South Vietnam,” Third World Quarterly 27, no. 1 (2006): 27–41.
3. T. K. Adams, US Special Operations Forces, 19.
4. Ibid., 22, 54–55.
5. Ibid., 67.
6. Sedgwick Tourison, Secret Army, Secret War: Washington’s Tragic Spy Operation in North Vietnam (Annapolis, MD: 1995),
8–9; John L. Plaster, SOG: The Secret Wars of America’s Commandos in Vietnam (New York: 1997), 19.
7. John Prados, Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby (New York: 2003), 75.
8. Quoted in Tourison, Secret Army, Secret War, 19; quoted in Prados, Lost Crusader, 75.
9. Rene J. Defourneaux to William E. Colby, Nov. 21, 1989, Colby Collection, Box 6, F22, Vietnam Archives, Texas Tech University.
10. Plaster, SOG, 17–18; Prados, Lost Crusader, 76.
11. Quoted in Prados, Lost Crusader, 76; quoted in Plaster, SOG, 21.
12. Quoted in Prados, Lost Crusader, 77. Colby thought Air America a most inappropriate name for a secret air force. Tourison, Secret Army, Secret War, 19.
13. Tourison, Secret Army, Secret War, 20, 43. Kennedy had dismantled Eisenhower’s 5412 committee, but then, seeing the need for such an oversight body, he had created his own.
14. Prados, Lost Crusader, 78; quoted in Tourison, Secret Army, Secret War, 37.
15. William Colby and Peter Forbath, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA (New York: 1978), 173; Tourison, Secret Army, Secret War, 100; Plaster, SOG, 22; author interview with Robert Myers, June 11, 2007.
16. Tourison, Secret Army, Secret War, 8, 58; Prados, Lost Crusader, 80. See also Thomas A. Bass, The Spy Who Loved Us: The Vietnam War and Pham Xuan An’s Dangerous Game (New York: 2009); Larry Berman, The Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent (Washington, DC: 2007).
17. Harold Ford, William E. Colby as Director of Central Intelligence, 1973–1976 (Washington, DC: 1993), 79, released under Freedom of Information Act, Aug. 11, 2011.
18. Quoted in Tourison, Secret Army, Secret War, 13.
19. William Colby, Lost Victory: A Firsthand Account of America’s Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam (Chicago: 1989), 84; Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 161.
20. Colby, Lost Victory, 88; Thomas L. Ahern Jr., CIA and Rural Pacification in South Vietnam, Center for the Study of Intelligence, August 2001, available at National Security Archive, www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB284/index.htm, 39–40.
21. Colby, Lost Victory, 85.
22. Quoted in John A. Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife (Westport, CT: 2002), 15, 22.
23. Quoted in ibid., 26.
24. Gregoire Potiron de Boisfleury, “The Origins of Marshal Lyautey’s Pacification Doctrine in Morocco from 1912 to 1925,” master’s thesis, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 2010, 9–12, online at www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA524341; Colby, Lost Victory, 91; Interview: William Colby, former director, Central Intelligence Agency, Special Forces Magazine, April 1994, 41.
25. Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 175–176; Zalin Grant, Facing the Phoenix: The CIA and the Political Defeat of the United States in Vietnam (New York: 1991), 166.
26. Author interview with Gilbert Layton Family, Oct. 13, 2006, Washington, DC.
27. Ken Conboy and James Morrison, “Early Covert Action on the Ho Chi Minh Trail,” http://ngothelinh.150m.com/Early Covert Actions.html; Gilbert Layton to Frank Mallard, Nov. 1, 1961, Layton Family Papers.
28. Quoted in Tourison, Secret Army, Secret War, 24–25, 34; Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 44.
29. Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (Cambridge, MA: 2009), 168–169; David A. Nuttle, “They Have Stone Ears, Don’t They?” unpublished memoir, May 6, 1966; Nuttle to author, Sept. 21, 2006, 42–44.
30. Author interview with David Nuttle, Sept. 6, 2006.
31. Nuttle, “Stone Ears,” 43.
32. Ibid., 5.
33. Quoted in Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 45; Colby, Lost Victory, 89.
34. Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 165–166.
35. See Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared. The Early Years of the CIA (New York: 1995), 205–216, 237–272.
36. Quoted in Randall Bennett Woods, Quest for Identity: America Since 1945 (New York: 2005), 213; quoted in Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 184; Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: 2007), 179; Richard Helms, with William Hood, A Look over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency (New York: 2003), 181.
37. Nuttle, “Stone Ears,” 47. The conversation that follows is quoted from Nuttle’s memoir.
38. Nuttle, “Stone Ears,” 9.
39. Quoted in Prados, Lost Crusader, 73; Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 166.
40. Nuttle, “Stone Ears,” 53.
41. Quoted in Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 46–47.
42. Quoted in ibid., 46. Special Forces A-Teams consisted of twelve military personnel who had the collective mission of training local self-defense forces and conducting civil affairs programs to improve hygiene, health care, education, and agriculture. Adams, US Special Operations Forces, 84–85.
43. Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 52.
44. Dora Layton to Marsh and Family, December 1962, Layton Family Papers; Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 54.
45. Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 25.
46. Al Friendly to Gil Layton, Feb. 6, 1996, Layton Family Papers.
47. Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 58; Nuttle, “Stone Ears,” 57.
48. Quoted in Tourison, Secret Army, Secret War, 55.
49. Colby, Lost Victory, 91; author interview with Dora and Todd Layton, Oct. 23, 2006; Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 76–77.
50. Tourison, Secret Army, Secret War, 24; author interview with Dora and Todd Layton, Oct. 23, 2006; Dora Layton to friend, Jan. 1963, Layton Family Papers.
51. Author interview with Carl Colby, Jan. 9, 2007.
52. Author interview with John Colby, Jan. 12, 2007.
53. “CIA Information Report,” Nov. 28, 1961, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS hereafter), 1961–1963, Vietnam, vol. 1, 689–691.
54. Quoted in Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 78–79.
55. Colby, Lost Victory, 99.
56. Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 80.
57. Ibid., 84; Colby, Lost Victory, 102.
58. Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 80–82; Seth Jacobs, Cold War Mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America’s War in Vietnam, 1950–1963 (Lanham, MD: 2006), 127; A. J. Langguth, Our Vietnam: The War, 1954–1975 (New York: 2000), 168–169.
59. Colby, Lost Victory, 93. This passage displays an amazingly cavalier attitude on the part of a CIA station chief whose job it was, in tandem with the chief of SEPES, the South Vietnamese security apparatus, to ferret out communist agents who had penetrated the South Vietnamese government and military.
CHAPTER 10
1. Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: 1983), 263.
2. William Colby, Lost Victory: A Firsthand Account of America’s Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam (Chicago: 1989), 117; author interview with Carl Colby, Jan. 9, 2007.
3. Quoted in Thomas L. Ahern Jr., CIA and Rural Pacification in South Vietnam, Center for the Study of Intelligence, August 2001, available at National Security Archive, www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB284/index.htm, 60; David A. Nuttle, “They Have Stone Ears, Don’t They?” unpublished memoir, May 6, 1966; David A. Nuttle to author, Sept. 21, 2006, 16.
4. Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 61; Nuttle, “Stone Ears,” 16–17; John Prados, Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby (New York: 2003), 87–88; two Montagnard representatives to Colonel Gilbert Layton, n.d., Layton Family Papers.
5. William Colby, Lost Victory: A Firsthand Account of America’s Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam (Chicago: 1989), 98; Richard H. Shultz Jr., The Secret War Against Hanoi: Kennedy’s and Johnson’s Use of Spies, Saboteurs, and Covert Warriors in North Vietnam (New York: 1999), 7; quoted in Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 97.
6. Author interview with Barbara Colby, Jan. 5, 2007.
7. William Colby and Peter Forbath, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA (New York: 1978), 178.
8. Ibid., 180, 183.
9. Lucien Vandenbroucke, Perilous Options: Special Operations as an Instrument of US Foreign Policy (New York: 1993), 30; Ted Shackley and Rickard A. Finney, Spymaster: My Life in the CIA (Dulles, VA: 1992), 57; quoted in Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: 2007), 185.
10. Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 188.
11. Ibid., 182; Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 187.
12. Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 188.
13. Quoted in Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 86.
14. Ibid., 86–87, 101, 114; unknown correspondent to Bonnie Layton, n.d., and Gil Layton to Colonel Barry Peterson, March 2, 1991, Layton Family Papers.
15. Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 110; “Commentary on National Security Intelligence Estimate 53-2-64,” Oct. 19, 1964, Box 2, F Colby-VN, Papers of James Srodes, Marshall Library, Virginia Military Institute; quoted in R. W. Komer, Bureaucracy at War: U.S. Performance in the Vietnam Conflict (Boulder, CO: 1986), 11; William E. Colby to Major Hardy Bogue, Jan. 31, 1992, Box 6, F20, Colby Papers, Vietnam Archives, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas.
16. Shultz, Secret War Against Hanoi, 47–48.
17. Colby, Lost Victory, 122; quoted in Shultz, Secret War Against Hanoi, 39–40; author interview with Robert Myers, April 11, 2007.
18. See “Current Intelligence Memorandum, CIA,” Jan. 11, 1963, FRUS, 1961–1963, Vietnam, vol. 3, 19–22.
19. “CIA Information Report,” June 28, 1963, FRUS, 1961–1963, Vietnam, vol. 3, 423–425; quoted in Thomas L. Ahern Jr., CIA and the House of Ngo: Covert Action in South Vietnam, 1954–1963, Center for the Study of Intelligence, June 2000, available at National Security Archive, www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB284/index.htm, 167.
20. Ahern, CIA and the House of Ngo, 169–171; Ellen J. Hammer, A Death in November: America in Vietnam, 1963 (New York: 1987), 167–168; David Halberstam and Daniel J. Singal, The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam During the Kennedy Era (Lanham, MD: 2006), 143–145; Howard Jones, Death of a Generation: How the Assassinations of Diem and JFK Prolonged the Vietnam War (New York: 2003), 297–298.
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