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Minutes after 2
A.M. on November 21, 1970, more than one hundred U.S. war
planes shattered the dark calm of the skies over Hanoi. Their
mission: rescue sixty-one American POWs from Son Tay prison.
Less than thirty minutes later, the raid was over, but no
Americans had been rescued. The prisoners had been moved from
Son Tay four and a half months earlier and that wasn't all.
Part of the raiding force landed at the wrong compound, a
"school" bristling with enemy soldiers, but the
soldiers weren't Vietnamese . . .
Replete with fascinating
insights into the workings of high-level intelligence and
military command, The Raid is Benjamin Schemmer's unvarnished
account of the courageous mission that was quickly labeled
an intelligence failure by Congress and a Pentagon blunder
by the world press. Determined to ferret out the truth, Schemmer
uncovers one of the CIA's most carefully guarded secrets.
From the planning and live-fire rehearsals to the explosive
reactions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff watching the drama
unfold to the aftermath as the White House and Pentagon struggled
for damage control, Schemmer tackles the tough questions.
What really happened during the twenty-seven minutes the raiders
spent on the ground? Did the CIA know the whole time that
the Americans were gone? Had the Agency in fact been responsible
for the POWs being moved? And perhaps most intriguing, why
was the rescue — though it never freed a single prisoner
— not a failure after all?
Benjamin F. Schemmer, a West Point graduate, Ranger,
and paratrooper, is uniquely qualified to write on military
matters from several vantage points. His military service
included three years in the Office of the Secretary of Defense,
where he became director of land-force weapons systems.
From 1968 to 1992,
he edited the privately owned Armed Forces Journal International
and later Strategic Review, published by the United
States Strategic Institute. He has written major feature articles
for The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times,
and is a frequent lecturer at military command, staff, and
war colleges. He has appeared on network and cable news including,
ABC, CNN, Larry King Live, and Crossfire.
He is the coauthor,
with Colonel John T. Carney, Jr., of a forthcoming book, No
Room for Error: The Covert Operations of America's Special
Tactics Units from Iran to Afghanistanon, the never-before-told
story behind the U.S. Air Force's highly secret special tactics
units (due October, 2002).
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