Decent interval
by Frank Snepp · first published 1977
8mentions
3recommended by
7HN commenters
2013–2024first – last mentioned
43% recommend57% neutral
"Widely regarded as a classic on the Vietnam War, Decent Interval provides a scathing critique of the CIA's role in and final departure from that conflict. The book was written at great risk and ultimately at great sacrifice by an author who had believed in the CIA's cause but was disillusioned by the agency's treacherous withdrawal, leaving thousands of Vietnamese allies to the mercy of an angry enemy. It remains today a riveting and powerful testament to one of the darkest episodes in American history."--Jacket.
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…particularly "extraordinary" about these claims. > You have made these accusations without any evidence. The evidence is circumstantial and based on past behavior patterns of the US government. Read "Decent Interval" and its follow-up "Irreparable Harm" by Frank Snepp, or "State of War" by James Risen (for something more recent) to get started on this history. Again, there is nothing "extraordinary" about the previous…
on “If a Drone Strike Hit an American Wedding We'd Ground Our Fleet” ↗The article makes no mention of the two most influential exposés by CIA insiders, Philip Agee's Inside the Company: CIA Diary (1975) and Frank Snepp's Decent Interval (1978). Either book would give a better illustration of conditions inside the CIA than any book the article mentions. Those two accounts made a deep impression on my cohorts and contributed to our feeling…
on “Has the CIA Done More Harm Than Good?” ↗Decent Interval was an interesting book, can recommend.
on “A Novel the CIA Spent a Fortune to Suppress” ↗This is going to go pretty much like it went for Frank Snepp and "Decent Interval", see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Snepp
on “United States Files Civil Lawsuit Against Edward Snowden” ↗The CIA did something similar with: > Frank Snepp’s Decent Interval: An Insider’s Account of Saigon’s Indecent End Told by the CIA’s Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam, which was published in late 1977. > At the very least Snepp had written the definitive history of the…
on “A Novel the CIA Spent a Fortune to Suppress” ↗…even among scholars. I think the lack of attention is because it was published after most of the generation who really cared had passed on. My cohorts in the 1980s talked a good deal about Frank Snepp's Decent Interval (1977) and its revelations about intelligence work. Sam Adams' book would have been a bombshell.
on “The obscure intelligence bureau that got Vietnam, Iraq, and Ukraine right” ↗- Decent Interval - Frank Snepp - About Saigon's fall by a CIA analyst - Inside China's Nuclear Weapons Program - Danny Stillman - Operation Dark Heart - Anthony Shaffer - Afghanistan. "The Pentagon" bought and destroyed…
on “Home Libraries Will Save Civilization” ↗I quit the CIA in a fit of anguish and published a memoir, “Decent Interval,” about botched intelligence and the abandonment of our Vietnamese allies. Prosecutors in the Carter Justice Department hauled me in for allegedly violating CIA secrecy agreements and an invisible “trust”…
on “Snowden and a muzzled free press (2013)” ↗