Now is the Time to Read FIRST IN: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan

The nonfiction book FIRST IN: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan by Gary C. Schroen was published in 2005. Today the book is probably more relevant than when it was published.

In the author's afterword he says: "While there are positive developments taking place in Afghanistan, progress rests on a shaky foundation."

Today as more U.S. troops are sent to Afghanistan to deal with what is clearly a deteriorating situation, these two paragraphs from the book's afterword are very contemporary:

The most significant area of unfinished business in the war on terrorism is centered in the border areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Our current mode of operations and the structure of our military and CIA forces in those border areas are ineffective in bringing the fight to the enemy hiding in those mountains. The strategy should be reconsidered and U.S. military Special Forces units returned to the area, along with seasoned CIA SAD paramilitary officers.

At the same time, U.S. diplomatic policy toward Pakistan should be reviewed and reconsidered, with the aim of strengthening the Pakistani government's, and their military leadership's, resolve to press hard to root out terrorist strongholds and hiding places in the tribal areas.

If you want to understand what's happening right now in Afghanistan and Pakistan, read FIRST IN now. The author does an exceptionally good job of explaining the Afghan culture that so impacts a military victory as well as explaining the policy constraints in the U.S. that can hinder that victory.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs as a National Internet Business Examiner and at Operation Support Jews in the Military and Fiction Marketing, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life.

Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites that get people to say yes to your brand, book or business. Her newest project is the book/website project In Support of Our Troops.

CIA on Secret Missions in Afghanistan in 2001

“A band of elite special forces and CIA operatives who secretly invaded Afghanistan post 9/11 on horseback” is the subject of Doug Stanton’s book HORSE SOLDIERS to be published in May by Scribner according to the April 7th Daily Variety. Disney and producer Jerry Bruckheimer have acquired the screen rights to this project.

I asked my husband if he knew about this mission, and he handed me Gary C. Shroen’s book FIRST IN: An Insider’s Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan.

I don’t think the HORSE SOLDIERS mission is the same mission as Schroen describes in his book. Schroen and other CIA operatives were helicoptered in to Afghanistan to make contact with the Northern Alliance only days after 9/11.

But I started reading Schroen’s book with an eerie feeling. I had temporarily put aside the novel A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS by Khaled Hosseini because I’ve come to a part of the novel (which deals with the disintegration in Afghanistan during the long years of fighting) that I can’t seem to get past.

What’s interesting is that I had no problem getting past a certain scene in Hosseini’s earlier novel THE KITE RUNNER which a male friend of mine could not get past. That scene was about a male victim; the scene I’m stuck on is about female victims.

To be reading at the same time a novel and a nonfiction book that cover much of the same material is eerie. But what’s more upsetting is to realize that those gains in Afghanistan so evident when Schroen’s book was published in 2005 have to a great extent been eroded.

Schroen writes about meeting a Northern Alliance commander (the boldface is mine):

I touched on a key issue for Aref, stating that unlike 1992, when we walked away from the Muhjahedin when victory was achieved, the U.S. government was in this fight for the long haul. We wanted to change conditions in Afghanistan, so that after the Taliban were crushed, and after bin Ladin and his Arab terrorists were eliminated, the country could rebuild, the economy could revive and peace could finally come to Afghanistan. A peaceful, economically stable environment would ensure that the country would never again be used by foreign elements as a sanctuary for terrorists.

And here it is 2009 …
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at LA Internet Business Examiner, Operation Support Jews in the Military, and Fiction Marketing, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

New Vietnam War Movie Based on Non-Fiction Book Announced by HBO Films

The July 17^th Daily Variety announced HBO Films is developing a movie based on former CIA agent Frank Snepp’s 1999 non-fiction book IRREPARABLE HARM: A FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT OF HOW ONE AGENT TOOK ON THE AGENCY IN AN EPIC BATTLER OVER FREE SPEECH.

This is a follow-up to his 1977 non-fiction book DECENT INTERVAL: AN INSIDER’S ACCCOUNT OF SAIGON’S INDECENT END, TOLD BY THE CIA’S CHIEF STRATEGY ANALYST IN VIETNAM.

Here’s the IRREPARABLE HARM review by John J. Miller (no relation) on the book’s Amazon page (boldface mine):

Former CIA spook Frank Snepp was one of the last Americans lifted off the U.S. embassy in Saigon in 1975, at the tail end of the Vietnam War. In the days leading up to that fateful moment, he complained that the United States needed to do more to protect its intelligence assets, most of whom were left behind.

"We'd betrayed the Vietnamese who'd depended on us," writes Snepp in Irreparable Harm, "and those who worked most closely with them ... now had blood on our hands, for it was we who in our daily contacts had convinced them to trust us."

Snepp criticized this turn of events in a 1977 book, Decent Interval, and was promptly sued by the CIA because they had not given him clearance to write about his experiences.

The resulting court case went all the way to the Supreme Court. Snepp tried to defend himself on First Amendment grounds with the help of a then-unknown Harvard lawyer named Alan Dershowitz.

He ultimately lost the case, plus his money and the right to publish anything about the CIA without first receiving authorization. Irreparable Harm--which has received CIA clearance--captures all the twists and turns of Snepp's legal fight …

I find it interesting that the HBO movie will be about the legal battle against a large bureaucracy – how many such movies have we seen? – rather than about the actual story: the U.S.’s betrayal of its South Vietnamese intelligence assets.

In intelligence lingo intelligence assets means people – people with families, people who trusted you at great risk to their own lives and the lives of their families. And we left those people behind to face almost-certain death at the hands of the North Vietnamese.

How many years from now might some former CIA agent write a similar story about leaving behind our intelligence assets in Iraq and Afghanistan – to face almost-certain death?

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Vietnam War, CIA, Frank Snepp, Iraq War, Mrs. Lieutenant, fall of Saigon, HBO Films