Talking with Victor Charlie: An Interrogator's Story

I am reading the other 2 reviews of this book, and I am truly wondering as to whether the authors "skimmed through" this book, or simply ddidn't know that much about the intracicies of the Vietnam War to pick up on the latent points Mr. Tourison made within the pages of "Talking With Victor Charlie". This book, while only 291 pages, took me an unusual 8 days to read it. It was so densely packed with up to now unknown facets and idiosyncrasies of the American War in Vietnam that I could write a 20,000 word review and only cover 1/4 of Tourison's revelations. Needles to say that it is doubtlessly a scathing indictment of America's "botching" of the conduct of the war. Tourison certainly knows what he is talking about. Aside from writing 2 other books (I've read them both-they are awesome!) Project Alpha: Washington's Secret Military Operations in North Vietnam and Secret Army, Secret War: Washington's Tragic Spy Operation in North Vietnam (Naval Institute Special Warfare Series) Tourison is is a retired army chief warrant officer and holds a B.A. in political science from Mt. St. Mary's College. He served and well documents his tours in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia as both an enlisted and warrant intelligence officer from 1961-1963, 1965-1967 and 1970 to 1974. He was the acting branch chief of the the Defense Intelligence Agency's "Special Office for POW/Mia Affairs". Finally, Tourison is 100% fluent in Vietnamese and Mandarin Chinese and is considered an expert in Morse interception operations and intelligence analysis. While the fluency of Tourison's writing lacks the eloquence and flow of an accomplished novelist (there were parts of this book that were kind of "dry" at times) the profuse information put forth within the pages of this book will keep the historian of this war ruminating for weeks on end! While Tourison teaches the reader the professional tricks an interrogator used in Vietnam, one has to wonder why this country lost this war even after uncountable times he was able to extract from captured North Vietnamese and Viet Cong cadre military intelligence that made the difference in each instance between strategic victory and hours of our forces conducting fruitless search, being ambushed, or worse, being killed! The Wrong War: Why We Lost in Vietnam Tourison had an interesting past. He had seen the world by age 21. Starting his military career at Fort Devins, Mass. in 1958, as a Morse incercept operator, he was soon transferred to such worldly posts as Italy, Germany, Yugoslavia and Germany (1959-1960), Ankara Turkey and Tripoli, Libya (1960-1961), he was forced to end his world wind tour when tonsillitis forced him to go stateside to recuperate with bed rest for 6 months. Reenlisting in 1961 and immersing himself in Vietnamese language courses, he turned 21 in Saigon in October, 1961. Although there is a book to confirm Tourison's thoughts about the way Vietnamese viewed Americans at the time The Ugly American it is interesting to

Excellent and detailed narrative of how interrogation and document exploitation operations are conducted downrange. The author also goes into great detail on the military intelligence analytical process. This book provides an excellent overall insight into the Human Intelligence field and the beginnings of the modern Army Interrogator speciality. This account is much more illustrative of what goes on today in Iraq and Afghanistan than other more recent pop-culture works like "Fear Up Harsh" (which was a self promoting piece of fiction masquerading as fact). For me the book dragged just a little sometimmes when the author was recounting how the US and Repuliic of Vietnam intelligence apparatus in Saigon was set up or very obscure technical points about the organization of Viet Cong and PAVN units. That's not to say those aren't interesting topics, I was just looking for more interrogation case studies. All that being said, can't reccomend this book highly enough for anyone wishing to catch an honest, accurate glimpse into how the US military runs interrogation operations downrange.

In the current controversy about rendition and harsh interrogation, Tourison recounts, in a relaxed way, both how to conduct effective and humane interrogations, and, equally important, how to organize and cross-reference the data from multiple interviews with multiple subjects. He uses the tradecraft term of needing to build a "wiring diagram" of relationships among your subjects and other people and things to which they relate. Some of the more controversial works on interrogation, such as the CIA KUBARK manual, focus exclusively on interaction with a prisoner, and not well enough on how to use what was learned, not only to disseminate, but to use in future interviews with the same prisoner. He recounted when it was best to focus on building a relationship between interrogator and subject, which often is possible to do when the interrogator is not concerned about being "tough" I've seen a good deal of material in the intelligence and special operations community, and nothing comes close to Tourison's wisdom.