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Prologue: Tet, 1968 In defeat, Sam Adams readied his classified files for the transfer downstairs . Appearing far younger than his thirty-four years, Adams was a man of patrician good looks and an all-American affability, although that affability would have been subdued on this day. There were a lot of files to go through, indeed four safes’ worth of files, and each file was in its own way a reason why he felt he had to leave: Accurate intelligence had been suppressed and, worse, deliberately compromised. This melancholy chore went efficiently enough, though, so that by five P.M. Adams was done with his files and could depart for home. The official move would come in the morning. The next day Adams returned to the office, named for the title of its chief, the Special Assistant for Vietnamese Affairs (SAVA), early. Not that by moving two floors away in CIA headquarters Adams was going anywhere far, but still there were farewells at SAVA that needed to be made to secretaries, colleagues, and, dutifully, to the boss who had been so much a part of the deception: This was the special assistant himself, George Carver. Adams would also, of course, want time to go through the overnight cables in from Saigon, and just maybe have one last chance to update the enormous topographic layout of Khe Sanh that dominated the Vietnamese Affairs Staff Related Activities Center (VASRAC), located in a darkened and secure room in the office. Days started slowly at SAVA and so certainly, perhaps Adams reasoned to himself, the farewells could wait a bit. It was January 31, 1968. Adams routinely punched in the code to enter the office, but when the buzzer sounded and the door opened the scene was not what he had expected. The secretaries were typing madly, and the usually quiet VASRAC was teeming with officials gesticulating to one another and frantically updating maps with red pins. Adams managed to catch someone’s attention and was hurriedly told that the Viet Cong were attacking across the northern and central parts of South Vietnam. Cities 1 Hiam_A MONUMENT TO DECEIT_text_Layout 1 1/28/14 9:42 AM Page 1 with names like Nha Trang, Man Me Thuot, Kontum, Hoi An, and Da Nang had been hit, along with smaller towns, villages, and hamlets, in surprise attacks. It was an all-out invasion, but one that was coming from within South Vietnam as Viet Cong units based on the outskirts of population centers were bursting in to take over. Adams postponed his departure from SAVA that day and watched as the offensive unfolded. The latest intelligence reports from South Vietnam became outdated almost the moment they arrived, but apparently the Viet Cong had actually seized the ancient capital of Hué and the offensive, as feared, was already in the southernmost region of the country. The real shocker, though, came when word reached Washington, DC, that Viet Cong commandos were right smack in the middle of the U.S. embassy compound in Saigon. At SAVA, Adams learned of these events as they became known, and he helped out amid the bustle where he could, but he also resignedly took time away from the office for the mundane task of going to the CIA employee credit union to cash a check, and for having a leisurely lunch. It was not that Adams didn’t care; it was just that he realized that what was happening that day in Vietnam, half a world away, had been foreseeable. As an intelligence professional, this fact sickened him. Sam Adams had not predicted the giant Viet Cong offensive, although in the weeks prior he had seen in the intelligence to which he was privy strange and ominous stirrings: Viet Cong agents in Saigon had been falsifying identity cards that would allow them access to the city; Viet Cong defections and desertions had dried up, suggesting that the Communists were on a heightened state of alert; and intercepted Viet Cong radio messages were referring to something called “N-Day.” That this newest intelligence had been ignored was bad enough, but what really upset Adams was that the U.S. military in South Vietnam, headquartered in Saigon and called the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), was deceptively undercounting, and in many cases outright ignoring, Viet Cong strength, and had been doing so for years. Just days into the 1968 New Year, as but one example, U.S. military intelligence officers at MACV had quite...

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