cover image War Without Windows: A True Account of a Young Army Officer Trapped in an Intelligence Cover-Up in Vietnam

War Without Windows: A True Account of a Young Army Officer Trapped in an Intelligence Cover-Up in Vietnam

Bruce E. Jones. Vanguard Press, $18.95 (302pp) ISBN 978-0-8149-0934-8

Jones details how, in the months before and during the Tet Offensive, U.S. intelligence doctored records to give the appearance that enemy forces were smaller than they actually were. (Jones provided the only direct physical evidence from inside U.S. headquarters of intelligence fakery during the Westmoreland v. CBS libel case.) This personal and often emotionally charged account tells of Jones's involvement in the self-defeating falsification of the enemy Order of Battle, during which ""the integrity of the intelligence process was sold out.'' The author, a small cog in the intelligence machine, raised as many objections as he dared, but was forced to go along with the program, he maintains, and admits that he was ``by no means immune from our arrogant disdain of the enemy.'' One of the most impressive aspects of the book is Jones's anecdotal dramatization of the so-called military mind, especially the fabled lack of imagination. (February 1)