John Plaster’s riveting account of his covert activities as a member of a special operations team during the Vietnam War is “a true insider’s account, this eye-opening report will leave readers feeling as if they’ve been given a hot scoop on a highly classified project” ( Publishers Weekly ). Code-named the Studies and Observations Group, SOG was the most secret elite US military unit to serve in the Vietnam War—so secret its very existence was denied by the government. Composed entirely of volunteers from such ace fighting units as the Army Green Berets, Air Force Air Commandos, and Navy SEALs, SOG took on the most dangerous covert assignments, in the deadliest and most forbidding theaters of operation. In SOG , Major John L. Plaster, a three-tour SOG veteran, shares the gripping exploits of these true American warriors in a minute-by-minute, heartbeat-by-heartbeat account of the group’s stunning operations behind enemy lines—penetrating heavily defended North Vietnamese military facilities, holding off mass enemy attacks, launching daring missions to rescue downed US pilots. Some of the most extraordinary true stories of honor and heroism in the history of the US military, from sabotage to espionage to hand-to-hand combat, Plaster’s account is “a detailed history of this little-known aspect of the Vietnam War…a worthy act of historical rescue from an unjustified, willed oblivion” ( The New York Times ). Major John L. Plaster was a retired US Army Special Forces soldier, regarded as one of the leading sniper experts in the world. A decorated Vietnam War veteran who served in the covert Studies and Observations Group (SOG), Plaster cofounded a renowned sniper school that trains military and law enforcement personnel in highly specialized sniper tactics. He is the author of SOG ; The Ultimate Sniper: An Advanced Training Manual for Military and Police Snipers ; The History of Sniping and Sharpshooting ; and Secret Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines with the Elite Warriors of SOG , a memoir of his three years of service with SOG. SOG 1 COLBY’S SECRET WAR IT WAS A MISERABLE sea yet navigable despite the looming islands and the swells that propelled the heaving 38-foot junk. February was well into North Vietnam’s monsoon season, and when there weren’t full-fledged typhoons there were squalls and showers, day after day, wretched conditions for small craft like this junk—but people must eat, so fish must be caught. Despite the modern times—February 1961—the bobbing boat had been hand built in the Vietnamese tradition, crafted by the very half dozen men who manned her. Wooden hulled and two masted, above deck she had just a small squarish wheelhouse aft, and like all North Vietnamese fishing boats, displayed proudly Communist red sails; they were her only propulsion. And because she lacked modern navigational instruments, her captain steered as had his ancestors for ten generations, by the stars. But in tonight’s overcast it was not his knowledge of the heavens but his familiarity with the towering limestone islands around them that allowed him to steer closer to the seaside town of Cam Pha. Two nights earlier they’d passed the glowing horizon that was Haiphong, North Vietnam’s major port city, and this evening during a quiet sunset they almost could see the hazy mountains of Kwangsi Province, China, some 40 miles northward. No other fishing boats braved tonight’s squalls or teased the darkened reefs and shoals. On so miserable a night, surely no government craft could come to their rescue if they were swamped. But on the other hand, neither would a Communist Swatow-class patrol boat stop them and make difficult inquiries, which actually was their main concern. Despite its authentic appearance, this junk had been built not in North Vietnam, but 800 miles away at Vung Tau, South Vietnam. And while the men who made and manned her were once simple fishermen, in more recent years they’d become refugees who fled the Communists; and even more recently they’d been trained by CIA paramilitary officers who also had financed this entire expedition. When at last his junk reached calmer, leeside waters behind a jagged island, the captain called up a thin, middle-aged man from below. Several crewmen lowered over the side a small woven basket boat crammed with a radio and provisions, and off he went: Agent Ares, the CIA’s first long-term North Vietnam–based operative, had been successfully landed. The man to whom Agent Ares ultimately reported was as much his opposite as was imaginable. Catholic, Ivy League, with intelligent eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses, William Colby looked and sounded more like a corporate executive than the CIA’s Saigon station chief. Comfortable in a bow tie and business suit on even the sultriest tropical days, the man who oversaw this expanding covert enterprise hardly appeared to be a rising CIA star and longtime veteran of the secret wars. In 1944 then-Lieutenant William Colby had