Frank Snepp's 'Last Spy Story of the Vietnam War' cleared for release.

[Carl Robinson]

Here's something you might find interesting, folks, not that I've ever had much time for Frank Snepp who's been dining out on the "decent interval" for decades.  Still pissed off, nobody was listening to him in '75 when it was just too late.  It was always gonna' be a panic. 

CIA Okays Release of the “Last” Vietnam Spy Story

The CIA has now cleared his “last” Vietnam spy story. Turns out their man up in COSVN knew what was happening in Paris between Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. When they told President Thieu, he dug in his heels. 

Snepp recycles the claim that only Nixon’s Christmas Bombing of Hanoi in ’72 got the parties back to sign—basically—the same agreement. America “had his back.” (One small problem: 140,000 NVA troops were still hanging around down South.) 

And the US "had his back," how exactly?  Especially with a stroppy US Congress and Nixon doomed.  Did South Vietnam even have a real million-man army? 

But hurray! Thieu managed to derail any prospects for a coalition government.

And what good did that do, pray tell? I’ve tried over the years to engage Snepp on this. Why was the coalition idea tossed out? 

At that stage, it was about the only thing that could work. Many southerners supported it—and why not? Properly guaranteed internationally, with continued foreign investment and maybe even reparations (call it foreign aid) to the North, a mixed government might’ve bought time. Time for all those guilty-minded folks to get the hell out of South Vietnam.

But no. Just like today, it’s all one-way.  And always disastrous.

Anyway, give it a read. 

Carl