cia in vietnam paper

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Travis Beecroft HIST 642 Elkind May 23, 2014 The CIA in Vietnam “Vietnam is still with us. It has created doubts about American judgment, about American credibility, about American power—not only at home, but throughout the world. It has poisoned our domestic debate. So we paid an exorbitant price for the decisions that were made in good faith and for good purpose.” 1 The seeds of American foreign policy planted during the Cold War period festered in Vietnam during the twenty-plus years of American involvement. Not only did this cast doubts on American judgment, credibility, and power, both domestically and internationally, which Kissinger refers to at the commencement of this paper, it also damaged the reputation of the CIA’s operative and intelligence wings in the process. These limbs reached across the globe to act on behalf of the president and the American government, often against the will of the American people, in the name of policies such as “containment” and the “Domino Theory,” which sought to prevent the spread of Communism to regions previously on the periphery of American political interest. 1 Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking, 1991), 9. Quote by Henry Kissinger. Beecroft, 1

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Page 1: CIA in Vietnam Paper

Travis BeecroftHIST 642ElkindMay 23, 2014

The CIA in Vietnam“Vietnam is still with us. It has created doubts about American judgment, about

American credibility, about American power—not only at home, but throughout the world. It has poisoned our domestic debate. So we paid an exorbitant price for the

decisions that were made in good faith and for good purpose.”1

The seeds of American foreign policy planted during the Cold War period

festered in Vietnam during the twenty-plus years of American involvement. Not only did

this cast doubts on American judgment, credibility, and power, both domestically and

internationally, which Kissinger refers to at the commencement of this paper, it also

damaged the reputation of the CIA’s operative and intelligence wings in the process.

These limbs reached across the globe to act on behalf of the president and the American

government, often against the will of the American people, in the name of policies such

as “containment” and the “Domino Theory,” which sought to prevent the spread of

Communism to regions previously on the periphery of American political interest. In the

process, the American government overextended and exposed the weaknesses of its

foreign policy and their understanding of the Vietnamese culture and political history.

The CIA has received its fair share of the criticism for these failures, although in reality it

simply acts on behalf of a higher organization. In this way, “the CIA is the opening

probe, the agitator or facilitator,” and “it always acts in response to some other

initiative.”2 Those initiatives required the CIA to support a fragile South Vietnamese

government and conduct clandestine counterinsurgency and pacification operations on

the ground throughout Vietnam, while gathering intelligence that would, in theory,

1 Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking, 1991), 9. Quote by Henry Kissinger.2 L. Fletcher Prouty, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy (New York: Carol Pub. Group, 1992), 50.

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contribute to a better understanding of the enemy and accurately assess the effects of the

American military effort. It will be shown that their efforts on the ground were brutal

and ineffective, but although their intelligence at times was faulty, any accurate

intelligence that countered the plans of the president was discarded, leaving the CIA to

shoulder much of the blame that, at times, was not warranted.

The amount of scholarly material on the involvement of the CIA during the war in

Vietnam is extensive and at times overwhelming. With the release of the Pentagon

Papers and other previously classified material, scholars have been granted unparalleled

access to the treasure trove of documents that illuminate American activities in Indochina

from the 1950s until the mid-1970s. These documents, along with sources that were

readily available prior to their declassification, have allowed numerous academics and

amateur researchers the opportunity to discover for themselves the extent of CIA

meddling in North and South Vietnam. Consequently, these primary documents have

facilitated for a plethora of secondary material by scholars who have covered a wide

variety of perspectives, and in turn, they have served as a catalyst for debates on the

morality of their operations and their overall effectiveness. These sources have produced

a well-rounded study of the Vietnam War, perhaps resulting in a comprehensiveness

rivaled only by the scholarship on World War II. This historiographical section will not

feature all of the sources conferred for this paper, but will highlight key contributors to its

development. The scholarship overall reveals that for the most part, earlier accounts of

the CIA’s involvement in Vietnam were either apologetic or extremely critical, while

recent decades have presented a more analytical approach. The release of the Pentagon

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Papers has contributed to this, as scholars have been able to form more objective analysis,

both derogatory towards and supportive of intelligence efforts.

Among the primary documents most pertinent to the discussion of the CIA’s

involvement in Vietnam are the monographs released in 2009 by former clandestine

services officer Thomas Ahern Jr., who served in South Vietnam and Laos during the

war. Comprising over two thousand pages in six volumes, Ahern’s work provides the

most comprehensive account of CIA operations during the Vietnam War from an

American perspective, four of which have proven to be an invaluable resource for this

paper. The first three of his six volumes specifically deal with the high years of the war

in Vietnam and the crisis of the final evacuation of Saigon. Although not the first to be

published in the series, The CIA and the House of Ngo is an appropriate place to begin

conversation because it details the beginning of CIA involvement in Vietnam during their

period of support for Ngo Dinh Diem, the first president of South Vietnam from 1955

until his assassination in 1963. Ahern explains that American support for Diem was

“complicated from the very start by fundamental disagreements with Diem […] over the

kind of leadership required and the kind of polity to be built,” and “although [the CIA]

cooperated to help Diem deal with the immediate threats to his survival in office, they

developed conflicting approaches to the long-term issue of constructing for him a base of

mass political support.”3 Furthermore, Ahern notes that the task of finding qualified

leaders to launch resistance operations in North Vietnam was ineffective. As multiple

candidates proved their inadequacy in achieving the aims of the CIA, Ngo Dinh Nhu,

Diem’s younger brother “quickly emerged as the most promising of an unimpressive lot,”

3 Thomas L. Ahern, CIA and the House of Ngo: Covert Action in South Vietnam, 1954-1963 (Texas Tech Vietnam Center and Archive, 2000), 6, accessed February 28, 2014, http://today.ttu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/02-cia-and-the-house-of-ngo.pdf.

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and that “in any case, there was nobody else.”4 This was a sentiment felt by the U.S.

towards both Diem and Nhu, and the book highlights their relationship with the CIA until

Diem’s assassination via coup in 1963.

Following this work in terms of historical chronology is CIA and the Generals,

which details the CIA’s political action programs as well as its role in South Vietnamese

elections and secret negotiations from 1964-1975. This book covers the period after

Diem’s assassination until the fall of Saigon in 1975, and begins by explaining that after

the deaths of Diem and Nhu via a CIA-lead coup, CIA Headquarters made concerted

efforts to find the right people to lead the new government in South Vietnam. Ahern

explains that even the person placed in charge of the new South Vietnamese government,

General Nguyen Khanh, the first person to advise the CIA of a serious plan for the coup,

seemed unable to perform the tasks the CIA needed of him. Exemplifying this, Ahern

states that “it became clear to the [CIA] that Nguyen Khanh had no more capacity than

General Minh [leader of the coup against Diem] to unify the officer corps in a new

campaign to mobilize the country against the Viet Cong.”5 As a result, it became clear to

Saigon and the U.S. that Khanh “would require unqualified U.S. support; without it, he

would probably disappear in a neutralist putsch.”6 As it would turn out, the government

in Saigon would deteriorate and Khanh was ousted by a coup in 1965, which elevated

Nguyen Van Thieu to president of South Vietnam. Thieu’s relationship with the U.S. and

the CIA was on shaky ground as well. Ahern characterizes Thieu as being “suspicio[us]

of U.S. purposes,” and that his “mistrust of the U.S. focused increasingly on the CIA,

4 Ibid, 23.5 Thomas L. Ahern, CIA and the Generals: Covert Support to Military Government in South Vietnam (Texas Tech Vietnam Center and Archive, 1998), 19, accessed February 28, 2014. http://today.ttu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/01-cia-and-the-generals.pdf.6 Ahern, CIA and the Generals, 20.

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which he saw as an ubiquitous power either beyond Washington’s control or being used

by the U.S. government to thwart Saigon’s desires.”7 Ahern addresses the animosity

between the CIA and Thieu surrounding the 1971 Presidential election in South Vietnam,

which resulted in a second term for Thieu. Furthermore, he discusses the events leading

up to the 1968 Tet Offensive and the 1972 Easter Offensive which prompted the famous

quote by CIA officer Thomas Polgar who said that “the illusion that [the] was is over and

we have won is shattered,” a sentiment that began to sweep across CIA headquarters and

throughout the United States as well.8

The third volume in the series entitled CIA and Rural Pacification in South

Vietnam documents efforts made by the CIA to foster support and loyalty amongst the

South Vietnamese peasantry for the Saigon government between 1955 and 1975. In this

book, Ahern describes the six programs the CIA instituted in 1961 they hoped would

provide an active role in village-level counterinsurgency efforts. The first to be

implemented was the Citizen’s Irregular Defense Groups (CIDG), which imposed a

“strictly defensive posture: not only the static village defense element but also the

company-sized mobile unit called Strike Force was devoted exclusively to village

protection.”9 This program’s goal was to protect the mountain villagers, the

Montagnards, in South Vietnam from the Viet Cong, whom they “appeared to hate […] at

least as much as they did the Diem government.”10 As a result of their efforts, the CIDG

at Buon Enao, the programs first Area Development Center, killed over 200 Viet Cong

7 Ibid, 87.8 Ibid, 109-111.9 Thomas L. Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification in South Vietnam, (Texas Tech Vietnam Center and Archive, 2001) 53, accessed February 28, 2014. http://today.ttu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/03-cia-and-rural-pacification.pdf.10 Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification in South Vietnam, 46.

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and captured over 460 in 1962, a year when they conducted sixteen significant Strike

Force offensive actions.11 The CIDG and the Mountain Scouts program that would

follow focused on “separating the Montagnards from the Viet Cong, ‘thus depriving the

VC of local resources.”12 Two of the subsequent programs, including the Combat Youth

and Combat Intelligence Teams, “relied on the durable anti-Communist fervor of the

Catholic minority, whose favored status in the Diem government spared it the reciprocal

suspicions hat afflicted the efforts with other minorities,” allowing these groups to

survive after the CIA’s presence ceased.13 The two largest programs, the Strategic

Hamlets, focusing on security arrangements, political reforms, and economic

development for the ethnic Vietnamese, and the Force Populaire, also focusing on

security of the rural population, but drew its working-level cadres from the peasantry

instead of the professional bureaucracy, were both originated and associated by Ngo Dinh

Diem and his brothers. As a result, “irreducible structural problems would have made

their failure unavoidable,” even had the Diem regime survived.14

Another in the six-volume series is Ahern’s book entitled The Way We Do

Things: Black Entry Operations into North Vietnam. This book details CIA efforts to

launch clandestine espionage and sabotage missions in North Vietnam until 1963, when

the CIA’s primary role was transferred to the U.S. military. Ahern explains that in 1961,

President Kennedy instructed the CIA to “make every possible effort to launch guerilla

operations in North Vietnam territory,” hoping that the North Vietnamese would get “a

11 Ibid, 59.12 Ibid, 65.13 Ibid, 95.14 Ibid, 95.

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taste of their own medicine.”15 The agents sent in would “collect information on the

communists’ security practices for use by airborne teams dropped near their villages and

operating out of otherwise uninhabited safe havens.”16 However, despite the CIA’s

efforts to cause havoc in the North, the program had a series of failures by 1963 and their

lack of “curiosity [or] interest in the causes of known failures” was caused to “inadequate

staffing.”17 Ahern notes that some of these failures could be attributed to “poorly selected

drop zones,” agents’ “almost universal failure to come up on the air [radio] for weeks

after insertion,” and the dependence on a recruiting process that allowed the agents to “be

manipulated into a series of embarrassing and damaging failures in which nearly all the

agents were controlled by the other side.”18 These four books combine to create a

comprehensive report of the CIA’s efforts on the ground in Vietnam and are the bulk of

the primary material used for this paper.

Memoirs will also play a role in the development of this paper, specifically those

by Colonel Edward Lansdale, head of the Saigon Military Mission in Vietnam from

1954-1957, and George W. Allen, a former CIA intelligence analyst specializing on

Vietnam from 1948-1968. Lansdale’s memoir details his roles in the Philippines and

Vietnam where he served as a member of the CIA in an advisory role to Ramon

Magsaysay and Ngo Dinh Diem. Lansdale, a specialist in psychological warfare, trained

South Vietnamese in various tactics and had the SMM perform numerous counter-terror

campaigns against the North Vietnamese, which many would call brutal and at least

15 Thomas L. Ahern, The Way We Do Things: Black Entry Operations into North Vietnam 1961-1964 (Texas Tech Vietnam Center and Archive, 2005) 10, accessed February 28, 2014. http://today.ttu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/05-the-way-we-do-things.pdf.16 Ahern, The Way We Do Things, 11.17 Ibid, 62.18 Ibid, 62-63.

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controversial. In his memoir, Lansdale is coy about his involvement in Vietnam, and

most of his writing “sentimentalizes or brutalizes people’s motivations.”19 In his review

of Lansdale’s memoir, David Chandler is very critical of Lansdale for this reason, stating

that “historians will not be helped very much by Lansdale’s memoirs, despite his central

role in any account of U.S. involvement in the post-war Philippines and Vietnam in the

years 1954-1956,” and that this is partly because “many of his statements fail to stand up

to checking.”20 It’s hard not to agree with Chandler, who closes his review by

referencing an Italian proverb that says “lies have very short legs,” and that “in spite of

its charm, [Lansdale’s book] is a short-legged book.”21 For that reason, his memoir will

be used selectively and only when necessary.

George Allen’s memoir, on the other hand, is a valuable resource because it does

not gloss over any of the CIA’s involvement in Vietnam. Allen explains that America’s

failure in Vietnam was not simply because “intelligence was lacking, or wrong, but

because it was not in accord with what its consumers wanted to believe, and because its

relevance was outweighed by other factors in the minds of those who made national

security policy decisions.”22 As it will be shown in the development of this paper, many

CIA analysts were pessimistic about American strategies during the war effort. With this

in mind, Allen hopes to contribute “to the reader’s understanding of the complexities” of

the decision-making process.23 To contextualize this, Allen documents the increased

19 David P. Chandler, review of In the Midst of Wars: An American’s Mission to Southeast Asia, by Edward Lansdale, The Journal of Asian Studies 34.3, May 1975, 856. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2052584.20 Chandler, 856.21 Ibid, 857.22 George W. Allen, None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001), x.23 Allen, None So Blind, x.

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American involvement in Indochina as it became apparent the French were not going to

defeat the Viet Minh, and the “absence of a viable political rationale to undergird the

Saigon government’s counterinsurgency effort, [which] plagued American efforts

throughout the war.”24 Because of his criticism of the CIA and the bureaucracy involved

in the war’s decision-making, this memoir will serve a much more valuable purpose than

Lansdale’s, and will feature more prominently in the development of this paper.

A fair amount of secondary material focuses on the history of the CIA in general,

which occasional emphasis on the development of the CIA’s role in the Vietnam War.

One such source entitled The CIA and American Democracy by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones

details the evolution of the CIA since its inception in 1947 as a result of President

Truman’s National Security Act. In his preface, Jeffreys-Jones acknowledges that his

book “contains no sensational revelations, proceeds in an orthodox chronological manner,

and rests on documentary and verifiable sources.”25 Even so, this book is reliable

because it shows how the Agency was able to operate within the context of American

democracy, and details the pessimism felt by the intelligence community during the war.

Jeffreys-Jones begins his book by explaining that “although the Agency has generally

fulfilled the hope of its founders for an adequate foreign-intelligence capability, its

counsels have sometimes fallen on deaf ears,” because of “the CIA’s lack of proper

standing in Washington policymaking circles.”26 This was a sentiment echoed earlier by

George Allen, and will be further echoed by scholars and intelligence analysts throughout

the paper. It would be one thing for the president to ignore faulty information, but

24 Ibid, 138.25 Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), ix.26 Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy, ix.

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Jeffreys-Jones is critical of the U.S. government and their dismissal of reliable analysis,

and as a result, CIA intelligence analysts given an unfair share of the blame in the failed

efforts by the United States in Vietnam.

L. Fletcher Prouty’s book entitled JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to

Assassinate John F. Kennedy, and Stanley Karnow’s Vietnam: A History, will also be

used in the development of this paper. Prouty’s book is an account of the “power elite

and of its activities on an international scale during the Cold War, from 1943-1990.”27 Is

essential argument is that “no major event during [that] period was the result of chance.

Each was craftily and systematically planned by a power elite.”28 He organizes his book

around this notion and “present[s] an analysis of selected events of the past fifty years

that have changed the course of history in the United States and the world.”29

Specifically related to Vietnam, Prouty discusses the role Vietnam played in the Cold

War, and details the CIA’s Saigon Military Mission, the exodus of civilians from North

Vietnam to South Vietnam, and the overall strategy and tactics used by the CIA in

Indochina to win a proxy-war. This will be a valuable resource because it also discusses

the role of the CIA as a governmental agency, and the relationship the CIA and President

Kennedy shared during his time in office. Karnow’s Vietnam: A History is an all-

encompassing account of the Vietnam War is Stanley Karnow in his book Vietnam: A

History. Using a perspective he developed during his time in France before the war and

Vietnam during the war, Karnow is able to “produce a panoramic account that, while

concentrating primarily on the American intervention, would also describe and analyze

27 Prouty, JFK, xxvii.28 Ibid, xxviii.29 Ibid, xxviii.

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the origins of the contemporary conflict.”30 Karnow, along with many others, also

introduces his readers to Edward Lansdale and documents the tactics used by the SMM

during his time in Vietnam. Furthermore, she details the CIA’s Phoenix Program, lead

by William Colby, which took the lives of thousands of Viet Cong in the hopes of

damaging their political infrastructure. Both will be valuable resources for this paper.

At the end of World War II, with the Soviet Union emerging as a threat to its

Western Allies, there was a general agreement between the Truman Administration and

Congress about the need for a peacetime central intelligence service, however, the form

this service would take was debated. With the passage of President Truman’s 1947

National Security Act, which included a provision for the establishment of the CIA, for

the first time the government “gave democratic legislative sanction to a foreign-

intelligence agency, and […] officially approved those intelligence guidelines on which

there was a common agreement.”31 After its inception, it was believed that the CIA

“might possibly be useful in time of war, but not in peace, when there was no justification

for the idea that ‘political and intelligence activities’ would be ‘completely dominated by

the Armed Forces’ through the CIA.”32 By 1948, the United States was eager to prevent

the spread of Soviet Communist influence and it was concluded by the Joint Chiefs of

Staff that “the United States should have the means to support foreign resistance

movements in guerilla warfare, and that peacetime responsibility in this regard should be

that of the CIA.” 33 They also agreed to give the CIA “primary responsibility for

30 Karnow, Vietnam: A History, xi-xii.31 Jeffreys-Jones, 24.32 Ibid, 38. Quote by former OSS officer William A. Eddy.33 Michael McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and Counter-Terrorism 1940-1990 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), 28.

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conducting psychological and unconventional—including guerilla—warfare activities.”34

For those who sponsored the creation of the National Security Act, they understood that

“no matter what was written into the law, the CIA, under a cloak of secrecy, could be

manipulated to do everything that was requested of it later.”35 This paved the way for the

CIA’s covert involvement in Vietnam.

The first task for the CIA in Vietnam after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu

was to support Ngo Dinh Diem, an anti-Communist Catholic who took office in 1954 and

was chosen by the United States to represent the new South Vietnamese government.

Even though U.S. officials thought Diem was “incapable of succeeding, [they] saw him

as the only candidate for leadership of an anti-Communist South Vietnam.”36 When it

became clear that Diem was faced with opposition in the form of the French dominated

Vietnamese military, the CIA, under the guise of the newly created Saigon Military

Mission (SMM), undertook their “biggest task [of] keep[ing] Ngo Dinh Diem alive.”37

To do this, the SMM enlisted an elite guard for Diem’s protection, and “in a series of

adroit political moves [they] helped Diem gradually extend his authority in the creation

of a central government.”38 It soon became clear that “without CIA intervention on his

behalf Diem would not have survived six months in office.”39 To build local support for

Diem prior to the 1955 election, the SMM implemented numerous propaganda techniques

that would steer the election in his favor. In one instance, a member of the SMM ordered

one million tiny phonograph toys equipped with a brief recording of a political speech

34 McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft, 29.35 Prouty, 19.36 Ahern, CIA and the House of Ngo, 73.37 Prouty, 67.38 Ibid, 63.39 Ahern, CIA and the House of Ngo, 56.

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made by Diem. “The villagers, who had never seen or heard of anything like this before,

were astounded,” and that “such modern ‘witchcraft’ as this ‘voice in a box’ helped

guarantee the election of Diem” with 98% of the vote.40 So imperative was the support

given by the SMM that “none of this could have happened without the skillful undercover

work of the CIA and its experienced Saigon Military Mission.”41

In the years after achieving victory for Diem in the election, the CIA conducted

numerous pacification and counterinsurgency efforts in the South Vietnamese

countryside in the hopes of winning over the rural peasant population by playing an

“active role in village-level counterinsurgency in South Vietnam” against the Viet

Cong.42 The six programs instituted in 1961, including the Citizens Irregular Defense

Groups (CIDG), Mountain Scouts, the Combat Youth and Combat Intelligence teams, the

Strategic Hamlets, and the Force Populaire, achieved varying levels of success. For

instance, the goals of the CIDG were to ensure village protection, avoid “pursuit of the

enemy’s regular forces,” and to “‘give [the villagers] something to fight for and

something to fight with,’” without “creat[ing] a professional army.”43 In doing this, the

CIDG was able to kill over 200 Viet Cong and capture over 460 at Buon Enao in 1962.44

The Strategic Hamlets program, for example, which sought to create new communities of

rural peasants that would be isolated from the Viet Cong, “disposed of very large material

resources, mostly American, which offered “an improved standard of living” for the

affected peasants.”45 In sum, there were about 13,000 hamlets in South Vietnam,46 and

40 Prouty, 68-69.41 Ibid, 69.42 Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification in South Vietnam, 41.43 Ibid, 53.44 Ibid, 59.45 Ibid, 83.46 Allen, 222.

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“even where the Strategic Hamlet program provoked peasant hostility, it created genuine

problems for the [Viet Cong] political and military organization in the countryside.”47

Despite the benefits these programs offered, they were still deemed to be

unsuccessful. Regarding the CIDG, because of its defensive posture, it was unable to

maintain a powerful presence in the mountain regions, and eventually, there was “limited

CIDG success in creating reciprocal bonds of loyalty between the Montagnards and the

government.”48 The CIDG also “had no potential to reduce VC access to and influence

over the lowland Vietnamese majority.”49 On the other hand, while the Strategic Hamlets

created an improved standard of living for some involved, they “largely failed to attract

voluntary participation” which would have produced greater levels of success.50

Moreover, because many hamlets were scattered far across the countryside, “some

hamlets […] would be under quite firm governmental control while more remote hamlets

in the same village would be ‘out of bounds’ for government forces and fully under

Communist control.”51 The disappointment of the pacification efforts can be attributed to

the fact that “the Agency understood the insurgency little better than did the rest of the

bureaucracy.”52 These efforts failed to produce the desired results because “almost none

of the civil bureaucracy [in Saigon was] in direct touch with the peasantry” and that “the

Army constituted the only organ of government with a widespread rural influence.”53

Perhaps most importantly, the programs “had little political impact in attracting the

loyalty of the people—‘winning their hearts and minds’—because they were conducted

47 Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 84.48 Ibid, 59.49 Ibid, 73.50 Ibid, 83.51 Allen, 220.52 Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification in South Vietnam, xiv.53 Ibid, 5.

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in a political vacuum,” facilitated by Diem’s inability to win over minority groups,

something vitally important to ensure the stability of an already fragile regime.54

Despite the CIA’s efforts to build support for Diem in South Vietnam, he was still

detested by many for the distance he created between his bureaucracy and the minority

groups, which constituted a large percentage of the population. When it became clear in

1960 “that dissidence among non-Communists in Saigon was on the rise” and that

General Tran Van Minh was attempting to “identify potential coup participants,” the CIA

needed to do all it could to keep Diem alive or, after growing tired of Diem’s numerous

inabilities, watch the events unfold.55 At first, the CIA did whatever they could to keep

Diem in power. They had successfully turned a 1960 mutiny attempt by a number of

paratroopers into lengthy negotiations that would “preserve [Diem’s] role ‘as the leader

in the…anti-Communist battle.’”56 Because Diem’s opposition in this instance “lack[ed]

any kind of political program or even serious interest in power, [they] were easily

outmaneuvered,” and their attempted mutiny “did little more than intensify mutual

distrust.”57 With American frustration of Diem escalating, it was decided that “‘more

aggressive probing’ for possible replacements should ‘Diem’s government disappear.’”58

By late June 1963, rumors of another attempted coup towards Diem were swirling, and

again “the U.S. stood firmly behind the regime and hoped to influence it in the right

direction,” and that “‘rash attempt to knock it over’ would benefit only the Viet Cong.”59

54 Allen, 140.55 Ahern, CIA and the House of Ngo, 140.56 Ibid, 140.57 Ibid, 144.58 Ibid, 151.59 Ibid, 168-169.

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By August 1963, however, it seemed as though American policymakers had turned sour

on the idea of continuing their support of the Diem regime, and Henry Cabot Lodge sent

a cable to Washington stating “‘we are launched on a course from which there is no

respectable turning back: the overthrow of the Diem government.’”60 A few months later

in October, Lodge “confirmed that America would ‘not thwart’ the coup” should there be

one.61 Shortly afterwards, President Kennedy stated to Lodge that “‘once a coup under

responsible leadership has begun…it is in the interest of U.S. government that it should

succeed.’”62 By November, coordination between Vietnamese General Don and the

CIA’s Major Lucien Conein had produced a satisfactory plan for the assassination, and

on November 2, 1963, Diem and his brother Nhu were shot at “point-blank from the gun

turret with an automatic weapon,” then sprayed with bullets and stabbed “repeatedly with

a knife,” thus bringing an end to the Diem regime.63

In addition to supporting the Diem government through pacification efforts and

ultimately participating in the coup against him, the CIA also conducted numerous

counterinsurgency efforts throughout Vietnam. The man chosen to head the SMM in its

first years was Colonel Edward Lansdale, “a deceptively mild, self-effacing former

advertising executive” who had served as a member of the Office of Strategic Services

(OSS) during WWII. It was his job to “assist the Vietnamese in counter-guerilla training

and to advise as necessary on governmental measures for resistance to Communist

actions.”64 In doing this, he and the SMM performed numerous psychological warfare

60 Ahern, CIA and the House of Ngo, 181.61 Karnow, 314.62 Ibid, 317.63 Ibid, 64 Edward G. Lansdale, In the Midst of Wars: An American’s Mission to Southeast Asia (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 127.

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tactics intended to build support for the south and weaken the Viet Cong. 65 Among their

efforts were initiatives that involved “a number of psy-war-gambits to stir up the

population in Tonkin in the months before the French evacuation,” which included

“spreading rumors that Chinese divisions had moved into the country in a rampage of

rape and destruction.”66 The SMM also invested heavily in propaganda material,

including the “use of radio, newspapers, leaflets delivered by the millions […] posters,

slogans, exhibits, motion pictures […] and specialized advertising,” in order “to do

everything possible to exploit the nationalistic feelings of the people in an attempt to

unite” South Vietnam.67 The SMM also “polluted petroleum supplies, bombed the post

offices, wrote and distributed millions of anti-Vietminh leaflets, [and] printed and

distributed counterfeit money.”68 In essence, the SMM was “designed to ‘raise hell’ with

‘guerilla operations’ everywhere in Indochina,” while serving as “a skilled terrorist

organization capable of carrying out its sinister role in accordance with the Grand

Strategy of the Cold War years.”69

As leader of Lansdale’s northern unit, Major Lucien Conein, “a rough-and-

tumbler officer […] who had fought against the Germans with the French resistance

during WWII,” was instructed to sabotage the transportation network in anticipation of

the Vietminh takeover.70 In doing this, Conein and his agents “laced the oil destined for

Hanoi’s trams with acid, and they concealed explosives in the piles of coal that fueled

railway locomotives.”71 However, due to “the rigid Communist control structure, a

65 Karnow, 236.66 McClintock, 127.67 Prouty, 60.68 Ibid, 71.69 Ibid, 58.70 Karnow, 237.71 Ibid, 237.

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tightly knit web of local cadres and informers,” only “a few” of 80 teams Conein sent to

the north survived.72 Eventually, one agent who quit the project in disgust claimed that “I

didn’t mind butchering the enemy, but we were butchering out own allies.”73 The

enterprise into the north continued, however, “a futile endeavor designed mainly to

gratify that Saigon leaders, who derived satisfaction from the illusion that they were

avenging themselves against their northern foes.”74 Despite the SMM’s efforts, Lansdale

and Conein provided the CIA with another setback, as they failed to topple the

Communist government in North Vietnam via a “series of sabotage and psychological-

rumor operations.”75 Because of these failures, it can be said that “the SMM’s successes

were little more than costly terrorist pranks of little military significance.”76

By the 1960s, “the CIA was first off the mark to respond to the call for action and

innovation, and Vietnam became ‘a sort of proving ground for both [sic] ideas, tactics,

and equipment’ of counterinsurgency.”77 These new tactics would be implemented with

two CIA programs that cast the darkest shadow on the Agency’s involvement in Vietnam.

The first, Operation Black Eye, began in the early 1960s and was an example of the

“phrasing of a threat,” in psychological warfare because it “generalized an uncertain

threat” that was intended to disconcert the populace at large.”78 This operation was

carried out by South Vietnamese troops that were organized into terror squads and

worked with rural agents to penetrate Viet Cong-held areas. These troops would sneak

into the homes of suspected key Viet Cong leaders and murder them while they were

72 Ibid, 378.73 Ibid, 378.74 Ibid, 378.75 Jeffreys-Jones, 95.76 McClintock, 128.77 Ibid, 131.78 Ibid, 240-241.

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sleeping. Left behind “on each of the bodies was a piece of paper printed with a

grotesque human eye,” and in many instances these pieces of paper were pinned to the

front door of a house suspected of harboring Viet Cong agents, symbolizing the notion

that “big brother is watching you.”79 In a 1966 Army Study, it was concluded that

although this operation was brutal in its practice, in actuality, the “generalized terror

‘seem[ed] to have limited effectiveness over a period of time,’ reaching ‘a point of

diminishing returns’ when the population either ‘breaks’ or ‘focuses hostility on some

objective it perceives, correctly or not, as the source of the treat.”80 While the CIA

thought this would have been an effective operation, it in fact was not.

The most brutal CIA operation during the entire war was dubbed the Phoenix

Program, which began in 1968 was to “‘root out’ the Viet Cong political apparatus

‘through counterterrorism’” efforts.81 The CIA had proposed that all of the U.S.

intelligence agencies pool their information on the infrastructure of the Viet Cong

together, and that in theory, “centralizing [the intelligence] factions under sound

management” would cause “the rural apparatus on which the Viet Cong relied for

recruits, food, money and asylum [to] be crushed.”82 This policy “sought to identify and

‘neutralize Viet Cong leaders on the village level.”83 However, the definition of

“neutralize” was unclear, and consequently, “the non-definition of alternative means and

local outbreaks of mayhem and blood feuding meant that the program degenerated into a

79 Ibid, 240.80 Ibid, 241.81 Frank Snepp, Decent Interval: An Insider’s Account of Saigon’s Indecent End Told By the CIA’s Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1977), 12.82 Karnow, 616.83 Douglas S. Blaufarb, The Counterinsurgency Era: U.S. Doctrine and Performance, 1950 to the Present (New York: Free Press, 1977), 246.

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counterproductive bloodbath.”84 Troops for the program were “recruited, organized,

supplied, and directly paid [counterterror] teams” and they were “to use Viet Cong

techniques of terror—assassination, ambushes, kidnappings, and intimidation—against

the [Viet Cong] leadership—the ‘fight fire with fire’ rationale.”85 For Saigon officials,

the program “functioned as a vehicle for […] extortion,” and their ability to “eliminate

their rivals, or solidify power.”86 Although the South Vietnamese did most of the killing,

the program was “entirely American and largely the initiative of the CIA.”87 Depending

on the source, American estimates the Viet Cong deaths ranged from around 20,000,88 to

about 60,000.89 An estimate conducted by the South Vietnamese government estimated

the number of deaths to be around 41,000.90 All the same, “instead of winning […] the

hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese, “the program caused many Vietnamese to hate their

American allies. They viewed the United States as a sponsor of the worst kind of

terrorism.”91 This program, perhaps more than any reason, helped contribute to the

demise of the American legitimacy worldwide, and domestically antiwar activists labeled

it as “mass murder.”92

Intelligence gathering was also an important function of the CIA during the

Vietnam War. It is a common preconception that the CIA did not have enough area

specialists to accurately predict and assess the reactions of the Vietnamese people. “In

84 Jeffreys-Jones, 166.85 McClintock, 192.86 Prados, Safe for Democracy, 363.87 Jeffreys-Jones, 166-167.88 William Colby and Peter Forbath, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA (London: Hutchinson, 1978), 270.89 Prouty, 328.90 Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York: Knopf, 1974), 237.91 Joseph Trento, The Secret History of the CIA (Roseville: Forum, 2001), 338.92 Karnow, 617.

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fact,” however, “there was no shortage of Southeast Asian specialists in the foreign

affairs and intelligence arms of the U.S. government,” it was just that “they were rarely

consulted, and their written assessments were consistently dismissed or ignored.”93 Sure,

at times the CIA had incorrectly estimated the extent of various campaigns effectiveness.

In one case, a CIA analyst was “almost certain” that the U.S. air strikes during President

Johnson’s Operation Rolling Thunder in 1965 would deter the enemy, but that the North

Vietnamese would “‘probably avoid actions’ that might bring ‘the great weight of U.S.

weaponry’ down upon them.”94 In another case, a CIA assessment “failed to predict

North Vietnam’s response to infiltrating regular troops into the South under the cover of

secrecy” after Rolling Thunder bombings.95 However, that same CIA assessment

correctly argued “that the bombing would not stop Viet Cong attacks, ‘and that North

Vietnam might in anticipation of international sympathy evoked by the bombing, ‘decide

to intensify the struggle.’”96 Another CIA analyst correctly assessed that Operation

Rolling Thunder’s bombing campaign “did not impair the flow of men and materials into

South Vietnam.”97 Even CIA director Richard Helms “knew perfectly well that the U.S.

bombing and ground fighting tactics were doing little to destroy the military thereat

posed by Vietnamese Communist forces.”98 Furthermore, when trying to get an accurate

estimate about the fighting strength of the Viet Cong, the CIA assigned a Harvard

Graduate named Sam Adams to calculate a total number, which he found to be around

600,000. This was a stark contrast to the 270,000 General Westmoreland and advocates

93 Allen, xi.94 Karnow, 417.95 Jeffreys-Jones, 148.96 Ibid, 148.97 Ibid, 169.98 Ibid, 168.

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of escalation believed were there, and even though Adams was closer in his assessment,

“his superiors ignored his report, tried to suppress it, and made no effort to place it on the

desk of the president,” knowing that might ruin their plans for escalation.99

In 1964 it was even noted by CIA analyst Willard Matthias that the situation in

Vietnam “at best augured a ‘prolonged stalemate’ and he suggested a negotiated

settlement ‘based upon neutralization’ of Southeast Asia.”100 However, it soon became

clear to CIA analysts that “the problem was that if you believed that the policy being

pursued was going to be a flat failure, and you said so, you were going to be out of

business. In expressing such an opinion you would lose all influence.”101 This is because

“it seemed that the president, as the repository of democratically conferred sovereignty,

had to emerge the unconditional victor in any clash with an intelligence chief.”102 This

was most evident when Robert McNamara resigned after his request to cut back

Operation Rolling Thunder was declined by President Johnson, which made it clear that

“CIA pessimism therefore failed to have an impact either directly or through the

disenchanted Secretary of Defense.”103 This pessimism prevented analysts from

producing accurate assessments, and “the demoralized Agency’s failure to communicate

the message about Vietnam lead to expensive reverses that adversely affected U.S.

prestige, the economy […] and the presidency itself.”104 The presidents, in their attempt

to exert whatever authority they could over military strategy during the Vietnam War,

“simply ‘damned the torpedoes’—the negative and pessimistic intelligence estimates—as

99 Ibid, 169.100 Karnow, 419.101 Jeffreys-Jones, 171-172.102 Ibid, 152.103 Guenter Lewy, America in Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 385.104 Jeffreys-Jones, 172.

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they forged ahead” with their policy.105 As a result, “by disregarding or suppressing the

CIA’s accurate evaluations of the progress of the Vietnam War, the White House

undoubtedly insured that the nation floundered ever more deeply into a quagmire that

sapped America’s strength and prestige.”106

The efforts made by the CIA on the ground in Vietnam were often ruthless and

ineffective. The attempt to support the Diem regime simply because there were no

adequate alternatives resulted in a government that alienated most of its population. The

CIA’s pacification efforts in the mountains and countryside failed to win over the

peasantry, and as a result, disdain for the regime rose and it succumbed to a coup

orchestrated by the organization that had once protected it. The various psychological

warfare and counterinsurgency programs conducted by Edward Lansdale and the SMM

killed tens of thousands of Vietnamese civilians, and put a black eye on the reputation of

the CIA and the American government as a whole in the process. It can be said that

“counterinsurgency somehow combined both the arrogance of colonial power and the

unlimited violence of modern warfare; the methods of firepower of convention war were

combined with the strictly military side of the unconventional, without regard for the

consequences.”107 While at times CIA intelligence failed to accurately foreshadow the

impact of American military strategy, more often than not there were extreme levels of

pessimism felt by the CIA towards our policy, and when they were right in their analysis,

it was overlooked by a president who sought to achieve his own ends within the scope of

“containment,” “the Domino Theory,” or even personal ego. In the end, “the problem in

Vietnam […] was not evil leaders or faulty arithmetic a much as it was a lack of strategic

105 Allen, xi.106 Jeffreys-Jones, 139.107 McClintock, 273.

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thinking […] it was a fundamental question of the soundness of our policy, of our whole

approach to the war” that resulted in our failure in Vietnam.108 Now understanding the

role the president played in overlooking accurate intelligence, can the weight of blame

placed on the intelligence community be transferred onto his shoulders instead? And,

referencing Kissinger’s quote at the beginning of the paper, were the decisions made in

good faith and for good purpose, given the atrocity of the acts committed, and the

omission of reliable intelligence from the decision making process? I think not.

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Ahern, Thomas L. CIA and the House of Ngo: Covert Action in South Vietnam, 1954-63. 2000. Texas Tech Vietnam Center and Archive. Web. 28 Feb. 2014.

Ahern, Thomas L. CIA and Rural Pacification in South Vietnam. 2001. Texas TechVietnam Center and Archive. Web. 28 Feb. 2014.

Ahern, Thomas L. The Way We Do Things: Black Entry Operations into NorthVietnam. 2005. Texas Tech Vietnam Center and Archive. Web. 28 Feb. 2014.

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Blaufarb, Douglas S. The Counterinsurgency Era: U.S. Doctrine and Performance, 1950To the Present. New York: Free Press, 1977.

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