Chapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Valley of Death: From Blockbuster to Just Busted. Chapter 3 Tailwind (Take 1): Courage and Covert Operations. Chapter 4 Tailwind (Take 2): A Government Betrays Its People. Chapter 5 Lies and Legends, Men and Remembered Mettle Chapter 6 Two Parts Apocalypse Now and a Pinch of Sarin: Popular Culture's Recipe for Valley of Death. Chapter 7 Beyond Reason: Revelation in The Valley of Death Chapter 8 Consider the Sources: Thomas Moorer and John Singlaub Chapter 9 What Was She Thinking? April Oliver's Willing Suspension of Disbelief Chapter 10 The CNN-Tailwind Affair: Journalism in a Fearful America Chapter 11 Afterword

Jerry Lembcke delves into the origins of CNN's 1998 story about U.S. soldiers in Vietnam using nerve gas on defectors and how it came to be believed, not only by those who told it, but by news reporters and the public. In his investigation, Lembcke shows that the myth of Operation Tailwind originated in the fiction of popular culture, the unreliability of memory, and the conspiracy-minded, ultra-Right wing, fundamentalist Christian community.