The author was CIA strategy analyst in Vietnam for five years, including the period from the Paris Accords of 1973 to the final Communist victory in April 1975. His emphatically unauthorized book is an excoriating, almost unbearably painful account of the last days, with emphasis on the delusions and derelictions of high-ranking Americans. The principal target, chillingly portrayed, is Ambassador Graham Martin. Snepp charges that American procrastination and bungling cut off escape for thousands of South Vietnamese. A bitter, disturbing, and controversial book about the sickening end of a tragedy.
