None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam.

• Author: Mauriello, Carmen
• Position: Political booknotes: 20/20 hindsight - Review

NONE SO BLIND: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam by George W. Allen Ivan R. Dee, $22.50 MOST OF US HAVE LONG since tired of rehashing the "lessons of Vietnam." But with America now waging war against another little-understood enemy, a refresher course isn't a bad idea. What is striking about this well-timed book by a former intelligence analyst who specialized in Vietnam during the entire course of the war is how intelligence failures lay at the heart of the problem.

A 30-year veteran of the intelligence community, George Allen attacks U.S. policymakers for willfully ignoring the gravity of the Vietnam situation--specifically Allen's own repeated attempts to alert them to the many problems. Although the if-they'd-only-listened-to-me tone of the book grows a bit tiresome, there's little doubt that Allen's main contention is right: Overwhelming hubris and a foolish belief in American invincibility led military leaders to discount these warnings and plunge ahead. And he provides fresh, fascinating insider detail on how the misuse of intelligence contributed mightily to America's greatest military failure.

A patriotic Army brat raised on Coastal Artillery posts, Allen volunteered for the Navy on his 17th birthday at the height of World War II. After three years as a radioman in the Pacific Theater, Allen studied political science, international relations, and history at the University of Utah, before accepting a position on Army intelligence's Far East desk in 1949. By the time Dien Bien Phu fell in 1954, Allen had developed grave concerns about Vietnam, and gotten his first taste of military indifference.

Allen's intelligence bureau had discovered a massive buildup by the Viet Minh (predecessors to the Viet Cong) near the French garrison months before the attack. Allen had briefed his commanding officer, but the general took the mobilization to be the result of a French strategy to trap the enemy's main force. Allen's attempts to convince the general otherwise were brushed aside as "nonsense"

This early episode followed a pattern that would mark Allen's career, in which his warnings were ignored or censored to increasingly dire effect. Early on, Allen shrewdly identified two handicaps he believes sabotaged his career: the U.S. government's insistence on accentuating the positive and his own lack of access to sought-after intelligence. Allen's stubbornly realistic assessments in the wake of the mounting Vietnam nightmare...