Books like Decent interval by Frank Snepp

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man reveals how U.S. officials and corporations allegedly shaped global economics to the detriment of developing nations.

A definitive, document‑rich history of the CIA, revealing why presidents and CIA leaders have struggled to grasp global realities and how repeated failures have threatened U.S. national security.

A detailed account of Lt. Col. John Paul Vann’s service in the Vietnam War, tracing his rise from infantry officer to outspoken military analyst.

An exhaustive, evidence‑based investigation into the U.S. decision‑making that escalated the Vietnam War, challenging the idea of inevitability by exposing political indifference, self‑interest, and the key roles of McNamara, Bundy, Rusk, Ball, and Taylor.

"From the first large-scale Viet Minh offensive against the French in 1950, to the fall of Saigon in 1975, the United States tried desperately to understand the nature of the fierce Communist-led struggle to create a unified, independent Vietnam. Even before its military involvement, and through the years of combat, American intelligence played a key role in gathering information on the political and military situation in Vietnam and on the strengths and weaknesses of both sides.". "But as George Allen shows in this memoir, intelligence appraisals were consistently discounted, ignored, and rejected by policymakers in every administration from Eisenhower through Nixon - because these assessments undermined the mistaken assumptions of the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon." "In its inside view, its recitation of facts, and its powerful argument, None So Blind is a remarkable contribution to the history of the Vietnam War."--BOOK JACKET.

Millions have been gripped by Oliver Stone's film JFK and its premise that the plot to assassinate Kennedy originated beyond the highest levels of the U.S. government. In the movie, the advocate of this theory is a character named "X" played by Donald Sutherland, who, as the film's "Deep Throat," explains how and why this plot came about. As Stone acknowledged, "X" not only was faithfully depicted in the film, but also as the film's creative adviser provided fully. Documented information and analysis that helped shape the script. This mystery man was not a fabricated character, as some critics contend. His identity can now be revealed: "X" is L. Fletcher Prouty, a former top-level "military-CIA" operative and the author of JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy. Now, for the first time, Prouty presents in book form the explosive thesis that influenced Oliver Stone from the time he first began reading the. Author's writings in the late 1980s. Among the author's revelations in JFK:. Kennedy's plan to change the course of the Vietnam conflict and to remove all U.S. military personnel from that country by the end of 1965 created enormous concern at the center of the military-industrial complex and led directly to his assassination. Upon receiving the report of the Cuban Study Group from Gen. Maxwell Taylor after the Bay of Pigs disaster in 1961, Kennedy vowed to "shatter the. CIA into a thousand pieces." He began by firing longtime Director of Central Intelligence Allen W. Dulles and his top aides. The army set up a full-fledged covert operation derisively named Operation Camelot to thwart Kennedy's efforts to end the war. President Johnson reversed Kennedy's orders to wind down in Vietnam immediately following Kennedy's murder. And in March 1964 he set the course for massive troop escalation. Why Kennedy was ultimately against the war and. Why he was really murdered. Brilliantly written and researched over nearly eight years, JFK is riveting. It is the first eyewitness account by a top-level insider, a man who had access to the primary documents and personalities - including those in the White House - dating back to 1943. The shock waves generated by JFK will shake the halls of government for decades to come.

“[The United States’ goal in Angola] was not to keep out the Cubans and Soviets but to make their imperial efforts as costly as possible and to prove that, after Vietnam. we were still capable of response, however insane. It is this story that has been told, and in impressive and convincing detail, by John Stockweli, the former chief of the CIA’s Angola task force.’ His hook should not he missed. Since strategic thought survives by ignoring experience, it has a highly professional interest in avoiding accounts such as this. By the same token, all who are alarmed about the tendency toward such strategic thinking should strongly welcome Mr. Stockwell’s book.” —John Kenneth Gaibraith. New York Review of Books In Search of Enemies is much more than the story of the only war to be found when the CIA sought to recoup its prestige after the Vietnam debacle. Though no American troops were committed to Angola, only “advisors,” many millions were spent, many thousands died, and many lies were told to the American people, in waging a war without purpose to American vital interests and without hope of victory. In Search of Enemies is unique in its wealth of detail about CIA operations and convincing in its argument that the clandestine services of the CIA should be abolished. John Stockwell, who lived in Africa for ten of his early years, is a graduate of the University of Texas and an alumnus of the U.S. Marine Corps. After twelve years as a CIA officer, he resigned from the agency on April I. 1977

""Revolutions, like trees, must be judged by their fruit," Ignazio Silone wrote, and this is the standard the authors apply to the Communist experience - in the China of "the Great Helmsman," Kim Il Sung's Korea, Vietnam under "Uncle Ho" and Cuba under Castro, Ethiopia under Mengistu, Angola under Neto, and Afghanistan under Najibullah. The authors, all distinguished scholars based in Europe, document Communist crimes against humanity, but also crimes against national and universal culture, from Stalin's destruction of hundreds of churches in Moscow to Ceausescu's leveling of the historic heart of Bucharest to the wide-scale devastation visited on Chinese culture by Mao's Red Guards."--BOOK JACKET. "As the death toll mounts - as many as 25 million in the former Soviet Union, 65 million in China, 1.7 million in Cambodia, and on and on - the authors systematically show how and why, wherever the millenarian ideology of Communism was established, it quickly led to crime, terror, and repression."--BOOK JACKET.

George C. Herring examines the Vietnam War as the inevitable extension of U.S. containment policy from the Truman era, exploring the complex challenges it posed and the varied responses of American leaders and citizens.

Examines how the founding of the CIA was shaped by William J. Donovan’s pioneering public‑relations work with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II.

In A Time for War, Schulzinger paints a vast yet intricate canvas of more than three decades of conflict in Vietnam, from the first rumblings of rebellion against the French colonialists to the American intervention and eventual withdrawal. His comprehensive narrative incorporates every aspect of the warfrom the military (as seen in his brisk account of the French failure at Dienbienphu) to the economic (such as the wage increase sparked by the draft in the United States) to the political. Drawing on massive research, he offers a vivid and insightful portrait of the changes in Vietnamese politics and society, from the rise of Ho Chi Minh, to the division of the country, to the struggles between South Vietnamese president Diem and heavily armed religious sects, to the infighting and corruption that plagued Saigon. Schulzinger reveals precisely how outside powers - first the French, then the Americans - committed themselves to war in Indochina, even against their own better judgment. Roosevelt, for example, derided the French efforts to reassert their colonial control after World War II, yet Truman, Eisenhower, and their advisers gradually came to believe that Vietnam was central to American interests. The author's account of Johnson is particularly telling and tragic, describing how the president would voice clear-headed, even prescient warnings about the dangers of intervention - then change his mind, committing America's prestige and military might to supporting a corrupt, unpopular regime. Schlzinger offers sharp criticism of the American military effort, and provides a fascinating look inside the Nixon White House, showing how the Republican president dragged out the war long past the point when he realized that the United States could not win. Finally, Schulzinger paints a brilliant political and social portrait of the times, illuminating the impact of the war on the lives of ordinary Americans and Vietnamese. Schulzinger shows what the war was like for a common soldier, an American nurse, a navy flyer, a conscript in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, a Vietcong fighter, or an antiwar protester.