laws of armed conflict spies and saboteurs

For other uses, see Saboteur (disambiguation).Ī United States poster from the World War II-era that was used to inform people about what they should do if they suspect sabotage He could have strengthened his book by including more discussions of ground-level operations and by paying less attention to bureaucratic infighting and political meddling. Schultz argues that there is a place for covert activities run out of the Pentagon, but only after some far-reaching restructuring. For example, Schultz explains how SOG officers created a radio station to broadcast propaganda into the enemy's homes: the only problem was that most North Vietnamese didn't own radios. Though there were some isolated successes, basic ineptitude and uncoordinated thinking characterized the SOG's efforts, according to the author. The problems began in 1963, when President Kennedy took responsibility for covert action in Vietnam away from the CIA and entrusted it to the Pentagon's Special Operations Group (SOG), even though the prevailing opinion among the Pentagon brass was that espionage and covert action were a waste of time.

military operations were consistently hamstrung by Washington and undercut by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Schultz, a historian at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, uses recently declassified Pentagon documents and interviews with major players (including former defense secretary Robert McNamara) to show how secret U.S. covert activities during the Vietnam War. That's the principal lesson of this alternately dry and informative analysis of U.S.

Laws of armed conflict spies and saboteurs