Summary of John L. Plaster's SOG

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 William Colby was the CIA’s first long-term North Vietnam-based operative. He was a Catholic Ivy League man who sounded more like a corporate executive than a secret agent.

#2 The CIA began to send American Special Forces soldiers to train and assist the South Vietnamese who would execute Colby’s covert missions. The Green Berets and SEALs weren’t working for the CIA, but for CAS, an innocuous cover whose initials stood for Combined Area Studies.

#3 The SEALs trained junk crews to land secret agents in the North and organized a civilian raiding force, the Sea Commandos, for hit-and-run coastal attacks. The CIA brought in Nationalist Chinese instructor pilots with hundreds of missions over mainland China very similar to what Ky’s men would fly.

#4 The CIA had a program called Operation Switchback that transferred these Southeast Asian programs to the military in 1962, but President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 delayed the transfer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jun 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822527997

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

Book preview

Insights on John L. Plaster's SOG

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 14

Insights from Chapter 15

Insights from Chapter 16

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

William Colby was the CIA’s first long-term North Vietnam-based operative. He was a Catholic Ivy League man who sounded more like a corporate executive than a secret agent.

#2

The CIA began to send American Special Forces soldiers to train and assist the South Vietnamese who would execute Colby’s covert missions. The Green Berets and SEALs weren’t working for the CIA, but for CAS, an innocuous cover whose initials stood for Combined Area Studies.

#3

The SEALs trained junk crews to land secret agents in the North and organized a civilian raiding force, the Sea Commandos, for hit-and-run coastal attacks. The CIA brought in Nationalist Chinese instructor pilots with hundreds of missions over mainland China very similar to what Ky’s men would fly.

#4

The CIA had a program called Operation Switchback that transferred these Southeast Asian programs to the military in 1962, but President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 delayed the transfer.

#5

The Studies and Observations Group, led by Colonel Clyde Russell, was the largest clandestine military unit since World War II. It was responsible for sending covert attacks on North Vietnam to make it clear to the leaders of the North that they would suffer serious reprisals for their continuing support of the insurgency in South Vietnam.

#6

The CIA provided SOG with a squadron of long-term secret agents who were trained to parachute into North Vietnam. However, they were not very motivated, and SOG had to airdrop them into North Vietnam to get them to work.

#7

The first OPLAN-34A raids were launched by SOG in February 1964, just seven days after the organization’s founding. However, the Norwegians that were leading the attacks on North Vietnam were getting in trouble with their Vietnamese counterparts.

#8

The Tonkin Gulf incident was when the United States was supposedly attacked by the North Vietnamese in the waters off of Vietnam. The incident allowed the United States to expand its involvement in the Vietnam War, and it used this as justification for the Congressional Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which allowed the president to send American troops to Vietnam.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

Donald D. Blackburn, a US Army adviser in the Philippines in 1941, organized a clandestine spy ring and