Spies in Saigon: CIA Covert Operations in French Indochina and South Vietnam, 1950–1963

This is the story that the CIA does not want you to read.

Beginning in 1950, a small cadre of American intelligence officers arrived in Saigon under diplomatic cover to assess the Viet Minh, Chinese Communists, French, and Nationalist political groups in an effort to check the spread of communism amid the crumbling French colonial empire. Paul Springer was the CIA's first chief of station in Saigon. CIA involvement during the French-Indochina War has never been covered in depth, largely because Springer's name and mission remained classified for decades. More than 60 years later, his family had to take the agency to court for the release of his personnel file.

Springer’s assignment was followed by Ed Lansdale's Saigon Military Mission in 1954, tasked with stabilizing South Vietnam following the Geneva Accords, which partitioned the country at the 17th parallel. Author James P. Bevill seamlessly weaves together their stories, along with eye-opening details of a secret CIA black ops site on Saipan, the rise and fall of Ngo Dinh Diem, and how three North Vietnamese double agents infiltrated the highest levels of the government of South Vietnam. The study demonstrates how espionage, covert action, and political ambition intertwined during a violent war for national liberation in Vietnam.