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. Trade paperback. Good. Nancy Goodwin. xii, 590, [4] pages. Wraps. Illustrations. Maps. Index. Some darkening to text, some discoloration inside covers and flyleaves. Hole punched in front cover Cover edges worn. Ink name on front flyleaf. 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. He was one of the first whistle blowers who revealed the inner workings, secrets and failures of the national security services in the 1970s. Snepp wrote a memoir of the event, Decent Interval without prior approval from the CIA Publications Review Board. After the book was published, CIA Director Stansfield Turner pushed for Snepp to be sued 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. 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 (amounting to $300,000 by the time Snepp lost in front of the Supreme Court) were surrendered to the CIA. All of Snepp's publications require prior approval by the CIA. In 2001 Snepp published a second book, Irreparable Harm, about his court battle with the CIA. 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. Still the most detailed and respected account of America's final days in Vietnam, the book was written at great risk and ultimately at great sacrifice by an author who 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. More than forty-years later, it remains a riveting and powerful testament to one of the darkest episodes in American history.