The CIA's First Secret War - JACK

Before Vietnam. Before the Green Berets. There were the Guerrillas in Korea.

In July 2007, a 29-page CIA document was quietly declassified. It revealed an operation the Agency had spent more than fifty years keeping classified.

Its cover name: JACK.

Three years after its creation, the CIA was thrust into a war in a country it did not understand, against an enemy whose methods it had never studied, using men whose language it did not speak. From 1950 to 1953, under the cover of the 8206th Army Unit, a small team of OSS veterans, Marine raiders, and UDT frogmen improvised America's first major peacetime covert campaign.

They recruited some twelve hundred northern refugees — men who buried their hair and fingernails under trees before walking north, so their families would have something to mourn — and dropped them behind enemy lines. Jumping at 800 feet into no-moon nights through modified B-26 bomb bays. Operating armed fishing trawlers under neutral flags. Sabotaging the coastal railways from Wonsan to the Tumen.

For many of them, it was a one-way journey.

In this gripping, rigorously researched history, Michael I. Bryce uncovers:

• The Hotel HQ: How an improvised intelligence network ran out of a former hotel in downtown Seoul.
• No-Moon Drops: The harrowing low-altitude airborne insertions from C-46s, C-47s, and modified B-26 light bombers.
• The Sea Partisans: Night raids, rubber raft insertions, and clandestine coastal sabotage along the Sea of Japan and Yellow Sea.
• The Human Cost: The untold story of the Yeongdo guerrillas, captured radios, turned networks, and the price of improvised warfare.

Drawn from declassified primary records, USASOC archives, and Korean memorial sources, JACK delivers an unsparing, authentic look at the clandestine roots of modern Special Operations.

Essential reading for fans of Argo, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Devotion, and Band of Brothers — and for readers of Graham Greene's The Quiet American.

Uncover the secret history the Agency spent fifty years keeping classified — order your copy today.