Columbia University Press Face to Face with the CIA: The Memoir of a North Vietnamese Spymaster

In late 1970, South Vietnamese forces captured a man who, they soon discovered, was no ordinary prisoner. The highest-ranking North Vietnamese officer taken captive during the war, Nguyễn Tài ran an extensive communist clandestine security and intelligence network in Saigon that infiltrated the South Vietnamese government and carried out targeted assassinations. His arrest triggered one of the most intense and prolonged interrogations of the war, conducted by both South Vietnamese and American intelligence services, including the CIA. After many years of service in the postwar government, Nguyễn Tài published this memoir in 1999, recounting how he resisted relentless efforts to break him. This gripping firsthand account is at once a rare glimpse into the shadow war of espionage and a harrowing story of survival. Nguyễn Tài’s unvarnished testimony depicts years of psychological and physical pressure, with detailed descriptions of CIA and South Vietnamese interrogation techniques. It offers valuable insights into not only the tactics used by the United States and its allies during the Vietnam War but also the ethical and strategic dilemmas facing intelligence operations. Both chilling and thought-provoking, Face to Face with the CIA is essential reading for anyone interested in Cold War history and the moral complexities of intelligence work.