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Other works of Thomas L. Ahern, Jr. published by the Center for the Study of Intelligence include:

Good Questions, Wrong Answers: CIA's Esti~ates of Arms Traffic ThrOUgh Sihanoukville,Cambodia During the Vietnam WarD (2004

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CIA and the Generals: Covert Support toMilitary Government in South VietnamD

(1999·1 I

CIA and the House of Ngo: Covert Action in South Vietnam, 1954-630(2000,1 I

CIA and Rural Pacification in South Vietnam0(2001,1L- _

The remaining unpublished book in this series will describe CIA's management of irregular warfareIn Laos during the Vietnam conflict.D

The Center for the Study of Intelligence (CSI) was founded in 1974 In response to Director ofCentral Intelligence James Schlesinger's desire to create within CIA an organization that could"think through the functions of intelligence and bring the best Intellects available to bear onIntelligence problems." The Center, comprising both professional historians and experiencedpractioners, attempts to document lessons learned from past operations, explore the needs andexpectations of 'intelligence consumers, and stimulate serious debate on current and futureiritelligence challenges.

To support these activities, CSI publishes Studies in Intelligence, as well as books and monographsaddressing historical, operational, doctrinal, and theoretical aspects of the intelligence profession.It also administers the CIA Museum and maintains the Agency's Historical Intelligence Collection.

To obtain additional copies of this or any of Thomas Ahern's books contactHR CIAU CSI PubReq@DA (in Lotus Notes) or venitik@cia.ic.gov (ICE-mail).

The cover design, byl lof Imaging and Publication Support, shows the crew of a junkabout to depart on a supply mission to an agent along the North Vietnamese coast.D

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The Way We Do Things:Black Entry OperationsInto North Vietnam,1961-1964 C

THOMAS L. AHERN, JR.

"'~~\'Center for the Study ofIntelligence

Washington, DCMay 2005

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Contents

IntroductionD 1

Chapter One: When Your Only Tool Is a HammerD 7The End of the Honeymoon0 9Singletons by Sea, Teams by Air0 11Judgment by Preponderance of EvidenceD 15Father to the Thoughtn 17Under EnemyControID 19

Chapter Two: A More Ambitious AgendaD 21Stepping Up the PaceD '0'" 22An Appearance of Success : 24Teams TOURBILLON and EROS 0 25Operation VULCAN0 ., 26Soldiering On~ : 27Upping the An e 29No Other Options 31

Chapter Three: A Hesitant EscalationD 33. Stru.ctural Problem~ 33

Business as UsuaIL_J ; 35Restrictive Policy, Amoitious PlanningD 36Ambivalence at Head~uarrsl I 38Staying With the Program 40Taking Off the Gloves 41Better Aircraft but No Better LuCkD 44Improving the Technologyn 45A Game Not Worth theCa~D 47

Chapter Four: Moving Toward Military ManagementD 49A ValedictorySurge~ 50Under Military Control 52An Uneasy Partnershi 54With One Hand Tied 54

Chapter Five: "Just Shoot Them"D , 57A CUlturallmperativeD : 59The Lust to Succeed 61The.Pitfalls of "Lessons Learned"D 63

Source NoteD ~ 65

Inde~ I ~ , 67

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IntroductionD

This rnonoqraph completes a six-volume series on the contribution of the Central. Intelligence Agency (CIA) to the conduct of the Second Indochina War. Far fromexhaustive, the series samples the major aspects of the Agency's participation. Theseinclude political action, intelligence, and pacification programs in South Vietnam;management of the contemporaneous war in Laos; the analytical controversy overthe shipment of munitions to the Viet Cong through Cambodia; and the ill-fated pro-gram in which the Saigon Station inserted agent teams into North Vietnam.D

Some of these activities were rewarded with success that still looks substantial evenif, given the outcome of the war, it was necessarily transitory. Only two of thesubjectschosen for the series represent outright failures. Their unhappy outcomes made thetask of recording them a rather joyless prospect, but upon examination both of themturned out to embody the principle that failure is more instructive than success.D

The lessons vary with the case under study. This one, the story of the agents andblack teams inserted into North Vietnam, is offered as an object lesson in what hap-pens when eagerness to please trumps objective self-analysis, when the urge to pre-serve a can-do self-image delays the recognition of a talled-e-indeed, archaic-operational technique.D

To tell the story of covert penetrations of North Vietnam without tracing the influenceon them of earlier such efforts in other locales would obscure their significance as aparadigm of the CIA approach to HUMINT collection against closed and hostile soci-eties. True, the earliest correspondence about infiltrating intelligence and guerrillaoperatives into North Vietnam makes no reference to this experience, which began inEurope during World War II. But in fact the program against Hanoi adopted agent infil-tration by parachute as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) had practiced it inEurope during World War II. CIA then modified-one might say diluted-it, in defer-ence to the impossibility of arranging the ground reception parties used by the OSS,in order to apply it against the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea. In this way, thecovert infiltration of intelligence and covert action teams, mostly by air although occa-sionally overland or by sea, became an endurinq facet of the Clandestine. Service'sapproach to the problem of penetrating closed societies.D .

As applied by the OSS, the practice later known as "black entry" enjoyed its mostnotable success with the Jedburgh operation, which after D-Day inserted teams ofAmerican and indigenous nationality to mobilize local resistance movements against

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the Nazis. They armed French resistance fighters, including over 20,000 combatantsin Brittany alone, and these cut rail lines, derailed trains, ambushed German roadconvoys, and cut telephone and electric power lines.1DThe respectable showing of the Jedburgh teams, coupled with the absence of prom-ising alternatives, made it natural to apply the blind drop technique against the SovietUnion as cooperation against Hitler gave way to Cold War hostility. Both Nazi-occu-pied Europe and the Soviet Union suffered the abuses of a brutal dictatorship, and itseemed reasonable to expect the rise of a resistance movement against Stalin similar'to those that Jedburgh had supported against the Germans. In any case, as Cold Wartensions hardened, the Agency had to do something, and no better alternatives wereat hand. Accordingly, between 1949 and 1959, CIA dispatchedDagents, mostly byair, into the Soviet Union under the aegis of the REDSOX program. 20The effort enjoyed almost no success. Indeed, the chief of the Soviet Russia Divisionin the Directorate of Plans wrote in 1957 that it had been "strewn with disaster." Moreagents survived who were sent overland than those inserted by blind drop; of the lat-ter, apparently someDin all, only three ever managed to exfiltrate, and one of thesewas suspected of having been doubled. Meanwhile, the intelligence product of theprogram as a whole was "pitifully small, and the anticipated intelligence support appa-ratus, grafted on... underground resistance organizations, died aborning." Not eventhe overland operations produced anything substantial, involving as they did' shallow,short-term penetrations of "largely uninhabited ... border areas." The result was that"no REDSOX agent ever succeeded in passing himself off successfully as a Sovietcitizen and penetrating, even briefly, into the Soviet heartland."3D

In 1971, Operations Directorate (DO) historians attributed the failure of REDSOX totwo factors. One was the "implacable and ubiquitous KGB." The other was theabsence of the prospect of liberation that might have fueled resistance movementslike those in Western Europe during World War 11. 4 0The same factors that produced the REDSOX program forced a similar effort in Chinaafter Mao expelled the Nationalists in late 1949 and then, in mid-1950, sent the Peo-ple's Liberation Army south to join the fray in Korea. With US forces in bloody combatthere, CIA launched a frantic effort to weaken the 'chinese intervention by infiltratingthe mainland with guerillas and potential resistance leaders. Drawing personnel fromNationalist elements and also from non-Nationalists-the latter representing the seedof a hoped-for anti-communist Third Force-the Agency trained and dropped about

[ Ite~ms of agents onto the mainland. 50

, War Report: Office of Strategic Services (055), History Project, strQc Services Unit, Office of the AssistantS reta of War War Department, Washington, DC, 1959, 199-2002 et aI., The Illegal Border·Crossing Program, Clandes me Service Historical Series (CSHP) 098, July1 ,'lbid.,142- '0• Ibid., 145-46.

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Hans Tofte, who ran the operations launched froml Ilater said thatcommunications intercepts reflected Beijing's belief that 50,000 guerrillas threatenedits rear area; he therefore rated the program a success. ButAgency managementwas not persuaded that these operations were in fact diverting any substantial Chi-nese resources from Korea. By late 1951, Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Gen.Walter Bedell Smith was prepared to give up on them. The Agency could tie up morecommunist resources, he thought, if it turned to larger scale attacks and feints alongthe coast. Accordingly, CIA trained over] guerrillas, who conductedat least a dozen coastal raids. Whatever the results of these attacks-they may havebeen significant-the black entry program remained unproductive. 6DUndeterred by this record of failure, the Agency employed the black entry tactic~gainst North Korea. Drawing on the membership of ,-I_---,-,----,-,- ---,----.J1__1CIA trained and dropped at leastDeams into the North during 1952 and1953. The known product of the activity was limited to one team's weather reporting,useful to the US Air Force, before the team was overwhelmed in a surprise attackafter about six weeks on the ground. 7DSeeking to explain the paucity of results, a contemporary project review noted thepoor quality of team personnel and the disruptive effects of a change of mission.Teams selected and trained for sabotage missions had abruptly been directed to ere-ate resistance movements, a task requiring a very different set of skills. If these werethe operative factors, better agents and more coherent tasking would improve theprogram's performance. But the activity was canceled after the cease-tire of rnld-1953, and the thesis could not be tested. aD

I ~were thus the only teams to meet a criterion established by William Colby, when lateras Chief of the Far East (FE) Division he described the basis of the technique. "Therationale ... springs essentially from World War II experience....The population was

. essentially passive to friendly, with at least a small element willing to participate inintelligence, sabotage, or resistance operations.1I9D• Woodrow Kuhns. unpublished monograph. "CIA and China in the Time of Mao,"Center for the Study of Intelligence,9-14.n·lbld.:-nr-11.nl-- ~7 prOj~ct.Revillw;f [undated, c.late 1953, History Staff files,D8 Ibid.9 Kuhns, 4-15; William E. Colby, Memorandum to DDRlack Team Infiltration by Air and Sea Against FE DeniedAreas-Cold War," 2 August 1963, quoted in Kuhns, 9'L-J

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Probably because it was so obvious, Colby did not make explicit the connectionbetween favorable indigenous attitudes and the exactions of an occupying foreignpower. He also left unmentioned a key element in the motivation of potential recruitsfor 'ntell' ence and resistance 0 erations namel the ros ect f x .

ation.

There were other aspects of Colby's participation in ass operations in Europe thatmight have provided a cautionary note as the Saigon Station looked for ways to pen-etrate communist-controlled North Vietnam. Colby had jumped twice, once into occu-pied France and once into Norway, which was still in German hands in early 1945.The French mission featured a wild mixture of mishaps and serendipity: droppedsquarely into a town some 25 miles from the pre-arranged site, Colby's team escapedthe occupying Germans only with the help of French civilians awakened by parachut-ists landing in their gardens. 100Serendipity took over after two nights of exhausted stumbling through the countryside .toward the drop zone. Coming upon a farmhouse unaccountably still lit at two in themorning, Colby took a chance, and sent a French-speaking subordinate to the door.In a coincidence worthy of a John Buchan novel, the occupants turned out to be thevery maquis cell that had waited in vain for the airdrop. The cell leader, inexplicablyuncooperative, was later identified as a Gestapo informant. He had abstained frombetraying the impending arrival of the ass team only because the tide of war hadalready turned, and he was cautiously playing both sides of the street. 11DAs Gen. George Patton's Third Army broke the German lines at St. La and began roil-ing east, Colby found other resistance leaders to receive the munitions that fueled theuprising now erupting in the German rear area. In Norway, too, in early 1945, Colby'sdetermination and courage led to tangible results, as his team blew a bridge and sab-otaged a length of railway on the route from Finland back toward Germany. Savedfrom pursuing patrols by the end of hostilities, Colby rode a train north over the trackshe had so recently sabotaged; he later recalled having been "chastened by the shorttime in which it had been repaired by Russian paW's."12 0Despite the derring-do mystique that still surrounds ass activity in both Europe andSoutheast Asia, it is clear that black entry operations in Euro e at least made onl aperipheral contribution to the main war effort.

'0 William E. Colby, Honorable Men (New York: Simon andSchusler, 1979), Chapter10" Ibid.C1---,12 Ibid., 50.U

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Whatever the considerations that led to its application in North Vietnam, no sign hasbeen found that they conducted a serious search for an alternative. Indeed, there mayhave existed no such alternative, using either human or technical means. There arethings that, in a given place at a given time, are simply impossible.D

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Chapter One: When Your Only ToolIs.aHammerD

For five years after the Geneva Accords of1954 divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel of lat-itude, Ho Chi Minh in the North and Ngo DinhDiem in the South concentrated on consolidat-ing their respective regimes. For both of them,eradicating actual and even potential oppo-nents at home became major agenda items,and neither gave much material support to hispotential allies on the other side of the Demili-tarized Zone. For Diem, these were the Catho-lics who had chosen to remain in the Northinstead of joining the migration authorized atGeneva. Ho Chi Minh, meanwhile, imposed a .quiescent stance on the thousands of VietMinh, non-communist nationalists amongthem, who had not regrouped to the north whileCatholics were coming south. II I .

For more than a year after Diem's accessionas prime minister, the CIA in Saigon was pre-occupied with helping him prevail over hismostly non-communist opponents in theSouth. His unexpected success encouragedthe Eisenhower administration to repudiate theunification elections that the Geneva signato-ries (the United States not among them) hadmandated for July 1956. Instead, Washingtonwould support Diem as the leader of a newnation-state, one that faced a hostile Demo-cratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) across theDemilitarized Zone. This long-term commit-ment would demand as much intelligence aspossible on North Vietnamese and Viet Minhcapabilities and intentions, and the stationbegan trying to build Diem's nascent intelli-gence and security services into cooperative

partners in the intelligence war against thecommunists in both North and South. 2DThis bilateral approach seems to have beentaken as a matter of course. And it is indeedhard to see how an independent CIA effort,based In South Vietnam, could have succeededwithout Govemment of Vietnam (GVN) partici-pation. To begin with, the station lacked ade-quate access to agent candidates for useagainst either the southern Viet Minh or NorthVietnam. In addition, a unilateral program of anysubstantial size, whatever its prospects for suc-cess, would certainly have come to the attentionof a very prickly Ngo Dinh Diem. The stationtherefore relied from the beginning on SouthVietnamese partners to acquire agents and pro-vide facilities and administrative personnelD

Operating with the GVN had its drawbacks.Like any authoritarian ruler, Diem tully under-stood the potential of his security services tobe used against him by ambitious or disgrun-tled underlings, and he chose their leaderswith attention more to personal loyalty than tocompetence. This order of priority certainlyapplied in the case of Tran Kim Tuyen, a phy-sician whom Diem installed as head of the Ser-vice for Political and Social Studies, known byits French acronym SEPES. Not even a char-tered intelligence organization, it was in factonly the intelligence section of the Can Lao,nominally a political party but essentially acadre organization of Diem's functionaries. ButTuyen enjoyed the confidence of the president,and CIA began trying to cultivate a productiveworking relationShip.D

In what looked like a break for the station,Tuyen's deputy, an energetic ex-Viet Minh, dis-played none of his boss's reserve toward jointoperations. But things cooled abruptly duringhis visit to Washington in late 1955 when

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1 In Vietna:n~~H;story (Penguin Books, 1984), Stanley Karnow gives a good survey of the French defeat in Indochina andthe SUbsequent evolution of a divided Vietnam!I . . """ "2 For a more neerly comprehensive history of CTi\1elationships with Ngo Dlnh Diem and his intelligence services, see theauthor's CIA and the House of Ngo: Covert Action in South Vietnam 1954-63 (Washington, DC: Center for the StUdy ofIntelligence, 2000) (hereafter House of Ngo), especially Chapter 90

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AI Ulmer, FE Division chief, made an extempo-raneous and unsuccessful effort to recruithlm. 3DThe resulting boost to endemic Vietnamesexenophobia damaged the prospects of a colle-gial relationship with SEPES, but Diem wasInterested in it, in any case, more for domesticsurveillance than for policy-level intelligence.Perhaps not yet recognizing Diem's intentions,and still hoping to turn Tuyen into a productivepartner, the station bought him a motorizedfishing junk to transport personnel and sup-plies for the nine agent nets he claimed to berunning in the North. Case officerI I

c=!began noticing procedural anomalies intne radio messages purportedly received fromthese agents, and further investigationrevealed that the agent nets were fictitious.The junk, it turned out, had been leased to aJapanese fishing firm. 4 D 'Diem and Tuyen had also agreed to a smalljoint program of minor harassment of coastalfacilities in North Vietnam, but (assuming itwas, in fact, separate from the putative agentnets) It produced no recorded results. Indeed,it is not clear that any such operations wereever launched.sD

These embarrassments did not lead the stationto cut its ties with SEPES. Beginning in 1957,however, it did insist on full access to agentsand agent communications. This painful tight-ening of the ground rules took time to put intoeffect, and when President Diem proposedchanging the SEPES harassment program toone of intelligence collection, Chief of StationNicholas Natsios proposed to make a new

start, with new agent personnel. CIA wouldnow work also with the second of the two ser-vices that reported directly to the president, anarmy unit first called the Presidential SurveyOffice and then renamed the Presidential liai-son Office (PLO).60The PLO was headed by Lt. Col. Le QuangTung, another Diem loyalist, whose deferentialstyle tended to obscure his modest profes-sional qualifications. US support to his organi-zation came from both the Department ofDefense and CIA, and was designed at first toequip Diem with a guerrilla cadre capable ofoperating behind the lines after a communistinvasion of the South. Diem agreed in early1958 to let Natsios and Tung proceed with this,but again there were no recorded results. 70A similar fate befell parallel efforts with the Mil-itary Security Service (MSS), charged withcounterintelligence protection for the armedforces, and with the surete, the successor tothe French internal security organ later calledthe Police Special Branch. The pattern estab-lished with Dr. Tuyen and Col. Tung repeateditself with the MSS, whose commander some-how never seemed to get word in his ownchannels of Diem's agreement with the COSfor joint intelligence operations against thecommunists. Meanwhile, Diem acceptedadvisers and material support for the Surete,but the reward in useful intelligence was insig-nificant. As late as 1959, the only pol ice report-ing reaching the station came from low-level,casual informants. If the Surete had any pene-trations of the communist military or politicalapparatus, it was concealing them from thestation.aD

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3 Houseof Ngo,60.n• Kenneth Conboy ana--Dale Andrade, Spies& Commandos: HowAmericaLosttheSecretWarInNorth Vietnam (Lawrence:University Press of Kansas, 2000q19-20. No reference to this deception has been found in CIA records.O• Houseof NLfP. 60, 118-19.• Con~ 20 Houseof Ngo, Tf .0 "1lbid·LJ '• Houseof Ngo, 120.0

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The End of the 'HoneymoonD

The GVN's suppression of the Viet Minh thatbegan in 1955 eventually had the effect ofunleashinga fUll-fledged, communist-ledinsur-gency. In January 1959, answeringappealsfrom the leadership in the South to save It fromdestruction, the Politburo in Hanoi revoked itsprohibition on armed resistance. The southerncommunists now abandoned "political strug-gle" for a policy of "armedstruggle."This wouldrequire, among other things, logistical supportfrom the North. Accordingly, in May, the DRVcreated the 559th Transportation Group, themilitary organization that eventually built thetortuous supply lineth~h Laos known asthe Ho Chi Minh Trail.LJ

But the desperate communists in the Southcould not wait for supplies and men to begintrickling in from the North. On their own, theylaunched guerrilla operations and terroristattacks on Diem's officials that dramaticallyrevealed the failure of GVN repression todestTY tie Viet Minh staybehind organiza- ,tion.9

In January 1960, the first communistTetoffen-sive humiliated Diem's army and traumatizedrural administrators,driVing many of them to 'the security of military outposts, At this point,some of the younger officers in the SaigonSta-tion were already persuaded that, withoutmajor GVN reforms, the influence of the VietMinh would only grow. Indeed, a few Amerl-.cens--Ambassedor to the GVN Elbridge Dur-brow prominent among them-had begun asearly as 1957to deplore Diem's indifferencetowinning the consent of the governed. But even

Diem'scritics seem to have sharedthe prevail-ing inability to imagine spontaneous supportfor a totalitarian movement.GVN derelictionsmight make the peasantryvulnerable to men-daciouscommunist propaganda, but the con-ventional mindset viewed the insurgency ashavlnq no local impetus; it was solely a crea-ture of Hanoi,lOD

This perspective led, in turn, to the inferencethat the road to defeat of the Viet Cong, as theGVN beganlabelingthe Viet Minh, ranthroughHanoi.The insurgencywould end when thecost of supporting it rose to a level unaccept-able to the DRV.l1DDiem seems to have shared this view. Incapa-ble of finding any flaw in his own governingstyle, he was naturally inclined to look for rem-edies that took the war to the enemy. But atleast until late 1959, this orientationhad coex-isted with a stubborn aversion to joint covertoperationswith CIA against the communists in 'either North or South. At that point, it seems,the SUdden, incendiary burst of insurgentenergypersuadedhim of the needto take helpwhere he could get it.D

Whatever Diem's precise motivation, CIA inSaigon now had the green light to work on abasis of full reciprocitywith both SEPES andthe PLO.The problem was that the GVN andits CIA advisers were now playing catch-upball, especiallywhen it came to operationsagainst the North. Ho Chi Minh had had fiveyears to consolidate the regimentation of hiscountry, whose borders were almost hermeti-cally sealed off from Western-oriented neigh-bors. Theresulting dearth of the mostbasic

• The most illuminating account of Diem's contest with the Viet Cong for control of the rural population Is stili Jeffrey Race'sWar Comes /0 Long An (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972). For descriptions of Diem's "Anti-CommunistDenunciation Campaign," see Race and the author's CIA and Rural Pacification In Sou/h vietnsm (Washington, DC: Centerfor the Study of Intelligence, 2001).0 .10 The CIA perspective on the Insurgency, and the Agency's contribution to the counterinsurgency effort later known as thepacification program, are described in CIA and Pacifica/ion. n11 The term Viet Minh is a contraction of Viet Nam Doc lap Do';;gJiAlnh, the Vietnam Independence league, the front createdby Ho Chi Minh in 1941 to resist the Japanese occupation of Indochina. In the late 1950s, the term gradually gave way toViet Cong, t.e, Vietnamese Communists, a pejorative term coined by the GVN and applied mainly to the party apparatus inSouth Vietnam.D

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operational intelligence-identity documenta-tion and travel controls, and the organizationand deployment of internal security forces, forexample-meant that operational planningtook place, at first, in something of a vacuum.The first, tentative step to fill that vacuumwould come in the form of singleton agentoperations across the Demilitarized zoneLJ

It took a full year for the first jointly run agent tocross the Demilitarized Zone into North Viet-nam. COde-namedI Ihe paddledacross the Ben Hai River on an inner tube justbefore midnight on 5 December 1960. His Viet-namese case officer, hidden on the southbank, heard the air escape from the inner tubeasl Islashed it before burying itand setting off on foot toward the north. Thedocumentation provided by CIA'~ II Igot him through two policechallenges, and he proceeded to the nearbytown of Ho Xa before returning to South Viet-nam the same day.120By the time agent! !conductedhis first mission, South Vietnam was about tobecome the testing ground of a new US com-mitment to contain the spread of communismin the post-colonial Third World. John F.Kennedy had become president-elect after acampaign featuring Republican charges thatthe Democrats were "soft on communism." InJanuary 1961, Soviet leader Nikita Khrush-chev proclaimed his commitment to "wars ofnational liberation," and Kennedy promptlyaccepted what he interpreted as a direct Sovietchallenge. Growing anxiety over the GVN'sdeteriorating position meant that South Viet-nam would now become the laboratory for USexperimentation with the new doctrines ofcounterinsurgency and irregular warfare.D

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Only a week after his inauguration, the newpresident told the National Security Councilthat he wanted "guerrillas to operate in theNorth," with CIA his executive agent. In March,he inquired about progress, whether the NorthVietnamese were getting a taste of their ownmedicine. They weren't, at least not yet, andKennedy ordered the Agency to implement his"instructions that we make every possible effortto launch guerrilla operations in North Vietnamterritory."13D

Not everyone familiar with such operationsthought the idea made much sense. At aboutthe same time that Kennedy was pressing forresults in North Vietnam, Robert Myers, thenCOS inl Ivisited Saigon. Briefinghis fellow COS on activity In Vietnam, WilliamColby described the new program in whichteams of Vietnamese were dropping by para-chute into North Vietnam. Myers, who hadwatched the failure of such operations intoChina in the mid-1950s, told Colby it wouldn'twork: Just as the Chinese civil war was over,and Mao firmly established in Beijing, Ho ChiMinh was now in charge in Hanoi. His Leninistregime would be proof against any interloperswandering the countryside, collecting intelli-gence and/or fomenting reslstance.!' 0Colby disagreed, arguing that suitable safeareas could be found, at least in lightly popu-lated areas where black teams could set upreasonably secure bases. In retrospect, Myersthought this a projection onto Vietnam ofColby's ass experience with the Jedburghprogram: "he thought it was like Norway." 150Whatever the merits of Myers's objections,Colby's enthusiasm matched White Houseeagerness to challenge Ho Chi Minh's controlin the North. An~ challenge to thefuture ofProjectl ]was being made on the

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North Vietnam: Black Insertions, 1961-62

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What the president found a frustratingly slowCIA response did not reflect any lack of atten-tion to his demand for action against the DRV.In fact, by the spring of 1961, painstakingpreparations for team operations had beenunderway for almost a year. These were to bepreceded by singleton agents infiltrated intothe DRV. The agents would collect Informationon the communists' security pract ices for useby airborne teams dropped near their villages

other side of the world , in the form of the III-conceived operation to unseat Cuba's FideiCastro. Approved by the Eisenhower adminis-tration and adopted by John F, Kennedy, itcame to grief at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961.Even though the burgeon ing CIA-supportedHmong resistance in northeastern Laos wasthen beginning to look like a major success,the Bay of Pigs inflicted a grievous blow to theAgency's reputation for competence in irregu-lar warfare .160

Singletons by Sea, Teams by Air (U)

At the same time, hesitant to throw out thebaby with the bath, the administration over-came its dismay over the Bay of Pigs suffi-ciently to leave CIA, for the moment, in chargeof the nascent North Vietnam program.Indeed, the president expanded ProjectC]~__[modest charte r as he instructed theAgency to use its teams to conduct wide-rang-Ing unconventional warfare. At the same time,he shrank CIA's overall respons ibility withthree National Secur ity Action memoranda,signed in late June 1961, which transferred tothe Pentagon much of CIA's authority to planand conduct Irregular warfare . 171l

I. Conboy 35, Shultz, 21017 lbid·CI.Sedgwick Tourison secrotAanr SecretWar (Annapol is, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995), 34. SUbsequent recollection sof Saigon omcers Uk who interpreted the turn to airborne operations as a response tlLJllilssure lrom the newKennedy administration, overlooked the tortuous logistics that preceded the first team inliltrationsL _ J

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eventual contact with other.. .agentsinside the target area) ; the selection ofzones of operation, base zones andgeneral areas in which to choose dropzones, all of which had to be worked outas a tunction of the available intelligenceof the area, the locations of the homes oftheagents' relatives, andtheviews of theagents themselves ... . Long before , ofcourse, the process of spotting.develop ing end organ izing the agentpersonnel for these missions had beenaccomplished and involved the selectionof capable candidates [and) the matchingof their personalities into compatibleteems. In fact, this process was begunalmostexactlyone year before the firstteam was successfUlly dropped intoNorth Vietnam ."U

Much of the sama work went into the parallelprogram of singleton penetrations, and on26 March 1961, the Saigon Station once againlaunched agentC-- J landing him byjunk under cover 01 darkness near Dong Hoi ,not far above the DMZ. This time, he stayedfour days , observ ing communist pollee con-trois and "various minor military insta llations."Still using fabricated documenta tion, he took abus south to Vinh linh, then walked to the BenHal River, crossing back into South Vietnam,a arentiy again under cover 01 darkne ss.20

The first airborne leam was still waiting for afavorable conjunction of weather and moonphase when Ihe station and Col. Tunglaunched the next and more ambitious sing le-ton agent operat ion. Transported by a motor-ized fishing j unk 01 the type common 10thearea, agent; --Was inserted intothe Northin earty April 1961. He landed on the karst-studded coast 01 Ha Long Bay, east 01 the port

ia use to land In Ha LonQ8ar.D

.the development 0 coverstories for various contingencies;... theplann ing of the bundles to be droppedwith each team so that they would not betoo heavy but would include everythingnecessary 10 the mission; theprocurement...ol old French Indochinesesilver piaster coins [and 01) target areacunencles; the development...ofreportingrequirements given each team;the assignment of control signals (andother bona /ides for use in case of

Preparations for each team included theprocurement of steme equipment, someof it authentic North Vietnamese ilems

The station later oeianec lor Headquarterswhat this process entai led:

I I FV$A 12657 ,24 August 1961,10 FVSA 1218 1, 20 April 1961, owhere.inlhe meagercorrespondence abOUt inf!n,stiol'l across iheDMZ ISt ere any escnption Ihe measuresused 10avoid discovery cvORVsocuntyD

12

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I'05303948

of Haiphong, and set off to find his family'scommune. There, he was supposed to recruitsomeone to operate the generator for hisWorld War ll-era RS-1 agent radio." DGiventhe uncertaintiescreatedbythe needfora second man, the station accepted that itmight be weeks before the agent came up onthe air. In fact, It did not have long to walt. Eiud-Ingdiscovery,Clcached his radiogearandmade hisway to hisfamily's commune, wherehe persuaded his brother to help. After findinga hiding place forDin the forest, the tworetrieved the gear. They then dispatched thefirst of an Initial series of 23 messages thatinauguratedthe longest and most prolific radiocorrespondence from any penetrationof theNorth run either by CfA or by its successor, theSpecialOperations Group of the MIlitaryAssis-tance CommandNietnam (MACV)."D

In mid-June,Clsuddenly fell silent. On the17th,militiamenof the People'sArmed SecurityForce (PASF), a rural internalsecurity forceunderthe Ministryof the Interior, arrestedhimand his brother for espionage, A fisherman'sdiscoveryof the undamaged skiff used by theagent fa reach shorefrom the junk had led to asearchof the area and the discoveryof theholes he had used for temporaryconcealmentof his RS-! radio. A house-to-house searchIol-iowed,concentrating on familieswith ties to theSouth or the Frenchcolonialregime. Reportsfrom two villagers then broughtthe hunt to anend, One reported seeinga stranger, living in abeachfronthouse,who avertedhis face duringan accidental encounter. The second reportedseeing someonefrom the same house displ\!y.:...,ing a ballpointpen, thena rarity in theDRV."U

The Interruptionof radio traffic could havearisen from innumerable, mostly innocuous,

causes, and whenc=J:ame backon the airsome weeks later, he offereda plausible storyabout DRV security measuresthat had forcedhimout of hissafehaven.Accordingly, over thecourse of the next four months,the stationandits PLO partners launched at least three moresingletonsby land or sea into North Vietnam.Expectations remainedmodest, with survivalthe agents' maingoal. The intelligencetargetsfor one such] I were to "be assignedonce the agent is in place depending on theaccess he turns outto have." Meanwhile, asthis series of insertions began, the stationmoved in late May 1961 Into the airbomephase of the program."D

The first airborne team,dubbed CASTOR, hadbeen selected primarily for its prospects of sur-vivalln a remotearea populated by non-Viet-namesa tribes; as with the singleton agents, itsaccessto important intelligence had beenasecondary consideration. But as it happened,by the time it was readyto drop IntoSon LaProvince, the neighboring kingdomof Laoshadbegunto crumbleundercommunistpressure.By happycoincidence, the team wouldbelocatedwithin rangeof Route6, which ransouthwest into Laos, and could be tasked tomonitorDRV supportof the insurgency there."

DNear midnight on 27 May,a twin-engine C-47with civilian South Vietnamese markingsentered DRV airspace at a point chosen toavoid known antiaircraftemplacements.Piloted by Major Nguyen Cao Ky,the flamboy-ant Vietnamese Air Force officer who laterbecameprime minister, then vice president,ofthe GVN, the intruder proceededat low alti-tude, naVigating by the light of the full moon,"

D

~l FVSA 1218'8 Conboy, 25-260i2 Conboy, 26. _

t3 tbld., 25-26. 21~ilOl

~05303948

Ky reported delivering Team CASTOR to theappointed drop zone, and the station waitedwithIncreasing anxietyforthe firstradiocontactNotuntil29 Junedid the teambreakItssilence,but it then cameon the air with a reassuringaccount of earlydifficulties now resolved. Arelieved Saigon Station accepted the rationile'land promised an Immediate supplydrop.27

In fact, CASTOR had come under enemycon-trol only four days after Its 27 May landing. Itsarrival had beencompromised, first by a radarinstaliation located under its flight path overMac Chau District, and'then by reports fromalarmed villagers reacting tothe unprece-dented noise of an aircraft passingat nightover their remote hamlets. The drop zone, fur-thermore, lay only e kilometer from one ofthese Villages. Havingquickly pinpointed CAS-TOR's location, the PASF neededonly threedays to surroundthe team,which surrenderedwithout a flght."D . .

Meanwhile, unawareof this disaster, CIA andthe PLO launched Team ECHOon 2 June.This drop, well to the southeastof CASTOR,also went according to plan.The crew, confi-dent of its navigationto the drop zone, sawallpersonneland cargo chutes open, and theInsertionlooked like a success. But, as withCASTOR, the drop was followed by threeweeks of silence,and, when ECHq finallycame on the air, It provokedconcern by usingan Impropercall sign. Managersof the covertcommunications facility suggested that this."could be attributed to nervousness" at the firstcontact, but they wanted reassurance that the"crypto control signals" had been properlyused. If not, the team's securitywas suspect,even thoughthe message's"fist prinf'-anoperator's characteristic styleof operatingthe

key-indicated that 'ECHO's operator had infact transmit1ed it,29D

The possibility that the operator was workingunderenemycontrol seemsnot at first to havebeen explicitlyaddressed. This omissiondelayedserious consideration of what turnedout to be the fact. for DRVsecurityhad alreadytakenTeam ECHO into custody. Like TeamCASTOR, it had landed near a village, in thiscase so close to it that the participants at anight political indoctrination session sawthe C~47 silhouetted against the moon. Its first mes-sage, on 23 June, had been the only one notsent under enemy control. By that time, theteam knew that it had been compromised; itwas cepturedwhile fleeing toward the laotianborder· 30 DByearlyJuly, Headquarters beginningto worryabout the tardy first broadcastsfrom CASTORand ECHO, and ECHO then provoked further

.worrieswith Itssilence,afterthe flrst contacton23 June, for exactlya month.A third team,DIDO, had been dropped Into Lai Chau Prov-ince. inthenorthwest on29 June,where it wasto supplementCASTOR'santicipatedcover-age of traffic into Laos. Washington askedwhether it, like the others, had been instructedto comeon the air within three days of land-ing. 3 1DPresumably it had, but Team DIDOhad lastedonfyaboutfour weeksbeforejoining itscompa-triots in detention. Unableat first to find thebundle containing its radio, the team combedthe hills lookingfor it until they encountered aPASF patrol and were captured. Thus, by the~dlof JU'r' all three airdropped teams, as wellas were in North Vietnamese hands.32

I

.1

14

8' -n .fS-Seplember1:1 I30 June 1961 IFVSA 12657.n~ on ay. 6.38. Presumab)i&rer faulty intelligence or faulty naVIgation, or a combination therOOr,"accounts for thefrequent drops-if Conboy's informants are correct-of blackentry learns onto populated areas, butnothing has beendiscovered thatiIIuminalaS~~J-1 --,'I 1,5.h~y 1961,L- . IFVSA 12657.0ca Conboy,39.L.J .

-!---------------_ __.._ .

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Judgment by Preponderance of Evidenceo 'Headquarters' query about DIDO (no answerto it has been found) may well have been pro-voked by the loss of the aircraft trying to dropsupplies to Team CASTOR. On 1 July, it hadentered DRV airspace, then simply disap-peared. Subsequent correspondence betweenHeadquarters and the station focused on thetension between the urgent neceesity of sup-plying viable teams and the risk that such mis-sions might~d aircraft and their crews todestruction·u

The station, concerned not to abandon starv-Ing teams-and perhaps Just vlsceratly reluc-tant to admit possible failure-wanted toemploy a permissive standard for approval ofsupply missions. Responding on 25 July,Headquarters noted that Hanoi radio hadrevealed its possession of "much info re allteams." The field should, therefore, assumethat the "enemy may be preparing apprehen-sion cps." Nevertheless, having reviewed theavailable info on all three teams, "particularlyCASTOR," Headquarters accepted the pro-posed criterion: in the absence of "conclusive

IeVldere" of enemy control, elithre.!!.Dteams should be supplied."U

Headquarters may not have known, at thispoint, about the tardy second trensmission byTeam ECHO, on 23 July, the one that first gavethe station "strong indication that the ... teammay be under the control of the opposition."The main object of Washington's attention wasstill CASTOR, as Headquarters noted on 28July. Direction-finding (OF) analysis of CAS-TOR transmissions indicated its radio to besited considerably northeast of the team'sreported bivouac, and the station acknowl-

edged that, if the team was not doubled, it wascertainly "extremely hot." But Saigon ques-tioned the utility of resolvinqthe issue of bonafides by demanding more intelligence report-ing. The DRV could easily feed the team, with-out any significant damage to national security,any information it could reasonably beexpected to collect. And if pressed for more,CASTOR's putative DRV handlers would havethe team present the entirely plausible argu-ment that its parlous security situation pre-cluded more aggressive collection efforts. 340The available evidence allowed continuedhope that CASTOR was still viable, but TeamECHO was another matter. Its bona fides werenow "dubious," at best, the result of continuinganomalies in its message traffic that suggesteda surreptitious effort by the radio operator toindicate hostile control. In early August, thestation proposed ordering ECHO to exfiltrateas a way of testing its freedom. But the factremained that it had lost one of its four meneven before launch, when he was dismissedafter what the station called a breach of secu-rity. And the team had reported injuries toanother as he hit the ground. The remainingtwo, hobbled by their injured 'comrade, wouldbe able to do little. And even if it was still clean,the team was "almost as 'hot as CASTOR.""

DThe station announced on 1 August that CAS-TOR would get a supply drop that night. Some-thing must have prevented it, for two days laterHeadquarters proposed a moratorium on sup-ply missions to that team while everyonestepped back to have a look at the whole pro-gram. Acknowledging the station's Immenseeffort to do something about North Vietnam,Washington acknowledged a "strong reserva-tion" about the utility of infiltration efforts, at

SA 12657;SAIG4120, 1 Augus11961,

~i!ffi~@I'i[J===========~ he substanceof the station's

'5::;;:;:::;;~fllYy~m"":.SePtem er, the stencn cone u e t at the ECHO radio o~arator had Indeed consciously~gnaredhavmgcoma under ensmycontrol'LI _

15

b05303948

least those by air. "In all probability ECHO iscompromised. DIDO's status is doubtfulbecause of [the team's] complete silence."Regarding CASTOR, Headquarters still sawjust two alternatives: force it to produce posi-tive intelligence or, falling that, order it to exfil-trate. The station should levy detailedrequirements on roads, and ground and airtraffic. The team should also be told thatanother try at a supply flight would have to waitfor the next moon phase." D .Saigon did not respond, apparently, to the Invi-tation to evaluate the entire program. It didagrea to send intelligence requirements, buttold Headquarters not to expect too much fromCASTOR, "due necessity avoid capture."Washington had at this point already suq-gested an aiternativa to Insertion by parachute,telling the field of a "new approach" to NorthVietnamese operations that would make use ofthe Hmong irregulars then being armed innortheastern Laos. These, under their charts-matic leader Major Yang Pao, were now edg-ing toward the border with the DRV's Son LaProvince, in which Team CASTOR was operat-ing. If tha Hmong could continue thairprogress, their forward locations might serveas launch points foroverland infiltration ofteams into the DRV's mountainous north-west, 37DMeanwhile, whatever the level of skepticism atHeadquarters, CIA would continua to rely on air-dropped teams for Intelligence on inland DRVtargets. But by mid-August 1961, althoughDIDO had finally come up on the air, none of thethree teams in place had produced any signifi-cant Intelligence. Headquarters suggested forc-ing the pace, getting them to move Into theplanned second phase of operations by orga-nizing and directing intelligence nets. LikeWashington, the station implicitly accepted-at

least for the purposes of this discussion-theteams' freedom from enemy control when itagain cautioned against expecting too much toosoon. All three teams, "despite understandabledifficulties:' were just approaching the secondphase. It was thus "premature tojU~ defini-tively either their value or 10yalty.""U

In addition, Saigon felt obliged to "take excep-tion" to Headquarters' proposed creation of"safe zones:' in which the teams would organizea tribal resistance to Incursion by DRV securityforces. Such an effort would be "quickly moppedup," The station insisted, therefore, that teams"living clandestinely" conduct any acti~rogram of sabotage andharassment. 39 U

The debate continued, always under the tacithypothesis that the three teams were free ofhostile control. On 17 August, Headquartersnoted that all had been chosen explicitiy forparachute drop into areas that were home tofriends andrelatives, and wondered why con-tact with these people would be more secureafter a month in hiding than after a few days. "Itcould be argued that the reverse is true sincethe longer the delay between arrival and con-tact the more the necessity for air resupply."And the suggestion about "safe areas" hadassumed their location in "areas ditiicult forDRV forces to assaUlf.""D

This cable, released by the acting chief of FEDivision, revealed the pressures on theAgency to get results: "Would again empha-size interest very high levels [in Washington In]positive action realized thru [joint station-PLOteam] ops North Vietnam," This pressuredoubtless encouraged the station's eagernessto supply teams CASTOR and DIDO. DIDOhad been assessed as the best of the threeteams during training, and Saigon wanted torun the "calculated risk" entailed in supplying it

16 I

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with food and radio batteries. DIDO's secondand third messageshad provided a "reason-able explanation" for the team's six-weeks'silence, and fhe station thoughf other minoranomalies inconclusive. These included thestrength of the radio signal and conflicting tes-timony about the initial drop: the alrcrew hadreported that all parachutes opened, whileDIDO was now claiming that one cargo chutehad failed. 41D .The request for a supply mission to CASTORalso looked at the bright side of things. The sta-tion and its Vietnamese partners had done acountarespionage analysis which "Indicate[dj"that the team's security was "not compromisedto date." Except for inconclusive OF results,the "comma aspects" of the operation were"favorable on the whole." True, if the crew ofthe downed supply flight had been captured, itcould have given DRV security valuable infor-mation, but steps had been taken, by "chang-ing the resupply route and team location," toneutralize this threat. The likelihood that theaircrew had pinpointed the CASTOR dropzone, and thus the vicinity of Its operatingbase, was not addressed."0The cable offering fhis rationale crossed with amessage from Headquarters with more badnews about CASTOR. A "preliminary study" ofits message traffic indicated that the team wasnot using the only source of power droppedwith it, the GN-58 hand-cranked generator. Iffurther analysis were to confirm this finding,CASTOR would have to be judged as almostcertainly doubled.·O

Headquarters wanted its communicationsbase Inl 10 come up with a defin-itive answer by 21 August, but nothing in the

surviving record reveals what, if any, reply Itreceived. One can onlyinferthat the issueremained, at worst, unresolved, foron that day,Headquarters approved sUP,Q'Y,missions toboth CASTOR and DIDO."U

Father to the ThoughtD

Whatever the obstacles-mechanical, cornrnu-rucations, orweather-these drops were notmade. Meanwhile, Headquarters and the sta-tion were negotiating theterms ofa progress

. report to the inter-agency Vietnam task force inWashington. One section was to deal withDc::Jeam operations in the North, and Wash-ington thOUght Saigon's upbeat assessment oftheir security too categorical: "Can we state withas much certainty as [you] indicate that all fourteams [are] free of enemy controlT"O

The four teams, unnamed in Headquarters'cable, must have been the three infiltra1ted bV]air-CASTOR, ECHO, and DIDO-andthe singleton who had at this point reported therecruitment of several informants. As it haddone with the first approval of supply missions,Headquarters now chose to give the task forcethe most optimistic possible interpretation ofthe teams' security. It changed the field's sec-ond submission, apparently stilt a little too rosy,but managed a reassuring tone for itsinter-agency partners: "Lacking firm evidence to thecontrary, all four teams appear to be free of .ORV control.""O

The suggestion that only conclusive evidencecould create even the appearance of enemycontrol defied FE Division's own analyses of

.the three teams inserted by airdrop. The kindof evasive logic-chopping to which Headquar-

C0 5 303 94 8

•

3

{While we] appreciate Hqs frequenliyhelpful reminders a/ points (0 consider,also hope it apparent we not neglecting{to] analyze these ops on continuingbasis. Hope this can eliminate lengthy

The cable concluded with a pro forma-evenpatronizing-bow to Headquarters ' concernsabout team security:

But the availab le inlormation provided thebasis, inthestation'sview, fornomorethan an"educated guess as to whether [the operationswere] enemy-controlledor not." Even withECHO, suspect Irom the very beginn ing, thestation thought it proper to have given it thebenetit of the doubt. Urging the team to exl il-trate and applying "other challenges and tests"saved time otherwise wasted in the "prepara-tion and dispatch to Hqs [all lengthy but pre-mature and inconclusive CE analyses."4 DThe station went on 10 defend what it againdescribed as its "educated guess" that ARESremained Iree 01 hosti le control. The agenthimself, it noted, had reported even ts-like theDRV's discovery 01 the skiff in which he hadlanded-that suggested a compromise ofsecurity. It interpreted Hanoi radio broadcastsabout this and other evidence of clandestineagent activity as incompatible withC==hav-ing been captured and doubled . The real prob-lem, as Saigon saw it, was the agent'sreporting that he and his relatives were "hot:This meant not only the continuing danger ofarrest but a supportnetwork nooted even if Itsmembers evoided capture ."

other .. .agent op is or has been above suspi-cion: It accepted Washington's criteria as"valid to consider in [a) balanced evaluation ofagent pertormance and control"; as such, theywere being duly "noted and ...cons idered : "o

, ..-

Nevertheless, there weretoomanyindications01 trouble lor the issue to go away, and thecycle 01 aile mating doubt and optimism contin-ued. On 7 September 1961, Team ECHO senta clear-text message that said, "aireadyarrested : It repeated the same message thenext day. But the station made no mention 01this when on the 18th it responded in charac-teristically ambivalent lash ion to anotherexpression 01 f/eada arters' nagging doubts ,this time about L The_station said it "fullyconcurs" that "neltlier or eny

ters resorted here invited a skeptical responseeven from readers unfamiliar with the opera-tional correspondence, but there is no recordthat anyone accepted the challenge . W~hAgency officers and the policymakers bothintent on getting results, a really cold-eyed lookat events onthe ground was not in the cards.

Cl

'. I

-"

Map showingthe goographicafrange of reported'----' gents, ca. 1962n

---

6;1 FVSW 7393r-!-2, APriI1963.[.. SAIG 48S5L..J·'b".=.J

SAIG 4S55n

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cable exchanges ofCE and analyses and. judgments {based on the] limited materialavailable to date {in order] to permit fullconcentration on development of otherops·D

A marginal comment on this prescription indi-cated the sense of at least one Headquartersofficer that the two parties were now talkingpast each other: "And that, 'dear Hqs.', isthatl"5°D

Under Enemy controlD

Headquarters did not ask whether it made goodprofessional sense to launch new operationswithout first resolving security questions aboutthe old. On 19 September 1961, just a day afterhearing Saigon's complaint about excessiveattention to the control issue, it approved a sup-ply mission for Team CASTOR. It appears, how-ever, that this reluctant decision was not carriedout. Whatever caused the mission to bescrapped, the outcome was fortunate for the air-crew that would have flown it; as we have seen,CASTOR had come under enemy control only .four days after its 27 May landing. 51 DIn the ensuing two months, ambiguous-andsometimes not so ambiguous-signs of trou-ble had led the Agency to write off only TeamECHO as probably under enemy control. Evenin the case of ECHO, the Saigon Station har-bored some hope that the anomalies in itsmessage traffic would turn out to be innocu-ous. Meanwhile, Hanoi began a meticulouscounterespionage operation designed to con-vince the station and Col. Tung of the teams'bona fides. 0 .

The public trial in November of the survivors ofthe 1 July supply mission to Team CASTORmeant that any DR effort to exploit that opera-tion would challenge Saigon's credulity. Somemembers of the aircrew might well have knownlittle about their destination, but as it happened,the pilot was among the three survivors, and hewould necessarily have had full knowledg~ ofthe plane's destination and mission. 52 0At their trial, the survivors acknowledged theirrole in supplying guerrilla operations. But theirpublished testimony said they had given astheir destination a remote spot in Hoa SinhProvince, far from CASTOR in Son La. Thelikelihood that all three, presumably interro-gated separately, had managed to improvise acoherent story that satisfied their captors musteven at the time have seemed remote. Never-theless, whatever their residual doubts, CIAofficers in both Saigon and Headquartersaccepted CASTOR's credentials, and Qlanningbegan for a second supply mission. 53 D

While deploring the loss of the C-47 and itscrew, the station found cause for celebration inthe resulting uproar about internal security inthe DRV. Hanoi radio broadcasts were blasting"reactionary' elements among ethnic minori-ties," and appealing to~mountain people" tocooperate with security forces. Saigon attrib-uted all this to the information derived frominterrogations of the surviving CASTOR air-crew personnel and of Team ECHO, whosecapture Hanoi had now announced. Blackentry operations, even when rolled up, werethus "exactly the type [of] harassment" bywhich the station was "seeking to force [the]DRV to dissipate its assets on [its] own internalsecurity in remote areas [of North Vietnam]and thus decrease its subversive efforts inSouth Vietnam."54D

~R

oo~ .6' 19 September 1961,1 INo reporting on either theplanning or the cancellation of this supply flight has survlved.~52 Ibid" 43; Tourison,44. Tourison says the 1 July supply f1igh a so earned a team that was to have been airdroppedelsewhere in a new_J.eration whose locale he does not specify.D03 Conboy, 43-44.164 SAIG 6562, 18 be ember 1961,1 I

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CIA in Saigon offered additional evidence tosupport its view of a Hanoi regime understress. A British expert on Indochina, Profes-sor P.J. Honey, had just evaluated its conditionas "precarious," and a Saigon newspaperwrote about a 24 November piece in the com-munist daily Nhan Dan, which acknowledgedfor the first time that "enemy social foundationsstill exist, while ours are very weak." Hanoi

press and radio were pressing their campaignto mobilize the populace against Dlernist spiesand saboteurs, and a message from TeamCASTOR indicated that it and other agentteams were forcing the DRV to divertresources to beef up internal security. As oflate 1961, It looked to CIA as if its teams wereoperating on fertile ground. 550

20

55 SAIG 6709, 30 December 1961,1'- _

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Chapter Two:A More Ambitious AgendaD

It could have been argued-and later wasargued-that airborne and maritime harass-ment operations, even if successful at the tac-tical level, might not deter the southernInsurgency, but Instead spur the Politburo inHanoi to accelerate its campaign to annex theSouth, whence all the trouble was emanating.But the emotional climate of the moment didnot encourage such speculation. On the c~ntrary, it seemed a matter of common sense,both In Saigon and at Headquarters, not only toInfiltrate more teams, but to assign them pro-gressively more ambitious missions. Replyingin early December to what must have been anexpression of concern about insufficientlyaggressive tasking, Saigon offered this reas-surance:

We[are] not locating, recruiting, training,dispatching and directing...teams[merely] to obtain low level or even highlevel [order of battle intelligence]. Wecertainlyinclude 08 in specific missionsbut... [we] have emphasizedpotentialresistance, contacts wirh familiesto buildup intel assets, examination of potentialharassmenttargetssuch as roads,reportsof political controls, attitudeofpopulation, etc.10

The station balanced this guarantee of anaggressive program with an acknowledgementthat the teams' performance was up to thatpoint "far from outstanding." It reminded Head-quarters of earlier stipulations of the "limitedresults" to be expected from team operations,

and suggested that the only reason for pursu-.ing them was the "absence [of] other means toapproach [our] targets."2D

The implication was that one used the meansat hand to satisfy a policy requirement, how-ever ill-adapted those means might be toachieving the objective. By this permissivestandard, it was easy to justify a proposed airinfiltration into Hoa Sinh PrOVince, in the moun-tains west of Hanoi, by another team of hilltribesmen. Dubbed EUROPA, the new teamwould use the usual modus operandi, para-chuting to a safehaven from which it wouldemerge to contact trusted relatives and friendsand evaluate the area's resistance potential.The station restrained its enthusiasm for thisparticular venture: "We cannot make [a] pas-sionate plea for tremendous strategic potential[in the] EUROPA area." On the other hand, "wecan [make such a claim] for our presently pro-jected program of one team per month to giveus general geographic coverage of North Viet-nam." With more teams in place, the operationwould move into Phase II, a program aboutwhich the station said only that it would be sup-plemented by leaflet drops presumably aimedat stimulating discontent with the regime. 3DHeadquarters was apparently hoping, at theend of 1961, that more rigorous targetingwould help conserve scarce resources, but thestation saw no immediate potential in a moreselective approach. It saw itself as limited tothe agent personnel, mostly drawn from the hilltribes, supplied it by Col. Tung, and theseagents had reasonable prospects of survivingonly where they could find sympathetic localcontacts. Saigon was indeed "well aware of .special areas and groups, and [was] followingup all possible leads." But rather than await the

1 SAI~e5, 2 December 1961,1 I, Ibid. . . .3 Ibid. nls cable alludes to a dispatch oulllning the station's program that. jUdging by Its number, was sentl~ mid-August1961. The cable refers to planned activity In three phases, the second of which included leaflet drops. The third presumablyintroduced some kind of organized resistance to communist ruleDAlso see Conboy, 45, reference to EUROPA ascomposed of "Muong," a possible rendering of the tribe called "Hmong."D

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Meanwhile, airborne operationshad beensuspended unli l Ihe station acquired a more

One such effort involvedc=J Inserted byjunk, he would be supplied the same way. Onthe nighl 01 14 January 1962, the junk code-named Nautilus I crepl up amo ng Ihe karstislands sprinkled along the upper reaches ofthe Gull of Tonkin.The crew was unloading Ihefirst 0127 cases of suppl ies into a dinghy, lordeposit on shore. when a North Vietnamesepatrol boat, apparently lying in wail , broughtthe operation 10 an end.' 0The Inlerruplio n 01radio con tact wilh Nautilus Iand the junk's failure to return forced the sta-tion andIts Vietnamese counterparts to con-sider the possibility thatc=Iwas underenemy control. But it seemed to them morelikely that the supply mission had lallen vict imeithe r 10 bad weather-it turned foul four daysatter Ihe junk's departu re-or to a routinecoastal patrol, Nevertheless, when a replace-ment junk , Nautilus II lett Da Nang mid-Aprillor another try,C,was informed 01the mis-sion only atter Ihe junk was sale ly back in port .He subsequenlly radioed thaI he had recov -ered atl 30 bundles from Ihe cache site on asmall , uninhabited island in Ha Long Bay. Withthe apparent success of this mission, Col.Tung 's office- renamed the Presiden tial Sur-vey Office (PSO) alter the downed aircrew'strial exposed the PLO label- and CIA againaccepted the agent's bona fides.' D

Slepping Up the paceLj

Team DIDO, launched In late June 1961,greeted Ihe New Year with two messages say-ingthat it was transmitting under duress.Again, II appears Ihatlhe station was too pre-occupied with other business to pay muchattention. While preparing new opera tions. ilhad also 10service those agents and teams inplace whose bona l ides it saw no reason toquestion .'[J

results 01a "delin itive study," it was roceedingwilh the agenl materi al at hand .'

• SAIG 6562 .• FVS W 7393 .• SAIG 7060. 2' anuary' 962. retyped inundalec1 draftm;L:randum,1 i

::::=J Tourison••7-48. Tourisonbases his acco unt of the 1962 _ supplymission on 8 postwar Interview with 8 Nautius ,crewman, who $aid he was visited byr----- in prisOn. Weanng 8 "fancy walch- 80(L8~w9d 10smoke.LJsaid he knew the prisoncommander BnawasvlSltlng y PEi'TissionrThe crewmanconcluded lhat was 8 "traitor... one0 1 theirs allal~. dovbleagent.- It seemsmore liketythatl 'wasoperating In goodfaith unfiT8f1er his capture. (SeeTourison, 49~ J7 C_0!1I::!9-'y. ';.7 AIG 9012, 29 April 1962, retyped In undated drall memorand um] -=:I'---T.' eventeen OAV travel documents wore fabricated tor the supply mission, 16 for the junk and lis crewI ==:JI a revtsed Haiphon travelpermit10 be usedwithhisHaiphong basicidenlity documenl. (FVSA 13283. 2 H bruary

InfIltration Junk Naulllus ID

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suitable aircraft. The limited range of the twin-engine C-47 required both a refueling stop atDa Nang, on the coast in Central Vietnam,and perilously direct routes to drop zones inthe northwestern DRV. CIA officers attributedthe July 1961 loss of theCASTOR supplyplane at least partly to these factors, and addi-tional supply missions and team insertionswere, therefore, put on hold while CIA negoti-ated with the US Air Force for a four-engineDC-4. BD .Nguyen Cao Ky, now a lieutenant colonel,recruited new South Vietnamese Air Forcepilots, and when the first DC-4 arrived at aboutthe end of December 1961, an Air Americateam trained them in nighttime low-level flyingand navigation. When the crews were ready,the station and PSO chose to launch TeamEUROPA before moving to supply CASTOR. B

D .The launch did not take place without stillanother policy hiccup over the proportionalitybetween means and ends. On 11 January1962, Headquarters informed Saigon that, inview of the "doubtful results this small effortcan achieve," EUROPA was disapproved. Thesame cable welcomed a discussion of therationale for all such operations during anImminent visit by COS Bill Colby, a visit thatmust have resulted in a change of heart, for asecond cable on 15 February gave EUROPAthe green light. 10DOnce again, Ky commanded the aircraft, rely-ing on his ability to spot moonlit checkpoints onthe ground as he navigated a circuitous routeto the drop zone. All went well, it seemed to Ky,but in fact the area below was dotted with vil-

lages. According to Hanoi's published interro-gation report of one member, the team wasspotted while still descending. Within two days,the PASF had every man in custody. Havingcaptured the agent radio along with its opera-tor, the communists promptly launched adeception operation similar to those alrlead

Junder way withc=Jand CASTOR. 11On 12 March, EUROPA came up on the air,assuring Saigon that the team was "safe andsound." An effort to drop supplies to the teamhad to be scrubbed when radio contact waslost, but the station assessed the communica-tions failure as probably the result of badweather. As of early June, it told Headquarters,the team's radio messages, including safetysignals, were in order, and there was "no rea-son to believe [the] team doubled." 120The apparent success of EUROPA encouragedthe station to proceed with a supply mission toCASTOR. Ky and his crew having flown the lastmission,a second crew manned the DC-4 forthe flight to Son La. Once again, CASTOR andits North Vietnamese masters waited in vain.Caught in a rainstorm not far from the dropzone, the pilot lost his bearings and crashed intoa mountain. But intercepted North Vietnamesecommunications gave no sign of an alert. Thestation inferred that Hanoi was unaware of theflight, and evaluated CASTOR's security asunaffectedby the disaster.130The station's faith in the bona fides of TeamCASTOR was at this point fully restored, andplans were underway to reinforce it withanother team, to be called TOURBILLON, thatwould give it a serious capacity for sabotageand harassment. Meanwhile, the station made

6 Ibid., 4411c·54 was the military designationfor the Douglas DC·4, and Is used in much CIA correspondenceon theprogram.'l3urthecivilian nomenclatureappears Insome traffic,sugge~ that the plane was configuredto match the coverstory under Qhlh it was leased to a South Vietnameseentrepreneur.U9 SAIG 6562 Conboy,44-5.~ ,.- --,16 SAIG345 0g1January1962~15 February19621 I" Conboy.45.12 FVSA 1361 A ril 1962' SAIG 9993, 9 June 1962,,-1__-,

e a empted supply drop to CASTORis not known.D

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the first use of Laotian territory to insert a teaminto the DRV. On 12 March, after reconnais-sance by a small fixed-wing aircraft, the heli-copter descended onto the drop zone on theLaotian side of the border, adjacent to th~ovInce of Nghe An in the southern DRV.14U

The four members of Team ATLAS-appar-ently all ethnic Vietnamese-headed easttoward their target, a village where they wereto seek out two Catholic priests known for theiranti-communist fervor. After four days of unob-served movement, they suddenly encountereda small boy, who upon seeing them disap-peared into the forest. Soon thereafter, localmilitia arrived, and the team fled back towardLaos. One man was fatally shot, and anotherdied when he stepped on a mine. The survi-vors managed to assemble their radio andreport their plight, but were soon captured. Notuntil the two survivors' later public trial did thestation learn that they had been in the hands ofthe PASF since 5 April. 150However powerful the urge to believe in theirteams' survival in enemy territory, the stationand its PSO counterparts did not ignore"repeated danger and/or duress signals" fromTeams DIDO and ECHO. By early April 1962,both were assumed to be under enemy control,and Saigon concentrated on turning theirenemy-controlled communications back uponthe North Vietnamese. One ploy began with theassumption that both teams were still intact,even though controlled. Orders to them to headfor the Laotian border would test the willingnessof their handlers to move them west in order toprevent Saigon's RoF capability from revealinga failure to comply. If the teams got lucky, in thisprocess-they would have to be very lucky-they might manage to escape. 16D

. The second ploy also looked like a counsel ofdesperation. It had been launched with a mes-sage to DIDO that alluded to "friendly ele-ments" in the border area and tasked the teamto report on them. Later messages were tomention the team's proposed assignment,after exfiltration, to train new teams at projectheadquarters. The station seems to have beenwishing for a North Vietnamese nibble at thisoffer of a penetration of the Saigon office, butstipulated that it had "no illusions about thelikelihood of success in exfiltrating eitherteam."17D

With little hope for DIDO and even less forECHO, the station concentrated on its plans fornew insertions. On 16 April 1962, the six BlackThai tribesmen of Team REMUS parachutedonto a drop zone in Laotian territory some 15kilometers northwest of Dien Bien Phu. Theteam landed unobserved, retrieved its gear,and crept across the border. Some of the foodbundles dropped with the team were dam-aged, and REMUS almost immediately calledfor a supply drop. The station complied, but theteam's gastronomic requirements causedsome heartburn at Headquarters, which corn-plained about the unrealistic expectations rep-resented by a request for "chicken and duck'done to a golden tin1."'18D

An Appearance of SuccessD

With the insertion of Team REMUS, the stationhad what it considered four viable teams,including ARES, reporting from North Vietnam.It was now just over a year since PresidentKennedy had called for "guerrilla operations"there, and CIA was feeling the heat. It was notjust the modest number of teams in place, buttheir failure to engage in any significant harass-

24

14 FVSA 13612Q,~ FVSA 13612 Conboy. 47.D16 FVSA 13612. e Idea looks even more fancifull,o.Ji.\lht of SAIG 6562 of 18 December 1961, in which the station hadcategorically described Team ECHO as "captured."U"/lb'dO'6 C~~150Y, 50.Dse~ ~ 28 May 1962,1 . I.

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ment or sabotage, that suggested am~gapbetween mandate and performance. 19UIt was In this climate that Secretary of DefenseRobert McNamara and Commander-in-ChiefPacific (CINCPAC) Adm. Harry Felt visitedSaigon in May 1962. In its sessions with them,the station found itself defending its modestprogress in the DRV. Pointing to bad weather'as the biggest deterrent to accelerating thepace of infiltration, Chief of Station Colby alsojustified the intelligence emphasis in the task-ing of existing teams. They needed informationon local conditions and targets, he said, as aframework for the "harassment and diversion"operations that remained their main charter.The station and PSO were preparing 15 moreteams for insertion by the end of July; all ofthese would prepare the way for the subse-quent addition of sabotage personnel andequipment. 20DMcNamara expressed what the station calledhis "full support" for its activities and plans. Buthe drew a clear distinction between small-scale CIA-sponsored harassment operationsand "possible larger efforts of [a] militarynature." In so doing, he implicitly asserted thedominant military role in unconventional war-fare that President Kennedy had assigned tothe Pentagon after the failure at the Bay of Pigsin April 1961. Against a background of frustrat-ingly slow Agency progress, the prospect ofPentagon-run operations against the Northwas now, in the station's words, "more open.'?'

DMeantime, military support to CIA operationswould continue, and two admirals working for

Adm. Felt concurred with an Agency requestfor submarine reconnaissance of possible tar-gets for a maritime raid on Swatow-class gun-boats of the DRV's little navy. Also, having losta team to enemy action along Route 7,Ieadinginto northeastern Laos, the station was press-ing to get ready a new team of Hmong to para-chute into the DRV near the Laotian border. Itsmembers would recruit fellow Hmong in the LaiChau area, then lead them out to Laos fortraining and eventual return. 22 D

Teams TOURBILLON and EROS DThe COS had been right about the weather asan inhibiting factor. When he conferred withSecretary McNamara and Adm. Felt on12 May, the aircraft carrying sabotage TeamTOURBILLON, slated to join Team CASTOR,had already aborted three missions when Itencountered heavy storms. Finall~, in a DC-4flown by a veteran aircrew ofC IL:]TOURBILLON's seven men reached thedrop zone on the night of 17 May.23 D

Waiting below was a company or more ofPASF militia, who had set out the flame pots asspecified in the instructions to Team CASTOR.But the descending guerrillas encounteredstrong winds that blew them away from thedrop zone, and the PASF set off in pursuit.Their first quarry was the assistant teamleader, caught in a tree on landing, who wasshot and killed in his harness when he fired onthem. The others were surrounded and cap-tured within two days.24D

,. SAIG 9297, 12 May 1962,1 1>Olbid'D.. Ibid. National Security Action Memorandum 01 28 June 1961 specified that any paramilitary operation "wholly covertor disavowable, maybe assigned to CIA, provided that it is within the normal capabilities of the agency" (emphasis added).Any operation, "wholly or partially covert," requiring "significant numbers of militarily trained personnel, [and] amounts ofmilitary equipment," would "exceed CIA-controlled" capabilities, and would be run by the Department of Defense with CIA"in a SUpporti~e." (See Schulz, 21.)02:! SAIG 9297." Ibid.; FVSA 1 604,6 July 1964lr-----------------,1Conboy, 48.49.0.. Conboy, 490

/ 25

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DRV security elected to conceal the capturewhile it exploited the team's radio operator andgear to launch another deception operation.According to one survivor, interviewed after thewar, Saigon had ordered Team TOURBILLONto come up on the air within two days. Given itsexpected reception by CASTOR, it shouldneed no time to find a refuge, and initial contactdelayed for more than 48 hours would be takenas evidence ofenemy control. In fact, accord-ing to the same survivor, it took the North Viet-namese 11 days to get the team's radiooperator on the air with his first mesSage.250The record is mute on this point, but it is clearthat, despite the delay, Saigon acceptedTOURBILLON's bona fides. The stationreported the team's reception by the leader ofCASTOR and the loss of one man, whichTOURBILLON had called an accident. As of 20June, Saigon accepted that TOURBILLONwas scoutin~tential sabotage targets alongRoute 41.281_ 1

Meanwhile, on 20 May, Team EROS droppedinto Thanh Hoa Province, just east of the Lao-tian border in the upper panhandle. This inser-tion seems to have escaped PASF attention,and the five men-Hmong and Red Thaidropped into an area that was home to bothtribes-set up a hidden bivouac. They werethen supposed to contact tribal brethren, butlost their nerve, it seems, and when some RedThai villagers stumbled upon their encamp-ment, they fled north. The discovery of foodcans with foreign brand names triggered asearch by both PASF and army units. After twoweeks, they had found nothing, and the huntwas suspended. 27D

On 20 June, EROS reported fearing that it hadbeen compromised. DRV security was cover-ing the vicinity of the cache site, and the teamwas being, as the station reported it, "closelytracked." Short of food, EROS asked for sup-plies, which Saigon promised for July. No droptook place, and Saigon radioed the team thatbad weather was to blame. 28DLeft to its own devices, the team ventured outin a search for food. On 2 August, villagersspotted it once again. Security forces resumedtheir search, and a panicked Team EROSmanaged only to report the renewed pursuitbefore it went off the air. On 29 September, thePASF surrounded the team, killing one guer-rilla and capturing a second. Three othersescaped to the border, where they joined aparty of Lao hunters until their hosts betrayedthem to the North Vietnamese. 29D

Operation VULCANDHesldent teams, living black, represented oneof the two possibilities for surreptitious actionagainst DRV military facilities. The otherinvolved maritime hit-and-run raids, usingtechniques earlier employed against China, inthe early years of communist rule there, andagainst the regime in Pyongyang, during theKorean war. President Kennedy's repeateddemand for action against the DRV requiredexploiting all the resources at hand, and theseincluded, in the spring of 1962, 18 South Viet-namese who had been trained in underwaterdemolitionsI IFor a target, CIA chosethe DRV naval base at Quang Khe, which layon the Gianh River some 40 kilometers north ofDong Hoi, the town nearest the DMZ. 300

26

"'Ibld.n.. FVSA17604; FVSA 13986,27 JUly1962,11 ~______;======='-----___,27 Conboy,'!9-50.n ,-_----,28 Blind memoranclLim;'\ pperalions," "Date of Info: 20 June 1962,"1

[ 1FVSA 13986DCOri50g0. FVSW 7393 says that as early as 21'--;A'--u-'-gU---=S7t,-:Cth---=e-=-ra=-=d"'io---=0---=p":"":er::"'atC:-or::-:r""'es=-=p70n=-=d:i:"e-:Td----'Incorrectly to a challengequestion.u29 Conboy,50'0aoConboy,51.

05303948

Quang Khe was home to several of the DRV'sSwatow-class gunboats, 83 feet long and car-rying up to three 37mm cannon, four heavymachine guns, and eight depth charges.Although assigned to coastal security, they hadnot been encountered in the station's maritimeinfiltrations using motorized fishing junks, andtheir nearly continuous presence in port madethem attractive targets for hit-and-run attack.Accordingly, PSO acquired four of the 18 frog-men, and the station commenced training andoperational plannlnq.?' DCIA arranged with the Navy for a reconnais-sance by the USS Catfish, a World War II-erasubmarine that had long been devoted to intel-ligence collection along the Asian littoral. Itconfirmed the Swatows' presence at QuangKhe, and on 30 June 1962 the program's thirdjunk, Nautilus /II, carried the frogmen and theirlimpet mines to the mouth of the Gianh River.They made their way In on a raft for a quickbeach reconnaissance before returning to thejunk. A small sampan would then take themupriver into the vicinity of the gunboats.32DAerial reconnaissance supplementing the sur-reptitious observation of the junk confirmedjust three Swatows, each to be attacked by onefrogman, who would swim to it, attacti limpetsbelow the waterline, and return to the sampan.And indeed It appears that each of the swim-mers reached his target-in one case an uni-dentified naval vessel larger than theSwatows-and planted at least one mine. Howmany of them detonated remained unclear, forone of them went off prematurely, with theswimmer already spotted and trying to escape.The explosion crippled the gunboat but killedthe frogman; the station reported that it thoughta second Swatow had also gone Up.33D

Gunfire from a pursuing Swatow killed thefourth frogman and wounded the captain of theNautilus 111 before the gunboat rammed thejunk and took the survivors prisoner. Theymissed just one, who hid in the half-sub-merged cabin and was overlooked by the Swa-tow's crew, who never boarded the sinkingjunk. The survivor drifted south of the DMZ ona piece of wreckage and was rescued next dayby aSouth Vietnamese patrol boat. Col. Tung'sPSO accepted the high casualty rate as justthe fortunes of war,and the station seemedready to proceed with more operations likeVULCAN, whose results it summarized forHeadquarters: "Mission successful, priceheavy."340

Soldiering anDAs of late Jul~ 1962, the station was preparing28 newC ~teams,most of them to begiven a sabotage mission, for infiltration Intothe DRV. The chief of the External OperationsSection ,I lundertook to explain toHeadquarters what it could reasonably expectfrom current and proposed operations. His dis-patch, painfully honest yet spotted with wishfulthinking, encapsulated the Agency's dilemmaas it struggled to affect the DRV's war-makingcapability with the means at hand.C]beganwith a starkly pessimistic judgment about theresults to be expected from operations on thescale then projected: "The possibilities of anylarge diversion from the DRV effort againstSouth Vietnam are remote. Our operations areat too small a scale and initiated at too late adate [in the course of the Insurgency] to seri-ously affect DRV aggression against theSouth."3sD

"Some effects," however, should be possible.Sabotage of targets like military facilities,

~R

31 Ibid.,52-530 '32 Ibid.,53-55. S00546, 2 JUly 1962'LI --J33 Ibid.; FVSA13986.'" SAIG0546; FVSA 9 6.0.. FVSA13986; FVSA13960, 24 July 19&2,1 -,- --..J

27/'

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roads, railroads, and crops would require abeefed-up militia to improve security; this, inturn, would burden not only the regime but alsothe peasantry being forced to supply the man-power. Operations against targets like locomo-tives and rolling stock would force the regimeto spend scarce foreign exchange for replace-ments and parts. Meanwhile, an increasinglyoppressed population might take heart fromthese examples of regime vulnerability, anditself engage In economic sabotage. This, Inturn, would provoke another cycle of repres-sive measures that would exacerbate thealienation of the populace. 360

r=J:lcknowledged certain risks in thisapproach, even at the level of activity thenplanned. Use of minorities might provoke theregime Into "large scale repressive action"against particular ethnic or religious groups.Probably with events like the 1956 Hungarianrevolution in mind,Dcautioned against"spark[ing] premature uprisings which we areneither willing nor able to support." This heldtrue especially in the heavily populated coastalareas; it might be more practicable to encour-age revolt among the "widely scattered moun-tain groups which would divert DRV troops intopolicing large areas of difficult terrain."37D

Having cited some salutary side effects-larger numbers of trained South Vietnamese,the accumulation of operational intelligence,and the refinement of operational tech-niques-] fNenton to draw a measured butultimately optimistic bottom line. He stillthought it "unlikely that any major physicalchange in the scale of DRV aggression againstSouth Vietnam will result." On the other hand,it seemed probable that the "material and eco-nomic damage as well as the engendered sus-picion and confusion far exceed the relatively

small [investment in] the program." Pursuingthis theme,Dnvoked the prospect of creat-ing more "tension in an already strained econ-:orny' with activity that demonstrated SouthVietnamese determination even as it gavehope to restive Northerners that they did not"stand alone." 380~dispatch, released in the name of thechief of station, thus served to justify continu-ing the program even while he disclaimed itsability to achieve the stated purpose. With thispiece still en route, Headquarters cabled theresults of a comparable soul-searching, pro-voked by the conclusion in July of the GenevaAgreements on Laos. The agreements wouldallow the DRV to divert forces from Laos toSouth Vietnam, an advantage that the UnitedStates and the GVN must somehow offset. Aneffective program of harassment and sabotagein the DRV was more urgently needed thanever, but Headquarters was driven to the sameconclusion as the station. Measured againststated objectives, "our record in [the] DRV [is]not good." Operations in the North had beencostly in both men and materiel while leadingto little harassment or sabotage. OperationVULCAN had succeeded, but teams like CAS-TOR, to be admired for their very survival, haddone little or nothing. 3sD

Headquarters did not question the suitability ofthe operational technique, confining itself

.instead to some conventional cautionaryadvice. The station should avoid spreading itselftoo thin. It should apply rigorous standards tothe selection of both agent personnel.and tar-gets and pay careful attention to the lessons ofexperience. And it should never "succumb topressures from any outside organization, GVNor US Government," to launch operations aboutwhose soundness it had any doubts. 4oD

28

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3.~~VS960.0. 31 Ibid.

:Ib:ao- 30 July 1962·1 _

IC0530 3948

AOS

Xieng·Khouang

Potential US Air Force Targets inNorth Vietnam, Circa Early 1962

Gulf

of

Tonkin

0 1Car togra phy Cenle r/MPG 769690 AI (G00095) 3-05

100 Kilome ters,50,

• Military support complex

.. Army depot

~ Barracks

1 Radio station.t Power plant)( Bridge

o Rail transfer site

·8anMouang Cha

ited TOURBILLON sabotage operation, andinvited the station to identify specific targetsand means of attacking them.430 .

The Department of State, and particularly itsambassador in Vientiane , Leonard Unger,were preoccupied with avoiding the collapse ofthe just-signed Geneva Agreements, andvetoed the supply overllightthat the TOURBIL-LON sabotage operat ion would require. Wash-ington turned down Saigon's appeal of thisdecision, but informed the field that the inter-agency covert action oversight committee wasnow reviewin the entire question of Laosoverflights.42

The single concrete recommendation con-cemed the scale and frequency of sabotageand harassment operations. Speaking for FEDivision, Don Gregg urged "intermittent smallscale harassments ... [rather than) one or twolarger scale ops against bridges or POLdumps ." The success of Team TOURBILLON'splanned bridge-blowing would be very wel-come, but probably no more effective in influ-encing North Vietnamese behavior than aseries of "smaller actions ... against isolatedconvoys or camps which could be undertaken[by a) single team member" firing rifle gre-nades .41C .

Upping the Anten

The impassioned debate over the competinggoals of vigorous action against the DRV andthe preservat ion of the Geneva Agreementsraged until 23 August. On that day, Lt. Gen.Marshall Carter, the acting DCI, told DeputyDirector for Plans Thomas Karamessines thatthe "highest levels in the Government"-Le.,President Kennedy-had just approved a"concept of intensified operations againstNorth Vietnam ." This decision did not, in fact,resolve the overf