War of Numbers: An Intelligence Memoir of the Vietnam War's Uncounted Enemy - Softcover

Adams, Sam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1883642469 ISBN 13: 9781883642464

Publisher: Steerforth, 1998

Synopsis

Sam Adams loved intelligence work, and that enthusiasm shines throughout this memoir of his years with the Central Intelligence Agency. His career was dominated by an epic struggle over Vietnam -- over military attempts to hide the true size of the enemy forces there, and over the integrity of the intelligence process. Adams's insistence on telling the truth caused an ungodly ruckus in both Washington and Saigon at the time, and years later, after the CIA had threatened to fire him (on thirteen occasions!) and he had quit the agency in disgust, Adams brought his story back up to the surface more loudly than ever in a CBS television documentary which eventually resulted in a notorious trial on libel charges brought by General William Westmoreland.
After leaving the CIA, Adams sat down to write an account of his life at the agency. There is nothing else quite like the story he tells.

About this title

About the Author

Sam Adams was a graduate of Harvard College and from 1963 to 1973 was an intelligence analyst for the CIA. Adams died in 1988. The Sam Adams Award is given annually to an intelligence professional who has taken a stand for integrity and ethics. The Award, established in 2002, is given by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, a group of retired CIA officers.

From Kirkus Reviews

At the time of Adams's death in 1988, he had almost completed this book, which recounts his side of a major controversy regarding Vietnam in measured fashion and affords instructive insights into the lot of a lower-echelon operative in the spook trade. An intelligence analyst for the CIA from 1963 to 1973, Adams gained a modicum of fame (or notoriety) in the early 1980s as the principal source for a CBS TV documentary entitled The Uncounted Enemy, which exposed intelligence failures in the Vietnam War. General William Westmoreland sued for libel, and although the widely publicized case never reached a jury, trial disclosures supported claims long made by Adams. Under terms of a flexible roving brief, he had in the 1960s made himself the CIA's resident expert on the Vietcong's order of battle. On the evidence of captured documents and data gathered during frequent field trips to combat zones, it soon became evident to Adams that the US military was deliberately underestimating the VC's troop strength. In the face of political opposition, the CIA failed to defend his findings; the Pentagon figures were accepted by President Johnson, who was eager to reassure the electorate that an unpopular war was going well. Early in 1968, the unacknowledged cadres went into action with VC regulars during the Tet offensive, which turned the tide of the war and destroyed LBJ's re-election bid. Although Adams had been proved right in his calculations, he remained a prophet without honor in a government bureaucracy willing to accommodate its political masters; ultimately he quit the agency. In this tellingly detailed and evenhanded account of how vital intelligence may be collected, collated, interpreted, and ultimately ignored, Adams (who never opposed America's involvement in Vietnam) leaves yet another reproachful monument to a conflict in which truth was a constant casualty. David Hackworth, the retired Army colonel who wrote About Face (not reviewed), provides the volume's introduction. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Steerforth
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1883642469
• ISBN 13: 9781883642464
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288