An untold Cold War story: how the CIA tried to infiltrate a radical group of U.S. military deserters, a tale that leads from a bizarre political cult to the heart of the Washington establishmentStockholm, 1968. A thousand American deserters and draft-resisters are arriving to escape the war in Vietnam. They're young, they're radical, and they want to start a revolution. Some of them even want to take the fight to America. The Swedes treat them like pop stars-but the CIA is determined to stop all that.It's a job for the deep-cover men of Operation Chaos and their allies-agents who know how to infiltrate organizations and destroy them from inside. Within months, the GIs have turned their fire on one another. Then the interrogations begin-to discover who among them has been brainwashed, Manchurian Candidate-style, to assassinate their leaders.When Matthew Sweet began investigating this story, he thought the madness was over. He was wrong. Instead, he became the confidant of an eccentric and traumatized group of survivors-each with his own theory about the traitors in their midst. All Sweet has to do is find out the truth. And stay sane. Which may be difficult when one of his interviewees accuses him of being a CIA agent and another suspects that he's part of a secret plot by the British royal family to start World War III. By that time, he's deep in the labyrinth of truths and half-truths, wondering where reality ends and delusion begins.

Who's Who in Operation Chaos xi Introduction: Deep Snow 1 1. The High Road 11 2. The Committee 26 3. The Translator 44 4. The Jerum Affair 56 5. Petunia 72 6. The Birth of Chaos 91 7. The Split 105 8. The Infiltrators 123 9. Out of Love 143 10. The Next Step 163 11. Beyond Psychoanalysis 174 12. The Brainwashers 189 13. The Zombie Army 209 14. Operation Destruction 228 15. The Believers 241 16. The Assassins 266 17. The End of the World 292 18. Cliffhanger 304 Notes 315 Acknowl­edgments 349 Index 353