Vietnam: Policy and Prospects, 1970 {58.4mb.pdf, source}

 

Testimony of
Capt. Armand Murphy, Adviser to Regional and Popular Forces in Long An Province

Captain Murphy. I will begin, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman. Proceed, please, sir.

Captain Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am Army Capt. Armand Jordan Murphy from Florida. I have served in the Republic of Vietnam for the last 24 consecutive months, serving with the 9th U.S. Infantry Division and the last 12 months with the Military Assistance Command Vietnam. During the last 7 months I have held the position of senior Regional and Popular Forces adviser for Long An Province.

LONG AN PROVINCE

Long An Province lies to the south and west of Saigon at a distance of approximately 10 miles at its closest boundary. It is the southernmost province in III Corps tactical zone but possesses no international borders. The Province has seven districts, 81 villages, and 387 hamlets. The primary occupation of the 365,000 inhabitants is rice farming. By the latest statistics, over 85 percent of the population is under Government of Vietnam security. Militarily, Long An has 52 Regional Force companies and 163 Popular Force platoons. There are two regiments of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam forces totaling five battalions operating in the Province. The Third Brigade of the 9th U.S. Infantry Division with four infantry battalions operates almost exclusively in Long An. Vietnamese forces in both combat and combat support functions total approximately 16,000 personnel. U.S. forces total in excess of 5,500 personnel. Two Regional Force companies and 50 Popular Force platoons are to be added in 1970.

DUTIES AND ACTIVITIES OF CAPTAIN MURPHY

As the senior Regional and Popular Forces adviser, my primary function is that of principal U.S. adviser to Maj. Nguyen Van Thanh, commander of Province Regional and Popular Forces. My duties consist of rendering advice and assistance to Major Thanh on all facets of Regional and Popular Force functions. My activities include assisting in the planning, preparation, and execution of tactical operations, accompanying on inspections of Regional and Popular Force units, and advising on administrative and logistical support functions.

REGIONAL AND POPULAR FORCES IN LONG AN PROVINCE

The Regional and Popular Forces play a key role in the pacification effort in my Province through provision of territorial security. Currently in Long An, pacification expansion is being supported by 14 Regional Force companies, four independent Regional Force platoons, and eight Popular Force platoons. Other missions undertaken by Long An Regional and Popular Forces include security for villages and bridges throughout the Province.

The proficiency of Regional and Popular Forces in Long An Province has improved measurably. This improvement is largely attributable to the efforts of the 20 mobile advisory teams operating in the {p.259} Province. These teams, consisting of two officers and three noncommissioned officers, live and operate with Regional and Popular Force units and have the mission to upgrade the overall operational effectiveness of the units they advise.

The Chairman. Are those Americans?

Captain Murphy. That is correct, Mr. Chairman; they are Americans

The Chairman. Go ahead.

Captain Murphy. Another contributing factor to the improvement in territorial security force proficiency has been the equipment conversion program. Equipping these forces with modern weapons, vehicles, and communications equipment has not only given our allies superior firepower, communications, and transportation capabilities over the enemy, but has also resulted in a psychological effect on the individual soldier making him more self-confident and aggressive. Presence and availability of support from helicopter gunships, tactical air fighters, and medical evacuation aircraft have also greatly enhanced the combat capabilities of Regional and Popular Forces.

The Chairman. Thank you, Captain Murphy.

AGGRESSIVENESS OF VIETNAMESE

You were referring to making them aggressive. Were you referring to the Vietnamese?

Captain Murphy. That is right, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman. Are they not naturally very aggressive?

Captain Murphy. It varies, sir, with the individual.

The Chairman. Do you have to inspire them with aggression?

Captain Murphy. {sic: Murphy} It varies with the individual, and I would say with the leadership.

The Chairman. Do you think by the time we complete our job they will be aggressive enough to hold their own in this modern world?

Captain Murphy. I think, Mr. Chairman, that we have seen considerable improvement in the aggressiveness of the units through U.S. assistance, and I would hope that through our continued efforts in this direction that we will eventually achieve a very high degree of aggressiveness and combat capability on the part of the individual Vietnamese soldier.

BACKGROUND OF CAPTAIN MURPHY

The Chairman. Are you a Regular Army captain?

Captain Murphy. No, Mr. Chairman. I am Army Reserve.

The Chairman. You did not attend the Academy?

Captain Murphy. No, Mr. Chairman, I did not.

The Chairman. Where are you from in Florida?

Captain Murphy. I call St. Petersburg my hometown, on the west coast of the peninsula.

The Chairman. Is that where they have this oil slick?

Captain Murphy. I do not know about that.

The Chairman. Have you been reading about the oil slick?

Captain Murphy. No, I have not, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman. It is near Tampa, I believe.

Captain Murphy. Tampa is just north of St. Petersburg. {p.260}

The Chairman. They have a magnificent oil slick, killing all the wildlife and ruining all the beaches. I was recently down there for a couple of days, not at Tampa but at Fort Lauderdale. It is nice weather down there.

Captain Murphy. Yes, it is, Mr. Chairman. I am anxious to get back.

The Chairman. How old are you?

Captain Murphy. I am 27, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman. What were you doing before you were ordered to Vietnam?

Captain Murphy. I attended the Infantry Officer Candidate School.

The Chairman. What were you doing before that? Had you gone to college or had you finished school?

Captain Murphy. Yes, sir, I attended school at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

The Chairman. What did you study?

Captain Murphy. I studied mechanical engineering.

The Chairman. Are you going to be an engineer?

Captain Murphy. Yes, I am, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman. Do you do anything in the engineering field in Vietnam?

Captain Murphy. No, Mr Chairman. I am involved almost entirely in military affairs.

The Chairman. Pacification is kind of a mixture. It is not only military but political too. Is it not social?

Captain Murphy. Yes, it is, Mr. Chairman. It definitely has a political aspect.

The Chairman. Do you have many reasons to call upon your training as an engineer in your present position?

Captain Murphy. No, I do not

ADVISORY DUTIES OF CAPTAIN MURPHY

The Chairman. You do not, but you are becoming a politician. What exactly do you do when you advise these people? You are the senior regional adviser; is that right?

Captain Murphy. Senior Regional and Popular Forces adviser.

The Chairman. Whom do you advise directly?

Captain Murphy. I am principal U.S. adviser to Maj. Nguyen Van Thanh. Major Thanh is the deputy province chief for security in Long An.

The Chairman. What do you tell him? Give us a picture. About what do you advise him?

Captain Murphy. Well, let me, if I may—

The Chairman. Do you speak Vietnamese?

Captain Murphy. Yes, I do.

The Chairman. Does he speak English?

Captain Murphy. He speaks excellent English. We carry out all our conversations in English.

The Chairman. About what do you advise him?

Captain Murphy. Let me cite, if I may, a typical day.

The Chairman. That is what I would like. {p.261}

 

JOINT UNITED STATES AND VIETNAMESE MORNING BRIEFING

Captain Murphy. In the morning at approximately 8 o’clock we have a joint United States and Vietnamese briefing, which is conducted in English because the province officials are all fluent in English.

The Chairman. Who attends that meeting?

Captain Murphy. It is attended by the province chief, Col. Le Van Tu; my counterpart, Maj. Tan An, and the Vietnamese staff; Col. Alfred Sanderson, the province senior adviser, myself, and the members of the U.S. staff.

After this briefing, Maj. Tan An and I discuss our activities—

The Chairman. Who does the briefing?

Captain Murphy. The briefing is given by both United States and Vietnamese.

The Chairman. Are you one of those who does the briefing?

Captain Murphy. No, I do not brief.

The Chairman. Who does it?

Captain Murphy. The S-2 intelligence officers will brief on the enemy situation.

The Chairman. Are they the DOD intelligence of CIA? Whose intelligence officers are they?

Captain Murphy. Well, the Vietnamese intelligence officer.

The Chairman. They brief you about what? Describe it as best you can.

Captain Murphy. They will go briefly into the events of the night.

The Chairman. What happened the day before?

Captain Murphy. Yes.

The Chairman. The significance of the night before?

Captain Murphy. The significant incidents. They will brief us on intelligence reports which we may have received.

The Chairman. They are bringing you up to date on developments; is that right?

Captain Murphy. That is correct, more or less, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman. How many are at this briefing?

Captain Murphy. About eight.

The Chairman. Eight.

Captain Murphy. Eight Vietnamese personnel and about the same number of Americans.

The Chairman. In effect you gather around the table and they tell you what happened as far as they know. Then what happens?

Captain Murphy. Then the U.S. counterpart will brief immediately after the Vietnamese. He will go into detail on any reports which we may have received through our advisory channels, from our advisers in the districts or on down to the mobile advisory team.

The Chairman. Yes.

Captain Murphy. Following that, the Vietnamese operations officers, what we refer to as S-3 officers, will brief on operations for the day.

The Chairman. You mean what they are going to do in the coming day, not on what has happened.

Captain Murphy. On this particular day of the briefing.

The Chairman. Is it plans for the day?

Captain Murphy. That is correct, Mr. Chairman. {p.262}

The Chairman. Go ahead.

Captain Murphy. Then artillery personnel will give briefings on significant radar sightings and rounds of artillery expended during the preceding night.

That is about the extent of the briefing.

The Chairman. How long does that take?

Captain Murphy. It usually runs about 25 or 30 minutes in the morning.

ARTILLERY FIRE DURING NIGHT

The Chairman. What is a typical report? How many artillery rounds, would you say are normal? Is it 100, 200, or a thousand?

Captain Murphy. We have both Vietnamese and U.S. artillery located within a province.

The Chairman. In an average night do they expend many artillery shells?

Captain Murphy. Generally the United States and Vietnamese will fire a total of about 300 rounds of artillery.

The Chairman. During a night?

Captain Murphy. Yes.

The Chairman. At what do they fire?

Captain Murphy. Primarily, Mr. Chairman, on radar sightings. We have an antipersonnel or personnel detecting radar which is designed to pick up movements of personnel.

The Chairman. Can that radar tell whether it is a Vietnamese or an American or a North Vietnamese or a South Vietnamese?

Captain Murphy. No, it cannot, Mr. Chairman. There is in all areas in Vietnam a curfew of which the local inhabitants are aware. They are informed through their government channel, and it can be assumed that after a set time—

The Chairman. It picks up anything that moves.

Captain Murphy. Yes, it does, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman. Then the artillery shoots at it.

Captain Murphy. Yes, it does, after the target is cleared.

The Chairman. What does that mean?

 

RESTRICTIONS ON U.S. ARTILLERY FIRE

Captain Murphy. The target must be approved by Vietnamese Government officials. I think I should point out here that U.S. artillery is very restricted in the areas into which it can fire, both by us and by Vietnamese restrictions which are imposed upon it. For example, the U.S. artillery units have what they call a population overlay, Mr. Chairman. This is an overlay which has been drawn up through both visual reconnaissance of the areas and through coordination with Government of Vietnam officials. It shows where the population is centered, and these targets can under no circumstances be engaged by U.S. artillery. Some of these areas can be engaged by Vietnamese artillery because they do not have the visual reconnaissance factor or their overlays do not include the visual reconnaissance.

The Chairman. Why not? If there is a justification for one, why is there not for the other?

Captain Murphy. I think the U.S. artillery units are extremely aware of it.

The Chairman. What? {p.263}

Captain Murphy. Of the possibility of injuring civilians; innocent civilians.

The Chairman. The South Vietnamese do not care; is that it?

Captain Murphy. I would not say they do not care.

The Chairman. What does it mean then? Why do they make the distinction, if they do?

Captain Murphy. Frankly I do not know why the Vietnamese can fire in the areas that the United States cannot.

U.S. ARTILLERY ADVISERS

The Chairman. If you advise them not to fire over there, do they follow your advice?

Captain Murphy. I do not advise on artillery engagements generally.

The Chairman. You do not. Who does advise on artillery?

Captain Murphy. We have an artillery advisory detachment which advises the Vietnamese artillery which is from the 25th ARVN Division. It is not Regional or Popular Force artillery, so I do not get involved with the artillery.

The Chairman. Do Americans advise on this?

Captain Murphy. They have advisers, yes.

The Chairman. Americans. You do not happen to advise them?

Captain Murphy. No, I do not. Not on artillery matters, no.

UNITED STATES AND SOUTH VIETNAMESE NIGHTLY ARTILLERY FIRE

The Chairman. Do the Americans, you say, normally expend about 300 rounds a night?

Captain Murphy. That is combined. To give you a breakdown, Mr. Chairman, I would say the United States probably will fire about two rounds for every one Vietnamese round.

The Chairman. It is about 200 to about 100?

Captain Murphy. Yes.

The Chairman. What size artillery is this?

Captain Murphy. These are 105mm and 155mm.

The Chairman. What range do they have?

Captain Murphy. 105 can engage targets at about — let me consult with an artillery expert.

The Chairman. You can advise with him if you like.

Captain Murphy. About 11 kilometers.

The Chairman. Are you the artillery expert?

Captain Murphy. He is an artillery officer.

The Chairman. You are the one who advises them?

Captain Murphy. That just happened to be his basic branch, Mr. Chairman. He is an artillery officer. I am an infantry officer.

DIFFERENCE IN RESTRICTIONS ON UNITED STATES AND SOUTH VIETNAMESE ARTILLERY FIRE

The Chairman. We will come to him in a minute. This is greatly interesting on how it operates. The Americans are restricted in certain areas out of a delicate feeling for the civilians I take it.

Captain Murphy. I think they are extremely aware of the possibility of injuring civilians. {p.264}

The Chairman. The ARVN is not. Is that a proper distinction?

Captain Murphy. I would not say they are not concerned for the population. Certainly they have their restrictions, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman. I am not trying to put words in your mouth. I am only trying to get you to say it the way you see it. What is the difference, if any?

Mr. Vann. Mr. Chairman, may I help out on this?

The Chairman. I would like these young men who are not quite as sophisticated as you are to answer, Mr. Vann. We will come back to you later.

Mr. Vann. I am at the level that prepares the rules of engagement under which they operate, and I do know the answer to your question.

The Chairman. I understand. You will have your opportunity, but at the moment I am very interested in Captain Murphy’s observations.

Senator Cooper. May I intervene at this point?

The Chairman. Most certainly you can.

Senator Cooper. Is the difference based at least in part upon the fact that we do not command the Vietnam artillery? Do we?

Captain Murphy. No, Senator, we do not command Vietnamese artillery.

Senator Cooper. You command your own troops, but you cannot command theirs. You might advise them, but you cannot command them.

Captain Murphy. That is right, Senator.

The Chairman. I did not mean to lead the witness at all. I was only trying to get him to say whatever he believes to be the facts. I do not have any viewpoint.

Senator Cooper. It is a proper inquiry.

The Chairman. I am not trying to lead the witness. Whatever the situation is, I would like him to describe it. It is not often we get a witness of your particular qualifications, Captain Murphy. Most of our witnesses are diplomats and people highly trained in the art of evasion. [Laughter.] I like the way you answer questions. Obviously, you have not been trained.

This is no laughing matter. It is a fact. Any of you who have been around know that. What is the principal achievement of a professional ambassador? I would qualify that. That does not apply to a CIA ambassador. [Laughter.] Of course it is. It is to avoid saying what their government does not want them to say.

Captain Murphy, I am serious about it. I am very interested in seeing how this operates because we have a principal responsibility for it. We have plenty of advisers in your area. You have given the number there as 5,500 Americans; is that right?

Captain Murphy. That is approximately correct, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman. How many of those are advisers? How many are active, we will say, troops?

Captain Murphy. We have about 250.

The Chairman. Advisers?

Captain Murphy. Advisers.

The Chairman. You do not happen yourself to advise the Vietnamese on their program for the use of artillery, but some American does; does he not?

Captain Murphy. Yes, the artillery advisory elements. {p.265}

The Chairman. Do you know who that is?

Captain Murphy. The advisory element that advises the 25th ARVN Division is involved in the advice of ARVN artillery units.

The Chairman. Your idea is that even though we advise them not to be indiscriminate in their use of artillery, they do not have to take that advice. Is that the distinction you make?

Captain Murphy. They certainly do not have to take the advice.

The Chairman. As a practice, in your experience, do your counterparts take your advice?

Captain Murphy. Generally, Mr. Chairman, yes, they do. If my counterpart chooses not to take my advice, he has always afforded me the courtesy of an explanation as to why.

CAPTAIN MURPHY’S COUNTERPART

The Chairman. How old is your counterpart?

Captain Murphy. He is 37 years old, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman. Is he a professional soldier?

Captain Murphy. Yes, he has been in the Army for 17 years and he holds the rank of major.

The Chairman. Infantry?

Captain Murphy. He has served in the infantry.

The Chairman. He outranks you?

Captain Murphy. Yes, he does.

The Chairman. Do you have to salute him every time you come in his presence?

Captain Murphy. I afford him the courtesy of a salute in the morning.

The Chairman. In the morning, once a day?

Captain Murphy. Yes.

Tae {The} Chairman.  Are your relations good?

Captain Murphy. Quite good, Mr. Chairman.

Toe Chairman.  Has he been implicated in any form of corruption to your knowledge?

Captain Murphy. Mr. Chairman, I can truthfully say that I have never known my counterpart to be involved in any type of corruption or graft.

The Chairman. Did he fight with the French before he fought with the ARVN?

Captain Murphy. No, he did not.

The Chairman. He was not a member of the French forces?

Captain Murphy. No, he was not.

The Chairman. The French have been out 17 years. He did not fight at all then until after the Geneva accords?

Captain Murphy. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman. What did he do before that?

Captain Murphy. He was in the north. He came south in 1954.

The Chairman. Is he Catholic?

Captain Murphy. No, he is not. He is a Buddhist.

The Chairman. You mean he lived around Hanoi. He lived in North Vietnam, and he came south?

Captain Murphy. Yes. {p.266}

U.S. MOBILE ADVISORY TEAMS IN LONG AN PROVINCE

The Chairman. You say 20 mobile advisory teams operate in the Province. These are all Americans?

Captain Murphy. They are American advisory.

The Chairman. Consisting of two officers and three noncommissioned officers?

Captain Murphy. That is right.

The Chairman. They go about advising whom?

Captain Murphy. They advise the Regional and Popular Force units.

The Chairman. About what?

Captain Murphy. They render tactical, administrative, and logistical advice. I believe, Mr. Chairman, that Captain Geck is in a better position to testify on this since he is the leader of one of these mobile units.

The Chairman. Have you anything further? I was trying to develop your own statement as best I could to get a feeling about what you do.

Is Captain Geck with one of the 20 mobile advisory teams?

Captain Murphy. He is a team leader of one such team, yes, Mr. Chairman.

CAPTAIN MURPHY’S VIEWS ON HIS WORK

The Chairman. Is there anything further of significance that you should tell us? You have been there 24 months, you say?

Captain Murphy. That is correct.

The Chairman. Did you ask for an extended stay?

Captain Murphy. Yes, I did.

The Chairman. Do you enjoy this work?

Captain Murphy. I find it most rewarding.

The Chairman. You do? Why? What do you feel you are accomplishing?

Captain Murphy. Sir, I think I can best answer that question by relating the situation as it was when I arrived in Long An Province in January of 1968. At that time there were many areas which were under strong enemy influence and control. As a member of the 9th U.S. Army Infantry Division I operated in these areas. Many of these areas in which we engaged company and battalion size enemy forces are today prosperous centers of government support. I think a very good indicator of the progress that we have made is the open road network which now extends throughout the province.

ATTITUDE OF LOCAL PEOPLE

The Chairman. Are the people in your area reasonably happy and contented with their lot?

Captain Murphy. On every occasion that my counterpart and I have visited these new areas which have come under Government of Vietnam security through pacification expansion, the people have been extremely receptive to the GVN, to the Regional and Popular Force units which now occupy chose areas.

The Chairman. Have you become very friendly with many of the natives?

Captain Murphy. Well— {p.267}

The Chairman. Are the ordinary people easy to know?

Captain Murphy. Yes. They are quite willing to talk to you.

The Chairman. Are they? Are they friendly to you?

Captain Murphy. Yes, they are, particularly in the new areas.

The Chairman. In the new areas. Do you have anything further to say?

Captain Murphy. I have nothing else.

The Chairman. Do you have anything else? We have the three officers.

Senator Cooper. I have some questions.

 

EXTENT OF ENEMY CONTACT IN LONG AN PROVINCE

You have been in the area 7 months?

Captain Murphy. I have been in the area for 24 months, Senator. I have been in my current capacity for 7 months.

Senator Cooper. But you have been in this area more than the 7 months you have been adviser there. How long have you been in this province?

Captain Murphy. In the province for 24 months, Senator.

Senator Cooper. Twenty-four months. Has there been much fighting in this Province during that time?

Captain Murphy. There has been considerable contact with the enemy, yes, Senator.

Senator Cooper. Is this continuous contact? Has it been one of the major areas of fighting?

Captain Murphy. Let me relate back to my statement and then elaborate on it if I may. I think I can best answer your question in this manner. When I first arrived in Long An Province, I served with the 9th Infantry Division. At that time contact with the enemy was frequent, and generally the size of the enemy unit engaged was a company size unit or better.

Today contact with the enemy is far less frequent, and generally the size of the unit engaged is normally not larger than a squad.

STRENGTH OF ARVN AND U.S. BATTALIONS

Senator Cooper. What is the strength of an ARVN battalion? You say there are five battalions?

Captain Murphy. An Army of the Republic of Vietnam battalion has approximately 500 to 600 men.

Senator Cooper. What is the strength of a U.S. battalion, say of the four operating there?

Captain Murphy. A U.S. battalion would have approximately the same strength, about 500 soldiers.

VIETCONG AND NORTH VIETNAMESE WEAPONS

Senator Cooper. I see. What is the range and what kind of weapons other than small arms, are the Vietcong or North Vietnamese equipped with? Do they have any artillery?

Captain Murphy. The enemy, Senator?

Senator Cooper. Yes.

Captain Murphy. Mortar is about the heaviest artillery they have, mortars and rockets. {p.268}

Senator Cooper. What is the range?

Captain Murphy. Of long-range rockets?

Senator Cooper. What is the range of a mortar?

Captain Murphy. A mortar can accurately engage the target up to about 6 kilometers.

Senator Cooper. Six what?

Captain Murphy. Kilometers.

MORTAR AND ROCKET ATTACKS BY ENEMY

Senator Cooper. Have there been many mortar or rocket attacks by the enemy upon U.S. forces or ARVN forces?

Captain Murphy. Yes, indirect mortar and rocket attacks make up the majority of the enemy-initiated actions.

Senator Cooper. Do they fire upon villages?

Captain Murphy. They do mortar villages, particularly the villages which are undergoing pacification.

Senator Cooper. What is your headquarters, what town?

Captain Murphy. We are located in Tan An.

Senator Cooper. Have there been any mortar attacks on your headquarters?

Captain Murphy. Not for over a year, Senator, and we attribute this largely to the fact that through the pacification expansion we have been able to provide security throughout the periphery of the province capital.

RF AND PF FORCES IN HAMLETS

Senator Cooper. How many of the 387 hamlets are there that have Regional or Popular Forces? Please give a rough percentage.

Captain Murphy. I would say well over 300.

Senator Cooper. How many?

Captain Murphy. Well over 300 are under GVN security.

Mr. Colby. You have said the size of your forces is 52 companies, 163 PF platoons. They are present in a certain number of those hamlets.

Captain Murphy. Yes.

WEAPONS, VEHICLES, AND EQUIPMENT SUPPLIED TO SOUTH VIETNAMESE

Senator Cooper. You have given quite a comprehensive list of weapons, vehicles, equipment that has been supplied to the Vietnamese. Have the South Vietnamese been completely equipped now or is there more equipment which is intended for them?

Captain Murphy. The M-16 rifle conversion program, which is probably the most important and receives more emphasis than any others, has been completed for all the forces which now operate in Long An Province.

Senator Cooper. You say vehicles, communications equipment. Has that been completed?

Captain Murphy. We have completed approximately 60 to 75 percent of the conversion in these two categories.

Senator Cooper. Do you have any idea what the cost of this equipment — what is the cost of this equipment that has been furnished?

Captain Murphy. No, Senator, I do not have. {p.269}

UNITED STATES AND SOUTH VIETNAMESE COMBAT SUPPORT

Senator Cooper. You say:

Presence and availability of support from helicopter gunships, tactical air fighters, and medical evacuation aircraft have also greatly enhanced the combat capabilities of Regional and Popular Forces.

Is that support American support?

Captain Murphy. Yes—

Senator Cooper. The helicopter gunships—

Captain Murphy. The helicopter assault battalions, the troop carrying, and the helicopter gunships are flown exclusively by American pilots. The Vietnamese do have their own medical evacuation helicopters.

Senator Cooper. The support of gunships, fighters, tactical air fighters, medical evacuation support: is this in support of the American forces?

Captain Murphy. They do also support the U.S. Forces.

Senator Cooper. What I am asking is do the Vietnamese operate any helicopter gunships, air fighters?

Captain Murphy. No, not in Long An Province. They do have tactical aircraft.

 

Testimony of
William E. Colby;
Accompanied by
John Vann, Hawthorne Mills, and Clayton E. McManaway — Resumed

Mr. Colby. Excuse me. I think the Senator asked do the Vietnamese operate any one of these three things that are mentioned here; the gunships, no.

Captain Murphy. No.

Mr. Colby. Tactical air fighters?

Captain Murphy. Tactical air fighters, yes. The Vietnamese Air Force does have both forward air controllers and tactical aircraft pilots.

Mr. Colby. And medical evacuation?

Captain Murphy. No, medical evacuation is supported by the United States.

SOUTH VIETNAMESE COMBAT CAPABILITY WITHOUT U.S. COMBAT SUPPORT

Senator Cooper. The reason I ask you this is this: Suppose this support were withdrawn, say a year from now, what would be the combat capabilities — what would you estimate the combat capabilities for Regional and Popular Forces to be?

Captain Murphy. I think, Senator, that it certainly would have an effect on their capability in a negative manner, but I think they could continue in an effective manner.

Senator Cooper. You have been there 2-1 months and I know you have had great experience there. Do you believe that if American forces are withdrawn, that South Vietnam forces would be able to match, be a match or could they defend themselves against the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong? Do you believe they could sustain the combat capability without the presence of American forces?

Captain Murphy. Senator, I can only answer within the scope of my perspective. In Long An Province, yes, they could. This is evidenced by the fact that recently the U.S. unit there, the 3d Brigade {p.270} of the 9th Infantry Division, has, in fact, had difficulty finding suitable areas in which to operate.

Senator Cooper. The 9th Infantry Division?

Captain Murphy. That is right.

Senator Cooper. Because of what?

Captain Murphy. Because of the pacification expansion, and the expanded area in which Regional and Popular Forces now are operating.

ATTITUDE OF LONG AN POPULACE TOWARD GVN

Senator Cooper. I notice at one point this province is only 10 miles from Saigon; is that correct?

Captain Murphy. That is correct, Senator.

Senator Cooper. It seems to me the people there must have some knowledge of the government in Saigon. What do they say about it? Do they support it or are they against the government there in Saigon or do they have any attitude at all?

Captain Murphy. It is interesting to see the change in attitude in the areas under pacification from the time when the territorial security forces are first deployed to these areas as opposed to the attitude after they have been there for a while, and after the various agencies of the GVN have performed specific tasks in conveying to the people the position of the GVN. They become very much progovernment.

Senator Cooper. You hear that? Do people say that to you?

Captain Murphy. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. In many cases it is the first time that any government has displayed a desire to help the people at that level.

Senator Cooper. I am through.

 

The Chairman. Senator Symington?

Senator Symington. Captain, I am interested in your testimony.

MILITARY BACKGROUND OF CAPTAIN MURPHY

When did you enter the Army?

Captain Murphy. 1966, Senator.

Senator Symington. Where did you enlist?

Captain Murphy. In Texas.

Senator Symington. What is your training, your background?

Captain Murphy. I took the normal basic training. I then attended the Infantry Officer Candidate School, Fort Benning, Ga., and received my commission in the infantry. I was sent to Vietnam in January of 1968.

Senator Symington. Did you have any ROTC training before that?

Captain Murphy. Yes, sir, I did. I had 2 years of ROTC.

Senator Symington. I see. How old are you now?

Captain Murphy. Twenty-seven.

Senator Symington. When you got out of Benning where did you go?

Captain Murphy. I served a short time at Fort Benning. Then I went to Vietnam in January 1968 and served 1 year with the 9th Infantry Division. During the last 5 months I commanded the U.S. portion of what was then known as the combined reconnaissance and intelligence platoon. This was a platoon consisting of 20 American and 20 Vietnamese from the regional force province intelligence platoon. We accompanied them on many combined operations. This is when I first became involved with the Regional Forces. {p.271}

COLLAPSE IN THE DELTA

Senator Symington. I have been out there a good deal myself — believe I have made six trips, went all over the country. In the fall of 1965, things in the delta were quite quiet. I went to Vung Tau, and then on down to Can Tho. We had no guards. We just walked around, and there did not seem to be any problem. I went back again in 1966, twice in 1967. I went down and watched that riverine operation south of where you were. You are pretty close to Saigon; are you not, just a few miles?

Captain Murphy. I am located about 25 miles from Saigon.

Senator Symington. What is the reason for the collapse in the delta? The delta was the peaceful part of the situation in 1965 and 1966, 1967. Did it collapse all of a sudden? What is the story?

Captain Murphy. Senator, I can only answer your question as far as I have knowledge on it.

Senator Symington. Of course.

Captain Murphy. Because I was confined in Long An Province.

I do not think we have seen a collapse there.

Senator Symington. Now things are much better than last year but they were pretty good when I was there in 1967.

I am just wondering what was the problem in between times. We did not have any troops to speak of at all in the delta when I was there. The South Vietnamese seemed to be handling it pretty well.

Captain Murphy. As far as the entire delta is concerned, I am sure Mr. Vann will be in a better position to speak than I would be, Senator.

Senator Symington. The problems, as I remember them, were mainly near the DMZ and Danang, Chu Lai, and up in there, and a great deal of fighting west of Pleiku. But I thought the delta—

The Chairman. He is not in the delta.

Senator Symington. Yes, he is.

Captain Murphy. Mr. Chairman, the portion generally referred to as the delta is the area to the south of Saigon.

Senator Symington. That is right.

The Chairman. I thought Mr. Vann was responsible for the delta.

Captain Murphy. He is, further down in the delta.

Senator Symington. Mekong Delta.

Captain Murphy. That is right.

Mr. Colby. Long An is kind of a delta. But it is not part of the Mekong Delta.

Senator Symington. The only point is I have been in the delta a lot and it seems peaceful down there.

The Chairman. What delta are we talking about so that I can follow that?

Senator Symington. You are farther down.

The Chairman. Will somebody show it?

Mr. Mills. Here is Saigon and here is Long An. The Province stretches to the south of Saigon, but the so-called delta provinces that Mr. Vann is responsible for begin with the south.

The Chairman. South of Long An was what I understood.

Mr. Vann. That is correct. Long An and parts of Hau Nghia are geographically in what is called the delta. {p.272}

Senator Symington. The only point I am trying to make is this witness I did not think purported to be as competent to speak for the delta as Mr. Vann is; is that correct?

Mr. Vann. He is speaking of Long An, sir, which is his competence. Long An is geographically part of the delta.

The Chairman. Okay, proceed.

BACKGROUND OF CAPTAIN GECK

Senator Symington. Captain Geck, what is your background?

Captain Geck. I came in the Army in 1967 also. I went through OCS.

Senator Symington. How old are you?

Captain Geck. Twenty-three.

Senator Symington. Twenty-three?

Captain Geck. Yes, sir.

Senator Symington. What college did you go to?

Captain Geck. I do not have a college degree. I attended Seton Hall University in New Jersey.

Senator Symington. And did you enlist as a private?

Captain Geck. Yes, sir, I did.

The Chairman. I wonder if the Senator would mind. We are trying to take these men in order. I announced that when we finished with Captain Murphy we would go down the line. Each one will tell his own experiences and we have not come to either of them. What I was suggesting in the beginning was if anyone wishes to ask Captain Murphy anything. Then we will take them in order.

Senator Symington. I understand.

The Chairman. Is there anything further from Captain Murphy?

Senator Case. We will come back to that.

The Chairman. There are one or two small questions. I did not wish to cut you off.

Senator Symington. I was late because of another hearing.

The Chairman. He already explained he went to school. I think you will find the record is quite good on that. I do not wish to cut anyone off, but to proceed in as orderly a manner as we can.

Do you not wish to ask him anything?

Senator Case. No, not at the moment.

ENEMY KILLED ATTRIBUTABLE TO U.S. SUPPORTING FIRE

The Chairman. I have one or two questions because of your intimate knowledge on the local basis. You did not quite complete your statement to Senator Cooper, I believe. Can you estimate what percentage of the enemy killed in engagements with Regional and Popular Forces are actually killed by helicopter gunships and aircraft and artillery fire as opposed to the ARVN? Do you have any way of estimating that?

Captain Murphy. Yes, I do, Mr. Chairman.

I conducted a study on this last year, and it was determined at that time that 35 percent of enemy killed in action could be attributed to U.S. supporting fire. That includes helicopter gunships, artillery, and tactical air strikes.

The Chairman. That is about one-third. {p.273}

QUALITY OF RF AND PF FORCES

The CORDS handbook, entitled “The Vietnamese Village,” states that, and I quote, “Studies indicate that RF and PF are often marginal men drawn from the poorest elements of village society.”

Would you agree with that statement?

Captain Murphy. That they are only marginal men, Mr. Chairman?

The Chairman. This is from the CORDS handbook. Does that reflect your views about it too from your experience?

Captain Murphy. I think that—

The Chairman. I will repeat it. “Studies indicate that RF and PF are often marginal men drawn from the poorest elements of village society.”

Captain Murphy. They are drawn from village society, certainly. I am not sure I understand marginal. In what respect? Do they refer to proficiency as soldiers?

The Chairman. That is what I think.

Senator Symington. What is RF and PF?

Captain Murphy. Regional Forces and Popular Forces.

The Chairman. That is what I take it to mean. They are not extremely capable or efficient operators.

Captain Murphy. Well, here, Mr. Chairman, I think we have to determine what we are comparing them to before we can say they are marginal.

The Chairman. I only asked you to make your own observations about that statement.

Captain Murphy. I can honestly say, Mr. Chairman, that I have seen, and I have accompanied Regional Force companies on tactical operations which are as good or better than U.S. companies which I have also observed.

The Chairman. Is that right?

Captain Murphy. That is correct, Mr. Chairman.

MOTIVATION OF RF AND PF FORCES

The Chairman. What do you think motivated the average RF and PF member to join the force and for what does he think he is fighting?

Captain Murphy. The Regional and Popular Forces have a great appeal to the young man of draft age because they enable him to live in his home community. The Regional Forces operate exclusively within the province in which they enlist. The Popular Forces remain within the district in which they are recruited.

The Chairman. What does he convey to you that he is fighting for?

Captain Murphy. Well, there is no doubt he is defending his own home, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman. All right.

CALIBER OF REGIONAL FORCES IN OTHER AREAS

Do you think that the Regional Forces you advise are representative of Regional Forces in other parts of Vietnam? {p.274}

Captain Murphy. I am really not prepared to answer that because I have not observed Regional Forces in other parts of the country.

The Chairman. Have you never talked with any of your colleagues from other parts of Vietnam?

Captain Murphy. Yes. They encounter the same problems we encounter. Yes, Mr. Chairman. But I just do not know about RF and PF proficiency.

The Chairman. I mean do they report to you the high caliber of people, as you have described your own counterpart? Do you see any reason to say that your particular province is better or worse or different from other provinces in Vietnam? That was the question.

Captain Murphy. No, I do not see any reason not to say that.

The Chairman. I am prompted to ask this because of the comments a soldier also instructing Regional Forces made in a letter to his professor, which I have here in my hand. The soldier, who has a comparable responsibility to yours, wrote to his professor, and I quote part of it, “We’re out in the field South of Hue.” Of course this is the northern part and less prosperous, I take it, than your area.

Captain Murphy. Yes.

The Chairman. He says:

Which is a light antitank weapon, I am told—

OVERALL DISCIPLINE AND ORDER OF REGIONAL FORCES

That prompts one to raise a question as to whether all of them are as well disciplined and as well ordered as is your particular responsibility.

Would you have any comment on that letter?

Captain Murphy. May I ask again, Mr. Chairman, who wrote that letter? {p.275}

The Chairman. The letter is from a professor at the college in Sacramento, Calif. This is his old student. I will read the professor’s letter. He says:

Obviously he was fearful of retaliation from the authorities if the name were known, which was a very sensible precaution.

Captain Murphy. I take it, Mr. Chairman, that the individual who wrote the letter was not an adviser, but rather was in a U.S. unit since he refers to combined operations.

The Chairman. He says he is the soldier instructing regional forces. This is a Thermofax of the actual letter that the boy wrote.

Captain Murphy. Mr. Chairman, this training that he was giving them was not part of the basic training included in any of the formal training which is given to the Regional Force soldier. The Regional Force soldier undergoes a basic training course which is comparable to our own basic training course. Then the entire Regional Force unit to which he is assigned is periodically recycled to a training center for specific training on new weapons or developments. Teaching a soldier to fire a weapon without an interpreter is not part of the Government of Vietnam’s training program. This particular weapon that he describes, the M-72, is a weapon which is currently being funneled into the Vietnamese supply system. Going along with it will be courses taught to Vietnamese by Vietnamese in their own language on proper firing techniques.

The Chairman. Americans do not instruct the Vietnamese?

Captain Murphy. We do give some instruction through interpreters; yes, Mr. Chairman. Our mobile advisory teams do give instruction.

The Chairman. One last question.

ADEQUACY OF PAYMENT OF SOUTH VIETNAMESE ARMED FORCES AND CIVIL SERVANTS

Mr. Robert Shaplen, who has written a great many articles and I think a book on Vietnam, has spent a great deal of time there. He writes in the New Yorker on January 31 of this year as follows:

Is that correct about what an Army private makes in the ARVN? Do you know?

Captain Murphy. {sic: Captain} In Vietnamese currency?

The Chairman. Yes.

Captain Murphy. That is approximately correct.

The Chairman. What comment would you make on that statement? {p.276}

Captain Murphy. I would say that the pay grades are based upon the economic situation of the area in which they live. They have high cost of living areas and low cost of living areas. I can speak for Long An, and certainly with the various allowances that they receive they can exist on their income.

The Chairman. You can. Then would you say this was inaccurate? They do not have to moonlight?

Captain Murphy. I would say it does not pertain to Long An Province.

The Chairman. It does not. In other words, they do not have to moonlight or to obtain—

Captain Murphy. They are not in position to moonlight, Mr. Chairman. These people have commitments which require their services both day and night.

The Chairman. And they do not—

Senator Case. Regional and Popular Forces, I want to know what he is talking about.

The Chairman. An Army private is the way he describes it.

Senator Case. That is different; that is the ARVN.

Captain Murphy. He may be referring to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.

The Chairman. He says that officers and civil service are similarly situated.

 

Senator Javits. Mr. Chairman, would the Chair yield at that point? I was very impressed with the feeling of both the President and Vice President in Vietnam about this particular matter of which they are extremely conscious and make a very big point. They simply have to raise the salaries because they are having terrible morale trouble. It is a matter of information.

The Chairman. Then your experience would confirm Mr. Shaplen’s observation?

Senator Javits. I am going at a somewhat higher level than that, Mr. Chairman. The President of the country himself is very, very deeply involved and concerned in actions to improve this situation. Perhaps Ambassador Colby would comment.

Mr. Colby. Mr. Chairman, there has been considerable inflation, as you know, an increase in prices over the past few months.

The Chairman. Do you mean there or here? About which are you talking?

Mr. Colby. There.

The Chairman. Is it more there than here?

Mr. Colby. I believe it is more there than here, but I am really not all that qualified.

Senator Javits. I can tell you it is more there than here.

Mr. Colby. The Government has set up a commissary system for the miliatry {sic: military} personnel to try to save them some money. And they are currently discussing the possibility of some kind of direct support through provision of rice and other staple foods. The President, Vice President and Prime Minister are very much interested in this matter.

The Chairman. I think we had better move to Captain Geck.

Senator Javits. Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question or two of Captain Murphy?

The Chairman. Yes. {p.277}

ATTITUDES OF U.S. ADVISERS AND COUNTERPARTS

Senator Javits. Captain, I have just been in Vietnam and I am no expert at all, but I did want to ask you a couple of questions. Mind you please feel very free to tell me I am wrong about this because I am only testing out a very superficial impression with a man who has been there and lived with the problem. It would be helpful if I am right or just as helpful if I am wrong. We ought to know so I am giving a hypothesis rather than a conclusion. I had the distinct impression that our advisers, like you, were much more enthusiastic about the ideological cause than the Vietnamese of the same rank, station, and parallel responsibility. For example, you speak of a major in your statement. Talking with him and talking with you or your prototype was like day and night. Our fellows were enthusiastic, excited, missionary in their zeal, and these fellows were still rather cynical and rather pragmatic about the corruption and the problems and the murder with which they lived. Do you have any reaction to that?

Captain Murphy. I think one of the greatest forms of assistance we can give them is through our attitude toward problems which confront them and their Government. Certainly when we express zeal, enthusiasm, and confidence in them and their government, I think we do them a great service. We must realize they have been up against these problems for quite some time, and I know it is only human nature perhaps to let these problems run you down. So when we are enthusiastic, I think this is good.

Senator Javits. Do you feel that there is corruption at that level of any appreciable character?

Captain Murphy. I have not seen any corruption. I don’t have any firsthand knowledge of any corruption, Senator. I, of course, have heard rumors, but I don’t have any firsthand knowledge on corruption.

Senator Javits. Do you think at that level there is any playing ball, as a little bit of insurance, with the Vietcong and the Communists?

Captain Murphy. Certainly not that I have any knowledge of.

Senator Javits. In other words, on the Asian theory that you never lose all your options. You understand precisely what I mean by that?

Captain Murphy. Yes, I do. Again, I have no knowledge of it.

Senator Javits. You have not seen it.

COMPARATIVE QUALITY OF VC AND RF AND PF

Have you had any operational contact with the Vietcong?

Captain Murphy. I am not sure I understand your question.

Senator Javits. Have you been in any operations which brought you face to face with the Vietcong?

Captain Murphy. Right; yes, I have, Senator.

Senator Javits. Do you think they are superior in any way to the Vietnamese troops whom you are advising. If so, tell us in what way.

Captain Murphy. As I stated earlier, Senator. I think the degree of proficiency of the units vary. But by and large I think the Regional Forces and the Popular Forces are superior to the enemy forces. {p.278}

Senator Javits. They are. Are they superior in firepower and number and morale? Give us a little qualitative analysis on that.

Captain Murphy. Well, again, the degree of morale, the degree of agressiveness {sic: aggressiveness} varies from unit to unit and depends upon a great many factors. We have some units which are less proficient probably than comparable enemy units within the province.

Senator Javits. But on the whole?

Captain Murphy. By and large I feel that we have superior forces.

NECESSITY OF U.S. SUPPORT TO RF AND PF SUPERIORITY

Senator Javits. To what extent does this rely upon the American input, to wit, logistical support? Give it to us separately, if you can, as air support, artillery support, advisory support. There are four quantities there — logistical, air, artillery, advice.

Captain Murphy. How does each of these affect it? Is that your question, Senator?

Senator Javits. Right. You are an adviser. You say you have superior forces over the Vietcong and whatever North Vietnamese there are around. Now give us the input of these four aspects of American support and as they affect your qualitative judgment that the troop strength you are advising is better than the enemy.

Captain Murphy. The logistical support is entirely Vietnamese, Senator. We advise on techniques, but the system itself is run by Vietnamese.

Senator Javits. The supplies are ours.

Captain Murphy. The materials are funneled into the system at a high level.

Senator Javits. That is what I am asking.

Captain Murphy. But the distribution is by the Vietnamese.

Senator Javits. I understand, but how important is the actual materiel?

Captain Murphy. It is quite important.

Senator Javits. Indispensable, isn’t it?

Senator Case. They haven’t anything else.

Captain Murphy. Nothing that compares with the weapons of the enemy.

Senator Javits. OK. The enemy’s weapons would be very much superior to theirs, were it not for our input.

Captain Murphy. Yes, I would say that.

Senator Javits. Second, how vital is air support to the superiority of the Regional and Popular Forces?

Captain Murphy. It is definitely a contributing factor, Senator.

Senator Javits. Is that as indispensable as the supply?

Captain Murphy. I would have to say no, I don’t believe so.

Senator Javits. What about artillery support?

Captain Murphy. U.S. artillery support is not that important because the Vietnamese have access to artillery in Long An Province.

Senator Javits. And ability to use it?

Captain Murphy. And they can utilize it effectively.

Senator Javits. What about adviser backing? How indispensable is that?

Captain Murphy. This would be related directly to the proficiency of the individual unit. What we aim to do is concentrate our field advisory effort on the units which are less effective than some other {p.279} units. This is the criteria we use for deployment of our mobile advisory teams. I think at this point the field advisory effort is indispensable, but not as indispensable as it was a year ago and not as indispensable as it was 2 years ago. Next year it will be less indispensable.

MOTIVATION OF VIETCONG AND SOUTH VIETNAMESE FORCES

Senator Javits. The popular idea in the United States is that for some reason or other the Vietcong are more inspired, are better soldiers, are more patriotic believers in their cause than the South Vietnamese in theirs. To what extent do you think this has any real validity?

Captain Murphy. Senator, 4 or 5 years ago, this might have been a valid conviction. Certainly the degree of motivation of an individual soldier greatly influences his performance in the field. This is one of the factors which now influence the degree of proficiency of the individual soldier.

Going into an area which 2 months ago was under enemy control, providing security which has enabled the Government of Vietnam to perform its other functions, working with the people; building a road, being there providing security and seeing this progress has had a tremendous effect on the morale and the motivation of the individual soldier.

Senator Javits. So you think that motivation on the part of the South Vietnamese themselves is becoming higher?

Captain Murphy. Yes, it is. It definitely is.

SOUTH VIETNAMESE ATTITUDE TOWARD GOVERNMENT AND VIETCONG

Senator Javits. My last question, Mr. Chairman, is this: Again I would like to give you a hypothesis. I was there in 1965, and I was there again the other week and saw Ambassador Colby. I was not in your Corps; I was in the IV Corps area when I was there a few weeks ago. In 1966 I spent most of the time in I Corp up around Hue, but I would like to give you this hypothesis. In 1966 I had the impression that the South Vietnamese were anxious to get rid of their government because they felt their government was just another way of keeping them at war, where they had been for 20 years, that it was just that they hated it and they wanted peace at any price with anyone. They couldn’t have cared less whether it was Communitsts {sic: Communists} or Zoro-astrians, just so there was an end to the war.

This is my hypothesis and I want you to say I am wrong or right even from your little frame. I had the impression they had the same feeling with the Vietcong, “Go away and let us alone. You are the fellows who are now keeping this whole place in turmoil and killing us.”

Captain Murphy. Certainly, I don’t think the Vietnamese people, like people anywhere, enjoy the rigors of war. I think that they are now for the first time identifying themselves with one side, and that side is the Government of Vietnam.

Senator Javits. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman. Do you want to ask any questions?

SIZE, POPULATION, AND MILITARY FORCES OF LONG AN PROVINCE

Senator Case. I would like to put in terms of numbers some of these figures in your statement, if you will. You are advising in a Province. {p.280}

It has roughly what, 15 by 35 miles, something like that in its dimensions roughly. You know in a rough way.

Mr. Colby. It is bigger than that. Speaking in kilometers from north to south and east to west roughly. How many grid squares?

Captain Murphy. From north to south I would say 20 miles, and from east to west probably twice that.

Senator Case. I was roughly right then, and 365,000 people.

Captain Murphy. That is correct, Senator.

Senator Case. You have 52 Regional Force companies. How many personnel?

Captain Murphy. That represents approximately 7,000.

Senator Case. And 163 Popular Force platoons. How many are those?

Captain Murphy. About 5,500 personnel.

Senator Case. Now two regiments of the ARVN, five battalions.

Captain Murphy. Each battalion having about 600 personnel, 500 to 600 personnel.

Senator Case. Roughly 3,000 people.

Captain Murphy. That would be another 3,000.

Senator Case. Then you say our 3d Brigade of the 9th Infantry, four infantry battalions almost exclusively operating there. How much is that? About 5,500?

Captain Murphy. The United States is there with the 9th Division of about 5,500 of which about 200 or 250, Senator, are the advisory team.

Senator Case. So you have over 20,000 troops in this area.

Captain Murphy. Yes, Senator.

Senator Case. In your province.

Captain Murphy. Yes, we do.

Senator Case. And that is fairly static and has been that way for some time.

Captain Murphy. Since the end of 1967, we have more than doubled our Regional and Popular Force strength. At the end of 1967 we had 21 Regional and 74 Popular Force platoons as compared with the figure I gave in my statement.

Senator Case. This is not an active military operation so far as large-scale military operations. This is more or less a permanent garrison of, I take it—

Captain Murphy. All these forces operate within the province, yes.

MILITARY OPERATIONS IN LONG AN PROVINCE

Senator Case. When you say “operate” this isn’t large-scale military operation; is it?

Captain Murphy. Well, we frequently have operations in excess of two companies. Three and four company-size operations are a daily operation now.

Senator Case. Now these are conducted largely by the ARVN, I take it.

Captain Murphy. Under the command and control of the province officials.

Senator Case. Is it American operation?

Captain Murphy. No. I am speaking of Vietnamese operations.

Senator Case. What does our 3d Brigade do? {p.281}

Captain Murphy. They generally engage in company-size operations for the most part, sometimes even smaller.

Mr. Colby. If I may, Senator, I believe it was an area of fairly active operations up until fairly recently. I think the Captain made that point a while ago. There was some rather major fighting that went on there.

Captain Murphy. On a typical day, Senator, we have each of our seven districts conducting one and possibly two company-size operations. U.S. forces operate generally in the unpopulated areas in company size, utilizing, I would say, about 75 percent of their operational forces. In addition, one province-controlled operation may take place within the province center. It is generally of three to four company size.

Mr. Vann. Senator Case, if I can interject here, Long An Province has for a period of 8 years been probably the most hotly contested province in all of Vietnam. In 1962 through 1965, it had more Vietcong incidents and contacts by a multiple of 3 than any other province in Vietnam. Only in the last year has the level of activity there diminished substantially.

Senator Case. Has the level of American activity changed?

Captain Murphy. It has diminished; yes, it has, Senator.

Senator Case. Would you describe this, just in a very quick way. I don’t mean to go over it again.

Captain Murphy. During my experience with the 9th Division operating in Long An, my company averaged generally two contacts with the enemy per week. On most occasions the size of the force engaged would be a company or larger. This is not the situation which exists now. The situation now is that the U.S. forces, as I said earlier, are having difficulty finding suitable areas in which to operate. This has occurred because of the pacification expansion, because of the fact there are Vietnamese forces already in these areas and operating within these forces.

Senator Case. Have American forces been reduced then?

Captain Murphy. The U.S. forces have not been reduced, Senator. In fact with the departure of the division headquarters from Dong Tarn, which is just south of Long An, some of the support forces formerly in Dong Tam moved up to the Tan An area; the brigade headquarters are colocated with an advisory team in Tan An.

 

RESULTS IF U.S. SUPPORT WERE ELIMINATED

Senator Case. Just one other question. Suppose American support was completely eliminated now, what would happen?

Captain Murphy. All combat support?

Senator Case. All combat support. All the four categories that Senator Javits spoke of before

Captain Murphy. It would slow down the progress and, Senator—

Senator Case. Is that an euphemism? What would happen actually? Who would run the show?

Mr. Colby. The Senator also included the weapons?

Senator Case. Talking about weapons, the weapons, I don’t mean to say—

The Chairman. You mean take away their weapons and ammunition and give them bows and arrows? {p.282}

Senator Case. I don’t mean that. Let’s take it—

Mr. Colby. Support is the word of art.

RESULT IF U.S. AIR SUPPORT WERE ELIMINATED

Senator Case. Let’s take the air, no air.

Captain Murphy. The Vietnamese could contend with the current level of enemy activity.

Senator Case. Look, you kids get educated early in the language. The current level of any activity — what would happen in your judgment? We are not antagonistic; we are trying to get answers. You have been given a terrible job to do, all of you, the Ambassador, the Colonel, and everybody, and we are sympathetic as the devil. But we want to get the facts. We don’t want to be getting a lot of stuff that we get from the Admiral in Hawaii and from other people which is just a bunch of baloney. We want to know in plain language what would happen in your judgment if we pulled out all air support. You can talk to us, we are Americans, just the same as you would talk to your commanding officers and to the people in the military, to Colonel Vann or anybody else. He is going to talk to us this way soon. That is why we are having an executive session.

Captain Murphy. Senator, I hesitate because I am not sure that I know what would happen. Certainly the enemy would capitalize on this and they would take advantage of the fact we didn’t have air support. I presume you are asking me if they could hold the fort.

Senator Case. Sure. Would they collapse?

Captain Murphy. No, I don’t think they would collapse.

Senator Case. Well, they would have in 1965; wouldn’t they?

Captain Murphy. I think they would have; yes, Senator.

USE OF AIR SUPPORT

Senator Case. How often is the air support called in and for what purposes?

Captain Murphy. We only use tactical air support—

Mr. Colby. I think the Senator means to include helicopters.

Senator Case. Sure, helicopters, ambulance, or whatever you call them, you know supply, troops.

Captain Murphy. Whenever we engage an enemy which we think are of squad size or larger we employ this supporting fire on just about every contact.

Mr. Colby. How often do you have a contact, every day?

Captain Murphy. No, I would say four times a week: significant contacts, outside of ambush being sprung.

CAPTAIN MURPHY’S COUNTERPART

Senator Case. You have a counterpart in the Vietnamese force?

Captain Murphy. Yes, Senator.

Senator Case. What is his grade?

Captain Murphy. He is an ARVN major. He is the deputy province chief.

The Chairman. Senator, we really did cover every word of this. Senator CASE. But they didn’t cover it for me.

The Chairman. Okay. {p.283}

Senator Case. I am sorry. I mean the chairman didn’t mean to interrupt you.

The Chairman. No, go right ahead.

Captain Murphy. He is an ARVN major. He has been in the Army for 17 years. He is 37 years old. He is the deputy province chief and RE/PF commander.

Senator Case. He is a well trained, well educated man:

Captain Murphy. He is well experienced.

Senator Case. He is a well educated man.

Captain Murphy. He has the equivalent of 2 years of college by our standards.

Senator Case. What was his background in civilian life?

Captain Murphy. He came south in 1954, and as I said he holds an equivalent of 2 years of college. He has been in the Army since he was 20 years old.

Senator Case. Did he come from a well-to-do family?

Captain Murphy. No, he didn’t. He came south with just the clothes on his back and not much more.

Senator Case. I mean before that. How did he get to be a soldier, down there?

Captain Murphy. I get the impression from talking to him that he did came from a well-to-do family.

Senator Case. He did; yes.

Captain Murphy. Yes. Certainly if he has the education that he has—

ELIGIBILITY FOR EDUCATION AND ADMISSION TO OFFICER CORPS

Senator Case. The reason I ask, of course, is that it has been our understanding that only people of the upper classes and a rather small group are eligible for, one, education and, two, admission to the officer classes, is that correct still?

Captain Murphy. Of course, there are educational requirements, and they are dependent on attaining the education to achieve his requirements. He has to be able to afford it and to be able to afford it—

Senator Case. And in general whether purposely intended or de facto, as a word that has been used in considerable length around these premises lately, very few people are still eligible for the education that admits them to the officer corp, is that true?

Captain Murphy. Yes, Senator, with the exception of the infantry field commander’s commission which is available to anyone who exhibits leadership in the field. The educational requirement is waived for this type of commission. The individual who receives it can reach the grade of captain as a field commander.

CAPTAIN MURPHY’S COUNTERPART

Senator Case. Is this guy corruptible?

Captain Murphy. I don’t believe he is, Senator. I have never seen any evidence of it.

Senator Case. Has he a family down there?

Captain Murphy. He has a wife and seven children. They live in Bien Hoa, which is to the north. {p.284}

Senator Case. You mean another province?

Captain Murphy. Yes.

Senator Case. I was up there myself.

Go ahead, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman. How much does he make? Go ahead and finish it.

Senator Case. I think an impressionistic picture of this kind is the most we can get.

The Chairman. I agree with you. I think it is very important. All I was suggesting was that we had asked him most of those questions in the beginning before you came in.

Senator Case. These many other questions somehow don’t—

The Chairman. What is his pay?

Captain Murphy. He makes the Vietnamese equivalent of approximately $150 a month.

The Chairman. Do you wish to ask any questions?

Senator Pell. No questions.

The Chairman. Captain Geck, will you give your statement, please.

Testimony of
Capt. Richard T. Geck, U.S. Army, Adviser, Mobile Advisory Team, Kien Giang Province

Captain Geck. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

I am Capt. Richard Geck of New Jersey.

Senator Case. May I ask what town do you come from?

Captain Geck. Right now, Toms River.

Senator Case. You have always lived in that area?

Captain Geck. No, sir, I lived in Newark, N.J.

The Chairman. I was afraid we wouldn’t get to the New Jersey part.

Senator Case. There was never any doubt if we had to sit here all week.

The Chairman. I never knew he was from New Jersey.

Senator Case. When he raised the Seton Hall flag I knew he was a New Jersey boy.

The Chairman. Go ahead.

Captain Geck. I am currently the commander of a mobile advisory team in Kien Giang Province. I would like to take a few minutes to describe, in brief, the type of work being done by the mobile advisory team in Vietnam and to give you a general idea of how the work is progressing in my area.

SOC SON VILLAGE

My experience comes from the delta region of Vietnam, specifically, Kien Giang Province, located 140 miles southwest of Saigon on the Gulf of Thailand. I will refer specifically to one village; the village of Soc Son. Soc Son is centered in the main stream of enemy infiltration into the delta, and from time-to-time large enemy units inhabit two large mountins {sic: mountains} to the west. During the month of July 1969, Soc Son was the scene of heavy fighting between the government forces and infiltrating NVA units.

OPERATION OF MOBILE ADVISORY TEAM IN SOC SON VILLAGE

From July 1969 until November 1969. I commanded a five-man mobile advisory team located in Soc Son village. The team consisted {p.285} of two officers of the combat arms and three noncommissioned officers, who specialized in light weapons, heavy weapons, and medical training, respectively. Our primary mission in Soc Son was to assist the village chief in the upgrading of the level of security within his village with the emphasis on improving the performance of his existing forces, and the formulation and training of a strong Popular Self Defense Force group in each hamlet. In addition, we accepted the secondary mission of rendering assistance where possible in the field of village administration.

Soc Son, a village of 11,000 people, was notoriously ill run. The village chief, who had lived in Rach Gia City, about 8 miles away, since Tet of 1968, for fear of assassination, was ineffective and little was expected from his staff. The VC assassinated two of the four hamlet chiefs in the village center in late June 1968, and the terrorists had virtually a free hand within the village.

My team began with the work of training the Popular Force platoons in the village. We also began to work with the village staff in forming a People’s Self Defense Force and set about the task of initiating coordination between the various elements on hand. Through constant observation of the Popular Forces, we were able to see wherein their weaknesses lay and suggest methods of improvement. We accompanied the Popular Forces on their operations, rendering advice where needed, and providing liaison with supporting units. In short order, through an increased level of confidence, the results of the PF operations began to improve. Night operations became quite effective and seriously hampered enemy movement in our area. At the same time, elements of our team were busy with the village People’s Self-Defense Force leaders, providing them with written material to better explain their jobs, organizing a training program and assisting in the dissemination of information on the People’s Self Defense Forces. As the Popular Self Defense Forces developed, the village was able to release the PF platoons from their roles of static defense and allow them to operate offensively in the outer reaches of the village, targeting both VC military units and the infrastructure. A method of coordinating the operations of these various forces was needed. With the guidance of the advisers a village security plan was begun. This plan on completion provided each unit leader involved in the security of Soc Son with specific requirements as to his mission and responsibilities as well as the methods and requirement for coordination of operations between units. The resultant increase in security was staggering. Incidents of VC terrorism virtually came to a halt. The VC infrastructure was forced into exile and rendered ineffective. The village chief returned to the village. The Government of Vietnam gained a free hand to operate within the village and was able to turn its attention to improved administration and economic development in the area. As the people gained confidence in the Government, more information became available on enemy activities and VC operations were even further hampered.

Many of the things accomplished were made much easier through the help of the American adviser. The village chief, while in fact a good administrator, did not have the background to effectively coordinate the operations of the units within his village. Many of the staff members were new in their positions and did not know what {p.286} could or could not be done. The unit commanders, in many cases, had become too set in their methods. The alternative solutions to problems as offered by the advisers helped them to vastly improve their operations.

Presently Soc Son continues to grow. Many of the programs begun during and after the tenure of the advisory team have become examples used throughout the Province. The security plan developed in Soc Son is now used corpswide as a planning guide to village security.

In November our team moved to another village within Kien Giang Province and met with similar problems to those encountered upon our arrival in Soc Son. Progress in the new location is quite encouraging and many of the improvements witnessed in Soc Son are being seen in the new area.

The Chairman. In view of what has gone on before, I wonder if it would not be better if we let the sergeant make his statement and then you can ask questions of either one of them because time is running out. Is that agreeable to you?

Senator Symington. All right.

The Chairman. Sergeant, make your statement now and then the members can ask questions of all three witnesses.

Testimony of
Sgt. Richard D. Wallace, U.S. Marine Corps, Squad Leader, Combined Action Platoon, Quang Nam Province

Sergeant Wallace. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, my name is Sgt. Richard D. Wallace, U.S. Marine Corps, from Torrance, Calif. I am assigned as the squad leader of the U.S. Marine element of combined action platoon 2-1-5 in Quang Nam Province, Vietnam.

COMBINED ACTION PLATOON

A combined action platoon, or “CAP” as we call it, is a unit composed of U.S. Marines teamed up with Vietnamese Popular Forces soldiers. The Popular Forces, or “PF” as we call them, are a form of local militia who have the responsibility of providing security to their own village. By working closely together with the PF, the Marines help them to provide this security.

DESCRIPTION OF CAP 215

In my CAP at the present time, there are 13 marines, one U.S. Navy corpsman, and 25 PF soldiers. Being residents of the local village, the PF have excellent knowledge of the area and, of course, they also know the people. The marines are strangers from a different culture, but by working with the PF every day and sharing their dangers and hardships, the marines and PF develop close ties. Aided by close ties with the PF, the marines are able to understand and to be understood by the people in the hamlets. In fact, most of the marines come to feel as if they are part of the village community themselves.

My CAP area is located in Hoa Luong Village, located about 5 miles southwest of the Danang airfield, in the area shown in yellow on this map. This village has four hamlets named La Chau. Goc Kha, Duyen {p.287} Son, and Huong Son. The principal occupation of the people in this area is farming.

CAP ACTIVITY AGAINST VC

My CAP was established in its present area in July 1967. Before that time, the VC guerrillas had a free hand in the area, and they were able to depend on the people for food, other supplies, shelter, and information about the movements of U.S. and ARVN forces. The reasons for our staying in this area for this length of time is due to the close proximity of large NVA units just west of Danang. The average stay of a CAP is 1 year.

At the present time, the VC are no longer safe in my CAP area. They no longer receive moral or material support from the people. Nearly all of the hard core VC supporters have been driven out or captured, and the people are supporting their legitimate Government with a minimum of fear that the VC will get back at them.

When I took over the Marine squad in the CAP in July 1969, the hamlet of Huong Son was being repeatedly terrorized by VC guerrillas. Since that time we have concentrated our operations in and around that hamlet, and have reduced the terrorist activities. With the help of the Vietnamese rural development cadre in the village, we have been able to rebuild this hamlet and bring it to a normal life, and we are now in the process of building a school for the children there.

As I said earlier, the CAP’s mission is to protect the people. We accomplish this by patroling the area during the day and setting up two or more ambushes in different places around the hamlets at night. Because the ambushes are never in the same place from night to night, the VC never know where we will be, so they do not feel safe anywhere in our CAP area. Besides that, because they can’t predict our positions, they are not able to catch us by surprise with a larger force.

A CAP marine does not live inside of a fort. He lives among the people, with the PF, often staying in their homes. With no fixed position to defend, the CAP has a closer relationship with the people and can devote full time to the people’s security.

TRAINING OF POPULAR FORCES

While helping to provide security, the Marines are assigned the further task of training the PF so as to make them a more effective fighting unit. We teach them how to make better use of their weapons and we help them to develop better tactics with which to fight the VC. Eventually, the PF will be strong enough to take care of the area without Marines assistance.

DAILY ROUTINE OF CAP 215

At this point, I would like to briefly describe the daily routine of my CAP. Just before daybreak each day, we will secure from our night ambush positions and return to our daytime position. Our daytime position will normally consist of two houses farily {sic: fairly} close together, with half of the Marine squad in each one. Some members of the CAP will be detailed as sentries around the day position to guard against {p.288} surprise attack. The PF leader will normally leave six to 10 PF to stay with the Marines during the day. The remainder of the PF’s will return to their homes to spend the day working.

 

At some time during the day, the CAP will run a patrol through the CAP area. A typical daytime patrol will consist of five marines and five PF. Also at some time during the day the Navy corpsman along with his Vietnamese assistants and a security element will go to Goc Kha hamlet, where we have set up a simple dispensary in order to offer daily medical attention to the people in the area.

The Marines in the CAP eat three meals a day. Two meals will consist of canned military “C” rations and the third meal, usually in the evening, will consist of hot prepared food delivered by truck to our position. Any other supplies we need will be delivered at the same time. At about 6 p.m., the PF leader and I will get together and complete our plans for the night’s patrols and ambushes. After that, we each brief our men. Sometime after dark, the CAP splits up into two or more patrols, each of which goes out to set up ambushes under the cover of darkness. These ambushes remain in position all night, alert for the approach of the enemy.

This concludes my opening statement. I would be pleased to answer your questions.

WITNESSES’ AGE, EXPERIENCE AND LANGUAGE FACILITY

The Chairman. Sergeant Wallace, how old are you?

Sergeant Wallace. Twenty-two years old, sir.

The Chairman. How long have you been in Vietnam?

Sergeant Wallace. I have been there 8 months, sir.

The Chairman. Do you speak Vietnamese?

Sergeant Wallace. No, sir; I don’t.

The Chairman. Captain Geck, how old are you?

Captain Geck. 23, sir.

The Chairman. Do you speak Vietnamese?

Captain Geck. Yes, I do.

The Chairman. How long have you been in Vietnam?

Captain Geck. 18 months, sir.

PREPARATION OF WITNESSES’ STATEMENTS

The Chairman. Did you write your statement, Captain Geck?

Captain Geck. Yes, sir; I did.

The Chairman. Has it been cleared by anyone else?

Captain Geck. Sir, my statement was checked for punctuation, spelling, for things like that, but it was not checked for its content.

The Chairman. Was your statement checked?

Sergeant Wallace. It went through my CAP director, and the content of the statement was checked for punctuation.

The Chairman. Your statements were checked only for punctuation?

Sergeant Wallace. Yes, sir.

The Chairman. Senator Symington?

Senator Symington. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. {p.289}

BACKGROUND OF CAPTAIN GECK

When did you join the Army?

Captain Geck. Sir, I came into the Army in March of 1967.

Senator Symington. 1967.

Captain Geck. Yes, sir.

Senator Symington. What was your schooling before you came in?

Captain Geck. Prior to coming into the Army, sir, I attended Seton Hall Prep, and then Seton Hall University for 2 years.

Senator Symington. Where did you enlist?

Captain Geck. I enlisted in Newark, N.J.

Senator Symington. Did you have any ROTC before?

Captain Geck. No, sir, I did not. I was omitted from the program. Seton Hall has a ROTC program; I did not participate.

Senator Symington. You enlisted as a private?

Captain Geck. Yes, sir, I did.

Senator Symington. When were you promoted to corporal?

Captain Geck. Sir, I went through the basic training program at Camp Polk, La. Then I went to Camp Wolters, Tex., to the Army’s flight training program. After that I was relieved from that course of instruction and went to the Army’s artillery OCS at Fort Sill, Okla., so I was never promoted through the ranks. I went to OCS.

Senator Symington. You went right from a private. You were commissioned when?

Captain Geck. June of 1967.

Senator Symington. When did you go to Vietnam?

Captain Geck. Sir, I went to Vietnam in March of 1968.

Senator Symington. Nine months after you were commissioned then?

Captain Geck. Yes, sir.

Senator Symington. Were you commissioned a first or second lieutenant?

Captain Geck. Second lieutenant, sir, in the Army Reserve.

Senator Symington. When were you promoted to first lieutenant?

Captain Geck. A year thereafter, sir, and then a year thereafter to captain.

Senator Symington. And you told the Chairman that you spoke Vietnamese?

Captain Geck. Yes, sir. I can handle about 70 percent of my business in Vietnamese.

Senator Symington. Did you study that before you went to Vietnam?

Captain Geck. Yes, sir. I volunteered for Vietnam in March, went to Fort Bragg, to the military assistant’s training adviser’s course, and then on to the Defense Language Institute where I was trained 3-1/2 months in Vietnamese.

Senator Symington. Where is that school?

Captain Geck. That is Fort Bliss, El Paso, Tex.

Senator Symington. You took Vietnamese there?

Captain Geck. Yes, sir.

Senator Symington. When did you go into the Province you are in now?

Captain Geck. I worked in two Provinces, Chau Duc, which we spoke about earlier and Kien Giang. I arrived in Chau Duc in August {p.290} of 1968. Approximately 2 months later I went to Kien Giang, and I have been there ever since.

Senator Symington. When you arrived there was your Vietnamese pretty good?

Captain Geck. No, sir, it was fair. I could at that time conduct only about 40 percent of my business. It has progressed since that time.

CONDITIONS IN KIEN GIANG PROVINCE

Senator Symington. Since you have been there you think conditions have improved; is that correct?

Captain Geck. Yes, sir, I do.

Senator Symington. What was the situation when you arrived?

Captain Geck. When I first arrived in Kien Giang Province the Army was able to operate in fairly large units in most of the area. The conditions within the villages were fairly poor. The village governments were not organized.

Right now all of the villages in Kien Giang have elected governments. Most of the hamlets have elected governments. The people now are participating in the government. I think this is quite an improvement.

The Regional and Popular Forces have never had any outside assistance from the U.S. forces in our area except for air power. We have only had assistance from the regular Army of Vietnam forces.

RIVERINE

Senator Symington. What is your relationship with the Riverine?

Captain Geck. Sir, I have no relationship with the Riverine. We have used the Riverine elements to insert units from time to time, but I have no relationship with them.

U.S. TROOPS IN DELTA

Senator Symington. When you first came there what U.S. troops were in the delta?

Captain Geck. Sir, I am not sure of any besides the 9th U.S. Infantry Division, but we had no contact with them at all.

Senator Symington. Mr. Ambassador, I do not believe there were any American troops in the delta in 1965 in any quantity.

Mr. Colby. No, sir.

Senator Symington. When did we send troops into the delta in quantity?

Mr. Colby. We never sent troops to that part of the delta, Senator. The troops were sent to the upper delta only. I believe in early 1967.

Mr. Vann. They arrived in July of 1966 in Long An Province and in September 1966 in Dinh Tuong and Kien Hoa and Go Cong Provinces. U.S. troops have never been stationed in the other 13 provinces of the delta, only in three provinces.

Mr. Colby. You do have the river forces, the Navy forces though. Some of those are in Kien Giang, so in a sense there are U.S. forces.

Senator Symington. When you say they arrived, who arrived?

Mr. Vann. The U.S. 9th Infantry Division was assigned to Dinh Tuong, Kien Hoa, and Go Cong in September 1967. {p.291}

Senator Symington. That was the first time a division of U.S. troops went into the delta?

Mr. Vann. In any part of the delta?

Senator Symington. In any part of the delta.

Mr. Vann. No, sir. In July of 1967 a brigade of the U.S. 25th Division went into Long An, which is geographically the northern part of the delta.

Senator Symington. Just below Saigon?

Mr. Vann. Just below Saigon.

Senator Symington. Let us talk about the delta. The first troops that went into the delta, as we consider the delta, 50 miles or whatever the distance would be, south of Saigon was when the 9th Infantry Division went in in July 1967?

Mr. Vann. The U.S. 25th Division’s 23d Brigade in July 1967.

EFFECT OF INTRODUCTION OF U.S. TROOPS ON CONDITIONS IN DELTA

Senator Symington. Well, the thrust of my question is if we put troops into the delta for the first time as late as July 1967, and then increased the number of those troops in September 1967, that would automatically improve conditions, would it not?

Mr. Vann. If I might say, and in that connection, in connection with your earlier comments about 1965—

Senator Symington. First answer the question.

Mr. Vann. It would not automatically improve conditions, sir. It would depend upon how many enemy may have been introduced at the same time.

Senator Symington. All right. Now take it from there.

 

1965 ASSESSMENT OF DELTA SITUATION

Mr. Vann. May I now address your earlier questions about 1965. Sir, in 1965 General Westmoreland sent me to survey the delta and the reports that the delta was being pacified.

Senator Symington. Were you in uniform at that time?

Mr. Vann. No, sir, I was a civilian.

The reason General Westmoreland sent me to do that was because—

Senator Symington. What was your position at that time?

Mr. Vann. I was the provincial adviser for USAID for Hau Nghia Province, which is the very northernmost part of the delta. However, I had been the senior military adviser for the Mekong Delta in 1962 and 1963.

Senator Symington. At that time were you in uniform?

Mr. Vann. I was in uniform as a lieutenant colonel.

Senator Symington. Of the Army?

Mr. Vann. Yes, sir.

Senator Symington. Thank you.

Mr. Vann. General Westmoreland wanted me to assess the change in the situation in the area in which I had been the senior military adviser between 1963 and 1965. He asked me also to go beyond that area farther south into the delta. I had not previously been the adviser there, but I did have responsibility for the area when I operated as a staff adviser at the corps advisory level. {p.292}

Senator Symington. When you were in the military did you have any relationship with the pacification program?

Mr. Vann. At that time, sir, we did not have a pacification program as it is now known. We did have the strategic hamlet program in 1962 and 1963.

SCHOOL AT VUNG TAU

Senator Symington. Did you have any relationship yourself with the school at Vung Tau?

Mr. Vann. I had relationship with the school at Vung Tau from 1965 through the middle of 1966.

Senator Symington. What was your relationship at that time?

Mr. Vann. I was the USAID adviser on the RD cadre program to the RD cadre director.

Senator Symington. What was your relationship at that time with the Central Intelligence Agency?

Mr. Vann. I have never had any relationship other than one of cooperation as a representative of either the U.S. Army or of the Agency for International Development.

Senator Symington. At that time wasn’t the CIA running the Vung Tau operation?

Mr. Vann. They were the agency with operational responsibility.

Senator Symington. What is the difference between running it and being the agency with operational responsibility?

Mr. Vann. At that time, sir, it was being officially run by the Government of Vietnam, financed by the Central Intelligence Agency, and advised by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Senator Symington. And your relationships with the agency were always of the best?

Mr. Vann. We have had differences of opinion, sir, but I have never had a relationship of alienation with them.

I would like to address your—

Senator Symington. I want to follow this a little bit, colonel, because I am remembering a few things as you talk.

Mr. Vann. All right, sir.

Senator Symington. In 1965 you had a relationship at Vung Tau and there was some disagreement about how the place should be run; was there not?

Mr. Vann. There were differences of opinion among Vietnamese as to how it should be run, and there were some differences of opinion among Americans.

Senator Symington. Would you describe those a bit?

Mr. Vann. The principal—

Senator Symington. Your own position I understood was different from some of the thinking of the American authorities.

Mr. Vann. I would be happy to, sir. I would like to answer your previous question first.

Senator Symington. We will get back to that.

Mr. Vann. All right, sir.

Senator Symington. If we can.

Mr. Vann. I would say the principal difference, first of all, concerned the size of the teams that should be employed.

A second difference concerned the manner of advising on the RD cadre program. I would say a third difference concerned how overt or how covert the U.S. role in the RD cadre program, should be. {p.293}

Sentor Symington. {sic: Senator} Who did you differ with on these questions?

Mr. Vann. Some Vietnamese officials, sir, and some U.S. officials.

Senator Symington. What U.S. officials did you differ with on that?

Mr. Vann. I would say in one degree or another I differed with the MACV representative and the USIS representative.

Senator Symington. That is what I heard when I was out there, colonel.

Now, we will get back to the other question.

Mr. Vann. Thank you, sir.

Senator Symington. Right.

1965 ASSESSMENT OF SITUATION IN DELTA

Mr. Vann. I went to the delta in a series of trips, going each weekend to 10 different provinces over a period of about three and a half months to do this assessment for General Westmoreland.

On July 3, of 1965 I briefed General Westmoreland on my findings. I essentially told General Westmoreland that the situation in the delta had deteriorated considerably since 1963, that the Vietcong were firmly in control of the countryside in the delta, that contrary to the opinion of many advisers in the delta, the reduction of incidents was not because of pacification being successful but because the Vietcong had gained such control there was no need to have incidents. I told him that the VC had, in my judgment, made a decision to use the delta as a recruiting and food base, and that they had come to some form of an accommodation wherein they were leaving the provincial and district capitals and the road network alone so as not to get people excited and not to interfere with their operations in the countryside.

I also indicated that at that period of time up to 50 percent of the Regional Forces and Popular Forces had reached some form of accommodation with the enemy, a form of accommodation that went the gamut—

Senator Symington. Up to what period of time?

Mr. Vann. This was in July of 1965, sir. This was an accommodation that ran the gamut from a simple “I will let you live, you let me live” arrangement which would result in local cease-fires to an arrangement wherein some units were serving for the government in the daytime and operating as Vietcong at night. The latter would certainly represent the minority, the former the majority of the accommodations. I concluded by saying if the delta is pacified it is unfortunately pacified by the wrong side.

General Westmoreland listened to my arguments. He subsequently had me return to Saigon from my field post to brief his new deputy, General Throckmorton. He subsequently had me come in and brief General Rosson, the Chief of Staff when he was assigned.

Approximately a year later, when General Westmoreland decided to request troops to go into the delta, he advanced as the reasons for it some of the conclusions that I had given to him in 1965, such as that it had become a food and recruiting base for the Vietcong.

It has always been my contention—

Senator Symington. Excuse me. It was known that it was a food base for everybody; was it not? I can remember a general in the Army telling me that the tax of the South Vietnamese on rice coming {p.294} out of the delta into Saigon was greater than the tax that the Vietcong laid down for rice coming into Saigon. So I think we have known for some time, certainly in 1965, that it was a food base.

Mr. Vann. It is a food base for the entire country without question sir.

Senator Symington. Right.

CIA OPERATING RESPONSIBILITY FOR VUNG TAU

Did you recommend that the CIA operation responsibility be returned to the Army?

Mr. Vann. Responsibility in what area, sir?

Senator Symington. In operating Vung Tau.

Mr. Vann. Sir, it had never been with the Army, and I did never recommend that it be returned to the Army.

I did at one point in time, suggest that it might be more acceptable to the Vietnamese Government to have either the Military Assistance Command or the Agency for International Development have the principal responsibility and the financial responsibility for the program because of a tendency of Vietnamese to, in this case wrongfully, assume the motives of the CIA in running the program. It was my observation at that time, sir, that—

Senator Symington. You could not be talking about the villagers because they did not know what CIA meant.

Mr. Vann. I was talking about the hierarchy, the district and Province chiefs.

I would further like to qualify, sir, that the program as run by the CIA was totally overt, and that there were no subterranean or hidden motives behind it. But the basis for the recommendation was the fact that the Vietnamese are naturally suspicious and that they would have a tendency to ascribe hidden motives to the RD cadre program being financed by the CIA.

REMOVAL OF MAJOR MAI

Senator Symington. Did you know Major Mai?

Mr. Vann. I know him quite well, sir.

Senator Symington. What did you think of him?

Mr. Vann. I thought he was an extremely capable officer and one who was highly dedicated to his work.

Senator Symington. Do you know why he was removed?

Mr. Vann. Yes, I do know why he was removed, sir.

Senator Symington. Why?

Mr. Vann. There was some indication, sir, that Major Mai had started his own internal political organization within the cadre program and had established cells of the Duy Dan sect of the Tan Dai Viets political party, and had them reporting to him. The objectives of that party were contrary to the objectives of the Government of Vietnam.

Senator Symington. Do you agree with that? Did you know enough about it to think that was justified criticism?

Mr. Vann. Well—

Senator Symington. Did you know enough about it to think that was justified criticism of him?

Mr. Vann. Of Major Mai, sir?

Senator Symington. Yes. {p.295}

Mr. Vann. I did, sir. That does not mean I do not greatly admire and respect Major Mai.

Senator Symington. What were the objectives of Major Mai that were different from General Ky or General Thieu?

Mr. Vann. I don’t know whether these were Major Mai’s personal objectives, but the objectives ascribed to his party were a third force concept which was both antigovernment and anti-Vietcong.

Senator Symington. This is really quite fascinating. I was very impressed with Major Mai and so were all the people who went out there. The next time I went back he was completely obliterated from the scene and I heard that that was done because the Government did not approve of the fact that he was more interested in the people than he was in the way that the Government was being handled, including the corruption. I tried to see him but could not; I finally talked to him on the phone. I think he was an interpreter with the Korean Army in Vietnam.

Mr. Vann. It was my understanding he went to such an assignment, sir. I considered Major Mai to be a dedicated nationalist, a man who was against corruption, a man who was for a people’s program, a man who had been very effective as head of the institute. I recommended strongly at that time that he be brought to the United

States — he was extremely fluent in English — and lecture at our service schools and explain the nature of the war.

Now, I do agree that the Government of Vietnam at that time could not afford to have as the commandant a man who was believed by them, with some foundation, to be essentially advocating their overthrow.

The Chairman. Would the Senator yield?

Is there any connection between this and the Tran Ngoc Chau case? It sounds a little like the Chau case.

Senator Symington. That is right, Mr. Chairman. I suddenly realized what we were getting into down there. Some people in 1965 described Major Mai as being the most outstanding young person in Vietnam, that he was not a Communist in any way, but he did not approve of the way that the Government of South Vietnam was handling U.S. money, especially as they were personally profiting heavily from it.

MAJOR MAI’S REMOVAL

Senator Case. Would the Senator pursue this? What has happened to the major now? Is he still alive and working? What is he doing?

Senator Symington. Those are very good questions. I am interested in Colonel Vann’s recommendation that he come back here and tell about the cause in this country.

Senator Case. This was 4 years ago. What has happened since?

Senator Symington. I would be interested in it.

The Chairman. Also does it relate to the Chau case?

I understand the Americans had great difficulty in preventing President Ky from imprisoning him. Do you know anything about that?

Mr. Vann. I don’t know that, sir. I was not involved in it.

Senator Symington. What did you hear about it?

Mr. Vann. Sir, I knew he was removed because the Government of Vietnam believed that the political party, that it had evidence he was a member of, was anti-GVN. {p.296}

Senator Symington. But it was in no way a pro-Communist Party, was it?

Mr. Vann. Absolutely not. I make no suggestion that it was pro-communist.

Senator Symington. That is the point I wanted to bring out, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Vann.

Mr. Vann. I will say, sir, just in cooperation—

The Chairman. Go ahead and say what happened to him.

Mr. Vann. Sir, I don’t really know. I am aware he is alive, and I am aware he does have an official Government job and the rank of major in the Government of Vietnam service. That is the limit of my knowledge. I have not seen Major Mai since he left Vung Tau in 1966.

Senator Symington. Do you believe in the government of Thieu and Ivy today as it has been conducted?

Mr. Vann. [Deleted.] I feel that, in view of the difficulties that they face, they quite possibly are doing about as much as we can expect any group of Vietnamese to do under the circumstances.

Senator Symington. Well, the thrust of my question is you recommended that Major Mai come over here and lecture to the American people, you must have had great confidence in him, and agreed with his thinking, at least to some extent, about the need for reform of the present Vietnam Government.

Mr. Vann. Sir, I felt that the man was exceptionally well qualified, particularly with regard to the village and hamlet government. I did not necessarily endorse everything he did. Certainly I could not in good conscience endorse at that level an action designed to overthrow the Government of Vietnam when I was working for a government whose official policy was to support the Government of Vietnam.

Senator Symington. Did you have any proof that he was trying to overthrow the Government?

Mr. Vann. It was the announced purpose of the party, sir, to radically change the hierarchy that existed in Saigon.

The Chairman. By force or by an election? Is it any different from the Democrats’ attitude toward the Republicans?

Senator Symington. That is what I was thinking about.

Mr. Vann. Sir, there were members of the party who suggested that the way to change it was by assassinating 52 top leaders in the Government. That would be force.

MAJOR MAI’S REPLACEMENT: MAJOR BE

Let me say, sir, that the man who came to succeed him at Vung Tau at that time, Major Be, who was the Deputy Province Chief at Binh Dinh, was equally outspoken against corruption, equally outspoken against abuses of government and, in my judgment, is equally qualified as the officer to be in charge of training RD cadre programs.

Senator Symington. He belonged to the right party.

Mr. Vann. No, sir, he did not.

Senator Symington. What is the difference?

Mr. Vann. Colonel Be has come in for almost as much criticism from Government leaders as did Major Mai. {p.297}

Senator Symington. Are they both members of the same party?

Mr. Vann. I don’t know what party Major Be, or Colonel Be, may be a member of.

Senator Symington. How can you assert he was not a member of Major Mai’s party?

Mr. Vann. I have no evidence that he was so; I do not know.

Senator Symington. I see.

Mr. Vann. However, there are many political parties who have the same general lines.

U.S. ATTITUDE TOWARD REPLACEMENT OF MAJOR MAI

Mr. Colby. Senator, I might add on this, since I was partly involved at the time, as you know, that one of the factors which caused us not to really raise very much objection to the replacement of Major Mai officially was that we were supporting a very large cadre operation, and that if this became the personal political tool of one particular party the CIA would be directly in the position of doing what Colonel Vann says that many people suspected the CIA was doing, and which we do not wish to do.

REPLACEMENT AND ASSASSINATION OF HIGH CALIBER SOUTH VIETNAMESE

Senator Symington. I understand that. But Major Mai is just one case.

General Walt introduced me to a village chief and said he was one of the finest village chiefs around there. He was assassinated.

He then told me General Thi was a brave a man as he ever knew. He was kicked out. It is indeed difficult to understand what is going on out there.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

TRAN NGOC CHAU

The Chairman. I want to pursue this, Colonel Vann. How does Chau fit into this transition between Mai and Colonel Be? He has been in the news recently. We started to pursue this the other day and you said you would rather do it now. Can you fit it in now without my having to stumble around and ask a number of questions? Just tell us.

Mr. Vann. In December of 1965, then Lt. Col. Trail Ngoc Chau, Province chief of Kien Hoa Province, was appointed by the Government of Vietnam and the Minister of Revolutionary Development to be the director of the RD cadre directorate with offices in Saigon and responsibility for the RD cadre program throughout Vietnam.

A part of Colonel Chau’s responsibility was the supervision of the RD Cadre Training Center at Vung Tau, which had as its assigned commandant at that time Captain Mai, later Major Mai. Colonel Chau continued in this capacity until September or October of 1966.

During part of his tenure, Captain Mai, now Major Mai, was relieved of his responsibilities as the commandant. I believe this occurred in July of 1966. {p.298}

 

He was replaced initially by a Colonel Thinh, and then Colonel Chau himself left his post in Saigon and went to the Vung Tau Training Center to directly supervise it.

He left there when Major Be was assigned as the commandant. Major Be was assigned as the commandant, based upon the approval of Gen. Nguyen Duc Thang, who was the Minister for Revolutionary Development.

Major Be operated under the supervision of Col. Tran Ngoc Chau.

In about September or October of 1966, Colonel Chau went into a hospital with a reported illness. Essentially he was removed from the RD cadre program at his own request.

He subsequently continued working in the Ministry of RD and became an inspector of revolutionary development operations in I Corps until the summer of 1967. He had attempted to resign his commission in the army so as to be free to run for the constituent assembly in mid-1966. He was denied permission to resign.

However, at a later date, when they were having the elections for the assembly, the election laws provided that active duty army officers could run for the position of deputy.

Colonel Chau ran for the position of deputy from Kien Hoa Province, was elected as a deputy in the national assembly, and was subsequently elected by the national assembly to be its Secretary General.

The Chairman. What does Secretary General mean?

Mr. Vann. Secretary General, sir, I would ascribe as about the third ranking position in the assembly operating under the president of the assembly as his kind of chief of staff.

That is the situation. Col. Tran Ngoc Chau, as you know, is still a member of the assembly and is currently embroiled in a dispute brought about by the Government’s charges that he was dealing with his brother, a known Communist, without having reported this incident to the Government.

EVALUATION OF TRAN NGOC CHAU

The Chairman. You have evaluated Major Mai. What about Chau? The way you and the Senator from Missouri described Mai fitted what I have been told about Chau. He is also a nationalist, a great patriot, but he does not approve of the present Government and he is regarded by the present Government as a rival. Is that true or not?

Mr. Vann. I don’t know how the present Government regards Colonel Chau, sir, but with my regards to how I evaluate Colonel Chau, I think it is one of the continuing surprises and paradoxes of this conflict there and of that Vietnamese society that Colonel Chau who in my judgment is a nationalist, an honest man, against corruption, for the people, a man with a great deal of charisma, one whose motives I have always found to be of the highest order and Major Mai were bitter enemies. Colonel Chau had a great deal to do with getting Major Mai removed as the commandant because they happened to have different political ideologies, despite the fact that they were both for the same basic things.

I considered all three men, Major Be, now Colonel Be, the present commandant: Major Mai; and Colonel Tran Ngoc Chau to be people who were potentially going to do great things for their country from {p.299} the standpoint of giving better government, giving government that is more responsive to the needs of the peasants. I considered them people who were familiar with the village and hamlet structure, the needs of the population. Two of these gentlemen fought with the Viet Minh against the French.

The Chairman. Which two?

Mr. Vann. Colonel Be and Colonel Chau. I don’t believe Major Mai had because I believe he was too young to have done so. I feel had he been older, he would have.

The Chairman. However, Thieu and Ky both fought with the French against the Viet Minh; didn’t they?

Mr. Vann. Sir, I am not totally familiar with that. I know General Ky did fly with the French Air Force. He was trained by them.

Senator Symington. Mr. Colby would know.

Mr. Colby. He was, yes. He fought with the French.

The Chairman. Go ahead, this is very interesting.

Mr. Vann. That was my answer to your question, sir.

The Chairman. I am not trying to put words in your mouth. I am only clarifying it. You think that although Chau was, I take it you say, a political enemy of Mai, they both were high class, superior men interested in their country.

Mr. Vann. All of my contact with them, sir, would indicate that to me.

TRAN NGOC CHAU’S RELATIONSHIP WITH CIA

The Chairman. I read to you the other day about these allegations. There is nothing secret about it. This story is in the paper. I am trying to clarify Chau’s relationship with the CIA.

Did he ever report to the CIA when he was there?

Mr. Vann. To my knowledge, sir, he has never been employed by the CIA and never reported to the CIA.

Mr. Colby. Since he was in charge of a program that was being financed by the CIA, he certainly reported to them in that sense.

The Chairman. He reported to the CIA. Were you then in the CIA before you were ambassador?

Mr. Colby. I was, sir.

The Chairman. So you know this of your own knowledge.

Maybe you ought to comment about this aspect. I should have asked you about it. Go ahead.

Mr. Colby. The way this program ran, Mr. Chairman, was that the CIA financed the Government of Vietnam program. The program was part of the Ministry of Revolutionary Development, and Colonel Chau was the responsible officer in that ministry for that program. So that the financing of the program was conducted to some extent under his own overall supervision. In that respect he kept the CIA people informed of what they were doing with the program.

This does not mean, however, in proper CIA parlance, that he was an agent. He was not paid at all by the CIA. He was paid by the Government of Vietnam.

DID CHAU REPORT HIS MEETINGS WITH HIS BROTHER?

The Chairman. I believe that is consistent with what he has said, but I believe that one of the stories, at least, was that he had reported {p.300} voluntarily his meetings with his brother or other activities of this kind. This wasn’t any secret. Can you say whether he did or not? Did you know he had a brother who was a Communist?

Mr. Colby. Frankly, Senator, it has been 2 years since I have been associated with it, and one’s memory gets a little fuzzy. I would prefer to look at the records which I do not have access to [deleted] before I gave you a direct answer.

I do seem to remember that there was a story that he had a brother in the North, and that there was some possibility of a contact. I am a little fuzzy on the details.

The Chairman. Colonel Vann, have you any knowledge of this?

Mr. Vann. Well—

The Chairman. Why don’t you sit over here. There is plenty of room. There is a chair right there. I don’t know whether I ask questions of exactly the right one every time.

Do you know anything about this? Did he report? In your view was he frank and open with the Americans? I am not saying he was an agent, but to your knowledge did he report?

Mr. Vann. Sir, he was a man who was very fluent in the English language, and had U.S. advisers since 1961. He was a man who was known to many Americans, admired by many Americans, and he, in turn, appeared to be an admirer of Americans and things that we were doing and programs that we were suggesting.

He was a province chief in Kien Hoa Province in 1962 and 1963, while I was the senior adviser to the zone commander, a zone that included seven Provinces of which Kien Hoa was one.

He and I became very close friends during this period of 1962 and 1963. I was in contact with him on a fairly continuing basis up until July of 1969.

Because we were close friends, he often confided to me many things that I knew he probably would not confide to other people.

In the latter part of 1965, then Lt. Col. Tran Ngoc Chau, in his role as Province chief, while I was visiting him in his Province in Kien Hoa, after giving me a very long and mysterious buildup, walked me out into his provincial palace garden at about midnight and confided to me that a very important person from Hanoi had recently visited him in his Province. He said, this was a person who was a nationalist and who was interested in seeing if there was some way of getting nationalists in the north and nationalists in the south together. Colonel Chau sought my advice as to what he should do.

I asked him as to what his relationships were with his adviser, who was from the Central Intelligence Agency assigned to the Province. He said he had very good relationships.

I suggested to him that that would be a much more appropriate channel through which to report and to get advice than through me, because I was not involved at that time in things dealing with the Government of Vietnam. I was at that time assigned as an adviser to the U.S. 1st Infantry Division.

We had then tried the experiment of putting someone who had been in Vietnam with each incoming U.S. unit to help them get oriented and acclimated to the Vietnamese and to the Vietnamese officials.

We dropped the subject, and I did not report it to any of my higher headquarters, and one of the reasons I did not was that during that particular period of time I had a great many confidences given to me {p.301} by Vietnamese, which, had I reported would have resulted in their heads being chopped off careerwise because things were extremely unsettled in Vietnam. There were a series of changing governments. There was a game of musical chairs going on, and the future was pretty indefinite.

Also, the enemy was at almost the high point of his control in the countryside, and that did have many Vietnamese officials standing with one foot in both camps.

DID CHAU REPORT HIS BROTHER’S VISITS?

During a subsequent period in the summer of 1966, when Chau and I were working closely together, Chau again raised the subject with me. He told me he had had another visit from that same person, and then after a great deal of cautions and explaining how dangerous it would be to him, he confided to me that it was his brother. He then gave me the background on his brother. He gave me a picture of what I assume now to be Tran Ngoc Hien, but a picture which had several inconsistencies compared to what I now know about Tran Ngoc Hien.

At that time, Colonel Chau — he was still in the army — asked me if I would report this conversation to my higher authority, and to find out if my higher authority would like to meet with his brother, Tran Ngoc Hien. He did not identify his brother by name.

He told me at the time that his brother was coming in and out of the country on a Japanese passport and that if a meeting was to be arranged it would require 3 weeks’ notice because he had to contact his brother by an advertisement in a Saigon newspaper.

I reported this to my higher authority, and went through that channel to the then Deputy Ambassador.

The Deputy Ambassador listened to the story, plus the background on Tran Ngoc Chau, informed me that they were continually getting requests for meetings of this sort from various people. [Deleted.] The bona fides of this man really had not been established, and he would let me know later what, if anything, would be done.

He subsequently called me in and said that neither the Ambassador nor he would agree to a meeting with Chau’s brother but that if it was particularly desired, if Chau’s brother particularly desired and thought he had something that was worthwhile that I would be authorized to represent the Ambassador at a meeting.

I gave this information to Colonel Chau, and he then said he would contact his brother. He subsequently told me approximately a month later that he had contacted his brother and that his brother was not interested in meeting with me because I was not of sufficient importance. That essentially terminated mv role in the matter involving his brother.

GOVERNMENT EFFORTS TO REMOVE CHAU’S IMMUNITY

The Chairman. Why do you think that presently the Thieu government goes to such lengths to remove the immunity of Chau?

Mr. Vann. I really do not know, sir, because you must understand that my contacts with Chau have been very limited since this thing became a hot issue last July. {p.302}

The Chairman. You have not seen him since that time?

Mr. Vann. I have seen him, but not for the purposes of discussion.

The Chairman. Yes.

Mr. Vann. He has attempted to see me and has made it a point, since he knows places where I go to, and I have had to excuse myself as quickly as possible after arriving.

MR. VANN’S PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS CONCERNING CHAU

The Chairman. Has the Ambassador or any one of your superiors ordered you not to see him and to discuss things?

Mr. Vann. Ambassador Bunker, sir, and Ambassador Colby have told me since July that it is advisable not to become involved in this matter since it is a matter between the Government of Vietnam and one of its officials; [deleted].

Mr. Colby. Any contacts on the subject would be made by Ambassador Bunker, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Vann. That is correct.

IS CHAU A COMMUNIST?

The Chairman. Do you personally have any doubt in your mind about Chau’s being a Communist or not being a Communist?

Mr. Vann. Sir, I have to have some reservation because Ambassador Bunker has informed me that there are things about the case of which I am not aware. I do not know what these things are.

However, since I do not have access to the dossier, either of the Government of Vietnam or of such files as the political section of the Embassy may have — it is quite obvious that I don’t have the total picture.

Nothing in my personal relationships with Colonel Chau and my knowledge of him since 1962 would lead me to doubt that he is other than a dedicated nationalist anti-Communist person.

The Chairman. That is all I can speak to.

Mr. Vann. Right, Senator.

DISCREPANCIES IN INFORMATION SUPPLIED BY CHAU

Senator Case. You said you were concerned about the discrepancies between what he had told you about his brother and what the facts about his brother were. Was this a distrubing {sic: disturbing} thing to you?

Mr. Vann. It has become. It is my knowledge, sir. that Colonel Chau has lied to me on several matters that involved this case, for what purpose I don’t know. There are several matters in which he deliberately lied.

Senator Case. Were these significant? Were these deliberate?

Mr. Vann. The information he gave me is different from information I now know to be true. It does not concern whether he is a Communist. It concerns details about his brother and details about statements that he has ascribed to other Vietnamese officials that they have subsequently told me that they did not say.

Senator Case. Have you any feeling that this was an intentional deception and, if so, what the intent was or what its purpose was? {p.303}

Mr. Vann. I feel that a portion of this may well have been to protect the identity and location of his brother.

Senator Case. I see.

 

ASSISTANCE SOUGHT BY CHAU CONCERNING CHARGES

The Chairman. Has Mr. Chau indirectly or directly sought your assistance at any point in connection with charges brought by President Thieu?

Mr. Vann. He has sought my assistance on a continuing basis, sir.

The Chairman. What did he ask you to do?

Mr. Vann. He has, first of all, asked me if there was some way that

I could arrange for him to go to the United States. That has been an approach over the period of the last year.

He has, second, asked if I could get the U.S. Government to intervene with President Thieu in his behalf and inform them of the fact that we were aware of his brother’s presence.

He has asked me to go to the Prime Minister, Prime Minster Khiem, in his behalf. He has also asked for advice as to what he should do. I have on a continuing basis advised him that he should use the same rules that he is asking the Government to use in his opposition to the Government. I have told him that at this period of time I consider his outspoken opposition — and this is particularly true in the first 6 months of 1969 — was hurting the Government’s efforts against the foe.

The Chairman. Against whom?

Mr. Vann. Against the foe, against the enemy. I have told him that, even though I knew his motivations were good, now was the time for all Vietnamese to get toegther {sic: together} and put their shoulder to the wheel, and that if he really wanted to have a different government, he should work for the 1971 elections as opposed to suggesting anything that would either aid or abet the Communist cause at the moment, even though it may not have that purpose.

U.S. POSITION ON ASYLUM FOR CHAU

The Chairman. Did our Government refuse or decline to grant him asylum?

Mr. Vann. Sir, I have not asked our Government to grant him asylum. But my superiors have told me that we will not seek to get him to the United States, which is what he had requested be done. We do not interpose an objection to his government letting him go.

The Chairman. I see.

Mr. Colby. I don’t think it was a question of asylum, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman. What was it?

Mr. Colby. I think it was a question of would we actively help get him out of there.

The Chairman. What is our position? Would we allow him to come if he could come surreptitiously?

Mr. Colby. Well, I think that is a question you really have to address to the Department and to Ambassador Bunker. Mr. Chairman. I am not qualified to answer it.

The Chairman. You don’t know? {p.304}

Mr. Vann. He has asked me whether we would do such a thing, sir, and I have said I did not believe we would, but that was my operating assumption.

The Chairman. Did you ever ask Ambassador Bunker what he would recommend?

Mr. Vann. I have discussed Trail Ngoc Chau with Ambassador Bunker on a number of occasions, sir.

The Chairman. What is Ambassador Bunker’s attitude?

Mr. Vann. Ambassador Bunker’s attitude, and his instructions to me, sir, were that I should tend to pacification in the delta and he would tend to the political situation in Vietnam. [Laughter.]

The Chairman. That is a very clear answer.

CIA CHIEF’S KNOWLEDGE ABOUT TRAN NGOC CHAU

Mr. Colby, since you were so closely identified previously with the CIA, did the CIA Chief there know about these meetings of Chau with his brother?

Mr. Colby. As I said, Mr. Chairman, my memory frankly is a little dim, and I am not that close to the situation today. I don’t have access to the files. I really would have to defer that to the CIA.

I do recall some consideration, should we say, to the fact that he had a brother. [Deleted.]

The Chairman. Do you know whether the present CIA Chief believes Chau is a Communist or not?

Mr. Colby. I do not know the answer to that, Mr. Chairman. I have never really—

The Chairman. This is what bothers me. I had not known about this Major Mai story. I was told that with the Senator from Missouri. Now you have Chau and, of course, this immediately suggests the treatment given Mr. Dzu, who is still in jail; isn’t he? As far as I know his only crime was that he ran against Thieu and came out second.

CHARGES AGAINST MR. DZU

Do you know of anything else wrong with Dzu?

Mr. Vann. I don’t know Mr. Dzu at all, but I know from the papers at that time that is not the reason that ostensibly he went to jail.

The Chairman. What is the reason?

Mr. Vann. As I understand, it dealt with some matter of fraud that was part of the charges, and—

The Chairman. What kind of fraud?

Mr. Vann. Advocating against the laws of the Government of Vietnam.

The Chairman. Which was to make peace.

Mr. Vann. Well, advocating some arrangements with the coalition government which is against the law.

The Chairman. That is right. The papers that I read indicated that he did advocate that they should seek to make a negotiated peace rather than a military victory. That is about what was reported in the press, which is not unlike what apparently was in the mind of Chau when he was. at least, conferring with you with regard to the possibility of meeting with representatives of Hanoi. Is that not a correct analysis? {p.305}

Mr. Vann. Chau did have in his mind, sir, an eventual political settlement of the war.

The Chairman. Settlement of the war is what both of them had in mind; is that not correct?

Mr. Vann. Sir, I cannot comment on Mr. Dzu because I have never dealt with him personally.

The Chairman. Of course I have not either, but all the reports were that that was his crime.

Mr. Vann. That is right, sir.

GVN PRESSURE TO LIFT CHAU’S IMMUNITY

The Chairman. Do you have any knowledge of any irregular activities or pressure brought to bear on the Vietnamese National Assembly by the Thieu regime in connection with lifting the immunity of Chau? Do you have any knowledge of that?

Mr. Vann. Sir, I have on a continuing basis talked to deputies in the assembly, particularly those from the delta.

The Chairman. Yes. What do you know?

Mr. Vann. The deputies have suggested to me that there is a good deal of pressure being brought by the Government, no specific person in the Government, but by the Government, on individual members of the assembly to support the Government’s position.

The Chairman. To sign a petition?

Mr. Vann. I think, sir, in this country, it is called lobbying.

The Chairman. Yes, that is one. Is it to sign the petition removing immunity?

Mr. Vann. There has been some specific reported lobbying for this purpose; that is right.

The Chairman. Do you know anything about that, Ambassador Colby?

Mr. Colby. No, Mr. Chairman, I do not. I don’t deal with the deputies normally.

The Chairman. You only deal with the diplomats and generals.

Mr. Colby. No, sir. I deal mostly with province chiefs and government officials.

The Chairman. I was kidding you.

Mr. Colby. I know it.

The Chairman. Politics is a difficult game.

VISIT FROM MR. DZU’S SON

Colonel Vann, I think this is very interesting.

This, I must very frankly confess, bothers me a great deal. I do not know Mr. Dzu personalty, but his son came to see me personally, as he did a number of members of this committee, in a humanitarian venture. He said his father was quite ill, with a heart attack or something, and he is in prison and he thinks he will be allowed to die there. His attitude is that the only real crime of his father was that he would like to settle this war with a political settlement. That is the way he described it.

The son is quite attractive. Isn’t he here now or do you know?

Mr. Vann. I don’t know him, sir.

The Chairman. He is a young man and he came to see me. but I do not know. I have read all his reports. {p.306}

Senator, do you wish to interrogate?

Mr. Vann. Sir, could I add one thing?

The Chairman. I wish you would add anything that is significant.

Mr. Vann. This is significant to the question earlier this morning, but it does not concern the Chau case.

CRITERIA FOR U.S. AND SOUTH VIETNAMESE ARTILLERY FIRE

In the discussion, sir, about the control of artillery and the fact that there are different criteria for U.S. artillery firing from Vietnamese artillery firing, just to clear the record, I would like to explain that U.S. units are not permitted to fire artillery shells within a thousand yards of a Vietnamese population center unless there are U.S. units under active attack.

Vietnamese units are allowed to fire at a closer distance because they can communicate directly with, outposts and Vietnamese commanders who are in the population center, and the population center may be under attack. That is the reason that Vietnamese can fire into areas that U.S. troops cannot.

Secondly, if most of the firing described in Long An Province, an average of 300 rounds per day, is like that which I have observed on a continuing basis in Vietnam in some 27 other provinces, it is primarily firing of what they call an H and I, harassing and interdiction. This is fired on known communication routes, usually in unpopulated areas, and in areas where it is felt that Vietcong units may be traversing as a way of both making it more dangerous to them and of inhibiting them not to come to those areas.

That is all, sir.

CHAU’S TROUBLE WITH CIA OVER RD CADRE PROGRAM

The Chairman. One last question I overlooked there on the Chau case.

Did Chau have any trouble with the CIA over the RD cadre program; do you know?

Mr. Colby. Yes, he did.

The Chairman. What was it?

Mr. Colby. It was a question of the degree of control. I think Mr. Vann approved of that.

The Chairman. With which official of the CIA did he have the trouble?

Mr. Colby. I don’t remember, Mr. Chairman. I think it was the station as a whole.

The Chairman. Was it Mr. [deleted].

Mr. Colby. I don’t remember.

The Chairman. Do you know, Mr. Vann?

Mr. Vann. Mr. Chau’s relationships with Mr. [deleted] were quite close, sir, and there was no personal disagreement between the two of them. However, Colonel Chau had a basic disagreement as to the role of the CIA representative in each province from the standpoint of handling the funds and making decisions relative to supporting or nonsupporting the program.

He felt these should be Vietnamese actions and Vietnamese decisions. {p.307}

I might also add that Colonel Chau had a difference of opinion with his own superior, General Thinh, over this same matter in that Colonel Chau was much more sensitive to the CIA involvement in the RD cadre program and its possible effects than was General Thinh.

The Chairman. What do you mean by sensitive?

Mr. Vann. Apprehensive as to possible repercussions from what he would consider to be their too overt role.

The Chairman. I see.

Mr. Colby. The CIA’s position on that, Mr. Chairman, was that they needed that degree of control over the funds they were disbursing. They did not want to give the funds at a central level and let it be handled by the Vietnamese.

The Chairman. The difference of opinion was over close supervision of expenditures?

Mr. Colby. Yes, sir.

POSSIBILITY OF COMPLETE U.S. TROOP WITHDRAWAL

The Chairman. The last question is a little different, but Colonel Vann, you have been there so long and had such a long experience and are so thoroughly acquainted with it, could you answer two general questions? Do you think we can take all of our troops out of Vietnam and, if so, when would you estimate this can be done? Or, will we have to keep 75,000 men, more or less there as we do in Korea? This is the thrust of the question.

Could you comment on that?

Mr. Vann. I can comment on it, sir, but I am undoubtedly going to get into trouble with both you and my boss.

The Chairman. You are not going to get into trouble. I prefaced this with “because of your long experience” and you shouldn’t get into any trouble. I don’t believe that you will with your boss.

Senator Case. Mr. Chairman, I would like to say I share with you the fact that in asking these questions, that we ask the colonel to be quite specific, quite detailed, and to break it down into various kinds of assistance.

The Chairman. That is right. You won’t get into any trouble, colonel. You have been there too long. Go ahead.

Mr. Colby. He has been in trouble before.

The Chairman. He is used to trouble.

Senator Case. He is a Rutgers man, so he cannot be fazed.

The Chairman. Tell us your prognosis of this situation.

Mr. Vann. Sir, first of all, any prognosis is based upon a set of assumptions, any one of which may prove to be false, and I have no more clairvoyance about how Hanoi is going to react or not react than anyone else.

In my judgment, we are proceeding on a course of action that quite clearly will get the U.S. role in Vietnam greatly diminished and greatly reduce the cost both in lives and in money.

REDUCTION TIMETABLE PROPOSED IN 1968

Now, I did at one time in 1968 propose that a time table tor the reduction, based upon my judgment as to what the situation was, [deleted].

Senator Case. Is this you in 1968 or you now? {p.308}

 

Mr. Vann. It was me in 1968, and I made certain assumptions which have thus far held correct, and my judgment continues to be at that level, that that is about as rapidly as we can do it without unnecessarily jeopardizing the continuation of the non-Communist government in Vietnam.

Senator Case. [Deleted.]

Mr. Vann. [Deleted.]

Senator Case. Will you break that down.

Mr. Vann. [Deleted.]

The Chairman. At what point did you say under 100,000?

Mr. Vann. [Deleted.]

The Chairman. Only to 200,000 by then.

Mr. Vann. [Deleted.]

The Chairman. Would you say it would take 5 years to get it down below 100,000?

Mr. Vann. [Deleted.]

The Chairman. Yes.

Mr. Vann. [Deleted.]

The Chairman. Three years?

Mr. Vann. [Deleted.]

The Chairman. It is too far to foresee beyond that?

Mr. Vann. [Deleted.] It is unpredictable as to whether Hanoi will scale up the fighting or scale down the fighting.

HANOI’S ACTIVITY DURING PREDICTED U.S. REDUCTION

Senator Case. This is the thing that I think is kind of important. Those predictions of yours are based upon the assumption that Hanoi will be nice people.

Mr. Vann. No, rather that they will continue as they now are.

Senator Case. Well, what is that?

Mr. Vann. Maintaining their current level of strength in South Vietnam.

Senator Case. Suppose they decide to do more. One, will they be able to do more?

Mr. Vann. I personally, sir, don’t think that they can substantially increase their effort in South Vietnam. I see several reasons as to why they may want to scale it down and go back more toward a political guerilla-type effort, and to modify their expectations for perhaps a decade or even a decade and a half.

Senator Case. You think that they will not do more because they will not find it feasible to do more?

Mr. Vann. I think, sir, that they must be having a great number of internal problems. They are certainly having a great problem of morale among their troops at the moment, even at this level of action. They are having an extremely difficult logistical problem supporting this number of forces.

Senator Case. This is a very important factor, it seems to me, and this is the kind of information we don’t have much of.

Mr. Vann. Sir, keep in mind it is a personal opinion. It is not factual information.

Senator Case. You haven’t pulled it out of the air?

Mr. Vann. No, sir.

Senator Case. This is based upon your observations and upon what you have heard. {p.309}

Mr. Colby. I think it is fair to say also based primarily upon Mr. Vann’s position in the southern part of the country.

Senator Case. Yes.

Well, would you, Mr. Ambassador, express a view contrary to that?

Mr. Colby. I would say, in addition to the factors that he comes up with; you do have the problem of the DMZ and the potential for action in that area.

Senator Case. Yes. I think there is no doubt about that.

Mr. Colby. There is a shorter geographical distance involved and they are engaged in a logistical effort there, and so forth.

Senator Case. You do not exclude their ability to—

Mr. Vann. Sir, I have information, of course less information, about these corps areas, but I did try to take into consideration this type of thing, too, in arriving at this overall judgment from whatever — the information that I have had available, and once a month I do get a briefing on the situation in the entire country and outside my area.

Senator Case. Is your feeling based largely not on what Hanoi is about to do, but upon increasing strength among the South Vietnamese?

Mr. Vann. I believe there is every reason to expect that the Government’s control will improve over a period of time. I see time as an element on our side and one that is hurting the enemy.

DIFFERENCE IN APPRAISALS

Senator Case. This was a different appraisal from the one you were giving in 1967.

Mr. Vann. In 1967, sir, we had a very different situation. We had a tremendous problem in the pacification area because of the lack of the continuing close-in security for the population.

Keep in mind that in 1967 we were winning a lot of battles. That meat-grinding action may very well have caused the enemy to try the change of tactics that the Tet offensive represented.

LOSS OF U.S. LIVES INVOLVED IN PREDICTED REDUCTIONS

Senator Case. Now, looking at your own prediction as to what you think is likely, what does this involve in 1970, 1971, 1972, in the loss of American lives?

Mr. Vann. I believe, sir, that it should be an ever-diminishing rate.

Senator Case. Well, would you give us some order of magnitude.

Mr. Vann. Sir, I would really submit that you could get much better estimates from someone directly involved in the U.S. tactical military effort.

Senator Case. I don’t mind trying that, of course, but I would like to have your own.

Mr. Vann. Well, sir, when we think of an ever-diminishing rate, one of the factors involved in casualties is that a great number of the casualties (less now than before — at one time it was over 50 percent of U.S. casualties) are from mines and boobytraps.

Now, the fewer U.S. troops you have in Vietnam, the fewer mines and boobytraps they are going to stumble over. So there has been quite a correlation between the size of our force structure and the number of casualties. If we get down to half of the present force {p.310} structure I would imagine the casualties would be half of what they are now.

Senator Case. Are you suggesting, your belief is, that the most likely result is [deleted].

The Chairman. Could I ask, Mr. Colby, if you have any different view about this estimate?

Mr. Colby. Well, I have great respect for John Vann’s attitudes and views. I think that as the nature of the American participation changes from combat units to primarily support structure, you will have the same kind of impact on American casualties. You will have a very substantial reduction, more than proportionate.

I think an example is the delta today without U.S. ground combat forces, although still with air combat forces — to refer to the Senator’s statements the other day. Nonetheless, the fact is that you have very few American casualties at this time in the delta area each week and month. I think as you reduce the American participation in the ground combat work in the other parts of the country, you will get a very sharp decline in the total number of American casualties.

PROJECTION OF HANOI’S ATTITUDE

As for the projection of Hanoi’s attitude and what they are thinking — if they are determined to carry on and achieve a Communist victory in South Vietnam at some appropriate time, they have a very difficult problem on their hands. They made kind of a truce on the assumption that the place would fall into their hands in 1954. They were badly deceived because the country picked itself up and put itself together and actually began to run, and I think—

The Chairman. Do you mean under Diem?

Mr. Colby. Yes, in the first couple of years in the Diem period, there was a very distinct revival of that nation or formation of a nation if you will. It deteriorated later for other reasons.

But they face the prospect of turning off the gas on this effort with the very dangerous potential for them that their forces in the south will disintegrate, that their own drive and sense of purpose will reduce, and that they would be sort of confessing to having failed. It is very dangerous politically to the heirs of Ho Chi Minh to come up and say that they failed in what their leader told them to do.

I think they will continue to keep some pressure on, with whatever they are able to use. I think that the potential for winding up and giving kind of a special effort is always there. They do have divisions in the area north of the DMZ. Their supply lines are shorter up in that area. I think there is a chance that at some time they could make a decision that their situation in the south was deteriorating to such a degree that they had to do something dramatic and sharp to shake it up, the way they obviously felt in early 1968.

Senator Case. Is there a possibility that, rather than being able to do this, they are reducing their response in response to ours and the evidence of this may be their increased activity in the plain of Jarres?

Mr. Colby. It is, of course, possible. Senator. I don’t read their mind.

Senator Case. I know. {p.311}

Mr. Colby. I frankly do not think so. I frankly believe their directives to their forces, their speeches to their people, show a continued determination to keep the heat on in South Vietnam.

The Lao situation is more or less as it has been all along, except that they have put some extra forces into it in the past 6 months or year.

Senator Case. Indeed they have.

Mr. Colby. But it is not anywhere near the magnitude of extra forces that they have in South Vietnam.

Senator Case. Of course not. But it is a substantial increase which suggests they are not under pressure. That is all I am trying to get at.

Mr. Colby. Well, it suggests they are able to put those forces which are in North Vietnam into an area very close to their own homeland as distinct from sending them all the way down to the South, which is a very large logistics problem.

Senator Case. Mr. Chairman, I didn’t mean to barge in in this way, but you and I are directly interested in the same approach.

The Chairman. Could you come back at a quarter of three as you did yesterday?

Mr. Colby. Yes, sir, at your disposal, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman. I have two constituents I promised to take to lunch.

Senator Case. That would be a humanitarian thing to do anyway.

The Chairman. We will come back then at a quarter of three. Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, at 12:55 p.m., the committee recessed, to reconvene at 2:45 p.m., this same day.)

AFTERNOON SESSION

The Chairman. The committee will come to order. Sergeant Wallace, as I said, I didn’t get to ask you any questions at all.

LANGUAGE FACILITY OF CAP TEAM

Do you speak Vietnamese?

Testimony of
Sgt. Richard D. Wallace
— Resumed

Sergeant Wallace. No, sir, I don’t. I have two marines that speak fairly good Vietnamese, and also my counterparts speak excellent English. We have a big brother program in which we select children within the hamlets to work for the Marines. The majority of these kids who work for us speak fluent English, and also write English.

The Chairman. Did you say two of those in your CAP team? Your CAP team consists of five?

Sergeant Wallace. No, sir, there are 13 marines.

The Chairman. Two of them speak Vietnamese?

Sergeant Wallace. Yes, sir, not fluently but they get a point across.

The Chairman. How do you communicate with the PF soldiers and with residents in the village in which you are stationed? {p.312}

Sergeant Wallace. Again, part of the PF’s, a good percentage, speak English, and the marines who speak Vietnamese are with me.

The Chairman. What percentage of your PF’s speak English?

Sergeant Wallace. I would say 25 percent.

The Chairman. Where are they learning?

Sergeant Wallace. School, sir, and from the marines and from the children.

The Chairman. How do you ascertain that the marines are understood by the people in the hamlets?

Sergeant Wallace. Well, sir, when we first arrived there, the hamlets were having quite a bit of trouble. We were primarily working within that area, operating in and around the hamlet there. The people are accepting the marines. They are more friendly with them. I am invited to all the hamlet meetings.

HAMLET MEETINGS

The Chairman. What kind of hamlet meetings?

Sergeant Wallace. This is just the hamlet meetings where they get the older people—

The Chairman. Are they social meetings?

Sergeant Wallace. Yes, sir.

The Chairman. What is the nature of the social meetings?

Sergeant Wallace. I just discuss things which improve the village or hamlet, and problems which have arisen and try to work these out.

NORMAL DAY OF CAP

The Chairman. Describe in the way that your predecessor, Captain Murphy did, a normal day. Give us a feeling of what you do and what is said.

Sergeant Wallace. Fine, sir.

I start off in the evening, usually around 6:30 or a half hour or an hour after dark. We run two patrols which go out and set up their ambushes. These ambushes stay out all night. They come back the next morning at approximately 6:30, depending upon what time of the year it is.

Then we send out a security guard to guard the hamlet in the daytime. We work with the rural development cadre. We get supplies for them and help them to rebuild the hamlet.

The people need wood, cement, tin, et cetera. The Marines during this time have opportunities to sleep.

 

SELECTION, BACKGROUND, AND TRAINING OF CAP

The Chairman. How is your 13-man CAP team chosen?

Sergeant Wallace. Sir, they are selected from the United States. At one time the CAP were all from within South Vietnam, but the program has been expanded and they are accepting them from the States. They are sent over with orders for the CAP program. They are screened and the better qualified Marines are taken for this program.

Senator Aiken. Are they from rural areas?

Sergeant Wallace. Pardon me, sir?

Senator Aiken. Are the Marines from the rural areas largely?

Sergeant Wallace. I don’t know what you mean by rural area. {p.313}

Mr. Colby. American farm areas. They are not.

Sergeant Wallace. They are not.

The Chairman. Is there any special training the squad leaders receive?

Sergeant Wallace. No, sir. We go to a CAP school, which is located in Danang. The school lasts 2 weeks. They just talk about the people, how the people live, the customs, et cetera.

The Chairman. Have the Marines under your command been given any special training?

Sergeant Wallace. Yes, sir. They also attend this 2-week course.

The Chairman. They do too?

Sergeant Wallace. Yes, sir. All Marines going through the CAP program attended this school.

The Chairman. Do you think the Marines today are trained as well as they were in the past?

Sergeant Wallace. No, sir. Present day demands for Marines are quite large. They are rushed through most of the training. They don’t have as much time to grasp all the infantry aspects which they need, and are not trained as well as I was when I went through training.

The Chairman. You say this is because they are in too big a hurry?

Sergeant Wallace. Yes, sir. The demand for Marines is such that they rush them through classes.

GREAT DEMAND FOR MARINES

The Chairman. Why is the demand so great?

Sergeant Wallace. We need Marines. People are rotating and to fill their positions they must get the replacements over to Vietnam.

The Chairman. But we are reducing the numbers. Aren’t we reducing the number of Marines along with the Army?

Sergeant Wallace. Yes, sir, correct. But when they rotate a man, they still have to send replacements for the remaining units.

The Chairman. Where does the reduction come about if you replace them or is this a fiction?

Sergeant Wallace. No, sir, it is not a fiction. They are reducing the Marines.

The Chairman. If they are reducing, then you don’t send a replacement every time you bring one home; do you?

Sergeant Wallace. I guess that is correct, sir.

The Chairman. I am trying to get it straight in my own mind. Why is there a greater demand for Marines now than there was when you were in training?

Sergeant Wallace. The CAP program has enlarged quite a bit. It is expanding.

The Chairman. The CAP program is expanding, not the Marines generally?

Sergeant Wallace. Yes, sir. In my area you will find we have two infantry units which I will show you on the map here. Charlie Company from the 1-26th, and also India Company from the 3-1st. They also have started using the CAP program. They are sending men down to work with the Popular Force soldiers.

India Company has CAP units located just north of my area. The 26th Marines have a CAP which is just south of my area. They operate {p.314} primarily in Huong Son area. The CAP program has been quite effective.

The Chairman. For what purpose?

Sergeant Wallace. Providing security for the hamlets.

The Chairman. I see.

IS SECURITY SITUATION IN CAP 215 AREA TYPICAL OF PROVINCE?

Would you say that the area you cover is typical of the province in terms of the security situation, lack of support for the Vietcong?

Sergeant Wallace. Would you rephrase that, sir.

The Chairman. Is the area that you cover typical of the province as a whole with regard to the security of the people and the lack of support for the Vietcong?

Sergeant Wallace. Yes, sir.

The Chairman. It is typical?

Sergeant Wallace. Yes, sir.

The Chairman. It is not unusual.

TERMINOLOGY USED TO REFER TO VIETNAMESE

We have often read in the papers that American soldiers, including marines, refer to the Vietnamese as Dinks, Gooks, or Slants. Is the terminology generally used?

Sergeant Wallace. [Deleted.]

The Chairman. Which is the more fashionable?

Sergeant Wallace. [Deleted.]

The Chairman. Could you give us any enlightenment as to why these terms are used by the marines?

Sergeant Wallace. [Deleted.]

The Chairman. Is this a word of affection?

Sergeant Wallace. [Deleted.]

The Chairman. Is it respect? What is it?

Sergeant Wallace. [Deleted.]

The Chairman. Your counterparts?

Sergeant Wallace. [Deleted.]

The Chairman. You are an adviser?

Sergeant Wallace. No, sir; I am not an adviser.

The Chairman. You are a leader of the CAP’s?

Sergeant Wallace. Yes, sir; a squad.

The Chairman. Do you have any questions, Senator Aiken?

WEARING OF UNIFORMS BY MARINES AND POPULAR FORCES

Senator Aiken. Are the Marines always in uniform?

Sergeant Wallace. Yes, sir.

Senator Aiken. Do the Popular Forces have a uniform too?

Sergeant Wallace. Yes, sir; they have.

Senator Aiken. I don’t want to ask any questions. Any I would ask have probably been asked twice already, so I will get it from the record. {p.315}

SUPPORT FOR SOUTH VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENT IN HAMLETS

The Chairman. Do you think that most of the people in the hamlets in which you have been stationed support the present Government of South Vietnam?

Sergeant Wallace. Yes, sir, I do.

KILL RATIOS OF CAP’S

The Chairman. What is the kill ratio of the CAP platoons?

Sergeant Wallace. Just a second, sir, I have the statistics. Sir, these are statistics from January 1 to November 30, 1969. Total enemy killed in this period of time was 4,735; the enemy killed by CAP’s was 1,862. The ratio is 6.4 to 1.

The Chairman. 6.4 enemy to 1?

Sergeant Wallace. Friendly.

KILL RATIO OF PF PLATOONS OPERATING ALONE

The Chairman. Do you know the kill ratio of Popular Force platoons operating alone after CAP teams have left?

Sergeant Wallace. Yes, sir, 3.5 to 1.

The Chairman. Just about half.

Sergeant Wallace. Yes, sir.

The Chairman. Do you know whether that is general or is that only in your area?

Sergeant Wallace. This is for the entire CAP program, sir, the entire combined action force, 114 CAP’s.

KILL RATIO OF PSDF

The Chairman. Is that the ratio of the People’s Self-Defense Forces?

Sergeant Wallace. No, sir. This does not include the PSDF.

The Chairman. What is their kill ratio?

Sergeant Wallace. I don’t have that.

The Chairman. Do you have that, Ambassador Colby?

Mr. Colby. We have some very poor statistics on that, Senator, which I don’t have very much reliance on. It comes out roughly one for one on People’s Self-Defense. These vary.

OWNERSHIP AND BOUNDARIES OF FARMS

Senator Aiken. I would like to ask one more question. You say this is a farming community. Do the people own the land on which they work or are they tenants working as tenant farmers? Are they working for someone who owns a lot of land perhaps?

Sergeant Wallace. Sir, I don’t know.

Senator Aiken. Is it their own? You might know. Is that situation better over there than it was?

Mr. Colby. It varies from one part of the country to another, Senator. Up in central Vietnam they never have had a very large landlord problem. Most of the holdings there are fairly small holdings. A number of them are rented out to other people in the villages.

A family will rent out part of its land to someone else. {p.316}

Senator Aiken. The boundaries are well defined?

Mr. Colby. Quite well defined, and they remain stable. Even when the village leaves because of the war and comes back 3 years later, the families find their old locations. The village handles a great deal of that.

Now, down in the delta area, where you did have larger holdings and absentee landlordism, there has been some modification over the past few years.

Under the Diem regime they put in a partial land reform program, let us say, and accepted as that. It reduced the maximum holding down to 100 hectares, plus a little for religious purposes. That is 250 acres.

This absorbed land which was formerly owned by the French or former bigger holdings. They spent quite a time trying to distribute this land, and by 1961-62 when the war began they had not done very much of it. This past year they had 147,000 hectares yet to distribute. They essentially had not distributed anything much over the past 7 years.

During this past year the Government set the goal of finishing up that whole 147,000. They did not make it. They did distribute about 75,000. They will clean it up in the early part of this year.

Senator Aiken. That is quite an improvement.

Mr. Colby. Yes. There was more distributed this year than the last 7 years.

Senator Aiken. When a few people get control of the land it seems almost a pure formula for rebellion in the country.

Mr. Colby. Well, the Government today has a further bill on land reform which has been in the National Assembly.

Senator Aiken. I know.

Mr. Colby. It is not yet up before the Senate. It is in Senate committee at the moment. This would reduce the maximum holding down quite a bit further. There is some debate as to whether it will be eight or ten hectares, but it will be way down. The thrust of the Government’s position on the bill is that you will arrive at a situation where you essentially cannot be a landlord. The only way to own land is to work it. That is the thrust of their policy. That has not yet passed the National Assembly.

Senator Aiken. Ok.

HAMLET FESTIVAL

The Chairman. Captain Murphy, perhaps you are as good as anyone on this. Are you familiar with the hamlet festival?

Testimony of
Capt. Armand Murphy
— Resumed

Captain Murphy. No, I am not, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman. Are you?

Testimony of
Capt. Richard T. Geck
— Resumed

Captain Geck. Mr. Chairman, are you referring to a situation in which we would bring in entertainment and bring the people together where we conducted operations?

The Chairman. This is described in a handbook for military support, pacification, but it is 2 years old. {p.317}

Captain Geck. I believe that is what you are referring to, sir. I have been instructed in it, but I do not use it.

The Chairman. Do you use it any more?

Do either of you know?

Captain Geck. No, sir.

The Chairman. I don’t know whether this calls —

Sergeant Wallace. Sir, we call it Psyops. Occasionally a team of Vietnamese will come in and show a movie.

The Chairman. “The purpose of this annex is to set forth the task organization of the RVNAF teams of the hamlet festival force involved in a cordon and search operation; in addition, discussion of the physical layout of the hamlet festival is presented. Task organization and functions of RVNAF teams. * * * , cultural team, agricultural team, youth services teach,” and so on.

Captain Murphy. Possibly, Mr. Chairman, this is a function of the regular forces of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.

The Chairman. I wondered whether you participated in it.

Captain Murphy. I am not familiar with it.

The Chairman. Either of you?

Captain Geck. It was a technique taught to us when we went through the advisory training program. We have used it in a modified sense.

The Chairman. It does not look as if it is a promising subject.

Mr. Vann. Mr Chairman, may I make mention of the fact that I am very familiar with the program. It is a program largely involving U.S. tactical forces, working in conjunction with police or provincial forces, that were involved in taking an area that had been under Vietcong control or in which there might still be members of the Vietcong. They surround the area, seal it off, and then have the National Police of the Government of Vietman {sic: Vietnam} assemble the people in the center of the town and interrogate, usually the males, and some of the female adults.

To make this less onerous for the people, a county fair or hamlet festival was also established wherein food, drink, and medical aid was dispensed to the people while they were assembled. They would also sometimes show movies or even get some local Vietnamese cultural drama teams to put on entertainment. It is a technique that was used extensively in 1967.

It has largely been abandoned since that period of time.

The Chairman. I suspected as much.

SENTENCING AND RELEASE UNDER PHOENIX PROGRAM

I believe we come back to the Phoenix program.

Ambassador Colby, I believe you said your statistical information about what happens to the Vietcong after their apprehension is not very good. I notice an article by Mr. Terence Smith in the New York Times of August 19, 1969 which says:

Do you think that is correct?

Mr. Colby. Well, Mr. Chairman, I stand by the fact that our information is not very good. We did run a survey here about 8 months {p.318} ago in which we used what information we had available and could collect on what happened to people. The experience at that time did reveal that about 20 percent received a sentence of more than 6 months. Most of them were much less.

 

This was a one-time experiment, and I would not generalize it completely, but it was one of the factors used to discuss with the government the necessity for a tightening up of the regulations as to what kind of sentences were applied to what kinds of people.

The Chairman. The same article quotes Mr. John Mason, identified as the head of the American Phoenix Advisers, and as saying, “Many of them just go out the back door of the jail. We know that.” What does he mean by that?

Mr. Colby. He means that a number of the people who are originally arrested are released very quickly because government officials decide they do not have enough of a case to hold them.

STATEMENT ON PHOENIX PROGRAM

Mr. Chairman, if I might, I have prepared a statement on the Phoenix program, if I might submit it for the record.

The Chairman. Yes, indeed.

Mr. Colby. It is just a general roundup of the program and it might help fill out the record.

(The information referred to appears on p.723.)

ADMINISTRATIVE DETENTION UNDER PHOENIX PROGRAM

The Chairman. Yesterday you mentioned a system of administrative detention of up to 2 years under the Phoenix program. Would you describe what happens to the typical member of the VC infrastructure who is arrested.

Mr. Colby. The man is arrested. As I think Major Arthur said, he would be picked up and brought into the district. He would be interrogated there for about 24 hours maximum. He would then be sent to the province.

There he would be held in a detention center at the province level. He would be interrogated there by some more specialized teams of interrogators, people who would try to find out both his tactical knowledge and his knowledge of the enemy infrastructure.

While under interrogation a case would be prepared describing his activity and his background, describing for what reason be should be held.

This case would be reviewed by what is called the province security committee. The province security committee, as I mentioned, is made up of the province chief, the deputy province chief for administration, the chairman of the provincial council, an elected body, the local provincial judge. There is frequently only one judge in the province, and he would be a member — I think a better term for it in English is the local district attorney, frankly, because—

Senator Aiken. Is he appointed or elected?

Mr. Colby. Under their system of law he is appointed. He is under the Ministry of Justice. He is a national government official.

Senator Aiken. I see. {p.319}

Mr. Colby. The case would be reviewed by that body. Assuming the suspect fell within the categories and depending on what his job was in the VC, he would receive an appropriate sentence according to the subdivisions that I have outlined. Serious party members would have a minimum of a 2-year sentence.

Leaders of the fronts, and that sort of thing, but not party members, would receive a 1- to 2-year sentence. A lesser follower, someone who had just helped at the machinery, would have a maximum of 1 year.

Upon conviction, under the current legislation, he would be moved to a detention center or corrections center, as it is called, a prison, and held there until the expiration of his term.

Now I am speaking of the ideal, Mr. Chairman. I am speaking of the way the legislation says it should work. There are weaknesses in it that are being worked on. One of them, for instance, is that there is frequently a long detention period while the case is being prepared. Bureaucracy does not prepare it fast enough.

The other thing, as was mentioned, is that a number of the cases received less than the appropriate sentence for their job until recently when this had begun to tighten up a little bit.

Some of the provinces have not moved the individuals from the province detention facilities to the national corrections centers even after the sentence. Up until a few months ago the requirement was that the case be reviewed and confirmed by the Ministry of Justice, which meant another 2 or 3 months’ delay in the processing. That has been changed in the past few months, so that, once the case was approved by the province security committee, the men will be moved to the national corrections center and begin serving their terms. The Ministry of Interior still does review the case but it reviews it after he has been sent to the corrections center.

PROVINCE SECURITY COMMITTEE

The Chairman. Who makes up the province security committee? I did not understand that.

Mr. Colby. The province chief, the deputy province chief, his deputy for administration. The latter is a civilian.

The Chairman. These are all Vietnamese?

Mr. Colby. Oh, yes. No Americans are in this. A number of these officers actually have American advisers. The province chiefs have senior advisers, for instance, but no Americans sit on committee.

RIGHTS OF ARRESTED PERSON

The Chairman. Does the arrested person have a counsel and trial?

Mr. Colby. Generally, no.

The Chairman. May he be tried by the committee while he is in jail and in absentia?

Mr. Colby. I think what you mean is one thing that is currently under discussion, Mr. Chairman. Does he have a right to a hearing?

The Chairman. And to be present at it?

Mr. Colby. No, he does not have a right to a hearing under the present legislation. There is some consideration being given to modifying that. {p.320}

VCI KILLED UNDER PHOENIX PROGRAM IN 1968 AND 1969

The Chairman. In 1968, out of a total of 15,776 VCI neutralized under the Phoenix program, 2,259 were killed, which is about 13 percent of the total.

Last year 6,187 were killed out of 19,534 neutralized, which is about 36 percent.

I noticed according to your statements for the record, the VCI killed about the same number of people. You said more than 6,000. What is the explanation of the great increase in the percentage of the VCI killed in 1969?

Mr. Colby. If I may make one correction, Mr. Chairman. You will recall that 1968 terrorist figures do not include the month of February, the month of the Tet attacks, so that it is an 11-month period.

The Chairman. I see.

Mr. Colby. Actually there were more people killed during 1968 than 1969, I am quite sure.

The explanation for the difference, Mr. Chairman, is, I believe, that during 1969 increased attention has been given to the program. There has particularly been an increased discipline over the kinds of people that were credited to the program.

During 1968 they did not have precise definitions of who was a VCI and, consequently, pretty much everyone who was arrested was included as a VCI in those figures.

By 1969, these sharpened up a bit, and many people who were actually captured and arrested as VC could not be classified as VCI for this program.

Secondly, I think that the pressures on the program of concentrating on the infrastructure as a target have created a greater degree of activity and a greater degree of intensity of effort so that even though the figures in 1969 are harder, I think you are getting essentially a larger total than you had for the softer figures in 1968.

Third, as I mentioned the other day, I think that a substantial number of the killed were not ones that were particularly targeted but were ones which were identified as members of the infrastructure after having been killed in some kind of an action. But since there was a certain desire to focus on the infrastructure as a target, these people were credited to the totals.

Mr. Vann. Could I add two things to that, sir, from my experience in the Delta?

The Chairman. Yes.

Mr. Vann. In 1969 many more members of the infrastructure are living in base areas than in 1968.

In 1968, they were continuing to live in the hamlet. Because they now live in base areas, it means they live with the military unit as opposed to living among the civilian communities. That would account on the one hand for why there would be such a high percentage killed.

Finally, and Ambassador Colby just touched on it, you are kind of comparing apples and oranges because in 1968 the figures are A, B, and C categories. In 1969, it was A, B, and C for the first 5 months and then A and B only lor the last 7 months. {p.321}

If you were to take comparable figures for 1968 and 1969 — A, B, and, C for the total year — the percentage of VCI killed goes down substantially.

The Chairman. Would the numbers go down?

Mr. Vann. Sir?

The Chairman. The number.

Mr. Vann. The number would go up.

Mr. Colby. The number goes up very substantially.

Mr. Vann. The numbers would go up, but the number killed goes down.

The Chairman. The number 6,000 against 2,000 is substantial.

Mr. Vann. Right, sir.

The Chairman. Numbers, not percentage.

Mr. Vann. Right, sir. But total numbers also go up considerably in 1969.

EFFECTIVENESS OF PHOENIX PROGRAM

The Chairman. Do you consider this program a successful one, Mr. Vann?

Mr. Vann. Sir, I consider it an essential program that has not become anywhere near as effective as we believe it can be. I also am well aware that, like any other program in Vietnam, it has its share of abuses, and by its very nature it is one which is extremely vulnerable to being misused. It requires a great deal of supervision.

Senator Symington. Mr. Chairman, would you yield for one question here?

The Chairman. Yes.

WHY IS PHOENIX PROGRAM ESSENTIAL?

Senator Symington. Why do you think it is essential?

Mr. Vann. Are you referring to me, sir, or the Ambassador?

Senator Symington. You said you thought it was essential.

Mr. Vann. I think it is essential because in any organization of the enemy the brains of that organization are what keep it going. In other words, you can kill on a continuing basis followers and yet the people who can organize things politically can get a recruiting drive going and replace these followers. They can continue to send them out where they are in danger and can be, and will be, killed and have to be replaced. The followers go out to do the missions or the dirty work, if you will. They are the ones who are sent out to do executions of GVN officials.

The best way of getting on top of that is to get the nerve center, the command post, of the enemy, and this is essentially what the Phoenix or Phung Hoang program is designed to do.

It has not yet enjoyed the success that we feel is possible. It has not done it primarily because there has not been the same degree of awareness on the part of the Government of Vietnam, speaking on the whole, not as individuals, as there is on the part of the United States as to the importance of this.

Please keep in mind their government is very militarily oriented. Even on the American side for years we had difficulty getting the {p.322} G-2 elements at various tactical levels to recognize that it was sometimes more important to capture one key organizer in an area than it was to kill 100 guerrillas because he was the man who could keep up the organization, keep it flourishing and replenish the losses as they occurred.

I had a very high level U.S. American Army G-2 officer comment to me in 1967, “Look, let us win this damned war by killing the enemy and then you civilians can screw around with the infrastructure after the war is over.” That reflected all too often the attitude on the part of some U.S. personnel.

The attitude is much more prevalent on the part of the Vietnamese personnel because they are much more militarily oriented in their entire government structure than we are. This is why I consider it is an essential program, sir.

Mr. Colby. I think I might add to that, Senator, that the necessity of the program comes from the nature of the war being fought. This is a war fought on different levels. Part of the war is a subversive war, a terrorist war being fought by a political apparatus, one which refused to consider operating under any kind of normal rule.

They are the ones who began the process of subversion and developing these networks, developing the attacks on the government structure.

If you are going to fight this kind of a war, you have to fight it on this level as well as on the regular level. You have to do a better job. The government of Vietnam, however, as Mr. Vann said, has not developed much expertise in this thing.

We Americans have been learning the necessity of it. The Com-

munist Party of Indo-China began in 1930 and they have been developing their techniques and standards ever since, so they have about a 40-year jump on us in terms of professionalism. This is a very professional covert operation that the enemy is running. A normal member of the VCI will have several aliases; he will have all the paraphernalia of covert operations, cutouts and all that sort of thing. So it is a subversive organization and it has to be met by good, sensible, hard police methods — intelligent ones too, not brutal ones; don’t get me wrong.

DIFFICULTY OF DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN CIVILIANS AND MILITARY

The Chairman. This is directed at civilians rather than military; is that correct? I am not sure.

Mr. Colby. Sir, the difference between a civilian and a military is very fuzzy in the nature of this war.

Is the guerrilla a civilian or military? Is the political boss civilian or military? Is the fellow who is in the local force unit civilian or military? He probably does not have a uniform. He does have a weapon.

The infrastructure fellow has a weapon. Maybe he has a bomb that he places someplace. Is he civilian or military? Those distinctions are some of the things that we have learned are not that compelling. We have learned it in our CORDS organization. We have learned that we have to put civilian Americans and military Americans together to make an American team to fight this kind of war. It does not divide into civil and military. {p.323}

The Chairman. Does this account for the fact that you have incidents like Mylai in which you cannot tell the difference, so you resolve all doubts in favor of the fact that they are all VCI because you cannot tell the difference?

Mr. Colby. No, sir. I think I have tried to indicate that we have devoted quite a lot of effort to identifying precisely who is a member of which part of the apparatus.

The Chairman. This is what confuses me. I thought you said it was difficult to tell the difference. I can see it would be very difficult.

Mr. Colby. I am saying there is not a difference between civil and military.

The Chairman. Yes.

Mr. Colby. But the Phoenix program is aimed at identifying by name — not by character but by name — the people who do these different jobs so they can be identified and individually picked up.

Mr. Vann. Sir, there is no relationship at all between the incident which is alleged to have happened at Mylai and the type of program we are now discussing, no relationship at all.

The Chairman. I can see there is not in that sense, but there is the fact that you cannot tell very well the difference between a military man and a VCI, a soldier. These people don’t wear their uniforms. They all wear pajamas; don’t they?

Mr. Vann. Let’s look at it from the other side, sir. Ambassador Colby is just as legitimate a target to the other side as is General Abrams.

When I travel in the countryside, sir, I have, not on my person, but close to me in the back of my helicopter and on my person if I am going to spend a night in an outpost, a weapon to give myself close-in protection if someone tries to assassinate me or shoot me. That is the kind of a war it is. Everything is fair game for either side.

Senator Symington. You say you have a weapon to protect you if someone is about to attack you?

Mr. Vann. Yes, sir.

Senator Symington. Where do you keep it?

Mr. Vann. If I am flying in my helicopter or in my car I have it at my feet or at my side, but out of sight because I don’t like to have it visible. I will have four hand grenades in a briefcase and a pistol and 100 rounds of ammunition in my briefcase.

Senator Symington. Thank you.

The Chairman. I agree this is a very peculiar war. Everything indicates that, but I am trying to understand.

ALLEGATIONS OF OFFICERS TRAINED AT FORT HOLABIRD

Are you familiar with the allegations made in the case in Baltimore involving a man named Reichmeyer? Are either of you familiar with it?

Mr. Colby. Are those the two officers?

The Chairman. They were being trained at Fort Holabird.

Mr. Colby. Generally. I am not precisely familiar with it.

The Chairman. Could you give an explanation of your point of view or your explanation of that incident if you are familiar with it? {p.324}

Mr. Colby. I am not familiar with it, Mr. Chairman. All I know is that those officers apparently had not been to Vietnam. They were talking about what they would be told to do when they got to Vietnam.

The Chairman. That is correct.

They were repeating what an instructor who had been to Vietnam told them would be expected of them when they arrived there; is that not correct? That was the report.

Mr. Colby. Right. My only comment is that that is not expected of them. In fact, quite the contrary, we have given very specific directives to our officers as to their behavior, and I believe I have submitted one of those for the record.

(The information referred to appears on p. 61).

The Chairman. Why did the Government drop the case and not go on through with it and allow them to attempt to prove their allegation?

Mr. Colby. I don’t know.

The Chairman. This is the same sort of thing that the Senator from Missouri and I are concerned about in the executive hearings. In this case these two men offered to prove their allegations. The Government backed off from it and it was quashed. It reminds me a little of what is quashed in our hearings and it leaves these questions in our minds.

I would much prefer for our own satisfaction if the Government had made the explanation you are making and had been able to sustain it. It would have cleared the air and been a lot better. These two men made what they called a proffer and the Government after that dropped it and didn’t prosecute them. The men were allowed whatever it was they asked for. It was a conscientious objection or something. The men said they were very deeply offended by what they believed they were expected to do if they went to Vietnam, which is what has been explained.

I grant it is just one case.

Mr. Vann. Senator Fulbright, may I submit—

The Chairman. I would like you to.

Mr. Vann. Although you have a policy, a program of instruction, and clearly delineated orders and principles that people are to follow, the Army, CORDS organization, and all of our other agencies in Vietnam are, after all, made up of human beings. Many people deviate from what they have been told to do because of their own personal experience or because of their personal convictions as to what may be right. I have on a continuing basis found subordinates of mine violating my established policies. Depending upon the nature of the violation, I either get it corrected or I discipline them.

But, sir, those are not the published instructions. It is not the way these people operate. What these two young gentlemen were told, and by what instructor, is not within my knowledge, but I do submit it is quite possible it was someone acting outside of the scope of his established responsibility.

The Chairman. I regret that the Government did not go ahead and clear the matter up at the time. {p.325}

INFLUENCE OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ON ALLEGATIONS OF VIOLENCE IN VIETNAM

What I said reminds me of a statement yesterday. I won’t undertake exactly to state what you said, Colonel Vann, but you expressed a certain resentment, I think, at what you considered an implication of some questions relating to this program.

It occurred to me afterward, when I considered how many acts of violence take place in this city or in New York City or any other city in America and the enormous increase in the amount of crime and violence here in this country, that you really should not be too surprised that people who hear about these things are not too skeptical about the allegations of crime or, we will say, acts of violence in Vietnam because we have them here at home.

We are at present a very violent people. Everything indicates that.

Mr. Vann. All I was submitting, sir, is when it happens here it is in violation of the law.

The Chairman. That is right.

Mr. Vann. When it happens there it is in violation of the law as we have established it.

EFFECT OF CONDITIONS ON ACTIONS IN VIETNAM

The Chairman. I think you are right in a sense. I mean I don’t feel that you have deliberately ordered people, or the policy orders them, to do many of the things which are done. The conditions are such that it almost inevitably results in that because this is a very nasty war. Don’t you think it is?

Mr. Vann. I agree with you wholeheartedly.

Mr. Colby. I don’t think it almost inevitably results in that.

Mr. Vann. I agree with you it is a nasty war, sir.

The Chairman. I think it arises out of the fact that we intervened in a civil war and the Americans were led to believe it was a holy war on a different basis. This has nothing to do with the way you gentlemen discharge your duties. There have been many, many misapprehensions about what the war is about, but that is another matter, largely of a political nature.

Mr. Colby. I did hope, Mr. Chairman, that in the course of these hearings we might lay to rest the belief that had gotten abroad and in the press that the Phoenix program was a program of assassination and murder and that sort of thing. I just don’t think it is. It is not—

HOW DOES PHOENIX PROGRAM GET THE PEOPLE AT THE TOP?

Senator Symington. If the Chair will yield, the testimony recently was that you go after the people at the top. How do you get them at the top. Suppose they resist; what do you do then?

Mr. Colby. The purpose of the program, Senator, is to—

Senator Symington. I understand what the purpose is.

Mr. Colby. To get ahold of the fellows. {p.326}

Senator Symington. You have been over the purpose. We both know — I have been in the Army myself, I have been a secretary in the Pentagon, and I think I know something about the establishment.

Mr. Vann says he has a gun by his feet and hand grenades in his valise, and so forth and so on.

Now, he emphasizes that it is not important to kill a blank number, which is what we do every week. We put out how many of them that we kill, and I think that is a relatively unimportant piece of knowledge.

With our industrial complex, if we cannot kill a lot of North Vietnamese, then I am very surprised. I wish we would have killed more North Vietnamese before they had killed more Americans. But, in any case, we kill a lot and we boast about it.

Mr. Vann comes up here and he says it is not important to kill the little people; it is important to kill the big people.

Mr. Colby. No, sir.

Senator Symington. That is, in effect, what he is saying, because you say you are going to get them. Suppose you go in and arrest a man and he pulls a gun on you. What do you do, run away or do you pull a gun on him?

Mr. Colby. No, sir. But the statistics for this year, as the chairman was suggesting, show that roughly a third of these were picked up by capture, roughly a third by themselves voluntarily coming over to the Government, and roughly a third by being killed.

Senator Symington. Right.

Mr. Colby. Now the rest of the effort is to try to get them to come to our side, either by invitation or by grabbing them.

Senator Symington. But you are told to get them, aren’t you, just like the Canadian Mounted Police are told to get their man. That is what they are told, aren’t they?

Mr. Colby. That is right.

Senator Symington. When you are told to get a civilian in a village it is stretching it a little bit to say that under no circumstances should you be considered — of course, the word “get” is an important word, you see.

Mr. Colby. Agreed.

Senator Symington. I have been on the CIA Committee in the Senate for over a decade and I think we are beginning to get awfully wordy about what we are doing.

IDEOLOGY OF MAJOR MAI AND TRAN NGOC CHAU

Colonel Vann, you said this morning that you didn’t think that Mai was a Communist; is that correct?

Mr. Vann. That is correct, sir. I have no reason to think that he is other than what he seems to be, which is a dedicated Nationalist.

Senator Symington. Right. And you also said the same about Chau, didn’t you?

Mr. Vann. That is correct, sir.

Senator Symington. Why do you think the Ambassador feels Chau is a Communist?

Mr. Vann. I don’t know that he does.

Senator Symington. Well, I do because he told our staff people that he was. {p.327}

Mr. Vann. He did not tell me that.

Senator Symington. Why do you think he told our staff people that he was?

Mr. Vann. If he thinks that, he has information that is not available to me.

Senator Symington. Or to the head of the CIA out there Mr. [deleted] who happens to be a friend of mine, and one of the best men I know in the business. He bays he is not a Communist.

Do you think Mr. Bunker takes the word of Mr. Thieu or some other official in the Saigon government over the top official in our Government?

Mr. Vann. I really cannot answer that, sir.

Senator Symington. But you are in your own mind confident that Mr. [deleted] is right and Ambassador Bunker is wrong about his being a Communist; is that correct?

Mr. Vann. Sir, I would not phrase it in that fashion.

Senator Symington. How would you phrase it?

Mr. Vann. I would say that I have no information at all that would suggest to me that Tran Ngoc Chau is a Communist. The information I do have suggests to me that he is not a Communist. It suggests to me he is not pro-Communist.

Senator Symington. All right. You have made your point.

CHAU’S DISCUSSION OF HIS CONTACTS WITH HIS BROTHER

Did Mr. Chau ever tell you that he discussed his contacts with his brother, who was a Communist?

Mr. Vann. With whom, sir?

Senator Symington. With his own brother.

Mr. Vann. He told me about his brother.

Senator Symington. What did he tell you about his brother?

Mr. Vann. He told me that his brother had come to see him and wanted to establish contact with the Americans.

Senator Symington. Did he tell you that his brother was a Communist?

Mr. Vann. He told me his brother was a Communist. However, he qualified it, and we had an argument about it. He told me his brother was first a nationalist and second a Communist, and I told him I thought that no one could be a Communist and have it as a second priority and that his brother must be first a Communist.

PRIORITY OF COMMUNISM AND NATIONALISM

Senator Symington. What would you say Dnbczek was, first a Communist and second a nationalist in Czechoslvakia, or first a nationalist and second a Communist. What would you say about that?

Mr. Vann. First of all, sir, I know nothing about the gentlemen except for what I read in the paper.

Senator Symington. I see.

If a man is a Communist, do you think automatically he cannot be a nationalist; is that right?

Mr. Vann. No, sir. I just think that, if he is a Communist, that takes first priority in his thinking, and nationalism would be second. {p.328}

 

Senator Symington. What do you mean by that?

How about the Czechoslovak Communists? You must get some papers out where you are. How about the Czechoslovaks who risk their lives protesting against communism although they are members of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia? Do you think they are nationalists first?

Mr. Vann. Sir, I don’t consider communism to be monolithic.

Senator Symington. What are you talking about?

Mr. Vann. I am saying I would imagine their allegiance to the Czechoslovak Communist Party would override, if it came into conflict with their feelings of nationalism, provided they were bona fide Communists.

Senator Symington. Well, we are getting into a semantic square dance.

TRAN NGOC CHAU’S CONTACTS WITH CIA

Senator Symington. Let me ask you this question, Colonel Vann. Do you know of any contacts that Mr. Chau had with the CIA?

Mr. Vann. Sir, I only know that Colonel Chau worked with the CIA advisers in his province, the CIA advisers in the Vung Tau Training Center, and the CIA advisers at the ministerial level.

Colonel Chau told me that he had had contacts with the CIA.

Senator Symington. What people did he have contact with?

Mr. Vann. Sir, he told me he had contacts with Mr. [deleted] and Mr. [deleted].

Senator Symington. Did he tell you he had any contact with Mr. [deleted]?

Mr. Vann. No, sir, he did not.

Senator Symington. Or Mr. [deleted]?

Mr. Vann. No, sir.

Senator Symington. Do you know whether the CIA reported Mr. Chau’s contacts to the Government of South Vietnam?

Mr. Vann. Sir, I have no idea of what they did or did not report.

Senator Symington. Mr. Colby, do you know about that, sir?

Mr. Colby. I really cannot answer. I wouldn’t want to answer without checking the files, Senator.

TRAN NGOC CHAU’S DIFFERENCES WITH CIA

Senator Symington. Do either of you know whether Chau’s differences with the CIA over the program involved Messrs. [deleted]?

Mr. Colby. They were both there at the time, sir.

Senator Symington. Were there differences between them?

Mr. Colby. I could not say. It was a difference between our Agency and Mr. Chau about how the thing should be run, [deleted].

Senator Symington. Colonel Vann, how about that?

Mr. Vann. I am aware that they did have differences of opinion on how the cadre program should be run, sir.

Senator Symington. What were the differences?

Mr. Vann. The differences were a matter of the degree of control that the CIA should exercise versus the degree and the type of control the Government of Vietnam should exercise. {p.329}

Senator Symington. Did you know that when the Ambassador sent representatives down there that they came back and agreed with Mr. Chau about some of these differences?

Mr. Vann. I am aware, sir, that two Foreign Service officers did go to Vung Tau at Deputy Ambassador Porter’s request.

Senator Symington. Ambassador Porter, not Ambassador Bunker.

Mr. Vann. When they came back they gave him a report on it. They did not give me the report.

Senator Symington. You don’t know how they felt about it?

Mr. Vann. I gathered from comments made afterward, I never saw their report, that they were sympathetic to Colonel Chau.

Senator Symington. And did you talk with them?

Mr. Vann. I have talked with the two officers involved on a continuing basis for the last 4 years, sir.

Senator Symington. Do you know [deleted].

Mr. Vann. Quite well, sir.

Senator Symington. What did he tell you about this?

Mr. Vann. Sir, we discussed this on numerous occasions, and—

Senator Symington. Pick the occasion that you think is most pertinent to my question.

Mr. Vann. It would be very difficult for me, 4 years past, to remember any exact date. But we remembered that Colonel Chau had some points in his favor. We also agreed that Colonel Chau is a prima donna, that he is a very ambitious man, that he had political objectives in mind in wanting to dominate this program, and that he also was extremely concerned about his own personal image as a possible employee of the CIA. This concerned his personal ideals and standards, and he became more concerned about it than his immediate superior, General Thang.

Senator Symington. What did he say to you that you thought had merit in it?

Mr. Vann. Colonel Chau?

Senator Symington. Yes.

Mr. Vann. I agreed with him that it would be preferable, given the expansion of the program and the rather deep involvement it would have with all phases of Vietnamese life, for it to be under the sponsorship of another agency.

DESIRABILITY OF IMPROVEMENT IN CIA

Senator Symington. So even though he was very ambitious, and I say with great respect that I heard the same about you when I was out there, you do agree, and I think both of you were probably right, there could be some improvements in the Agency.

Mr. Vann. Not in the Agency, sir, but it is a fact that the Vietnamese tend to regard anything in connection with the CIA as having some spy thriller type of activity associated with it.

Senator Symington. Do you agree with that?

Mr. Vann. I agree that the Vietnamese feel that way, sir. I do not agree that that is true, because all of mv knowledge of the CIA involvement on the revolutionary cadre development program was that it is overt and aboveboard. {p.330}

Senator Symington. Then the stories I have heard of your being heavily critical of the CIA have no basis in fact.

Mr. Vann. I would not say they have no basis, sir. I was heavily critical of individual members in the CIA, and some of their manners of operation. I was also very complimentary of some of the members, such as Mr [deleted] who I thought did a masterful job when I was out there.

Senator Symington. Where is Mr. [deleted] today, do you know?

Mr. Vann. Yes, sir. He is assigned here in Washington.

Senator Symington. Where is Mr. [deleted]?

Mr. Vann. I do not know, sir.

Senator Symington. Mr. Colby, do you know, sir?

Mr. Colby. No, sir; I do not. I am not sure.

Senator Symington. Do either of them have anything to do with Vietnam?

Mr. Colby. Mr. [deleted] does. Mr. [deleted], I am not sure.

Senator Symington. What does he have to do with it?

Mr. Colby. He is in, he is a staff officer in, CIA headquarters.

REASON FOR U.S. LACK OF SUCCESS IN VIETNAM

Senator Symington. I would ask you this question, Mr. Colby, and I would like the record to show again that I never met anybody who seemed to know more about what he was doing than you. Why do you think it is, with 800,000 Americans, and I count the fleet, people in Thailand, Japan, and the Philippines, why do you think it is when we have that number of people, backed up by this great military-industrial complex, that we have had so little success out there in what we are trying to do?

Mr. Colby. This you asked me to submit a reply for the record, sir. I have written out something and I would be glad to expand on it a little bit.

Senator Symington. Go ahead.

Mr. Colby. My comment was that during the period 1965 to 1968, Communist military strength in Vietnam was at a high level. Its regular troops rested upon active guerrilla forces and a politically organized base. The Communist regular forces were set back by U.S. regular forces.

The Vietnamese Government, with U.S. support, then strengthened its Regional and Popular Forces, the People’s Self-Defense, Phoenix, and police operations, and developed a more actively engaged population.

By 1970 the nature of the war has thus changed. What was formerly a Communist war conducted on three levels became a Government-led people’s war facing an increasingly North Vietnamese military force.

The territorial forces, the police, and the People’s Self-Defense make the enemy military forces much less effective since they preempt the caches, the recruits, and the information.

Under these circumstances the enemy regular military force becomes less difficult to handle than the earlier combined guerrilla and regular enemy forces and infrastructure. {p.331}

A weaker enemy thus faces a GVN which is stronger in the political as well as in the military field. This process has already begun in the delta where smaller total military forces are handling a situation which formerly required the assistance of regular U.S. forces.

Now, that is just a portion of the delta that I am talking about.

Senator Symington. As I understand you say the reason we haven’t been successful out there is because the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong regulars and guerrillas have increased their strength to meet our competition; is that right?

Mr. Colby. No, sir. The answer was, how can the Vietnamese be expected to assume what these 800,000 Americans have done.

Senator Symington. I didn’t ask you that. At this time I asked you why it was, with 800,000 people, backed up by $80 million a day at one point and over $100 billion all told, we have been so unsuccessful in whatever it is we are trying to do out there.

Mr. Colby. I think, Senator, the thing is that, unfortunately, as has happened in previous wars, we have learned about the tactics and technique of this war in the course of fighting it, and that we have had a very bad few years in the course of that.

Senator Symington. You don’t think that if we had unshackled the Army, let them counterattack into Cambodia and North Vietnam and Laos, and if we had let the air operate as it always had before in any wars we have been in, and if we had let the Navy operate on the same basis, we could have cleaned this matter up pretty rapidly?

Mr. Colby. No, sir, I think the nature of this war requires the active engagement of the population, the creation of a population which is really fully involved in the war. I think we have finally learned this lesson and we are beginning to apply this lesson.

Senator Symington. Thus, even though we put these 800,000 people and all this money and equipment into the war, the very fact we went at it the wrong way is the chief reason for lack of success; is that your opinion?

Mr. Colby. I think it had a lot to do with it. It is not the sole reason.

PROSPECTS FOR VIETNAMIZATION IN NEXT FEW YEARS

Senator Symington. Nevertheless you feel that because South Vietnamese now know how to do it, with the proper equipment, Vietnamization will increase over the period of the next few years; is that correct?

Mr. Colby. Over a period, yes, Senator. I think that having learned the techniques and having begun to apply them, and with a program which will carry it further it will succeed. A lot of these techniques are in their infancy; the Phoenix program is just beginning to be effective and there are a lot of other problems in the country. But gradually these techniques will become accepted and become implemented. The People’s Self-Defense for instance is still very untrained, [deleted].

Senator Symington. I see. But despite the arsenals in this country. General Westmoreland’s setup, and Admiral Sharp’s setup, and the Air Force, and 800.000 young Americans, the reason they did not win {p.332} was they didn’t know how to fight the war right. They are learning how to fight it right, and after they get out, it will be won by the Vietnamese if we give them the equipment; is that right?

Mr. Colby. Well, a lot of those things were necessary at one period, Senator. The war would have been lost certainly without those young men. There is no question about that. The war would certainly have been lost by 1965 or 1966 unless our troops had entered it.

Senator Case. Mr. Chairman, may I carry a few questions along that line?

Senator Symington. I would like to turn this over to Senator Aiken, if I may, because I have to catch a plane and Senator Fulbright said he would be back here in 10 minutes. I would be very glad to yield to you.

Senator Case. Well, you are so gracious.

Senator Aiken. I have one question.

REGULARS NEEDED TO COPE WITH A GUERRILLA

How many regulars does it take to cope with a guerrilla?

Mr. Colby. If you are just talking about regulars, Senator, it is a very sticky problem because there are over 10,000 hamlets in Vietnam, any one of which can be attacked by a guerrilla. There are two possible ways to protect them. One is to go out and hit the guerrilla with a regular force, if you are lucky enough to find him. The other is to develop self-defense capabilities for all those people, all those hamlets. The only way to find the guerrillas is to do that.

Senator Aiken. I have two definite answers. I asked General Westmoreland how many regulars it took to deal with a guerrilla and he said 10. I asked Admiral Sharp, who was some distance away from the scene, and he said, oh, four or five. It seems the further away you are—

Mr. Colby. I would rather answer the question by saying that a guerrilla can be dealt with not only by regulars but also by guerrillas and also by policemen. But it is not a thing you can handle effectively by only regulars alone.

Senator Aiken. The method of making war even by guerrillas, has changed.

Mr. Colby. Yes, sir.

Senator Aiken. So that a smaller force can—

Mr. Colby. Can tie up—

Senator Aiken. Can tie up or hold off a much larger force than would have been possible 30, 35 years ago.

Mr. Colby. Yes, sir.

Senator Aiken. Go ahead, Senator Case.

NECESSITY OF POPULAR SUPPORT TO DEFEAT GUERRILLAS

Senator Case. I take it, along that line, that part of the answer is also that you cannot ever defeat guerrillas unless the population is at least with you.

Mr. Colby. I believe so.

Senator Case. On the other hand, the guerrilla cannot be effective unless the population is sympathetic to him. {p.333}

Mr. Colby. Not necessarily sympathetic, Senator.

Senator Case. Apathetic — is not antiguerrilla.

Mr. Colby. Yes.

Senator Case. You are naturally taking into account now the matter of bringing the population actively on the side of the South Vietnamese regime.

Mr. Colby. Yes.

SOUTH VIETNAMESE ABILITY TO FIGHT WAR

Senator Case. Again, further along the lines of the questions that Senator Symington was asking. There has been a suggestion that what we did was our thing — the type of warfare, highly mechanized and supported by air and helicopters, and sophisticated equipment, communications and other things. It is argued, therefore, that our effort to Vietnamize the war cannot succeed because we won’t be able to turn this kind of warfare effectively over to the Vietnamese; and yet they have been corrupted in their tactics by seeing us and wanting to copy us and being able to do the thing in the modern 20th century way.

I wish you would talk about this because the question of the success of the Vietnamese themselves in this kind of war seems to me terribly important.

I was going to ask these younger officers, too, their general views about this. Are they going to be able to operate helicopters, communications equipment, artillery, all the mechanisms that we have taught them is necessary?

Mr. Colby. We have a system in the services of starting with the junior member for an answer, Senator.

Senator Case. I wish you would sort of help me and get this information out as you think appropriate.

Mr. Colby. I think your questions are quite apt and I think we ought to start with them, not have them just say their boss is right.

Senator Case. Well, all right.

Senator Aiken. Let us begin at the end of the line.

Mr. Colby. The question, Sergeant, is, do you think the Vietnamese have been corrupted into believing they have to have very fancy equipment that they will not be able to continue to use and maintain and employ that we have spoiled them in a way in giving them this equipment and that consequently the implication of the Senator’s question is we will have to continue to do it.

Sergeant Wallace. No, sir. I don’t feel this way because the PSDF were given M-1’s.

Senator Case. What is that, sir?

Sergeant Wallace. The People’s Self-Defense Force were given M-1’s carbines and Thompson machineguns. These are obsolete weapons that we no longer use yet they are willing to learn and seem to be fighting effectively with these weapons.

SOUTH VIETNAMESE ABILITY WITHOUT U.S. AIR AND LOGISTICAL SUPPORT

Senator Case. There is another side. I mean it isn’t just what they will be willing to use, but what they will be able to use. Will they {p.334} be able to carry on this fight without our providing air support and logistical support, and all the rest?

Sergeant Wallace. Yes, sir, I think they can.

Senator Case. Will they do it because they will supply air support or—

Sergeant Wallace. We have used air support very few times in our area.

Senator Case. In your particular experience.

Sergeant Wallace. Yes, sir.

Senator Case. That is not the general situation. Would anybody in the whole team talk about this air support? I had always understood air is rather important.

Captain Geck. Throughout the IV Corps, some of the Vietnamese are flying some of the helicopters themselves. I guess right now it is about 10 percent. However, the Vietnamese have quite a few pilots. I would not know the exact number of how many are in Fort Walters training at this time with helicopters. Our plan is to replace our pilots with theirs.

The Vietnamese I have flown with, and I have gone on operations, are very competent. They will fly into the same areas that the American pilots will, and give you the same sort of support.

On the maintenance side, which I was just prompted to mention, I am not exactly sure of what they have as a capability, but there is a training program for their people at a base in IV Corps near Can Tho. Naturally, the people of the Popular and Regional Forces units I work with, have been slightly spoiled by the M-16 rifles they are using now and the heavy air support they now have. They could not do without it.

In any combat situation, once you have this asset, to do without it is a hindrance. However, in my area, they have all had their own artillery. I would say it has been my experience that they have 50 percent or more of their own air support and have been flying helicopters, so that I see there is a good chance for us to pull out in the future.

Senator Case. And you, Captain?

Captain Murphy. I would like to attack this question from the standpoint of comparing what they do have, Senator, to what they don’t have, where I am in Long An Province.

First of all, as you mentioned, they do have modern individual weapons, the M-16 rifle or the M-60 machinegun, the M-79 grenade launcher. They can utilize these weapons effectively against the enemy.

They have modern transportation and communications equipment. They have the same radios and the same vehicles that we have in the U.S. Army. They perform 100 percent their own maintenance.

Senator Case. They do?

Captain Murphy. On the equipment which they have, yes, they do, sir.

Senator Case. All this?

Captain Murphy. There is one platoon or two tubes of Vietnamese artillery operated by the 25th ARVN Division located in each of our seven districts. They have support capabilities throughout that district. {p.335}

Other indirect fire weapons that they have are mortars, the same mortars that we have in the U.S. Army. What they don’t have in Long An Province are helicopter gunships. However, training programs are underway whereby we train helicopter pilots, and eventually they will be able to perform and operate in their own helicopter assault companies and fly the gunship support as well.

ENDURANCE AND MOTIVATION OF SOUTH VIETNAMESE

Really, Senator, it is not very difficult to be an infantry soldier. It takes commonsense and an aggressive attitude. Certainly, the Vietnamese have all these capabilities. The one thing they do not have, which we have, is a little more endurance. The Vietnamese people, by and large, do not have the endurance capability that the U.S. soldier has.

Senator Case. You mean physical stamina?

Captain Murphy. Physical.

Senator Case. That is interesting.

Captain Murphy. But they do have something we don’t have, Senator, and that is the motivation brought about by the role that they are performing in the defense of their own homes and villages.

Senator Case. Well, you know, I will come back to you, if I may, but you had something you wanted to say about that.

CAPABILITIES OF SOUTH VIETNAMESE

Major Arthur. It has been my observation that the Vietnamese people, as a nation, or as a race, are quite clever mechanically. They are able to take engines apart and put them back together again. You can see a man taking his motorcycle apart and repairing it on any street corner in Saigon or Binh Chanh. They are quite adept and can handle communications very well. That is one of their fortes.

The artillery that I have observed is good, and they provide all the artillery fire support in Binh Chanh.

The counterparts that I have operated with on combat missions are capable of handling air mobile operations. They would be capable of handling and controlling light fire teams, which are two helicopter gunships when we are in contact, if those gunships were flown by Vietnamese. I stand beside the captain or the colonel — whoever happens to be there. He tells me what he wants done in English, as broken as it is. If it is the captain, with the little Vietnamese that I speak and the interpreter we get the point across. I tell the pilots of the helicopters where we want them to hit, and they engage that area.

When the Vietnamese are trained to fly the helicopters, and the Vietnamese commander on the ground can talk to the Vietnamese helicopter pilot in the air in Vietnamese, they will be able to handle their own air support. There is a language problem now.

They can also handle the medical evacuation helicopter if they were talking to a Vietnamese pilot for they know the procedures, et cetera.

We speak of the modern weapons we have given them. Well, the people on the other side are carrying AK-47’s made in Red China or Russia. They are modern weapons also. I feel the South Vietnamese in {p.336} my area have progressed and are capable of assuming their own defense. They provide 100 percent of the maintenance of the equipment in my area, also maintaining the jeeps that I have.

I hope I have been able to answer some of your questions, sir.

Senator Case. Thank you. You have, indeed.

SOUTH VIETNAMESE MOTIVATION AND AGGRESSIVENESS

Now, I would like to come back to the point you were making when you were last talking together, because it is what you said that sounds so different from what so many people have said and written: that the one thing that the Vietnamese, South Vietnamese, have not had is motivation or morale or aggressiveness, another one of your words, but rather the reverse of all those attributes, and this was the trouble, that they wouldn’t go out to fight, and they wouldn’t move in to fill gaps that we perhaps have had to leave occasionally. I wish you would develop this a little bit more because this is almost the heart of the point, it seems to me; isn’t it?

Mr. Colby. Yes, it is.

Senator Case. Is you experience unique?

Captain Murphy. I don’t believe it is unique, Senator. It is a question of what causes this motivation or this aggressiveness to evolve. I think it is partially because of the weapons, the equipment that they have now. But more than anything else, sir, I think it is a result of the individual soldier, the individual platoon leader, and the individual company commander seeing the progress that his unit has helped to bring about in the rural hamlets and villages.

That is, I think, one of the greatest factors which has contributed to it.

Senator Case. I am sure it is, and what we are interested in is whether it really happened, or whether it happened in a real area or whatnot.

Captain Murphy. I assure you it has.

Senator Case. I remember when I was over there before, up in I Corps, one of the most important things about these mixed teams that I guess you said, didn’t you, you were involved in one of these mixed patrols, or whatever you called them—

Sergeant Wallace. Yes, sir, combined action platoon.

Senator Case. The boys did all right so long as you were with them. And, seriously, that is a fact. I was not surprised at it or critical. But if you weren’t with them, then what happened to them?

RESULT OF U.S. WITHDRAWAL FROM VILLAGE OR HAMLET

I would like to ask all three of you what has happened when our teams have moved out of a village or a hamlet, or whatnot, and left it to the Vietnamese.

Captain Geck. Sir, if I may make a comment here, this is something I tried to point out in my opening statement, after we moved out of villages (I cited one particular village, and we have worked quite a few) in very few cases do the units seem to return to their old level. {p.337}

In most cases, I think the word is confidence. It has begun to work well. They can see they have the ability and are successful against the enemy. They continue to operate this way. They are no longer afraid of the enemy. He is no longer this giant who used to scare them. Because of Tet, 1968, he is now a real individual they have met and defeated. Also, something I have seen on the village level in both the civilian and the military side is a confidence in, if not a stable Government, at least a stable system developing in Vietnam, something they can count on for the future.

On the civilian side, you can see it in rural areas not very far, perhaps 5 kilometers from a large Vietcong base area. They are putting up a large building. People are contributing quite an investment to the villages they live in. The Vietnamese are sensible in the usage of their money as we are. They are not going to waste millions of piasters in some cases or take a chance that these buildings that they are erecting will be destroyed in the near future.

They have confidence that the village will continue to grow. I think this is the whole trick both in the military and inside the Government.

MOTIVATION OF REGIONAL AND POPULAR FORCES

Major Arthur. I wanted to bring up a point about their motivation, because I am talking about the Regional Forces and Popular Forces as opposed to the ARVN. I am at the Province level. I have 17 Regional Force companies and 25 Popular Force platoons in the district.

The motivation of our troops is up over previous reports that you might have heard. Primarily these are home troops. The Popular Forces are working in the district they were recruited in, and the Regional Forces are working in the Province they were recruited in. This, to me, is part of the drive to get good Regional Forces and Popular Forces and upgrade them to handle the territorial security and protect their homes in this area.

This is where the motivation comes in.

SKEPTICISM IS PRODUCT OF PAST EXPERIENCE

Senator Case. You will forgive us if we are skeptical about these things because we have had this kind of a report 5, 6, 7 years.

Major Arthur. Yes, sir, I understand.

Senator Case. People like you have not wanted to be offensive to your counterparts or make a bad record of your own accomplishments, so you come up only with the good side, and I am not saying that any of you are doing this now. What I am saying is that you have to be understanding with us when we have had to listen to this kind of thing from McNamara. We have McNamara coming back and saying the boys are going to be out of the trenches by Christmas, you will remember, 5 or 6 years ago, and not only that, but right down the line.

Major Arthur. Sir, I didn’t say it was 100 percent either. There is an improvement, and there is room for improvement still. {p.338}

 

IS REASONABLE END IN SIGHT?

Senator Case. What we are trying to get at is, must this still be looked at as an endless thing, or is there an end in sight and is it reasonable?

Major Arthur. Yes, sir, I think it is reasonable to assume that with things going the way they are going now, there is an end in sight. I cannot really put a timetable on it. It is beyond my capability.

CAP PROGRAM IN HAMLETS

Sergeant Wallace. Senator, I would like to mention that the primary purpose of the CAP program is to move into that hamlet, provide security for the people. The hamlets are being trained and protected by the CAP’s. There are 450 hamlets which presently are protected by CAP teams; there are 350 hamlets in which the CAP’s operated previously. In all there are 800 hamlets which have been provided security by the CAP program.

One hundred and fourteen platoons are now being trained by the CAP’s; 90 platoons were previously trained by CAP’s. This is a total of 204 platoons in 204 hamlets. Not one of these hamlets where the 90 platoons which we trained are located has been turned over to the Vietcong nor have the Vietcong been able to move in and take over the hamlets.

The Chairman. Is that one district or everywhere?

Sergeant Wallace. This is the entire CAP program.

Mr. Vann. Senator Case, could I add just one thing?

Senator Case. Yes.

IMPROVEMENT IN RF AND PF PERFORMANCE

Mr. Vann. We are very much aware of the skepticism and feel that there certainly has been adequate justification for it. And yet there are some others who have looked at it over the long haul and are in a position to compare realistically what existed today and what existed a year ago, or 3 or 5 years ago.

These officers have been talking about RF and PF, the Regional Forces, and Popular Forces.

We always are aware of the fact that no statistic in time of war is accurate. To some extent they are all spurious. But let us look at the very broad picture of how Regional Forces and Popular Forces performed in the past and how they are performing now. In 1966 the Regional Forces and Popular Forces, numbering less than 300,000, lost as many men and as many weapons as they killed and as they captured.

In 1969, the Regional Forces and Popular Forces killed three times as many enemy as they suffered losses themselves, and more than four times as many weapons were captured as they lost. This involved 475,000 Regional Forces and Popular Forces.

Now, sir, there are many other measures of effectiveness. Nevertheless, this is one that in the final analysis means how people are performing in combat. There is a very substantial improvement. It is attributable to many, many things, not the least of which is certainly a much less hostile environment as far as the population is concerned than they previously had. {p.339}

Senator Case. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Ambassador, do you have anything you want to contribute?

SATISFACTORY OUTCOME CAN BE ACHIEVED

Mr. Colby. On this point, Senator, I refer back to my opening statement where I rather carefully say that we are not optimistic nor pessimistic about this situation, but I do believe that a satisfactory outcome can be achieved.

I can think of setbacks which will occur and I can think of situations which could arise which could reverse the current trends.

I think it is important, after the experience that you referred to of the disappointments of the past, that we be very serious about this. It also depends in great part upon the determination of the Vietnamese and of the Americans who are there — the determination to continue this program of increasingly developing the ability of the Vietnamese to carry this load themselves.

Therefore, we are trying not to exude optimism in our report to you here. I speak for myself certainly and I am sure for the other officers here. But we are also convinced that this is not a thing that the American people can feel is just sort of a hopeless thing that goes on forever. It is one that can be achieved.

I think you make a very valid point, can the Vietnamese expect to carry on the same standard of effort that they have with our rather fancy equipment. The answer is “No.” But I also think that the Vietnamese are developing the ability to fight this kind of a war that we are faced with now with greater effectiveness, that this can make a substantial difference in the balance between them, and that consequently an outcome which gives them a free choice for the future can be achieved.

Senator Case. Thank you, sir, very much.

Captain, may I just ask you a couple of questions.

POPULAR FORCES OPERATIONS WITHOUT U.S. SUPPORT

You said in your statement that you went with the Popular Forces on their operations, gave them advice where it was necessary, and provided liaison with supporting units. Those were your words. You are referring to U.S. support units there, are you not?

Captain Geck. Yes, Senator. I am referring basically to helicopter gunships in that case.

Senator Case. That is the chief kind of support?

Captain Geck. Yes, Senator, it is.

Senator Case. Do the Popular Forces continue to conduct light operations after our advisory teams have moved on to other villages?

Captain Geck. Yes, Senator, very much so. In fact, those particular Popular Forces that I am speaking of in that paragraph, have been increased. Their numbers have been increased since I left. Their operations now go further out than they ever went before, further than they ever went with us. I think in some cases they were afraid to take us out to some places, because they were afraid one of us would he hurt.

Senator Case. You obviously believe what you are saying. {p.340}

Captain Geck. Yes, sir, Senator. I am very impressed with the people I am working with.

Senator Case. I don’t mean anything else except you have around this table for the most part people who want to be persuaded, but also people who have been disappointed so many times.

Captain Geck. Senator, I think, as the Ambassador said, I am probably optimistic. But, at the same time, I can see there might be setbacks. However, in the cases I have worked with, these people have learned quickly and responded well, and continued to do so after we left.

SUPERIORITY OF KIEN GIANG PROVINCE

Mr. Vann. I might say, sir, Captain Geck is working in a province that has an unusually good province chief and one in which the amount of progress made in the last year surpasses that of nearly any other place I know of in Vietnam. So his assessment would naturally be more positive than, say, someone working in Kien Hoa Province.

Kien Hoa Province, incidentally, is about the worst province in our delta, and is the one that Mr. Robert Shaplen picked to write about in his article.

Senator Case. I figure it is not going to come up spontaneously from the Defense Department or Department of State, and he had better do that job. But I am glad to have that comment; it is important.

SELECTION OF CAP SQUAD LEADERS

Sergeant, how are the CAP squad leaders chosen?

Sergeant Wallace. Sir, once we report to staging, they will issue orders to Vietnam, and I was assigned from the States to the CAP program. We are screened by a board and issued orders.

TRAINING OF CAP MARINES

Senator Case. What special training do they get?

Sergeant Wallace. Sir, all CAP marines go to 2 weeks of school in Danang.

Senator Case. Danang?

Sergeant Wallace. Yes, sir.

Senator Case. What about the marines under your command, what do they get?

Sergeant Wallace. The same schooling.

Senator Case. The same kind?

Sergeant Wallace. Yes.

Senator Case. Senator, wouldn’t you like to ask a question or two? I might want to come back before we get through, but please go ahead.

Senator Pell. Thank you.

I have a few questions, which I will direct to Ambassador Colby.

IDENTIFICATION OF VC BY PHOENIX PROGRAM

In connection with the Phoenix program, how do you identify the people whom you feel are active in the infrastructure? Perhaps Colonel Vann would want to answer that? {p.341}

Mr. Colby. I can start off. This an intelligence problem initially. You develop card records on people in the area.

You know that the infrastructure in a certain province, in a certain district, probably has a certain structure. It has a chairman; it has a security man; it has a finance economy man; it has a liaison, and so forth. It has different bodies. So you know there is somebody taking care of those problems on the infrastructure side.

Then, through interrogation of ralliers — people who come over from the other side — through interrogations of prisoners, through some informants, through reports of neighbors and people of that nature, you gradually build up a picture of who these people are.

Now, initially a number of these reports may be just a single alias, a report that a certain job is filled by a man named Thanh or who calls himself Thanh. Then through the gathering of additional information, you find out that this man’s name is really Nuygen Van Thanh or something, and that he was born in a certain section and place.

Senator Pell. Do any Vietnamese citizens have access to these card filing systems?

Mr. Colby. This is a Vietnamese card system, not American. The American helps the Vietnamese to set it up. The Vietnamese handle it.

Senator Pell. Is it a Vietnamese source for most of the intelligence going into it?

Mr. Colby. Yes.

PURPOSE OF THE PHOENIX PROGRAM

Senator Pell. The statement has been made, which has concerned me, that one of the purposes of the Phoenix program or one of the results of it certainly is the elimination of the hard core of those who oppose the Thieu-Ky regime.

What is your reaction to that statement or allegation?

Mr. Colby. I think if you can go to the different areas where this program is in process you can see that the real thrust of it is to identify members of the Vietcong. That is what the problem is in a local area. These are the people who are the problem — with grenades and with contacts with the guerrillas, and so forth.

So that from the national level down to the bottom level, the whole thing is aimed at the Vietcong infrastructure and the Vietcong apparatus and terrorism.

It is possible, occasionally, that the wrong information on a man is reported, such as that he is in the infrastructure or that he holds a certain office in the Vietcong apparatus. Second, there may be a shakedown kind of thing: “I will report you unless you pay me.” And, of course, you can go and say that a political jealousy in a local area could produce a wrongful report.

This is certainly possible, and I think that the National Assembly, in calling the Government to an interrogation on this, about 3 or 4 months ago, was conscious of this problem. They are following it. They are concerned about it.

I certainly would not say it has never happened, but I think the thrust of the program, the command emphasis given to it, the inspections, and the general emphasis is pretty clearly that these are members of the enemy apparatus. This is not just a little political discussion. {p.342}

Unfortunately, the word “political” sometimes is difficult to translate. We call the Vietcong a political apparatus and that sounds like a political party over here.

VIETNAMESE AND AMERICANS IN PHOENIX PROGRAM

Senator Pell. Are the people in the Phoenix program entirely Vietnamese or are they mixed Vietnamese and Americans?

Mr. Colby. The Vietnamese. The Phoenix program is basically a Vietnamese program. There are American advisers in it. This is a Vietnamese structure which has information centers and operation centers at the district, province, and national level. These are all Vietnamese officials.

They will have an American sitting in the office with them.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN G-2 AND PHOENIX PROGRAM

Senator Pell. What is the relationship between our own intelligence organization, G-2, and the Phoenix program?

Mr. Colby. They are not technically a part of it. The Phoenix program is a Vietnamese program. In other words, if there is an American unit in the neighborhood, a brigade or something, our G-2 of that brigade would not be a member of the local Phoenix committee. He would have liaison, but he would not be a member.

Senator Pell. I don’t mean to take so much of your time, but I must be phrasing my questions poorly.

Does any member of G-2 ever feed in information to the Phoenix program — to the Vietnamese?

Mr. Colby. Yes.

Senator Pell. And vice versa?

Mr. Colby. We have access to most of the Vietnamese intelligence — I believe all of it — on this question.

NUMBER OF AMERICANS INVOLVED IN PHOENIX PROGRAM

Senator Pell. How many Americans are involved in the Phoenix program?

Mr. Colby. 450 Americans, almost all military being direct advisers.

There are many other Americans who are associated with the organizations that work with the Phoenix: in the Phoenix program, the police, the military, and so forth.

NUMBER OF VIETNAMESE INVOLVED IN PHOENIX PROGRAM

Senator Pell. How many Vietnamese, roughly, to the nearest thousand, are involved?

Mr. Colby. It is a hard question; it includes the Vietnamese special branch, the entire thing. The ordinary police participate in it on a part-time basis.

Senator Pell. How many have it as their main responsibility?

Mr. Colby. There would be roughly between 4,000 or 5,000 working directly on it. But. as I say, there are literally tens of thousands more who spend part time on it. {p.343}

NERVE CENTER ON WHICH PHOENIX PROGRAM FOCUSES

Senator Pell. This question I would direct more to Colonel Vann, if I might. I must say I have heard the most complimentary things about you, Ambassador Colby, and you, Colonel Vann, with respect to what you have done and the way you do it in Vietnam.

You said that part of the purpose or the purpose of the Phoenix program was to go to the nerve center. Don’t we still believe the nerve center to be in Hanoi or do we believe the nerve center to be in South Vietnam?

Mr. Vann. Sir, the organization that we are focusing this program against is the South Vietnamese political infrastructure that supports COSVN, the Central Office of South Vietnam. That would be the regional political structure, provincial political structure, district and village, and even down to hamlet.

The lower the level, the more indistinct it becomes, so that at the hamlet level the Vietcong hamlet chief may also be the leader of the local Vietcong squad.

The higher the level the more sophisticated the organization becomes. You will have a separate man to do liaison, another to do tax and finance and economy, another to do women’s organizations, et cetera. It also ties in directly at all levels with the military units that they command. In other words, an infrastructure chief at any level has at his beck and call a supporting unit; at the hamlet level it is a squad, at the village level it is a platoon, and at the district level it is usually a company.

Senator Pell. I would like to go up a little higher still. Isn’t the nerve center for this operation in North Vietnam? Presumably the reason for our commitment in Vietnam is that the nerve center is in North Vietnam. If what you are saying is correct, we shouldn’t have a single American soldier there.

Mr. Vann. COSVN, in turn, operates directly under Hanoi, sir.

Mr. Colby. Excuse me, I think if I may, Senator, the Lao Dong Party, the central committee of the Lao Dong Party, is the nerve center.

Senator Pell. For South Vietnam?

Mr. Colby. For the Communist effort of all Vietnamese. There is a separate party called the People’s Revolutionary Party, which is the southern branch of the Lao Dong Party. It has a central committee and a whole structure.

As you go down, I think we really mean the nervous system rather than nerve center. The party and its apparatus is the nervous system of the enemy force. It calls upon the muscles of the guerrillas and the main forces and all the rest. But it is the nervous system that runs this.

As you correctly say, the head of it is in Hanoi, but the nervous system goes throughout the country through this apparatus. We are engaged in cutting off the apparatus at various places so that the force which is conducting this war is unable to operate. {p.344}

PHOENIX PROGRAM’S EFFORTS CONCERNING ENEMY LEADERSHIP

Senator Pell. When a man gets sufficiently high up, one is pretty sure he won’t rally spontaneously and he has such a security setup that he will not be able to be taken prisoner. Then will not an effort be made to assassinate him?

Mr. Colby. Not to assassinate him in that sense. If you had clear knowledge that the province committee is at a certain place, you might well organize a very large operation of several companies or battalions to go in and clean that area out.

Senator Pell. We don’t have the same situation we have with the Mafia in any part of this country where the poor soldiers, like the numbers people, get taken in all the time, but not the fellows at the top of the family. What do they call the family leaders, the dons?

Mr. Colby. The Capo.

Senator Pell. No, the Capo are soldiers. We know who the top people are in this regard, but we do not go after them.

Mr. Colby. No, we go after anybody that we can get. But most of the higher leadership is either in Cambodia or in a fairly secure base area way out in the jungles.

Mr. Vann. Could I add one other thing to my answer?

Senator Pell. Yes.

Mr. Vann. I am not aware of any successful or even any attempted assassination of such a leader of the type that you talk about. In my time in Vietnam I am not aware of our ever having done that, ever trying it, or ever having been successful.

Senator Pell. I think, as a general rule of international relations, there is a policy of no government-supported assassinations. Otherwise many more of our chiefs of state and heads of government would be assassinated, which is not the case. It is not done.

Mr. Colby. It is just not very feasible, either, in this kind of a case.

Senator Pell. Certainly around the world it would be done much more frequently than it is. There is in your former agency, as you know, a general agreement that you don’t do it. You don’t assassinate chiefs of government as a result of government action. It never happens in history. Do you know of an exception, Mr. Chairman?

The Chairman. I do not know.

Senator Pell. It is a fact because then it opens up the other way.

TREATMENT OF PRISONERS

Going back to the rights of individuals, and this is what has bothered me particularly in Vietnam, what happens to prisoners when they are taken? Do we turn them over to the South Vietnamese and then they are rather cruelly interrogated, which we accept? Is there any way this practice can be discouraged more, or not?

Mr. Colby. Those people taken with arms in their hands are handled as prisoners of war whether they are From North Vietnam or from South Vietnam.

If the United States captures them, we turn them over to the Vietnamese to be handled. We have advisers with the prison system, with the POW system, and so forth. {p.345}

I referred to our directive about the Phoenix thing. If anything happens that does not fit the rules of war, our people are supposed to object.

The major was telling about a case in his district where he made a point of this. He objected strenuously, and it has not happened since. This was in the record a little while ago.

In our instructions, in our training of the Vietnamese, we emphasized good systems of interrogation. Now, occasionally, people do get a little loose, I am sure, but our thrust is in this direction, and I think the Vietnamese are increasingly accepting that this is what we expect about how to behave.

Now, I would add that the International Red Cross Committee does inspect the Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camps. It regularly looks them over and checks on them.

Senator Pell. The problem, as you know, is the same in Greece. It is not when you get to prison, but the process when you are taken and if you are lucky enough to be sent to jail. This is the question.

Mr. Vann. Let me add there, sir, that an American unit which captures a Vietnamese prisoner cannot just turn him over to any Vietnamese. They can only turn him over to that level of the Government of Vietnam that has an official detention center. That is usually the province level.

Senator Pell. I see. Thank you.

BETTER MOTIVATION OF NORTH VIETNAMESE

I would be interested in the assessment of any of you. I don’t think you covered it quite in the way I wanted it. How do you account for the better motivation of the North Vietnamese, in general, as a country, as opposed to that of South Vietnam?

Mr. Colby. Some of the Vietnamese discuss this in some degree. They wonder why it is that the North Vietnamese ethnic minority within South Vietnam has so many of the important jobs.

There is a certain characteristic energy and toughness, and so forth. The southerner spilled out onto that rich delta a few generations ago. He is less organized in the sense that the northerner has been living in tight little village communities, and has developed a rather strong discipline and self discipline.

These, like most ethnic differences, are not 100 percent by any means. But there is a difference in the characteristics of a North Vietnamese and a South Vietnamese.

Senator Pell. More vital.

Mr. Colby. More discipline, more drive in most cases; not always by any means.

Senator Pell. Like Italy.

Mr. Colby. This creates a certain amount of trouble in the political scene in Saigon.

Senator Case. You know — off the record.

(Whereupon, there was a short discussion off the record.) {p.346}

BLACK AMERICANS IN VIETNAM

Senator Pell. Is there any inhibition on the use of black Americans in the Phoenix operation? Do the black American soldiers offer any problems in dealing with the Vietnamese? I noticed the people the Department sends up here are always all white. What is the reason for that?

Mr. Colby. We have one province senior adviser who is black, a U.S. colonel. We have a deputy province senior adviser who is a black U.S. colonel. In your province, Captain Murphy, you have a black district senior adviser.

Captain Murphy. Yes.

Senator Pell. How about in uniform? Do any of you have a black commanding officer?

Major Arthur. Yes, sir, a full colonel. He is a deputy senior adviser.

Mr. Colby. He was the one I was referring to.

Major Arthur. The senior adviser is a FSO-1, and the deputy is a full colonel.

FRICTION BETWEEN BLACK AND WHITE AMERICANS IN VIETNAM

Senator Pell. We hear reports about friction between black and white. How true is that?

Major Arthur. I cannot say on that level. I have three black noncommissioned officers on my team. We have no problem on our level There are 14 of us.

Sergeant Wallace. No problems at all.

Captain Geck. None in my team. I have heard of very little friction.

Senator Pell. How about you, Captain?

Captain Murphy. I was a commander of a U.S. unit, and I am now in an advisory capacity. In neither capacity, while I was the commander of that unit, or now, have I witnessed or heard of any trouble of this nature. I just cannot think of a single incident.

Senator Pell. Either the press reports must have dealt with other parts of the country or they were ill-advised.

Thank you. Those are all the questions.

Mr. Mills. I would just like to mention that we have had one incident of racial unrest on our team. It was on a MAT team. There were a couple of black fellows, and one white southerner who did not get along. I feel that this was a matter of the leadership of the MAT team. We transferred the officer who was a weak leader away from there. Even though the two Negroes and the white who were involved in this difficulty were kept at the same post, with a stronger leader in charge there was no longer at least overt hostility.

They did their jobs together. They did not go out socially after work was over. I think this is, perhaps, fairly typical of the situation in other parts of the country. Where you have good leadership which does not tolerate antagonism based on anything other than non-cooperntion or things of that nature, you do not have racial problems.

Senator Pell. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. {p.347}

PROVINCIAL RECONNAISSANCE UNITS

The Chairman. Mr. Ambassador, are you familiar with an article about this subject by Georgie Anne Geyer in the February 1970 True magazine? Do you know any such writer?

Senator Case. What magazine is that?

The Chairman. True magazine, T-r-u-e. Are you familiar with her?

Mr. Colby. She is a reporter, I believe, in Vietnam.

The Chairman. I thought perhaps you had met her. She apparently was in Vietnam.

Mr. Colby. I might have met her, Mr. Chairman. I don’t recall it.

The Chairman. She reports it as her own experiences in Vietnam, and I think, for whatever it is worth, the article should be put in the record.

 

(The article referred to follows:)

______________________

(True Magazine, February, 1970)

THE CIA’s HIRED KILLERS

(By Georgie Anne Geyer)

As the war becomes more political and less military, targets shift from the enemy’s army to its civilian leadership. To get the job done, the U.S. has trained an elite corps of assassins to eliminate the Viet Cong’s “shadow government.”

It was 3 o’clock one hot, dark Sunday morning in a small delta town near the Vietnamese-Cambodian border. The tough, powerfully-built American we’ll call “Bill” — a paramilitary or guerrilla fighter for the Central Intelligence Agency who had spent precious little of his career worrying about the “moral implications” of his work — paced back and forth in the dingy front room of his house. His job, like that of many Americans in South Viet Nam, was terror. And for the first time in his life, this mission was bothering him. If he hadn’t had eight or 10 or maybe 15 drinks, perhaps he wouldn’t have talked to me about it. But he had, and he did. “I’ve been doing this for 22 years all over the world,” Bill said, sitting down and hunching over his beer. He was very intense as he reeled off the places: Egypt when Nasser was coming to power, the Congo when we were trying to get rid of Tshombe — Bill’s life story was a history of just about every place the United States had intervened or tried covertly to intervene in the past two decades. “I did it believing in it,” he went on. Then he shook his head in perplexity. “But for the first time, I feel I really don’t understand a situation,” he said. “When people ask me, all I can say is * * * ‘I don’t know * * * I don’t know * * * ‘ Hah!” He pointed at me. “If you write a story and say you don’t know and * * * “ His voice trailed off. There remained only the sinister silence of the tiny delta town. “The dedication of these people is fantastic,” he spoke up again. “The dedication and the motivation. I wish I could understand it. You capture them and put a pistol to their heads, and they say, ‘Kill me.’ They’re so little. * * * “ Bill had shoulders like a football player — it was easy to picture the absurdity, even the vulgarity, of his enormity next to the tiny-boned, miniature, frail Vietnamese.

“You take their necks in your hands * * * you can destroy them so easily. But you can’t just keep killing them. You can’t ever kill them all. * * * ”

Today a lot of Americans like Bill are beginning to have misgiving, as the Viet Cong hangs doggedly on, about the increasing ruthlessness and cold-bloodedness in this already most sanguinary of wars. Many are also beginning to wonder whether such methods really “work” — or whether we don’t destroy more than we build in the process.

A few months ago, the mysterious arrest of eight Green Beret officers for the slaying of an alleged North Vietnamese double agent spotlighted some of the “dark side of the moon” activities in which Americans are involved. Inside sources reported at the time that Gen. Creighton Abrams, commander of American forces and a man of recognized integrity, was so personally enraged by many of the “black intelligence” goings-on conducted by irregular outfits like the Green Berets and the CIA that he personally ordered the arrests as a once-and-for-all example. {p.348}

“The Special Forces,” he reportedly told subordinates, “are going to have to show a higher regard for human life.”

The CIA was careful to divorce itself from the Berets case, but many other equally brutal operations in which the Agency and other Americans are involved are likewise coming into question. The recently disclosed massacre at Song My, and the subsequent investigations, only served to underscore the point.

With the peace talks in Paris, the deemphasis of the military role in Viet Nam, and the impending U.S. pullout, the political side of the war has been stepped up. The struggle today is to control the peace — to be on top when the ceasefire finally comes and the half-million Americans go home. The name of the game on both sides is to get your people into places of power, to win the allegiance of the countyside and its rice-roots leadership for the future, and, conversely, to get the enemy’s people out of corresponding positions.

The U.S. and the South Vietnamese are using various methods of doing this. Among them are persuasion and propaganda, promises of political and economic reform, goodwill missions and * * * the use of sheer animal terror.

At the heart of the latter phase of the campaign are Bill’s troops, the little-known Provincial Reconnaissance Units or PRU’s (pronounced Prews). A regionally-based, American-led, CIA-financed paramilitary force of 5,000 Vietnamese, they were originally conceived of as a counterguerrilla organization borrowing from Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s principles of living and operating among the peasantry as the fish do in the sea.

They operated out of regional safe-houses or, even, Viet Cong-like, masqueraded as peasants by day and fought as guerrillas at night. In the beginning, they practiced all the arts of guerrilla warfare — the ambush, the night raid, the kidnapping or the knifing in the night — and they also engaged in stand-up battles in which they rapidly established themselves as tigerish fighters in an army where most units resemble Snoopies looking banefully over the garden fence at the cat next door.

But of late the PRU emphasis has been on just one role of the guerrilla: to murder, kidnap, terrorize or otherwise forcibly eliminate the civilian leadership of the other side. Trained and directed by their American advisors, the PRU’s have set out to target and destroy what has come to be known popularly as the “VCI” — the Viet Cong “infrastructure.” These are the “shadow people” of the VC, the complex of political cadres, tax collectors, party members, couriers and others who do the base work which keeps the guerrillas and the main force units going. They also serve as the de facto government in VC-held territory, and the idea is to get as many of them out of the way as possible before a ceasefire turns control of the country back to the Vietnamese.

Thus in one village, a VC tax collector will be assassinated in his bed in the night. In another, “wanted” posters will be put up for a VC leader, offering a reward to try to persuade his friends to turn him in. The PRU’s may also drop down from helicopters and terrorize whole villages, in the hope that they will be frightened to deal with the VC in the future. Or they may bribe VC office holders to change sides, or kidnap (technically, the word is arrest) those who prove unbribeable.

In 1968, according to Saigon government figures, approximately 15,400 of the estimated 80,000 members of the infrastructure were “eliminated.” Of these, 11,000 were captured, 2,220 killed and the rest rallied to the Saigon side.

In Go Cong province in 1968, the PRU’s captured the very highest VC official — the province chief. Acting on intelligence that he was hiding in a certain village, they crept out on a small midnight raid and kidnapped him from his bed. But not all “captures” are so deliberate. In Kien Giang province, on a massive raid on a village, one PRU suddenly noticed a Viet Cong trying to run away. The PRU tackled the man and the two wrestled wildly for a few minutes until the PRU stabbed and killed his opponent. The PRU’s discovered only then that the dead man had been the North Vietnamese lieutenant in charge of all the movement of materiel into the delta for the 1968 Tet offensive — the battle which changed the course of the war.

In Rach Gia, the South Vietnamese colonel complained to the PRU advisors about mines on the road: so the PRU’s laid an ambush that killed 40 VC who had been laying the mines at night. In another village, a South Vietnamese woman was sent with a 300 piastre (about $3) bribe to give to a VC guard to visit her husband in a VC prison in Vinh Binh. Her husband passed her a message for the PRU’s outlining the entire prison layout. The next morning the PRU’s hit the prison, liberating 28 shackled South Vietnamese. {p.349}

The PRU types are not sentimental when one of their own turns double agent. When one group made such a discovery, it set up a field tribunal, condemned the man to death, and beheaded him. Both the head and the body were politely returned to the man’s family for burial.

Indeed, the PRU’s are excellent torturers and employ beatings, electric wires in the ears, water suffocation, and anything else that seems effective, constantly and regularly. “Sometimes we have to kill one suspect to get another to talk,” one American advisor says cooly. Another American advisor told me — and I have no reason not to believe him — that he ate supper with his PRU’s on the hearts and livers of their slain enemies.

The mission and the operation of the PRU’s, of course, is still extremely hush-hush. Most correspondents know of their existence, but few have obtained any verifiable details. U.S. high officialdom in Saigon talks about them only on rare, private occasions, and Washington doesn’t acknowledge their mission at all. Even the Berets case didn’t totally bring out the PRU’s role.

During a recent tour of duty in Viet Nam, I asked, without much hope of approval, to be allowed to go on a PRU mission. To my surprise, permission was granted. It was not to be an assassination or kidnapping — no correspondent would ever be permitted to witness that — but a sudden-strike mission on a VC-held village. It seemed that the Americans wanted to show off a South Vietnamese unit that was zealous, effective and full of fight, particularly at a time when the regular Vietnamese army, the ARVN, was under severe criticism.

The American CIA chief with whom I dealt had trained guerrillas elsewhere in Asia during World War II. Intelligent, handsome, a professional in irregular warfare, he was proud as punch of his PRU’s. Like many similar experts, he believed that had the war been fought more on the counterguerrilla level in the beginning, it would not have turned into such a mess. “Now we’re fighting this war the way it always should have been fought,” he told me once.

We started our mission by flying down to Rach Gia, a picturesque little fishing village on the South China Sea where the boats are gaily painted with the all-seeing Vietnamese eyes that actually see so little. Its airport was a deserted road cut in half by an operating road, so that when a plane came in, traffic stopped in both directions. This morning, 160 PRU’s — tough-looking, wiry, cocky, incredibly eager — arrived early in trucks. While they were waiting, they sat on the runway and — just for kicks — ducked to miss the wings as the planes roared in.

One boy of 22, with a buoyancy I had never seen among the regular South Vietnamese troops, advanced the single most flabbergasting proposal I ever heard in Viet Nam. “In the ARVN, you don’t get a chance to do anything,” he said, “and I want to fight. Here, there’s opportunity. Yesterday there wasn’t room for me in the chopper, and I was sad to be left behind. I like to go on American missions because the VC like to kill Americans and then we get them. I like the Americans because they don’t just advise you, they fight with you.” Then he got his spectacular idea. “If there is a war in the United States, I would like to come and fight with you,” he added.

The two American “advisors” (really the leaders) of the PRU’s were friendly and obviously competent. Twenty-nine-year-old Stanley Rodimon, of Huntsville, Alabama, had studied economics at the University of Alabama. Small, dark-haired, good-looking, he was proud of his job. “We’re just taking their guerrilla tactics and turning them around and using them on them.” he said. “I’ve had no trouble adjusting. This is just a job now. I’ll either stay in the service or go back to work in the bank.” Franklin Flynn, 36, of Imperial Beach, California, had been detached from the Navy Seals to serve with the PRU’s. Blond, husky, with a wry sense of humor, Frank also looked upon it as a job and was proud of the work he was doing.

The object of our whirling onslaught by helicopter was the small village of Ba The, a group of houses strung out on both sides of one of the arrow-straight, French-built canals that gridiron the Mekong Delta. The PRU advisors had special intelligence that several ranking VCI had been hiding in the village. The intelligence was carefully guarded. Only the advisors and the top Vietnamese PRU leader knew where we were going. As we swirled down to it, the town’s VC sympathies became obvious. A large white sign hung across the canal reading: “Be sure and listen to what Uncle says. Rise up and kill the Americans.” This was the same Uncle Ho Chi Minn who had also said. “I am not concerned with the military successes of the government of South Viet Nam. I would only become concerned when they and the U.S. began to destroy the VC political infrastructure.” {p.350}

Our choppers landed like a sinister flock of black crows coming to roost in the swaying green rice fields, and the men jumped out swiftly into the waist-deep water. Almost immediately, a small bare-shouldered man rose out of the paddy and pointed his gun at Rodimon. Rodimon killed him on the spot, and the body slipped back beneath the unbiquitous water of the delta. “I was happy when I got him,” Rodimon exulted later.

Systematically the PRU’s swept into and through the village — house by house, bunker by bunker. From the air, the town had looked as empty of human life as an Arizona ghost town, but one by one the PRU’s nudged out young Vietnamese, their wet, brown shoulders glistening in the sun.

Among those “killed or captured” — it was significant that the two were lumped together — were the VCI they had sought. In all they had killed eight and captured 26 — in their terms, a successful day.

That evening, as we sat in one of the advisors’ houses drinking beer, the two men kept stressing, perhaps because such bloody methods were being questioned on many levels, how careful they were in their work. “The men are very selective,” Rodimon insisted. “They never hurt villagers. I personally checked the pagoda in the town before we went. We’re very careful of religious things. We have a fund to give money to people picked up by mistake. But the men never feel bad about killing a VC.”

Were they certain that all the men they “got” were really VCI? Absolutely, they said, the intelligence was that good.

Only at one point did Frank Flynn waver, reminding me a little of Bill’s misgivings. “Sometimes,” he said, very late in the evening, “I wonder. Are we really doing anything for the people? Or is it just for ourselves?”

There are many more — both Americans and Vietnamese — who question and question deeply the use of deliberate counterterror and assassination on “our side.” There are Americans who question not only its morality and effectiveness, but also what it does to the Americans involved when they see brutality and torture institutionalized in their military system. As one senior American officer in Viet Nam put it, “There are no circumstances — none whatsoever — in which murder is legal in the U.S. Army.”

On one occasion, an American talked to me about the policy of shipping captured VCI to the remote Con Son island prison for the duration of the war. He shook his head. “I ask myself,” he said, “is that any different from the Gestapo?” Another said, “We use the word ‘neutralize’ which is a horrible word. It means kill or capture.” Then he thought some more. “But on the other hand, if we’re going to fight this war, we should be effective. We have to fight it their way.”

That was exactly how the PRU’s originated and the whole counterterror philosophy got started — through the idea of “fighting it their way.” In the absence of an American or South Vietnamese ideology, it was said in the early days, why not borrow the most workable tenets of the enemy’s? “After all, they stole the atomic bomb secrets and all from us,” a young American named Frank Scotton said one day. “Why should we be squeamish about stealing people’s warfare from them? It works better than anything we’ve come up with to match it, so why not give it a try?”

Thus Scotton and a few other Americans, who were both USIS and CIA-related, started a counterguerrilla movement in northern Quang Ngai province. Their emulation of the Viet Cong went to such lengths that they even had “our Vietnamese” learning the four general rules of Mao Tse-tung (“respect the people, help the people, protect the people, follow orders).

Terror and assassination were included in their bag of tricks. At one point, USIS printed 50,000 leaflets showing sinister black eyes. These were left on bodies after assassinations or even — “our terrorists” are playful — nailed to doors to make people think they were marked for future efforts.

Even the American mandarinate’s formidable representative to Saigon in the early days, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, once acknowledged our newfound toy with the words: “There is a brand-new type of fighting man — the terrorist, who is just as distinct as the infantryman or the aviator, and he fights in a war with no front, no rear and no flanks in which his ‘base’ is right among the people.”

The counterguerrilla idea quickly found supporters in all quarters. The Green Berets, for instance, built their own private army of 40,000 mercenaries. Scotton’s movement evolved into something called the CT’s or Counter-Terrorists. Finally, {p.351} the PRU’s emerged in 1966. But whereas Scotton’s original counterguerrillas were both assassins in the night and goodwill organizers of the people, the PRU’s were almost exclusively assassins in the night. The ideological mission was taken over by the Revolutionary Development and later the Phoenix program.

From the beginning, it was no secret that the CIA sponsored, trained, paid and led the PRU’s. Or that they represented the specifically political CIA approach, as opposed to the military approach. From the beginning, the CIA had seen the war more in political terms than did the generals. And the CIA certainly turned out to be more right than wrong.

But “our terror” was different from “their terror.” To the Viet Cong, terror was an indispensable weapon in the political and military war. They both pinpointed village chiefs, killing them brutally and precisely, and they used indiscriminate terror, throwing bombs into marketplaces and killing the innocent.

Terror on “our side,” on the other hand, was largely selective. Victims were carefully targeted, generally by the CIA in concert with South Vietnamese intelligence. The major difference was there was no real political organization — no political ideology — behind our terror. Their boys did it for faith; our boys did it for money.

From the beginning, the PRU’s were the best killers in Viet Nam. When other Vietnamese troops balked at going up Supersitition Mountain near the Cambodian border, which they believed to be cursed and where the VC had been dug in for years, it was the PRU’s who climbed down into the sinuous caves.

Everywhere they fought like tigers. An estimated 30 percent were former VC who had learned well how to fight and how to hate. Often they had become ferociously embittered because a father or a brother or a relative was killed by the VC.

“That man used to be a VC,” one American officer said one day, pointing to a PRU. “But they killed his family. He lit out for the bush. Spent two years out there alone, conducting a private vendetta against Charlie. God knows how many VC he killed. Finally he came in and joined up with the PRU’s. He wants to kill more VC.”

This fighting spirit is encouraged at the camp at Vung Tau on the coast where the PRU’s are trained by CIA instructors in an intensive four-week course in clandestine warfare. They learn how to slit throats in the dark, how to make the silent capture, but get no political indoctrination. The training leads to a strong sense of comradeship, and the PRU’s are ferocious about protecting their American advisors. (In Kien Giang province, they worried about one 300-pound adviser whom they would not be able to carry out if wounded.)

Their American leaders are CIA paramilitary, Navy Seals, Special Forces — anybody the CIA could dig up who had a counterinsurgency background. And in contrast to ARVN officers, the Americans generally treated the PRU’s as equals. They were even promoted according to merit, in sharp contrast to the ARVN with its aristocratic caste system. When I talked to the PRU’s themselves, this basic equality was the first thing every one stressed.

“I like the unit because very man’s a fighting man,” the Squad Leader Truong Van Lan said. “We really don’t have officers, like in the ARVN where everybody’s sitting in the office. The men are like brothers. We even call each other ‘brother.’”

“We kill many VC,” the deputy commander, Nguyen Ngoc Diep added. “We give fame to our people.”

Yet, how well are the PRU’s actually doing in their assigned task of rooting out the VC infrastructure? Are they actually as successful as Saigon makes them out to be?

From the beginning, the problems of this assignment were enormous. Our South Vietnamese could understand shooting at a guerrilla who was shooting at them. But a quiet little clerk they’d known from childhood who just happened to be directing the entire thing? “It’s like trying to convince them to get the Mafia leader instead of the guy in the New York subway with the switchblade,” one American advisor put it.

Then there were the “accommodations,” by which South Vietnamese officials had, for years, made “deals” with their VC counterparts. A VC village chief near Dalat once wrote an angry letter to his South Vietnamese counterpart and demanded:

“What are you trying to do? Why are you interviewing my relatives? Why are you attacking me now?” It was hard for him to believe that his “friends” on the “other side” could have turned against him. {p.352}

The early figures of apprehended were impressive, but American officials now admit that the victims were chiefly small fish in Mao’s swarming waters: rice carriers, low-level VCI. Nor has that much meaningful intelligence actually been gathered. And about 80 percent of those caught are eventually let go by their South Vietnamese brothers.

Moreover, the VC appear able to regenerate cadres as fast as the Americans knock them off. “I am constantly amazed at the tasks they level on these people, that they don’t just throw up their hands,” one American says. But then, many of the VCI are unquestionably the most energetic, aggressive, upward-mobile and idealistic people in the country.

Many came out of the Viet Minh after it won the war against the French but lost the South. About 10,000 Viet Minh stayed south after 1954 and laid the base for the future Viet Cong leadership. Still others “signed on” after the late President Ngo Dinh Diem’s infamous law 1059 by which any anti-Diem men, whether they were communists, Confucianists or whatever, were purged and often killed by the Diemists.

For these men, indoctrination by the VC was a real awakening. “Suddenly I realized what life was all about,” one related after he was captured by the southerners. “We would sit around in a circle and the political cadres would talk to us. They never actually told us anything, they made it come out of us. How many villagers had the Americans killed? they would ask. How many of your women are sleeping with them? What are they doing to your country? Suddenly everything became clear.”

And today, in addition to their old roles of supply, political indoctrination and tax collection, the VCI form the ostensibly-elected liberation committees — which will constitute the new VC “government” in the South to fight the government of Saigon.

Moreover, what about the whole idea of terror? Does it not destroy the loyalties of more people than it wins over? Is it really effective on “our side”? Without being naive about it, for this is a war, how does a supposedly democratic government rationalize the same kind of terror its excoriates “their side” for?

For one thing, despite the fact that it is generally effective, terror is not alway, {sic: always} so selective as PRU leaders claim. The roundup of hordes of people in operations like that at Ba The is bound to bring in the innocent as well as the guilty. PRU’s steal from the peasants, just as the ARVN does. They often do the same dull stupid things as the South Vietnamese soldiers, only they compound it with terror and brutality.

Not only do many Americans object to these methods, so do many South Vietnamese. Torture has now come to be used so indiscriminately that the VC warn their men to beware of any released prisoner if he has not been tortured.

The Vietnamese Congress, no paragon of virtue itself, recently began a series of investigations charging Phoenix and the PRU’s with corruption, clumsy police work and too many illegal arrests.

“Officials have orders to arrest a certain number of Viet Cong,” charges Ho Van Minh, deputy chairman of the House of Representatives and considered one of the best and most honest young deputies. “But our investigations show there have been a multitude of cases in which they’ve arrested the wrong people.”

He and other officials who called for an investigation of the whole program admitted that it had resulted in the capture of many agents. But they also wondered whether the malpractices were not alienating people from the government and thus simply creating more VC.

“There have been a number of arrests which really amount to kidnapping,” says Ho. “A man going home from work on his bicycle is seized on the way. As far as his family knows, he has simply disappeared. Perhaps a month or two later, they find out where he is.”

Another critic, Ho Ngoc Nhuan, chairman of a lower house rural-construction committee, complained that: “In Qang Nam province, I followed one operation. They jammed the entire population of four hamlets into a four-room school and a courtyard while they searched the villages. They ignored the village chiefs who might have been able to help them distinguish which people were VC. They kept the people squatting there for two whole days.”

In the 1970’s the PRU’s will be transferred entirely to the Vietnamese Ministry of the Interior as part of the total changeover of all units to Vietnamese direction. However, the CIA is by no means immediately relinquishing control — not as {p.353} long as it pays the bills. But certainly with the Green Beret scandal and with the cold eye of criticism looking more at such covert operations, everyone will be taking a colder, harder look at PRU and other such activities.

As noted, one American officer said that there are no circumstances whatsover {sic: whatsoever} in which murder is legal in the U.S. Army. Another disgruntled American civilian official put it this way: “They use terror, yes, but they also have ideology. We have terror without ideology, without revolution. And what is that? It’s plain murder.”

 

__________

VIETNAMESE CONGRESS’ INVESTIGATION OF PHOENIX PROGRAM AND PRU

There are one or two things I will ask you about. I won’t read it all. The hour is getting late. It says:

Before I go on, are you aware of the Vietnamese Congress’ instituting any investigation?

Mr. Colby. Yes; I referred to that in my testimony.

The Chairman. I thought I recalled it.

Mr. Colby. The legislature did call the government to explain. The Prime Minister and several of the other ministers appeared before them to respond to questions.

The Chairman. I won’t read all of the article, but she quotes and says:

That is a quote of Ho Van Minh. Do you know Ho Van Minh?

Mr. Colby. I don’t know him.

The Chairman. Have you ever heard of him, Mr. Vann?

Mr. Vann. I have heard of him, sir.

The Chairman. Would you agree he is an honest young man?

Mr. Vann. I don’t know his reputation. I do know the reputation of his associate who was involved in this, Mr. Ngo Cong Duc [deleted].

The Chairman. I will try to paraphrase it. This whole thing here is not so much about the brutality of it. The point she is really making is that by this kind of clumsy administration they make enemies for the Government. She says:

Another critic, Ho Ngoc Nhuan, Chairman of a Lower House Rural-Construction Committee, complained that: “In Quang Nam Province, I followed one operation. They jammed the entire population of four hamlets into a four-room school and a courtyard while they searched the villages. They ignored the village chiefs who might have been able to help them distinguish which people were VC. They kept the people squatting there for two whole days.”

Then the conclusion is that this makes enemies of the Government. In other words, it is not accomplishing its purpose.

Mr. Colby. I think, if you would like my comments on that, sir—

The Chairman. Yes.

Mr. Colby. I think the problem of mistaken or wrongful or even deliberately erroneous allegations, as I mentioned before, does exist. It is something that just has to be stomped on and stopped. I think they are trying to do that and trying to put in controls to reduce it. {p.354}

With respect to the second one, I think that that fits into the discussion we were having a little while ago of the cordons and the operations like the Russell Beach which we are really turning away from and doing much, much less of. There was some of that done some time ago, particularly up in central Vietnam. It has been used less and less.

The Chairman. There were a few other questions.

USE OF FIRE POWER AND PHOENIX PROGRAM AFTER U.S. WITHDRAWAL

Senator Case. Just one thing on that line, if I might. It would be well to have it at this point. Both you and Colonel Vann have been concerned about this sort of thing, I know, very much, such as the use of helicopter gunships being used indiscriminately, et cetera, et cetera.

What is going to happen as we pull out, and the Vietnamese themselves are left with responsibilities for the conduct of the war in matters such as this, and the kind of thing that the chairman has just called to your attention?

Mr. Colby. I think, Senator, that the growth of the whole program puts some internal controls upon the techniques. In other words, new rules are being applied that say that you must inform a village chief of the arrest of anybody in this village. It is a new rule that they are just beginning to implement. That kind of a thing, once it gets started and going becomes a matter of habit. It is followed and begins to put a certain control on just who gets arrested in a village.

Now, with respect to the use of firepower, the Vietnamese get used to a stricter standard. As they depend more and more upon the elected village officials and elected province officials and as their legislature takes a more active role in protesting against things like this, that kind of control will increasingly come to bear.

Two or 3 years ago the army was the only power in the country. There is no question about it. Officers’ words were law. That is no longer the case. Their power is being circumscribed on the Vietnamese side, not just by American influence.

Now, there is more work to do on this, don’t get me wrong, but that, I think, is the answer to your question, Senator.

Senator Case. Do you agree?

Mr. Vann. Sir, not only do I agree, but I went to the trouble of comparing some statistical estimates. In 1969 with approximately 14 times as much airpower being applied from the standpoint of strikes against targets in South Vietnam as were applied in 1962, there were in my judgment less civilian casualties than there were in 1962. That reflects a tremendous improvement in discrimination and the use of these indirect fire and airborne weapons systems.

Senator Case. What do you think will be the result as we progressively withdraw our advisory groups?

Mr. Vann. I wholeheartedly concur with Ambassador Colby’s assessment. I really couldn’t put it better.

Senator Case. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. {p.355}

 

CASE OF TRAN NGOC CHAU

The Chairman. I am told that Senator Symington had to leave and did not quite complete some questions about the Chau case. I will try to make these very rapid and get through with them. The hour is getting late and everyone is getting tired.

Mr. Vann, when was Chau’s brother arrested? Do you remember?

Mr. Vann. In April of 1969.

The Chairman. April 1969. Was Chau accused at that time or when was Chau accused?

Mr. Vann. Sir, within a few days after Mr. Tran Ngoc Hien had been arrested, the information appeared in the newspapers that he had been in contact with his brother who was a deputy in the assembly, Mr. Tran Ngoc Chau. That is not in the form of a formal accusation.

The Chairman. When did Chau first publicly acknowledge his contacts with his brother?

Mr. Vann. To the best of my recollection, sir, in the spring of 1969, subsequent to April and prior to, I would say, June 30.

The Chairman. Prior to June 30?

Mr. Vann. To the best of my recollection, but I can’t really be certain as to the approximate time.

The Chairman. I am not sure, but I thought I asked you about this. Do you believe the United States has a responsibility to intercede in Chau’s behalf at least to the extent of informing the Vietnamese government of Chau’s reporting on his contacts?

Mr. Vann. Sir, the Prime Minister of the country has been informed as to the facts that Colonel Chau did notify Americans of his involvement.

The Chairman. He has been informed of it?

Mr. Vann. I informed him of it.

The Chairman. In your opinion, did the CIA have a responsibility at an earlier point in time to inform the GVN of Chau’s contacts?

Mr. Vann. I am not personally aware, sir, that the CIA knew of Chau’s contact with his brother.

The Chairman. You testified you knew; you didn’t know whether anyone else knew.

Mr. Vann. That is correct, Senator.

The Chairman. When was the Prime Minister informed of these contacts? Are you the one who informed him?

Mr. Vann. I informed him, sir, in early July of 1969.

The Chairman. Did you have reason to believe that Chau would make public his contacts with official Americans regarding his brother?

Mr. Vann. Mr. Chau informed me, sir, that when it got down to the point of his being tried he would have no recourse but to speak about the contacts.

The Chairman. Did you so inform the Embassy? {p.356}

Mr. Vann. Yes, sir, I have. I informed through my channel, which was Mr. George Jacobson and Ambassador Colby.

The Chairman. What recommendations, if any, did you make?

Mr. Vann. Sir, I felt that although Chau had, by his own admission, violated technically the law of his country, I did not believe that he was either pro-Communist or was aiding or abetting communism, and that I considered that it would be better for all concerned if the case went no further.

EFFORT TO LIFT CHAU’S IMMUNITY

The Chairman. Can you describe a little more specifically how the Thieu government has lobbied to obtain the lifting of the immunity of Mr. Chau?

Mr. Vann. Sir, I can only say what I got from deputies.

The Chairman. In your district?

Mr. Vann. From the Delta on the matter, [deleted].

 

CHAU’S VIEWS ON GVN POLICY

The Chairman. What views has Mr. Chau expressed to you about appropriate Vietnamese policy about broadening the government in negotiations?

Mr. Vann. Sir, he has made so many recommendations over so long a period it would be very extensive.

Colonel, now Mister Tran Ngoc Chau, [deleted] contention on a continuing basis to me was that the non-Communist elements of the society must have a greater voice in the government of Vietnam, a voice that he does not feel that any other than those associated with the current government now have. That is his opinion.

The Chairman. Did he express his view on a coalition government?

Mr. Vann. To me, sir, he has always expressed the view that there should be some accommodation made at the local levels and that would preclude an accommodation having to be made at the national level.

My interpretation of his views is that he would not endorse a coalition with Communists at the national level.

SELF DETERMINATION IN LIGHT OF MAI’S AND CHAU’S EXPERIENCES

The Chairman. This case is made even more significant by your exchange with and discussion of Major Mai as to what we can find or what we can do about the political situation in South Vietnam, and how realistic is the asserted objective of giving them a right of self-determination.

Mai’s and Chau’s experiences and also Dzu. whom I would include from what we know about it from the press, at least assuming the press statements are true, seem to me to make rather a farce of the idea of self-determination. You have a very effective dictatorship, not unlike the Greeks or any other, if an opposition man. no matter how reputable, puts up his head and off it goes. This comes back to a question asked the other day. Self-determination under the circumstances {p.357} is illusory. If there is any objective which could make any sense at all, it simply is the restraining of communism, which was the main objective expressed by former Secretary Rusk.

Mr. Vann. I am sure, Mr. Chairman, you realize there is on a continuing bases a number of people who are in opposition to the Thieu government who do speak on the matter. I believe Senator Trail Van Don is one of the foremost, and certainly to some extent, General Minh. So I would not say that it is any case of totalitarian—

The Chairman. There are all kinds of opposition. We have those distinctions too. But according to your own testimony, if I understood it correctly, Mai and Chau were two of the most promising, attractive opponents. There are other kinds of opponents. You have tame opponents as well as other kinds.

Mr. Vann. Sir, the time period that we talked of with regard to Major Mai was 1966, and the Thieu-Ky government per se did not exist then.

The Chairman. It was the Ky government.

Mr. Colby. You didn’t have constitutional government.

Mr. Vann. It was a directorate headed up by Ky.

ACCUSATIONS AGAINST AND VIEWS OF TRAN NGOC CHAU

The Chairman. In order to complete the record, I will put in some of the documents dealing with accusations against Mr. Chau and his views on a variety of subjects, and some newspaper articles dealing with this case.

 

(The materials referred to follow:)

__________

AN OPEN LETTER OF DEPUTY TRAN NGOC CHAU

My countrymen and comrades-in-arms in kien hoa and throughout the country, deputies to the national assembly, gentlemen,

In my letter of Dec. 5, 1969, to the deputies to the national assembly, I promised to defend myself when necessary?

I still honor this decision until the lower house formally carries out articles 37 and 38 of the constitution against my person.

However, in the aftermath of the president’s biased accusations against my person and the threats he made in Yung Tau against the national assembly, as well as in the wake of radio and television broadcasts and demonstrations, etc. I felt the need to send to you this letter to give you and public opinion food for thought.

THE SPIRIT OF THE CONSTITUTION

The constitution of Vietnam has 117 articles. To honor the constitution means to honor all the articles and the laws emanating from these articles.

Recently, the president and a small number of people have only alleged article 4 in order to condemn me and intimidate all those politicians who disagree with the government.

Why did the president and that small number of people not uphold article 7 of the constitution, and why did they abuse their power and exploit the nation’s facilities to slander and and denigrate me over the radio and television, in the press and demonstrations encouraged or authorized by the government. Article 7, section 8, clearly states that “defendants are considered innocents until they are definitely found guilty by a court. In case of doubt, the court will rule in favor of the accused”. {p.358}

ARTICLE 4 OF THE CONSTITUTION

Thus, even though I may be affected by article 4 of the constitution, I am still an innocent man.

Article 4 of the constitution says clearly that: “that republic of Vietnam opposes communism under all forms; all activities aimed at publicising or promoting communism are strictly forbidden.”

I cannot be so cowardly as to deny my brother Tran-Ngoc-Hien’s relations and contacts with me (I did not seek to contact my brother). But the contacts were only made discreetly, between two blood brothers, and were never disclosed or publicized in order to publicize or promote communism.

On the contrary, in my contacts with Tran-Ngoc-Hien, I never failed to try to persuade my brother to:

Tran-Ngoc-Hien himself testified to my anti-communist stand at his trial on July 4, 1969. Several newspapers carried this news. Let me quote thoi {sic} the daily of July 5, 1969:

“ * * * the defendant’s brother (Tran-Ngoc-Chau) proved himself useless because he opposed communism too strongly.”

It could by no means be believed that the above statement was intended to protect me because the documents used to accuse me were also based on other statements by Tran-Ngoc-Hien.

Previously, when talking about my “case” to a number of deputies in the dan tien (people’s progress) bloc, the president had said that “Mr. Tran-Ngoc-Chau did not act in any way for the communists but only out of his connections with some american groups.” this statement was disclosed to me by Mr. Nguyen-cao-Thang and Mr. Nguyen-cao-Thang, later, confirmed it to other deputies at the dien hong conference hall.

To tell the truth, I did not act either for the communists or for any foreign group.

Even after Mr. Nguyen-cao-Thang retaliated (as I had demanded that the lower house looked into allegations that Mr. Nguyen-cao-Thang had used his money and influence to undermine the national assembly) by telling the press that I had “records of connections with the communists,” premier Tran-thien-khiem denied this news and disclosed that no government agencies had such a dossier (the hoa hinh daily carried this news item which was not denied by anyone).

With the facts just mentioned, there cannot be any pretext for accusing me of violating article 4 of the constitution.

Meanwhile, president Nguyen-van-Thieu himself accepted to talk peace with north Vietnam and the NLF, agreed to allow the NLF to take part in elections. Such steps have enabled the NLF to gain prestige in the international political arena, thereby enabling them to establish a government which was recognized by many countries. The communists could not have achieved such things before the republic of Vietnam agreed to sit down at the conference table with them in Paris.

If article 4 of the constitution is to be upheld, then the president’s acts just mentioned actually helped the communists publicize and promote communism.

However, I have no intention to accuse the president of violating article 4 of the constitution because I believe that the president’s acts (if they were as sincere as those of other Vietnamese and my own) were all aimed at realizing national reconciliation, restore peace in freedom, and not at favoring communism.

THE PRESIDENT’S ACCUSATIONS

According to the contents of the “dossier” which the president submitted to the lower house, I was accused of the following crimes:

1. 8 times of contacts, relations and exchange of news with Hien without notifying the authorities.

2. support in money, transportation facilities and legal papers for Tran-Ngoc-Hien.

3. existence of the enemy’s support for my candidacy to the lower house. {p.359}

WHAT IS THE TRUTH

May I speak out the truth as follows:

1. I wrote to Hien a card agreeing to see him for the first time. The other times Hien always came to see me unexpectedly.

You may understand the situation of two blood brothers who were separated for 16 years when one of them asked to see the other. Who could be so inhumane as to decline the request?

Moreover, at that time, I thought that my brother might try to see me in order to surrender to the nationalist cause.

I never exchange news with Hien, but only tried to persuade him by analyzing the situation with a view to making Hien see that the communists could not win victory in south Vietnam. And thus, I intended to persuade Hien to renounce communism or make him persuade the communists to seek an accommodation with the republic of Vietnam in order to end the war.

I wish that you will understand why I did not denounce Tran-Ngoc-Hien. How could I ignore my feelings and traduce my brother to his death?

I believe that no nationalist could do this.

Moreover, every time Hien met me, I always told Hien that if he refused to heed my advices (a,b,c), he must get back to the north and never see me again.

Apart from such human circumstances and from the fact that the contacts between my brother and me had a family character, high government authorities who knew our relations acknowledged my sincerity. If these authorities, for some noble reasons, prefer to let me defend myself alone before public opinion, I would agree to it and would not disclose their identities and ranks.

2. As a province chief (until the end of 1965), director of the RD training program and commandant of the RD training center in Vung-Tau (until the beginning of 1967), I never gave Tran-Ngoc-Hien any document, news or facilities, except an amount of 30 thousand piasters, a car ride from Kien-hoa to my tho {sic} and a card authorizing Hien to meet me. This help was given exclusively within the framework of brotherhood and only for once.

In the above-mentioned positions and with available means, I could, if I intended to help the communists, have done much more to support Hien and the communists, especially in 1964 and 1965 when the situation in Kien-hoa and many other provinces throughout the country was critical.

On the contrary, I wrestle with the communist and people.

The result was that the day I was assigned to the RD ministry (November 1965), the leaders of the religions in the province and the provincial council members sent cables to the central government and corps authorities to request for my continued stay. And it is precisely because of my anti-communist record that it, Gen. Nguyen Ven Thieu, national directory chairman, awarded me the fourth class national order medal and first class order of merit medal. Both things rarely happens to out going province chiefs.

3. In the electoral campaign for the lower house in Kien-hoa, there were only about 90,000 people out of 500 thousand did vote. These voters were all screened and were in the government-controlled areas.

I was elected among 19 candidates with 38 thousand votes. The majority of my votes were gotten in the provincial capital (I got 8,000 votes while the runner up got less than 3,000) and in the areas where catholic voters lived.

The foregoing are my clarifications about the three accusations by the president as featured in the “dossier” which the president forwarded to the lower house.

OTHER ACCUSATIONS

Recently, the armed forces radio and a couple of newspapers in the capital disclosed another accusation, namely, that Tran-Ngoc-Hien said that Hien entrusted me with the mission of setting up a committee to work with the NLF. In this committee, there were 2 buddhist monks, 1 politician and 1 deputy.

I strongly deny and protest this additional accusation and other accusations which may be added later. I never had such activities.

Suppose this disclosure was truthful, why did not the president “dossier” mention it?

It should be noted that the “dossier” forwarded by the president did not hint at additional evidences while the “dossier” in the hands of a fellow deputy contains this item. {p.360}

May I caution public opinion that after he was sentenced to life imprisonment, Tran-Ngoc-Hien has been kept in solitary confinement and has not been visited by his relatives for three months. Was this measure intended to force Tran-Ngoc-Hien to tell further of my crimes.

My countrymen and comrades-in-arms,

Fellow-deputies,

The foregoing are my clarifications about the “crimes” which the president has charged me of.

I could not guess whether there will be other accusations. However, I believed that the accusations bearing the signature of the president himself must be the most serious and complete accusations.

I agree that all shows of force and display of anti-communist spirit are rightful. But when the “secret” dossier has only been sent to the lower house for consideration and decision, and when the public and even the people who wrote for the radio and TV networks or organized the demonstrations have not been assess the validity of the dossier, any condemnation and indictment before the lower house takes a decision and the court pronounces a verdict are only acts contrary to reason and in violation of both the constitution and existing laws (article 7, section 8 of the constitution now in force).

If anyone still believes that I am guilty, my guilt should be specified as follows:

“Tran-Ngoc-Chau had the courage to take up arms to kill foreign invaders and the communist during 23 years; but Tran-Ngoc-Chau did not have the courage to traduce his blood brother Tran-Ngoc-Hien who was a north Vietnamese officer”.

Although there are serious pressures for accusing me, I still believe that the common sense of the nationalists will not accept any arbitrary measure and accusation against me which are severe than against the communists.

Respectfully,

Saigon, December 24, 1969.

 

__________

SELF-CONFESSION BY TRAN NGOC HIEN IN RELATION TO TRAN NGOC CHAU

PAST CONTACTS WITH TRAN NGOC CHAU

I. — First contacts without change of attitude

After studying the importance and location of the objectives as well as assessing the importance and competence of the individuals, the directorate of studies decided to work on a number of people, including Tran Ngoc Chau, who might become good news sources. Although Chau and I are blood brothers, we had not met for nearly twenty years, and I had no idea how he had changed. Therefore, I chose the following mottoes:

(a) To persevere in winning over him regardless of the time needed.

(b) To strengthen the brotherly ties and at the same time to win over him politically in accordance with the dictates of circumstances.

(c) To remain vigilant.

(d) To make careful preparations for the contacts. And to do this, I asked Mr. Tran Chau Khang, my eldest brother, to contact Chau first in order to assess his attitude in advance.

By the beginning of 1965, Mr. Khang met him and told him that I intended to see him. Mr. Khang reported to me that Chau was willing to receive me and that I could come to see him at any time; he sent me a card bearing this sentence: “please let this man come and see me immediately.” Besides, he sent me a query whether I intended to surrender to the government. If I did, he would recommend me for a trip to the United States. As it was not yet timely to make a contact, I destroyed the card, fearing that it might cause trouble as I was using a false I.D. card by September 1965, when Mr. Khang went down to Kien Hoa to ask Chau to give him legal papers so that he could apply for a job, I asked Mr. Khang to reassess Chau’s attitude and see whether his attitude had changed in any way. Mr. Khang told me that Chau did not say anything about plans to see him; I reasoned that there was no obstacle to my plans. Therefore, in November 196.5. I decided to go to Kien Hoa to have the first contact with him. At about 1430 hours on a Sunday in Nov. 1965, I went straight to the residence of the chief of Kien Hoa province and told the guards that I wanted to see Chau. I wrote a note as follows:

Dear brother: I have just arrived from central Vietnam, and, following your advice, I request to see you. Signed: contractor {p.361}

We were so happy to see each other after so many years. We talked about our family. I told him about our relatives in the north. He introduced his wife and children to me. At dinner, in the presence of his wife and children, he asked me whether I needed any legal papers, thereby showing that he was a man of fair play. I thanked him and told him that I had gotten all necessary papers. As far as I can remember, I got the following ideas across to him during our conversation that night:

The front ordered me to contact you and see whether you want to support the front. Your former friends such as Buoi, Luong, Chuong, Kinh and Lien all want you to do so. No one has anything against you. We ourselves took the risk of contacting you.

The front stands for the struggle against the americans, and for demanding independence, democracy, peace and neutrality. There is nothing to communism, The revolutionaries are not against anti-communist elements who are true patriots. The revolutionaries only oppose those who, under the label of anti-communism, suppress the people and let american inference in our sovereignthy {sic: sovereignty}. On the other hand, the revolutionaries would be guilty of ignorance if they fought against french dominion in order to accept the rule of the russians or of the Chinese.

Your interests and mine are identical; they are the interests of the people. No theory or doctrine transcends these fundamental interests.

As you believe you are a nationalist and patriot, you should not use any pretext, even that of opposing communism, to calmly let the americans murder the compatriots and devastate the country.

Chau did argue with me on those ideas, but my principle was to avoid arguments.

He said categorically: my stand is clearly to oppose the communist ideology, but not go hate the communists as individuals. He said he did not kill anybody except when he was on operations. He complained that the guerrillas had attempted to kill him with a plastic charge.

Finally, I said: the main and realistic question is not to find out who is right and who is wrong, but to work together to save south Vietnam from the nearly 30 years of war from the french till the Americans. We should not try to convert each other today. Life will do the conversion.

The next morning, Chau had to go early for an operation; he asked me whether I could stay. I said I wanted to leave. Before departing each other, Chau put in my pocket a bundle of 500-piaster notes (I found out later that the sum was nearly 30,000 piasters). His wife told a driver to take me to My-Tho in a private car. After this contact, I made the following report to my superiors:

I requested that the front’s committee in Kien-Hoa forbid the guerrillas to assassinate Chau because he could be won over in the long run.

 

II. By May 1966, for a second contact, I went straight to Chau’s office as he had just been appointed director of the R.D. training program.

At this time, the buddhists were waging a vigorous struggle, the anti-American movement was gathering momentum, the internal situation of south Vietnam was critical. I went to see Chau this time in order to see whether the overall situation had any effect on his stand.

During this second contact, I advance the following ideas:

“{sic} The front is quite determined to fight the Americans until the end. The most appropriate political course for South Vietnam to take would be real neutralism. The South would not go communist but would not be dependent on the Americans. You have many friends among the generals, field grade officers, politicians, intellectuals. You should contact patriotic elements and form a group which would work hand in hand with the front when the opportunity arrives. This means that you can continue to oppose communism, but you should do something to oppose the Americans and defend the interests of the people. The front’s policy is to seek the widest unity possible. The front does not demand that people support its platform entirely, but only wants to support people who oppose the Americans.

Here is what Chau replied to me: this is very difficult. There are here people who oppose the Americans or who do not like the government, but this does not mean that they are willing to cooperate with the communists. {p.362}

He boasted that the Americans respected him, that American newspapers praised him, and that he knew many American personalities to whom he could introduce me if I wanted. But I replied: what should I see Americans for? I only want to see patriotic nationalists. We were in the midst of our conversation when an American came in, so I left.

Chau’s ideas had not undergone any change. On the contrary, he appeared to be closely associated with the Americans. Therefore, I decided not to continue to work on him politically for some time, and to wait for a more favorable occasion.

II. — Apparent change of attitude, but actual intentions to profit

For a long period, I did not come to see Chau because Mr. Khang told me that Chau was having close relations with the Americans.

 

(III) By the end of 1967, Chau asked Khang to tell me to come to his private house on Ngo-Tung-Chau street in Gia-dinh so that he could say something to me. The contents of the third meeting between the two brothers are as follows:

He told me he had gone to Hue. Many relatives knew that I was in Saigon. So the secret was revealed and security agents might know about my whereabouts. He advised me to take to the bush and not to go around to contact people; he said I might be arrested and bring trouble to him. I answered: don’t worry, I will drop in here only occasionally and will go out immediately.

After that, he told me he would run for the elections in Kien-Hoa for the reason that he would lose his initiative if he continued to stay in the army, and that a political career would be more lasting and promising. Chau added: can you see any way to help me? I do not need more votes because I know many people and enjoy prestige * * * among people in Kien Hoa province; moreover, I don’t have important opponents; but could you tell “the other side” not to “sadden” the election day such as by preventing people from going to the polls, indulging in terrorism, shellings, etc. I asked: do you have a new policy to propose in running for the elections? He answered: I have always opposed the communist ideology but not in a blind manner; I do any thing beneficial to the people and the cause of peace.

I considered Chau to be a “potential target” who deserved to be won over in a long process. Therefore, within the framework of strategic intelligence, I intended to lead him into the path of activities useful to my purpose whereas I knew that the lower house would be a corrupt and puppet body which would not play any important role or influence anybody. I indirectly asked him why he did not stay with the army and be a province chief or work in some ministry, which give him more actual power whereas a deputy in south Vietnam could by on means deal with Mr. Loan or a gun-carrying general.

But I realized that Chau had decided to do politics at all costs. I tried to win his sympathy by saying:

The front intends to induce the people to oppose and boycot {sic: boycott} this election. But I personalty am ready to support you and I will report your desire to my superiors. If they agree, orders would be promptly given to the Kien Hoa people.

Here are the contents of the cable I sent to brother Toan after I met with Chau:

About one month later, brother Toan sent me a letter:

Brother Toan did not say a word about my proposal. And until now, my superiors have not said a word about it. {p.363}

During the election period, I closely follow the electoral process in Kien Hoa by reading newspapers. It appeared to be relatively smooth. Besides, I was told by Mr. Khang that during the election campaign, Chau used suzuki motorbike to move around in Kien Hoa.

There were only 3 candidates in Kien Hoa: Chau, 1 male nurse and 1 teacher. Chau believed he did not have serious opposition. The result was that Chau got 30,000 votes from 80,000 voters out of the population of 500,000.

In my opinion, the success of Chau was a matter of course and should not surprise or mystify anyone.

 

III. — Since the Mau Than Tet, signs of change of attitude

After the first wave of the Mau Than Tet offensive, after the second wave, after the general situation had evolved and after I had received instructions from above, I had the following intentions regarding Chau:

1. — To persevere in working on him over a long period, using three assets: brotherly sentiments, influence of the situation, political action consisting of:

(a)  advising and criticizing Chau with a view to limit obnoxious effects of the political gimmicks that he liked to do at the national assembly;

(b)  gradually arousing his patriotic, anti-american feelings, and at the same time making him understand and sympathize with the policies and programs of the front.

(c)  increasing his awareness about the need for political probity.

2. to exploit all counter-intelligence information.

3. to be extremely vigilant and cautious as chau might be a tool of the CIA. since the middle of 1968, there have been signs of:

(a)  progress along the lines specified above.

(b)  influence of the situation (on chau).

(c)  Chau’s change as the situation changed.

(d)  the CIA’s activities falling in line with the U.S. policy.

Little by little, the man showed more signs of change in his ideas and attitudes in subsequent contacts.

 

IV. — The June, 1968, contact had two objectives

(a) To find out whether chau could potentially participate in the Trinh dinh Thao alliance.

(b) To assess whether he had undergone further change after the two offensives and his trip abroad.

He raised his voice to berate and condemn Mr. Trinh-dinh-Thao. Therefore I gave up the idea to sound him out.

During this contact, although he still pretended to stick to his anti-communist stand, he did show signs of concern and display some changes in his thinking such as:

From believing that the Americans would defeat the communists he had come to admit that the Americans could not win victory because they had a wrong policy but that they could not lose either. He said: why didn’t you go and fight anywhere instead of fighting in the cities thus bringing death to the people. I answered half jokingly: the countryside was all liberated, if we did not carry the fighting here where could we do it then? We did not shoot at the people. The people and their houses were destroyed because of American airplanes. As a deputy, why haven’t you raised your voice to protest against American bombings of civilians?

He showed first signs of wanting to put an end to the war. He disclosed that public opinion in almost all the countries he had just visited (Japan, United States, England, Italy, France) wants:

a. Contradiction and dissention between the Americans and the authorities in Saigon.

b. The ideas, viewpoints and peace formulas of every personality and group on the Saigon or American side.

I asked Chau: are the reactions of the national assembly and of Thieu to the unilateral cessation of the bombing of the north real or not? I have heard that it was all a farce triggered by Bunker.

Chau smiled: those were real reactions. Please don’t believe that the Americans can do anything they want here; we do not abide by all the decisions of the Americans.

I said: it is distressing indeed. As an outsider. I could not even put up with this. The Americans are unacceptable. They override you so crudely. This is a good occasion for the Vietnamese to find a way to shake off the American yoke. {p.364}

Chau asked: please find out if the north is willing to receive a southern parliamentary delegation in order to discuss about the possibility of solving the war in the south.

I asked him: do you really intend to seek a settlement among all the Vietnamese? is this your own personal idea or is it someone else’s? Chau replied: it is not appropriate to say at this time, but roughly Tran-chanh-Thanh shares this idea.

I tried to work on him: this idea is not realistic. Why go to the north while the front is the direct opponent and is the people’s ligitimate {sic: legitimate} representative which has full rights to make decisions? since the north still refuses to recognize, the southern regime, how could it receive a southern parliamentary delegation? this would only be beneficial to the americans because the americans can use it to soothe public opinion. The only rightful solution is to deal sincerely with the front of national liberation. However, I will report to my superiors and will give you an answer.

I did report Chau’s ideas and suggestions to my superiors and askes {sic} brother Toan to:

(a)  Find out what was behind Chau’s proposals.

(b)  Suggest to me how to answer Chau in such a way as to preserve the front’s policies and at the same not to contradict Chau too sharply.

After that, Tu Hiep ordered me to answer along the lines expounded on the Hanoi and liberation radios.

(VII). — The contact after the election of nixon, by the end of dec. 68:

Chau appeared to be gratified by the election of Nixon and said: during this transition period, the position of Mr. Thieu will be rather delicate but will be better and better defined.

Following the advice of my superiors, I answered Chau that it was not timely yet to send a southern parliamentary delegation to the north. He flew into an anger and said: “so you believe your are certain of success and only want to settle with the Americans. You must not force us into the position of either siding entirely with the other side or leaning competely {sic: completely} on the Americans. We are those who neither accept the front nor side with the ultra-rightists. We are only middle-of-the-road people (litterally {sic: literally}: we are only people who stand in the middle).

I waited to Chau to cool down, then advanced some ideas.

The policies and platform of the north and of the front are always identical. The front’s policy is that the southern problem must be settled among the Vietnamese without foreign interference.

If you or your group want to put an end to the people’s 30 years of sufferings, you should deal directly with the southern front of liberation. This is inevitable, sooner or later.

The americans are presently squeezed from all sides. This is a good occasion to break away from american bondage; and the only solution is still to seek an accommodation among the Vietnamese.

(VIII). — The contact after the ky dau tet, by the end of february, 1969, at Chau’s invitation through Mr. Khang:

Upon seeing me, he told me immediately: a number of deputies and possibly representatives of some religions want to set up a delegation to paris or to somewhere else in order to contact the north and the front with a view to assess the possibility of ending the war. This group’s intention is to gain some political stature which would enable it to tell other circles and groups that it has the capability of promoting understanding and reaching an settlement with the other side. It does not matter for it to meet with north Vietnam first and the front second or simultaneously.

I asked: What are the group’s views on a solution? He replied: to seek a settlement with the front without having to amend the constitution forbids communism while the front has never admitted that it is a communist organization. The front can in the long run be considered a political party, a minority group, and adjustments can be made for it to have deputies (to the national assembly). President Thieu has about the same ideas. There must be a settlement with the front, sooner or later, but it is too dangerous to declare so at this time. He asked me to find out whether the front and the north would agree to receive the group. If the answer was positive, he would go to paris in april or may 1969.

I asked for further information about the composition of the delegation. He roughly said he had contacts with the buddhists, Hoa Hao and Cao Dai, etc.

I tried to work on him: {p.365}

Is this your sincere idea or only a political gimmick or a CIA scheme; does this group have any strength or prestige? If not, after the meetings, all its members would be jailed and would not be able to achieve anything.

What is Mr. Thieu really stand for?

If you want to give your group strength, you must enroll the support of the major religions such as the catholics, the An Quang buddhists, as well as of personalities both here and abroad. It would be useless to have a group of people whose names scare off people. There must be a political platform that is in line with independence, democracy, peace, neutrality, if a settlement is to be reached. In politics, you must know the strength of the parties. On what grounds, could you consider the front as a minority group?

Finally, I promised: although I have no concrete ideas yet, I will report to my superiors and will give you an early answer.

After I left Chau, I wrote a report to my superiors dealing with Chau’s formula of seeking a settlement with the front within the framework of the constitution. In another letter, addressed to Tu Hiep, I wrote: “It is to be wondered what happen in paris in * * * april and may which would make Chau decide to go there to contact us”.

After that, I went to see Ba Can and talked briefly about Chau’s ideas, and I said that we should study the situation more fully in order to make suggestions to the higherups.

I intended to come and see Chau by the beginning of april, 1969, for two purposes:

(a) to assess the strength, policies and platform of the Chau group.

(b) If favorable, to ask to contact some of the group’s members in order to have clearer ideas and to expand my sources who might be useful to my strategic intelligence activities.

I had not come to see Chau when I was arrested on April 6, 1969.

 

__________

VIEWS OF THAN NGOC CHAU ON GVN/NLF TALKS

(Submitted by Daniel Ellsberg)

The several items following were recently sent me by Tran Ngoc Chau, formerly lieutenant colonel in ARVN, now a Deputy from Kim Hoa (when he was twice the Province Chief), and Secretary General of the National Assembly, House of Deputies. Formerly a battalion commander in the Viet Minn, rallying to the Bao Dai Government in 1950, Chau was perhaps the leading innovator and analyst of pacification techniques in Vietnam and was first head of the Revolutionary Development Cadre Program. I know Chau as a close friend and, as do many other Americans, respect him as a patriot.

Among the items sent by Chau (not reproduced below) is a hand drawn diagram headed: “This is how the GVN and NVN are competing in winning over the support of the people in South Vietnam.” With the “people in South Vietanm {sic: Vietnam}” as a box in the center, Chau shows them as appealed to, on the one side, by successive boxes representing various vehicles ranging from the DRV (attracting “communists of the first degree”), the NLF (attracting “communists of the second degree”), Trinh Dinh Thao’s alliance (for “communists of the third degree”) and the proposal of coalition government (appealing to “communists of the fourth degree”): whereas on the other side, non-communists vehicles encouraged by the GVN (and U.S.) are represented by the GVN alone, appealing to “anti-communists of the first degree”: “Everyone else is accused or condemned as pro-communist.”

Chau is now regarded as a leader of the nationalist opposition to the present GVN, within the National Assembly. He has for several years favored ceasefire and direct talks between the GVN and the NLF in Vietnamese politics. Were it not for the immunity granted by his membership in the National Assembly, he would undoubtedly be arrested by the current GVN leadership for his recent expressions of these long-held views (as represented in the accompanying translations). That immunity is probably not absolute. His vulnerability has undoubtedly been increased by his recent public disclosure that a Viet Cong captain now in police custody is his brother (another brother is a North Vietnamese official), even though these family relationships have been known to the government for some time and represent, as he out it, a “familiar drama” in the conflict in South Vietnam. {p.366}

 

__________

WHY MUST WE TALK WITH NORTH VIETNAM AND THE NATIONAL LIBERATION FRONT

(By Deputy Tran-Ngoc-Chau)

On January 15, 1969, the Quvet-Tien Daily published an interview with me about attitudes towards the NLF. To make the matter clearer, I would like to add the following statement. — Deputy Tran-Ngoc-Chau

NOT GONE WITH THE WIND

From the beginning of 1945 to the end of 1949, I had the privilege of wearing torn clothes, walking bare-footed, living from hand to mouth, working without pay and living in straitened circumstances along the Truong Son Mountains to participate in the resistance, taking up arms to oppose foreign invasion.

In 1950, I changed ranks and rallied to the Nationalist camp. Since then, I have worn French uniforms and American shoes, lived in plenty and received high salaries, enjoyed comforts from Hai Phong and Hung Yen to the Ben Hai and Ca Mau, participating in the resistance against the Communists.

The time I have spent on this side is threefold or fourfold the time spent on the other side; feats of arms I have accomplished on this side also outnumber those on the other side. My authority and privileges on this side are also superior to those on the other side. My way of life and my thoughts are also more at ease on this side than on the other side. I have also more friends and relatives here than there.

Thus, there is no reason why I should support a victory of the other camp (NVN and the NLF) whether on the battlefield or at the conference table.

But we must also sincerely admit that if the great majority of our people could enjoy their basic rights under a good regime, they themselves would have long ago been determined to defend themselves against any form of Communist propaganda and terrorism. Thus, the Communists would never have been able to use minority rule to sway us and to make it necessary for us to cope with them for so many years.

In view of the above, I believe that the Communists are guilty of provoking the war, but that we ourselves, non-Communist leaders, have been incapable of improving society, of bringing confidence to the people, and of fully utilizing our capabilities to destroy the Communists.

And it is because of the above-mentioned inability that the Communists have been able to expand and attract a great part of the population to them, while we ourselves must depend on our ally, the United States, to fight the Communists.

Until the day comes when the United States changes its methods, we must face our enemy in the front and our ally in the back.

We cannot prolong this war under such conditions.

An early end must be put to the war so as to save the great majority of the population from death, from infirmity, and from bankruptcy caused by the war.

Both sides — we and the Communists — must put an end to the war for the sake of humanity.

REALISTIC REASON

There are only three ways of achieving peace in this war:

1. Surrender to the Communists.

2. Defeat the Communists.

3. Make mutual concessions.

Of course, we cannot, nor is there any reason for us, to surrender to the Communists in any form. At any rate, we remain stronger than they.

Defeat the Communists? We have been deftating them successfully day after day. Whoever opens the daily news bulletins and statistical reports from 1959 to the present would certainly see that the total number of Viet Cong killed stands at millions by body count, and that the population that we control comes up to twenty or thirty million. Therefore, if we choose to defeat the Communists with the old strategy, it would mean that the war would go on indefinitely-endlessly. Such a situation would be tantamount to continuing the present war with promises but without any end in sight.

A number of anti-Communist elements whose incomes increase and whose relatives and friends dodge military service have chosen this self-deceiving formula.

Therefore, if the two above formulas are not chosen, we must make mutual concessions to put an end to the war and bring peace to our country. {p.367}

CONDITIONS TO END THE WAR

But on what basis must concessions be made? This is quite a problem which we must analyze.

As everyone of us knows:

In the past — in spite of statements and promises of peace — our government has advocated that the war must be ended on the basis that “NVN must withdraw its invasion troops”, the Viet Cong must “chieu hoi” and surrender to the government, and that, even if they would do so, only elements recognized as “good” can participate in political as “individuals” in the “national community”.

The above conditions require that NVN and the Viet Cong must lay down their arms and surrender — no more, no less.

In my heart and that of all non-Communist people, we hope that NVN and the Viet Cong will act that way.

Our attitude in resiging {sic: resigning} ourselves to sit down at the conference table in Paris on January 18, 1969, with a delegation equal in number to that of the United States delegation, with the presence (known to the entire world) of the National Liberation Front indicated that our government had given up the above unrealistic policy of restoring peace.

What a shame!

When the other camp consists of 8 Vietnamese facing our camp which consists of 4 Vietnamese and 4 Americans.

But let’s look into the reality, into the bones and blood of the people and into the scenes of destruction of the country, and thus continue to seek peace.

The most loud-talking anti-Communist elements should raise their voices and tell people what we should do in the face of this tragic and shameful situation.

Should we accept the Communists and thus maintain Vietnamese personality (because we all still are Vietnamese) or accept dependence on the United States not necessarily to be anti-Communist, but rather to depend on the United States to lead us anywhere it wants?

Is there anyone who forgets that:

In 1963 the United States accused President Ngo-Dinh-Diem (who had been elected by the people in accordance with the Constitution) of repressing the Buddhists and attempting to come to agreement with NVN in order to come to the November 1, 1963 coup?

And that in 1966 the United States supported the most terrible repressions of the Buddhists by tanks and planes, and today (the U.S.) compels the Republic of Viet Nam to sit at the conference table, not only with North Viet Nam, but also with the National Liberation Front?

But reality, however shameful, still does not necessarily require us to choose between “dependence on the United States” and “acceptance of the Communists”.

Reality still gives us a chance to choose another road, different from slavery (Communist or foreign).

 

RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE NATIONALISTS

That road is one of nationalism, pure nationalism, which can overcome all temptations, influences and controls by both the Communists and the foreigners.

Those Vietnamese who sincerely love their compatriots and their country will unite to build that new road.

If there are Vietnamese who sided with the French, or follow the Americans or the Nationalist camp out of horror and hatred of the dictatorial nature and the brutal actions of the Communists, why can’t there be other Vietnamese who sided with the Communists out of horror and hatred toward the arbitary {sic: arbitrary} and despotic nature and the selfish and cruel actions of some of us?

In the most cruel and corrupt regimes there still must be generous and honest elements.

The road to save the Vietnamese nation now and in the future in South Viet Nam, in North Viet Nam, and all over the Vietnamese territory, will not be built by the Vietnamese who follow the American, follow the Russians or follow the Chinese, but rather will be built by the Nationalistic Vietnamese.

In the face of that new reality and those new requirements, the Republic of Viet Nam should bravely talk peace directly with North Viet Nam and the National Liberation Front. {p.368}

Talk with North Viet Nam in order to reach agreement on a common framework for the future of both the South and the North, and talk with the National Liberation Front in order to end the war on the territory which lies South of the 17th parallel.

Viet Nam peace cannot be settled completely between the Republic of Viet Nam and the National Liberation Front because on the other side of the parallel North Viet Nam is still ready to stir up trouble and support the war.

Nor can Viet Nam peace be settled completely between the Republic of Viet Nam and North Viet Nam because the National Liberation Front, which North Viet Nam will never abandon, is still on this side of the parallel.

We have the right to call the National Liberation Front by a hundred terms which are bad, vile and most servile, but we must, admit that this organization exists in reality, and that there could never be any peace talks which could bring an end to the war if we did not agree to make some concessions to this organization and thus to satisfy some of its minimum demands.

We have done this before with regard to some armed opposition groups. Why can’t we do it again with regard to the National Liberation Front? Is it because this Front is Communist or dependent on the Communists?

 

That is the truth.

But at present, both we and the U.S. have realized that our army and the army, technical ability and resources of the most advanced modern power in the world can’t exterminate them and because of that, we are forced to talk with them at the conference table.

Whether we like it or not, we are compelled to discuss the methods of ending the war in order to restore peace.

But peace is never restored by means of a combat of wits and open discussions at the conference table.

Peace can be restored only by means of acceptance by the concerned parties.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE CONCERNED PARTIES

Let us ask ourselves who are the concerned parties and what understanding and concessions are possible?

The United States

First, let us speak about the United States. We must speak about the United States first because in the past the United States has proven its power through the evolution and shifts of power among the patriots and scoundrels among the leadership of the Vietnamese nation, and at present the United States is still the most influential power from our local level to the central government and from the companies and battalions to higher echelons.

If the United States had withdrawn some assistance items or some supply items, certainly what happened to President Diem, to the regime prior to 1963, would have happened to President Thieu, to the present regime.

With its available open and secret power, the United States is the main obstacle which blocks Viet Nam on the road to war or peace. If the United States does not agree with the RVN.

Therefore, let us demand that the United States reconsider its attitude at the Paris peace negotiation and at other peace talks to come.

It is precisely the presence of the United States at the conference table which has:

The presence of the U.S. not only entails the above consequences, but moreover the whole world knows that it is the U.S. that took the helm and forced the RVN to sit at the conference table with North Viet Nam and the NLF. {p.369}

In view of the past disastrous consequences, and the obstacles that can be forecast, the U.S. must put an end to its absurd role in Paris and in other peace talks, the U.S. cannot use the fact that it has troops fighting in Viet Nam to maintain this negotiating role, because the American troops came to Viet Nam at the request of the GVN in order to meet a political need.

Peace talks are a way of solving problems on the political level. Only the RVN — a sovereign nation — has the unique competence to solve (its) political problems.

If one pretends that the U.S. needs to be present in order to solve the military problems, it will be all the more absurd.

Because military decisions must always depend on the political ones.

Assuming that we accept this reasoning, the U.S. only has the right to designate military representatives who participate within the RVN’s delegation. It does not have the right (to have) an equal or separate delegation.

The righteous cause of both the U.S. and the RVN lies in these details.

The RVN is ready to conclude separate agreements with the U.S. regarding the guarantees concerning the safety and the interests of the U.S. in Viet Nam. With these guarantees, the U.S. should let the RVN negotiate directly with North Viet Nam and the NLF.

(I don’t know whether the American negotiators in Paris feel ashamed when they face, not the U.S.S.R. or Communist China, but the delegates of a segment of a little country. I personally feel very ashamed over the situation of the V.N. negotiators who must sit together with the American delegation in order to talk with Vietnamese even though they are Communists.)

The Republic of Viet Nam

As for the RVN, we must be determined to put an end to the military war. But we can’t surrender to the Communists. We will accept in sequence:

Of course, such a plan must be approved by the National Assembly which will amend 1 or 2 articles of the Constitution concerning election procedures.

Once again I must stress that if we want peace, we must be realistic and make concessions.

In Italy, the Communist party is the strongest party. However, the Italian nation is still not controlled by the Communists.

In Viet Nam the Communists have not and will not triumph over us by force of arms. But they have come to the conference table with political prestige.

Why don’t we accept replacing this military struggle with a political one? We will win.

Because only when faced with a direct Communist threat will the Nationalist parties unite. The South Vietnamese people don’t like Communism and will choose the Nationalist parties immediately after terrorism and danger have ceased.

NORTH VIET NAM AND THE NLF

We must acknowledge that they have scored some success when they forced the U.S. to stop the bombing and come to the conference table as their equal. But results are only a possibility.

We hope that North Viet Nam and the NLF must realize that they can never conquer South Viet Nam:

Even though the RVN has not yet defeated North Viet Nam and the NLF this year, nor next year, certainly the RVN can still continue to exterminate the Communists and prevent them from winning.

If North Viet Nam and the NLF see this reality clearly, we hope they will thrust the U.S. aside in order to sincerely seek with us a peace solution among Vietnamese, even though they are of different political views.

IF AGREEMENT IS REACHED

Assuming that peace is restored based on concessions made by the RVN, what will happen?

The NLF will become an open political party, but it must observe the Constitution, especially Article 4.

Faced with this direct and present threat, non-Communist parties will be forced to come to an agreement, make mutual concessions and form an alliance to cope with it.

The population will have the free opportunity, without fear of terrorism or danger, of choosing the side that will secure for it the greatest material welfare and spiritual guarantees.

In this environment there will certainly occur a tense competition between the non-Communist side and the NLF.

Precisely this competition will help our society progress quickly, and our fellow countrymen easily find the righteous cause.

And because of this, all open or latent conflict due to religious and regional differences among the non-Communist people will be erased. And only because they do not have a serious adversary to cope with.

In the new political struggle, the Army will no longer play the main role, but the political parties, religions and the people will have to directly and totally resist the Communists.

IS THE CONSTITUTION VIOLATED?

Many persons deem that it is unconstitutional to express the view of accepting the NLF since this Front is a tool of the NVN Communists. The Constitution clearly forbids in Article 4 as follows:

So, when discussing the reasons why we must talk peace with the NLF or with North Viet Nam does not mean making propaganda or carrying out Communism. Provided that the above discussions only bring up realistic data and do not praise or encourage people to follow the Communists.

We ask ourselves, when the National Assembly authorizes the government to talk peace directly with North Viet Nam (authentic Communists) can this decision be interpreted as an action aimed at making propaganda or carrying out Communism or not?

Of course not.

So the proposal (and not the decision) to talk with the NLF (which is only a Communist tool) cannot be considered unconstitutional. Especially when representatives of our government are actually talking with the representatives of North Viet Nam and the NLF in Paris (despite the fact that both parties still declare they do not recognize each other).

In summary, it is unconstitutional only when the promoters of the idea renounce the RVN regime in order to demand the recognition of the NLF as a true government, but it cannot be unconstitutional only to propose the acceptance of the NLF as a political party that must observe the RVN Constitution and its incorporation into the whole RVN structure as a minority element.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, I must define clearly once again my position concerning peace talks with North Viet Nam and the NLF as follows:

With the concept presented in this document, I still maintain the position of a Nationalist who puts the integrity of the body and the mind of the Vietnamese above all other ideologies or interests.

I never accept Communism, but I also never accept our subordination to a foreign country. Because subordination to either side brings the nation war and destruction as the past and the present have proven.

______________________

(Submitted By Daniel Ellsberg)

PART I. COLONEL CHAU’S REMARKS

PERSONAL BACKGROUND

In addition to the positions that Dan Ellsberg has mentioned, I want to say a few more things about my background. I was from a very conservative religious family in the Imperial City of Hue. As a young Boy Scout in 1942 I was recruited into the Vietminh by a very outstanding leader of the International Boy Scout movement named Professor Bo. Beginning in 1942 Professor Bo organized clandestine Communist units among selected Vietnamese youth. In 1944 hand-picked youths from each province were sent to a special course in North Vietnam called The First Political Military Course. This course lasted three months and at its conclusion I was made one of the first platoon leaders in the Vietminh Liberation Army which, in 1947, was renamed the Army for the Protection of the Country. In 1945 to 1950 I served at various levels in the Liberation Army and moved up to the level of Political Commissar for the 5th Vietminh Inter-zone, which consisted of the areas from Duong Nang to the 3rd Corp in South Vietnam.

I left the Vietminh for several reasons. My conservative background made me very attached to the Royal Family and when Bao Dai returned to Vietnam, we felt we had a national patriot. Besides that, the Vietminh increasingly began to discriminate against all elements they considered unreliable, such as “bourgeoise,” Catholics and the like. A number of persons from religious backgrounds like myself left the Vietminh at that time. This was one of the major mistakes of the Vietminh — that they were unwilling to trust the inside cadre only on the basis of social origin. Another mistake was the 1946 assassination of all non-communist elements within the Nationalist movement.

First attempts at pacification

The first use of the term pacification was in 1952 when the French attempted three types of programs to clear the Vietminh from the countryside. One was in the Delta region of North Vietnam, a predominately Catholic area; the second type of French program occurred in the central coastal area, provinces such as Binh Dinh. The third took place in the Mekong Delta area. Each program was different and yet there were similar aspects: first, the launching of a military operation to clear Vietminh units from the area; secondly, the improvement and expansion of a French-type police system; thirdly, the reorganization of a village committee to take direct control of the village area. The basic failures of the French program are obvious from the outcome of the war against the Vietminh — the French defeat in 1954.

Pacification in 1961

Pacification was tried again in 1961 but this time much more fully under Vietnamese control. There was, however, substantial support from the U.S. and from advisors such as Thompson. The main element consisted in the effort of “combining a military spirit with the technical organization system.” The youth brigades organized by the South Vietnamese government were to undertake economic development activities, but also possess military combat qualities. {p.372}

There were two main failures in this 1961 program: first, an effort to do “too much too rapidly”; secondly, many of the local commanders were “intellectually hypnotized” by the instructions issued to them by Nhu’s central committee. Going too fast meant that the province chiefs were too eager for success and therefore moved on to more advanced steps in the pacification process before adequately completing the necessary preliminaries. They failed to screen the VC infrastructure out of the villages before undertaking pacification activities. There were not enough economic development activities and, thirdly, the province officials, in their haste, were not willing to persuade people to undertake the actions the government desired, but instead forced them to do various things, such as the construction of combat hamlets and the like.

During this time I was one of the province chiefs who refused to make haste merely for the sake of appearing successful to my superiors. My province, Kien Hoa at that time, also continually appeared as 36th or 37th among the provinces in the monthly progress reports that we had to file. Nevertheless, I believe the 1961 pacification program would have been a success “had it not been for the 1963 Buddhist crisis.” This crisis undermined the government at the center and made any progress in the field impossible.

In the aftermath of the November 1963 coup against Diem, the military regime declared there would be no more strategic hamlet programs and disbanded the combat youth that the Nhus had set up. Nevertheless within a short time the value of the program was seen and under a new name a new pacification effort was begun.

The 1963 pacification program

In setting up the new pacification program under the military regime, a major obstacle to be overcome was the fact that “many of those participating in the former pacification program had been physically or psychologically condemned.” They were looked upon as “Nhu people,” and felt defensive. The military said that they had collaborated with the Nhus, that they had cooperated with the Diem government and, therefore, were not reliable; yet these people such as myself and many others were the ones who had experience in pacification. Due to this psychological defensiveness, a number of the people who “joined the new pacification program did so without enthusiasm.”

Current pacification program — December 1965 to present

In discussing the current pacification program I must refer to my participation and my ideas. I do this without any sense of pride and Dan Ellsberg can verify the facts that I shall relate.

General Thang became Minister of Rural Development in December 1965 and this marked the beginning of the present pacification program. He appointed me as First Director of the Cadre Training Program because, as province chief in Kien Hoa, I had begun to work on pacification in my own way with some genuine success.

The ideas that I initiated in the first part of 1964 and found extremely useful was the census grievance program, and I shall now describe it and my reasons for initiating it.

I realized that the most important reasons for lack of success in pacification was because of the non-participation of people. This non-participation was not because the people supported the Viet Cong, because if the people had supported the Viet Cong, I would not have had the courage to continue in my activities at all. Rather they were threatened by the Viet Cong in a kind of imminent way. The Viet Cong were not there in the villages I dealt with; they were relatively secure; there were few incidents. But the people had a mental fear of the Viet Cong — an obsession. They felt the Viet Cong might always come back or could be anywhere at any time.

I set up the census grievance program because I wanted to release the people from their mental fear of the Viet Cong. The people did not have psychological confidence in our forces and the army and the PF. They always suspected that one or two people in these or any other government agencies might have secret connections with the Viet Cong, and, therefore, were afraid to give any information to the government.

The census grievance program was begun in 1963. The essential idea was that one cadre would be assigned by a province chief with a closed office in each village. Then on a regular basis this census grievance official would see all the people from {p.373} the village for an equal length of time, usually about three minutes and then he would walk out the door. So it became impossible to know who had said something to the official and who hadn’t — only the official knew.

The census grievance official would talk to the person and first begin to ask him about his family, how they were, who were his relations in the village, and what were the various members of his family doing. Secondly, he would begin to ask about whether the individual had any problems with government officials or with the soldiers, and whether he wanted anything done about these problems, or if he wanted more services, government aid of one kind or another. Thirdly, the official would ask the villager whether he had seen any suspicious activity lately, such as strangers near the village, change in the number of persons living in homes nearby or movement of supplies or goods in the area.

Once the census grievance program had begun operating for a little while, the people in the hamlet began to be supicious {sic: suspicious} but this time in a reverse sense. They no longer merely worried about whether someone was an informer for the Viet Cong or whether they were Viet Cong agents who watched and knew what their activities were. Rather they now began to wonder whether and if some of the people were informing to the government about them. No one knew whether anyone was giving any information; no one knew what kind of information might be given. But the whole procedure and the fact that nothing could be known about what went on began to have an effect on those people who were secretly members of what we called the “on-the-spot Viet Cong.” Within one month after the program began operating, seven poeple {sic: people} voluntarily left the village. These were the Viet Cong agents in the village.

In 1964 this program was so successful in my province that almost every province installed this system toward the end of 1964.

Colonel Chau’s procedures for dealing with the people’s grievances

A problem with the census grievance program was that the established authorities of the village, the police chief and the hamlet chief, etc., of course began to worry also about whether the people were informing on their activities. For that reason they were not cooperative at first and quite suspicious of the program. A problem I faced then was, “if I created jealousy between the census grievance cadre and the village chief, I would destroy the basis of the village chief’s authority.” My procedure then for dealing with complaints and grievances against the village chief was the following: (1) the census grievance cadre would put this information to the district office; (2) the district office would pass the information on to my personal staff of inspectors who would then go out and verify the fact that the grievance cited actually was occurring; (3) the inspector would report to a special committee of the province chiefs and would recommend action; (4) finally, I myself would have a talk with the village chief, explain the information and attempt to persuade him to change his ways. My purpose “was not to punish but to educate the village chiefs and to change their behavior.”

I also kept two afternoons open a week at the province capital where anyone could come and personally tell me about any problems he was having in the province. This audience with me was open to anyone, first come, first served. Another technique we used was to broadcast on a radio program. We had discussion of a problem that had occurred either in a named village or a village that was described in general. The problem would be described, then the way the case was solved, the solutions that were proposed by the province chief or adopted by the village chief as the case may be. This broadcasting of real problems and real solutions, together with the afternoon audience possibilities brought many people to see me in my office, and gave many people hope that some things could be changed.

The way I handled these fears and suspicions of the other government officials was mainly to try to talk with them, listen to their problems, listen to the concerns they had about the census grievance program. I tried to make myself available to them and help them understand that as long as they performed properly, there was nothing they need worry about. In fact, with time, many police chiefs told me that they found me far from being a threat, a valuable province chief, because at least I was accessible to them and they could talk to me about the problems they were having.

Daniel Ellsberg’s comments on the census grievance system

This entire discussion brings out a number of very interesting points. One is that information flow is felt to be very important by the Communists and Colonel Chau is one of those rare people in the GVN or American establishment who like- {p.374} wise is very concerned with promoting the accumulation of accurate information on the people whom government programs, pacification, military programs and the like are supposedly aimed at.

In Vietnam within the administrative agencies of the GVN there is generally a very high rate of personnel turnover, so there are very few people within the GVN who know anything about “their areas.” As a result of the census grievance program in Kien Huo province, however, an enormous amount of very important data had been collected and could be passed on from one hamlet village or district or province official to the next. For example, in a very simple hamlet of the province — a hamlet would consist of a number of houses with some coconut and banana trees and the like — there would be a simple thatched hut like all the others on the outside which would contain the data collected by the census grievance system. Inside this hut would be a very accurately, in fact, even artistically drawn map of the hamlet showing the property owned by each person, exactly where it was, its extent, and what was produced on that property. In addition, there would be file cards which clearly indicated the pattern of relations among people within the hamlet and among the various hamlets in the village. Further, there would be very complete listings of all relatives presumed working with the the Viet Cong, or with the GVN administrative apparatus. In addition to that, the census grievance data cards also had breakdowns of age groups, the amount of education received by various people, land holdings, and other such socio-economic information. Colonel Chau has not mentioned this purely informational aspect of the census grievance program, but as it worked out, it provided Kien Hao province with one of the few incidences of worthwhile information on the people in a local area.

One organization in Vietnam is known for backing new ideas. It backed the census grievance program in Kien Hoa province as a pilot project. Once it began working so well, it was immediately tried on a nation-wide scale. There it could not work so well for three main reasons: (1) not all province chiefs are anywhere near as good as Colonel Chau; (2) the cadre must be instructed to collect grievances and complaints about the government rather than merely to elicit information about the Viet Cong. The cadre cannot be motivated if they are to be nothing more than spies for the government; (3) there came to be an emphasis on the third part of the census grievance program — the collection of information on the Viet Cong. As a result of this, the cadre were neither as motivated nor as effective as they had been in the initial program.

But the “effectiveness of Colonel Chau’s census grievance program was not dependent on who was running it”; it did provide information. In fact, there never had been as much information as was obtained by this system. The system was by no means as good as it had been in its pilot province, but it still was effective for some purposes when extended to a national scale.

The reasons why Kien Hoa is not more secure today

Despite the success mentioned in 1964, it is correct to say that Kien Hoa province is not much more secure today than any other province in Vietnam. The reasons for this might be better understood if I describe my operations at the time a bit more.

I used the census grievance information as an input to several counterterrorist groups which I ran. These counterterrorist groups usually operated in small units of three men and were very effective in assassinating VC cadre in the area of my control. In addition to this I attempted to contact the families of persons who were working with the VC and used them as a means to bring people back to the government side.

The way I would do this was the following: once census grievance information gave us lists of people who were working with the VC, I would make a public announcement within each hamlet of the families which had a member working with the VC either in the village or elsewhere. When these families saw their names published in an open list like this, their feelings were hurt and they felt that their prestige in the community had been lessened. The whole purpose of the public announcement was to cause them some psychological shock and prepare them for visits from selected Chieu Hoi cadre who then came in and spoke with the family. These Chieu Hoi tried to convince the family that they should make an effort to get their VC members back. Usually the families then tried to get the VC members back. They would either talk to them when the VC members visited them, or they would communicate by writing or in some other way. Whether the {p.375} family was successful or not, the net effect of this was demoralizing for the Viet Cong members because they saw their families’ loyalty disappear and felt themselves more alone in the movement.

Furthermore, the family’s position and its unity before had been quite secure. They had a member working with the Viet Cong but no one really knew for sure, and they did not feel they had to hide anything. But with the publication of the list, the family began to feel insecure. That was the reason for their emotional shock — that was the reason they felt sorry they had a VC member in the family. And once the family felt insecure like this, they didn’t want the VC members to come back as often, so the whole arrangement of membership in the Viet Cong became a much less comfortable affair for the Viet Cong member. He couldn’t simply return to his family and be equally comfortable in the government side as well as the Viet Cong side of the Vietnamese scene.

Now to return to the reasons for the deterioration of the security of Kien Hoa province. First, the census grievance no longer worked after I left. Secondly, the counter-terrorist groups did not work because my successor decided to consolidate the small 3-man units, first into platoon and then even into company size. Thirdly, I had had support from eminent people in my province from the Catholics from the Hoa Hoa, from the Cao Dai, and so forth, but my successor could not obtain their support.

The reason for that is because I went around the province a lot by jeep and bicycle. I kept in constant touch with the villages and hamlets and with the officials, and I tried to be very sure to visit the hospital, both civil as well as military patients, and the prisons, at least once a week. My successor did not do this — the people made an unfavorable comparison and he did not receive their support as I have. “The failure of pacification is not due to military arrangements.”

Six steps to pacification — Chau’s program

When I ask people, Vietnamese or American, what is the end object of pacification, the answer always is something like, winning the hearts and minds of the people so that they will support the government. To me this is no objective at all. It merely permits all commanders on all levels of government to do what they wish.

When I hear an objective like this, I say that there is no pacification program. It’s too vague.

The objective of pacification should be people’s self-defense. By this I mean that: Ideologically as well as militarily, people must be convinced that they cannot stand as neutrals. They must either go with the Communists or with the government.

I will never consider a hamlet as pacified as long as the people are willing to protect themselves. No place in Vietnam can be considered as pacified in this sense at the present. There are only secure places which are secure because of the presence of military forces.

Now what will make people willing to defend themselves? That will occur only when people are running their own affairs. And how can this be obtained? This can be obtained when elections are really desired by the people, rather than merely imposed on them as it has happened so often in the past.

Local people’s organizations

Elections will be desired by the people only when they have their roots in the understanding that government can do something for them. People’s organizations exist in Vietnam as elsewhere in the world. “These organizations train people to respond to community spirit.”

Farmers realize farmers belong to a farmers’ association because it helps them with their crops. They then learn about representation and government when they realize that they can’t devote their own time to running the farmers’ organization, so they must appoint a representative to run the organization for them.

 

Improve living standard of people

To make local people’s organizations really important, they must do something tangible for the people. What I mean by improving the living standard is an improvement in economic conditions and also an improvement in their dignity. The people are most concerned with things like justice, fairness, protection, and the like. The city and town people care the most about dignity and justice. People in the country are most concerned with economic development and, in fact, {p.376} wouldn’t really understand any system that was supposed to guarantee them justice. They would see justice not in any set of procedures but merely in the way things are run.

This is where AID programs should come in — they should be brought in at this level — at the village hamlet level — to improve the economic conditions of the people.

Why have so many AID programs failed to work? Because most of the people working were technicians and they were only technicians — they did not use economic aid for political purposes in the villages and hamlets. Also, they did not really understand the local political situation and so often were taken in by the people who used economic aid for their self-interest.

Investigation into local natural leaders

For that reason it is important to know who are the most influential people in the community, that is, who are the people who can really have an impact on the people and get them to use new economic and agricultural techniques. For the most part, AID technicians don’t know this and neither do Vietnamese. This must be found out by doing a thorough investigation of this before putting in economic aid.

Confidence of the people

By confidence of the people I mean two things: first, security from the Viet Cong and, secondly, proper behavior of the GVN. These things are necessary before anything can be done in the community.

Now in Vietnam all of these six things have been done, but they have never been done together in one place at one time and they haven’t been done in the proper sequence. The sequence of events is all-important if the end result is to be the people’s self-defense as I have outlined it. The sequence must be as follows: 1) confidence; 2) investigation of leaders; 3) improvement of living standards; 4) local people’s organizations; 5) local elections; and 6) people’s self-defense.

Pacification

You have asked me to talk about the good and bad aspects of pacification in 1966 and 1967. The good aspects were the following two: first, there was a definite pacification program; secondly, we made strenuous efforts to implement the pacification program, and finally, we made some efforts to evaluate its success and failures. It was only toward the end of 1966 that we in the Ministry of Rural Development were able to convince the Vietnamese military of the need for pacification.

Question. What lessons did you learn about pacification in 1966?

The most important failure was “the improper selection of areas to be pacified.” Our failure was that we tried to make too rapid progress and we neglected the district towns and other areas that were marked as secure. The point was that only in a few pacified areas that had been considered insecure before 1966 could district and local officials show any real progress in pacification. So we neglected the central towns and district capitals, etc., and other such secure areas, and concentrated our pacification efforts on the areas just outside the secure areas.

The bureaucratic process of selecting areas to be pacified

In theory, suggestions of areas to be pacified was by the suggestion of the district chief, but in fact the province chief told the district chiefs which hamlets to select. Andt he {sic: And the} province chief was told by the corps commander or division commander which area to pacify and his main purpose was to extend the secure areas.

But this description of the actual process by which areas were selected is not quite accurate.

In practice pacifications areas were selected sometimes by the district chief, sometimes by the province chief, and sometimes by the divisional corp commander.

Impact of bureaucratic, economic and other interests on the selection of areas to be pacified

Actually the selection of areas to be pacified did not depend so much on the matter of tangible interests, but rather was more related to the “concept the various people had of pacification.” {p.377}

The province chief usually selected areas on a political basis. I selected my areas on the basis of these factors: (1) Whether there was enough security. This is the most important factor — security enough for the pacification teams to work. (2) The manpower factor, meaning the number of people living there. I used this as a guideline to how important the area was. (3) The existence of notable people who could mobilize people to participate in pacification programs. (4) My estimate of the sympathy of people in the area to be pacified and if it would be possible to win them over.

Many Vietnamese government institutions talk about the criteria of selection for pacification but say nothing about the final objectives for pacification.

It is impossible to select areas or to establish criteria for selection without a clear idea of the real objectives for pacification.

The ABC area concept

Consider three concentric rectangles with the inside one the first one, the A area; the second one the B area, and third one the C area. Assume that the A area marks the immediate location of hamlets and villages around a major district or province town. According to my ideas, the A area is the place where one should begin working on pacification, that is, it is secure enough for the pacification forces to work in, and now with additional effort, one tries to get the people to organize their own self-defense — the end objective of pacification as I have mentioned earlier.

Under those circumstances one deploys pacification personnel in the A area; the B area we will call the contested area, and in that, military deployment is needed to keep the Viet Cong out of the A area. And, in the C area we’ll call that the Viet Cong-controlled, the Viet Cong may have large forces, bases, and hideouts.

(Comment by Ellsberg:  The current situation is that people in A areas haven’t taken sides, and an area is secure only when it is saturated with troops. The people in these “secure” areas are passive; they don’t cooperate with the government in their defense; they haven’t been forced to take sides in the manner that Chau envisions. A major reason the government doesn’t want to work in the A areas is because this will not permit statistical display of progress since the areas are already called “secure.”)

My overall strategy is to move out from a number of relatively secure areas within a province, deploying pacification cadre first in the A areas, then to the B areas, and so forth, hoping to link up several foci so that the net area that might be called truly pacified grows and becomes connected together.

The strategy called for spreading out from many centers of security. It is not possible to begin with one area and then continually enlarge the sphere of security because that would mean in effect abandoning many districts and province towns that are now relatively secure. If people are abandoned who already have, in effect, sided with the government, the effect may be disastrous. To do that and concentrate all efforts in one area and then spread out would be giving up much too much. The Viet Cong would take over all the areas that had been left, of course.

(Comment by Pauker:  Whether a single center or many overall strategies are adopted probably depends on popular attitudes. If areas are secure only because there are lots of troops there, but the people really haven’t made any commitment of any kind to the government or might even be leaning toward the VC, then theoretically not much is lost by withdrawing to a single area and concentrating resources in order to begin spreading out from there. If, on the other hand, people in the other centers of pacification activity, have in a sense come to depend on the government or trust it, or what not, then withdrawing could be catastrophic.)

Area	Current deployment	Chau’s preferred deployment
A	ARVN base	A popular self-defense force plus (presumably) RD cadre
B	Some ARVN, some U.S. troops, some PF	A uniform police force — field police which had absorbed the RF and PF, and the urban police force
C	None — or popular force; regional force	ARVN operations in the “C” area

In effect, my concept of military operations reverses the current situation. Right now the popular forces in the C area in effect protect ARVN which huddles in the district and province towns of the A area. I would make the deployment as {p.378} indicated (see page 25) and give political control of the A and B areas to the province chief, while leaving ARVN in control of the C area. The C area, then, would be the primary field of ARVN operations with the uniform police handling police and security functions in the A and B areas.

(Comment by Menges:  Has Chau or anyone else made any preliminary estimates of the extent to which the ABC area concept in reality reflects the security situation in South Vietnam? Might it not be that there are corridors or patches of B and C areas within a larger A area, or vise versa? Or, put another way, I might ask whether the A, B, and C areas are mere constructs or whether they are meant to reflect geographically contiguous regions. Does geography here really matter? Partially I’ll answer my own question by saying that since force deployment and political authority is involved, territorial units are basic to Chau’s scheme. The notion of ARVN operating in a C area which crosses through A or B areas or of having uniform police operate in a defined A area while one-half mile away the C area is left to ARVN, and so forth, seems completely absurd. In other words, since the concept does depend in broad measure on the security situation in South Vietnam, being divisible into more or less contiguous if not necessarily concentric A-, B-, or C-type areas, the first question that needs to be answered is whether this, in fact, is the case in South Vietnam. It also seems logical to ask whether Chau or anyone else has tried any variant of this scheme.)

 

Organization of youth as a strategy

Question. Might it not now be time and in fact essential to begin the organisation of semitotalitarian youth groups similar to the young communists or Hitler Youth as a way of building an anti-Communist cadre?

It is not possible in Vietnam to extract one group from the society and deal with it alone as was done in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union or in Communist Cuba. Programs of this type have failed in the past because the indoctrination did not include the parents, relatives and other elements of the society that are essential since the youth will not simply follow an organization alone. Also, in order to have indoctrination it is necessary to have a doctrine.

Question. But for the very young children, eight, nine, and ten years old, the doctrine can be relatively simple anti-communist, and youth and sport associations can be the means by which subtly a gradual measure of indoctrination occurs.

Well, the French tried to do exactly this in the mid-1940s. They formed many sport organizations and the like in order to get youth to use up energy and not think about nationalism and other such ideas. But in fact it had precisely the reverse effect; I was in the Boy Scouts as I mentioned before and other youth and sport associations, but when we went out to the countryside bicycling and other such things, we enjoyed it but this did not leave us satisfied. We, in a sense, became more energetic because of these organizations, became more disciplined, more concerned about the society and, in fact, ultimately we became more nationalistic.

In Vietnam many youth organizations have been tried since 1954. Many were formed and many have been disbanded. Diem’s approach was the Republican youth and this ended in 1963. As I mentioned, Vietnamese will join if they are told to join something, but that isn’t the same thing as being truly committed.

Comments on ARVN

Responding to the question of the quality of the officer corps of ARVN, I would make the following breakdown: NCOs, 90 percent are good; company commanders, that is, lieutenants and second lieutenants about 80 percent; captains, 70 percent good; majors, about 60 to 50 percent; then colonels and generals from 20 to 15 percent good. In other words, the higher the rank, the lower the political morale and military quality of the persons who hold them.

Reasons for the GVN’s neglect of the people

The major reason the people are neglected by the GVN is what I shall call facilities and resources aspect of the situation. On the government’s side all facilities and resources come from the state — they come from outside the people, it seems, while on the VC side, it is necessary to get all these facilities and resources directly from the people, so they are not able to ignore the people.

This is a fundamental difference — one side is directly and clearly tied to the people. It understands this — the Communists know that unless they are able to extract and coerce and voluntarily get resources from people, they will have nothing. On the government side, though, it seems that the people’s cooperation is not directly necessary for anything. {p.379}

The Vietminh did not steal from the people, not because of communist ideology and other high-blown reasons, but due to “practical necessity.” They knew that they would have to get supplies from the people tomorrow, so, if they were to steal one time, they understood that the people would immediately begin to hide all the supplies from them, and they would not have a second, third, or fourth opportunity to steal from the people. The Vietminh knew this even though they might have been willing to use force. If they stole or were too rough with the people, they would simply not be able to find the supplies they needed. They wouldn’t even be able to buy the supplies they needed.

Main problems at the top echelons of the South Vietnamese government

After the fall of Diem in 1963, there were in reality three powers in South Vietnam: ARVN, United States, and the Viet Cong.

That mean