Decent Interval; An Insider's Account of Saigon's Indecent End Told by the CIA's Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam

New York: Vintage Books, 1978. First Vintage Books Edition [stated]. Presumed first printing thus. Trade paperback. Good. Nancy Goodwin. xii, 590, [4] pages. Wraps. Footnotes. Illustrations. Maps. Index. Some discoloration inside covers and flyleaves. Some darkening to text, top corner of covers and several pages bent, some wear to cover edges. Frank Warren Snepp, III (born May 3, 1943) is a journalist and former chief analyst of North Vietnamese strategy for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Saigon during the Vietnam War. For five out of his eight years as a CIA officer, he worked as interrogator, agent debriefer, and chief strategy analyst in the United States Embassy, Saigon; he was awarded the Intelligence Medal of Merit for his work. Snepp became a producer for KNBC-TV in Los Angeles, California. He was one of the first whistle blowers who revealed the inner workings, secrets and failures of the national security services in the 1970s. As a result of a loss in a 1980 court case brought by the CIA, all of Snepp's publications require prior approval by the CIA. Snepp's memoir, Decent Interval, was published without prior approval from the CIA. The book was based on an after-action report that he had written. CIA Director Stansfield Turner pushed for Snepp to be sued and he prevailed. The CIA sued Snepp for breach of contract. Snepp was accused of violating the non-disclosure agreement he had signed that forbade publication of any material about CIA operations without the prior consent of the agency. Snepp accused the CIA of violating his First Amendment rights. The CIA claimed that Snepp had violated his employment agreement by speaking out. They sued (United States v. Frank W. Snepp III). The CIA won a court verdict against Snepp, with the US Supreme Court ruling that Snepp's book had caused "irreparable harm" to national security due to creating an appearance of a breakdown of discipline in the CIA. The royalties from Decent Interval were surrendered to the CIA, and Snepp forced to clear all future publications with the CIA.