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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.
— Pierre Asselin, author of Vietnam’s American War: A New History (second edition)
Nguyễn Tài (1926–2016) was a prominent Vietnamese revolutionary and senior communist intelligence officer whose life was deeply intertwined with Vietnam’s fight for independence, from resisting French colonial rule to leading counterespionage efforts during the war with the United States. After the country’s reunification, he came under suspicion of cooperating with his American interrogators but was eventually cleared and subsequently held influential positions in the postwar government before retiring in 1992.
Quan Manh Ha is professor of English at the University of Montana. He is the cotranslator of Other Moons: Vietnamese Short Stories of the American War and Its Aftermath (Columbia, 2020) and Bảo Ninh’s Hà Nội at Midnight: Stories (2023), among other books.
Merle L. Pribbenow is a former CIA Vietnamese language and operations officer who since his retirement has been a researcher and author specializing in the Vietnam War. He is the translator of Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 1954–1975 (2002), among other works.
Lien-Hang T. Nguyen is Dorothy Borg Associate Professor in the History of the United States and East Asia at Columbia University.