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Operation Chaos
The Vietnam Deserters Who Fought the CIA, the Brainwashers, and Themselves
Matthew Sweet(0)
About
An untold Cold War story: how the CIA tried to infiltrate a radical group of U.S. military deserters, a tale that leads from a bizarre political cult to the heart of the Washington establishment
Stockholm, 1968. A thousand American deserters and draft-resisters are arriving to escape the war in Vietnam. They're young, they're radical, and they want to start a revolution. Some of them even want to take the fight to America. The Swedes treat them like pop stars-but the CIA is determined to stop all that.
It's a job for the deep-cover men of Operation Chaos and their allies-agents who know how to infiltrate organizations and destroy them from inside. Within months, the GIs have turned their fire on one another. Then the interrogations begin-to discover who among them has been brainwashed, Manchurian Candidate-style, to assassinate their leaders.
When Matthew Sweet began investigating this story, he thought the madness was over. He was wrong. Instead, he became the confidant of an eccentric and traumatized group of survivors-each with his own theory about the traitors in their midst.
All Sweet has to do is find out the truth. And stay sane. Which may be difficult when one of his interviewees accuses him of being a CIA agent and another suspects that he's part of a secret plot by the British royal family to start World War III. By that time, he's deep in the labyrinth of truths and half-truths, wondering where reality ends and delusion begins.
Stockholm, 1968. A thousand American deserters and draft-resisters are arriving to escape the war in Vietnam. They're young, they're radical, and they want to start a revolution. Some of them even want to take the fight to America. The Swedes treat them like pop stars-but the CIA is determined to stop all that.
It's a job for the deep-cover men of Operation Chaos and their allies-agents who know how to infiltrate organizations and destroy them from inside. Within months, the GIs have turned their fire on one another. Then the interrogations begin-to discover who among them has been brainwashed, Manchurian Candidate-style, to assassinate their leaders.
When Matthew Sweet began investigating this story, he thought the madness was over. He was wrong. Instead, he became the confidant of an eccentric and traumatized group of survivors-each with his own theory about the traitors in their midst.
All Sweet has to do is find out the truth. And stay sane. Which may be difficult when one of his interviewees accuses him of being a CIA agent and another suspects that he's part of a secret plot by the British royal family to start World War III. By that time, he's deep in the labyrinth of truths and half-truths, wondering where reality ends and delusion begins.
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Reviews
"In this meld of history and reportage, the deserters' stories, and those of dozens of revolutionaries, hosts, and spies, coalesce into an often moving examination of loyalty and dissent. Sweet details an undercover C.I.A. mission to disrupt defection, and sheds light on the exiles' complex motives. His quest to track down all the major players in the story takes him, variously, to a maximum-security prison, a cannabis refinery, and Paris cafés."
The New Yorker
"As humorously fascinating as it is deeply disturbing....Operation Chaos offers a new look at the era and the war that forgoes the usual combat and political narratives in favor of something truly strange and bizarre, rife with countless rabbit holes, plot twists and questionable characters and motives."
Spectrum Culture