50 Years On: The Last Great Spy Story of the Vietnam War

Frank Snepp, a top CIA analyst in Saigon in the war’s chaotic final weeks, tells how officials fatally ignored the warnings of two top spies in the enemy camp.

Apr. 29, 1975: An Air America helicopter crewman helps evacuees up the ladder on top of a Saigon Building to ferry evcuaees to US Navy ships off South Vietnam’s coast (UPI photo by Van Es)

THIS WEEK 50 YEARS AGO, Frank Snepp was in Saigon desperately trying to convince his bosses and Washington that U.S. officials were falling into a communist trap. As the CIA’s chief analyst of North Vietnamese strategy in Saigon, Snepp had secret agents inside the enemy camp who were telling him in no uncertain terms that, contrary to communist disinformation that U.S. diplomats and his own CIA boss had swallowed—that there could be a truce and peaceful end to the long war—North Vietnamese troops were preparing to overrun the capital in a final, brutal assault.

The full story of Snepp and his spies, one inside the communists’ military headquarters in the south, the other in Hanoi, has long been buried in layers of classification and ass-covering censorship. Snepp himself was careful not to reveal details of the espionage breakthroughs in his 1977 memoir, Decent Interval:  An Insider's Account of Saigon's Indecent End Told by the CIA's Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam. 

“I was very careful not to go into details that might expose people who had been left behind or agents who had been left behind,” he told me on the SpyTalk podcast. “I wrote about these spies in my book, but I was very careful to do so circumspectly. Now I can tell you a lot more.”

Frank Snepp (LinkedIn)

Snepp’s spy story begins with his secret agent inside COSVN—the communists’ Central Office for South Vietnam—Hanoi’s military headquarters in the jungle on the Cambodia border.

“His name is Vo Van Ba,” Snepp reveals. “Vo Van Ba was the best spy of the war.” Had U.S. officials believed him, the calamity of the war’s last days, with thousands of South Vietnamese desperately trying to escape the invading communists and helicopters lifting U.S. officials off rooftops, might have been avoided.

You can listen to the whole story here, or on whatever your preferred podcast platform.