War of Numbers: An Intelligence Memoir

Sam Adams had a problem. The numbers just didn't make sense. As a low level CIA analyst in 1966 working on a study on Viet Cong morale, his numbers of defections and desertions suggest the enemy would be gone in a year--a trend at odds with their growing strength on the ground. As he tracked down the source of this discrepancy, he realized that the MACV Order of Battle Estimate, the official count of the enemy at about 250,000, was a fiction based on the flimsiest of evidence. Adams struggled for years to get the right numbers out-his own estimate was that there were at least 250,000 more Viet Cong than on the list. In 1968 he was proven right, when during the Tet offensive 250,000 enemy soldiers that officially did not exist swarmed show more over American positions and dealt the greatest political blow of the war. But Adams was not vindicated, he was an embarrassment, and after five more years of spinning his wheels he quit the CIA for good in 1973.

War of Numbers somehow makes bureaucratic infighting as exciting as any battle. The OBE was the cornerstone of Westermoreland's strategy of attrition; the number upon which all other assessments of logistics and destruction were based. The clash between Adams' evidence based methods (even if the statistical inferences would make a professional cry) and MACV; who ignored small units, large numbers of logistics troops, and even entire classes of the enemy (guerrilla-militia) responsible for the mines and scouting that wore American forces down tactically, is a great story of deceit and failure in American leadership. The perpetrators shift; General Westmoreland (Adams was later the target of a libel suit by Westmoreland for his role in a CBS documentary), CIA Director Richard Helms, MACV J-2, other parties in the White House. Ultimately, Adams comes down to the conclusion that it was a mass collective delusion. A whole group of people responsible for running the war decided to run it on what was politically tenable rather than what was true.

Along with that grand narrative, War of Numbers has some great anecdotes about the life of a spy in the 60s and 70s. Its a lot of overstuffed arm-chairs, endless cables, 5x8 index cards, meetings with people trying to bury you. Two incidents stick out--one where Adams ran all over town looking for a Vietnam expert who worked at the next desk (he had started with her), and a second where he had to specially request a Viet Cong map of South Vietnam for one of his reports (the Viet Cong and government maps had different districts). How could we win if we we're not even on the same map? There's also a lot of black humor: parody songs in the Cosmos Lounge, quotes from Giap in the Saigon office. Adams would probably be the first to admit that he had an easy war, all he staked was his reputation, but his attempts to inform strategy with actual numbers were as a brave of a contribution as anything else. show less