I am curious to know, if the NSA Cassandra was asked the question "how do you know this?" and if the answer was the methodology, or an evasion, or even "I can't tell you that".
There is a need for secrecy-- protect humint, keep the opposition from evading or perverting the sigint-- so a balancing act is needed. The predictions are never perfectly accurate, with each failure to accurately predict comes erosion of credibility; the crying wolf problem. Source credibility becomes an issue also, 'Nam tended towards short time tours and a lack of relationships ("can I trust this guy that just parachuted in from some field listening post, showing the 60's equivalent of a PowerPoint presentation?"). When combined with a Pollyanna attitude on the part of the leadership sub optimal results are more likely. For the guy in the trench, sub optimal can be fatal.
Predictions are never 100% and hindsight is 20/20; regardless history implies that there are mountains of blame for the politicians (flag ranks are also politicians to get that high).
An SF officer, now retired LTC long ago told me that down in a bunker a week or so before Tet he saw a map with colored pins. He quickly memorized it. Almost every spot highlighted was attacked in Tet.
By bunker mate SP4 Carl Carlucci told me that he arrived to our C Co 2/18, 1st Inf Div, the swamp rats, just in time for the formation with 32 pairs of boots, each in front of the soldier’s rifle with its bayonet sticking in the dirt and its helmet on the butt.
Maybe 30 soldiers of 220 present. The survivors mostly in MASH hospitals.
It was the only time I ever saw Carl sad.
They had been flown up north to the highlands and sent in two columns, well separated, in a deep chasm. On a slight rise in front a 750lb claymore, made from as big a dud bomb, was fired, decimating one of the best companies of the war.
We way too seldom give credit to our foes. They were the best close combat troops in the world. Read The Last 100 Yards: the NCOs contribution to war by H J Poole, LTC, USMC, 1997.
My Uncle LTC Armand Reiser, USAF, assassinated, was air attaché, SE Asia, 1969-71. His DFC over Laos was his 7th and the first of the Cold War. He had 5 90 summer tours as a PVT in the horse drawn artillery and with his two brothers was commissioned the day after a Pearl Harbor.
His intelligence report to the Joint Chiefs was falsified by a BG in Hawaii and instead of saying “We have a serious problem in that the past year over 6,000 rural doctors, nurses, and teachers dead” to “<60”.
Don't worry, we'll make up for the mistakes by inserting ourselves into the new jungles of Venezuela...should be a cake walk, right William Kristol?
I was there with the Army Security Agency from late 67 to early 70 (two tours). Mostly in 509th RRG HQ giving daily briefings to the group commander and staff. Used to go over to the DODSPECREP (NSA) office on the MACV compound every so often. Also attended South Vietnamese Army intelligence briefings where they represented that they were winning the war! All this was before Tet 68 and you could see the movement of troops down into the Central Highlands and into III Corp. I do remember Dak To, Khe Sahn, etc.
I admire the author for having the courage to get out of the office and into the field. The first guy killed in combat (#3 on the Wall in DC) was an ASA guy and the compound I lived on was named after him (James Davis).
I have always had interest in and tremendous respect for the intelligence community. So many devoted career people laboring to provide concise, actionable information to the powers that be, as in this week’s Senate hearing. So often dismissively rejected.
4
I was a low-level army intelligence officer in the war. I wasn't there for Tet 68, but I was there for two other Tets. I can testify that each time Tet came around, we got many indications that there would be attacks in various places. Most of the time these were false alarms and nothing happened. I claim no special witness to anything lofty, but I can tell you that there were always so many local false alarms about so many things that I don't put much blame on anybody for not getting excited about them all. In spite of the surprise, US and South Vietnamese forces responded pretty well. The VC organization in South Vietnam was so seriously depleted by Tet 68 it practically ceased to exist in the Saigon area -- I can testify to that personally.
1
The intelligence I received was that the decimation of the S Vietnamese Vietminh was a deliberate part of the NVA to establish control of the communist party in the south.
The N Vietnamese culture was military conquer and destroy, aggressive in its combat. The S Vietnamese culture, quite nonagrrssive, was “gather for the battle. Whoever had the the most men and the high ground wins for today. No need to kill each other.”
The North was destroy.
As I read this article I felt more and more sick. I was a crew chief on a huey gunship supporting the 173rd Airborne and the 4th Infantry during the lead up and through all the fighting around Dak To and Hill 875 and two months later, beginning on January 30th, 1968 we flew many missions around Tuy Hoa during the Tet Offensive.
It turns out we were just stupid pawns in some unimaginable, gruesome game, played by egomaniacs, and the games are still being played today. What a waste.
2
TET was indeed a surprise to the in-country communications intelligence units. The major in-country intercept station was the "secrecy shrouded" 8th Radio Research Field Station located at Phu Bai - about 10 miles south of the city of Hue. Staffed by members of the "super-secret" (see Time Magazine) Army Security Agency, and in daily communication with NSA, it monitored the Hanoi High Command and I-Corps to include the "KSAF" (Khe Sanh Area Front to the North Vietnamese) problem. I can state for a sure and certain fact that no one at the facility had the slightest clue about the impending offensive - and presumably this extended to NSA as well. Our first hint came about 2 AM when the rockets and mortars landed in our compound, rousing the analysts from their racks and sending them running for the trenches. I was working the Mid shift and the first 120 M rocket just missed our operations building. I stepped out of the building and saw the perimeter dimly illuminated by flares. The airwaves, hitherto silent, erupted in radio traffic. By then, and for the next few days, we were too busy (burning files and prepping the facility for demolition) to pay much attention. It has been suggested that the NVA masked this build-up by sending the plans by courier rather than over the airwaves where we would have had a crack at it. Note that we did better with the 'little' offensive that followed in the late Spring / early Summer. See Spartans in the Darkness for more info.
2
I DEROS’d out of the 173d the previous spring. I was at Ft. Meade. Felt awfully guilty not being with the Skysoldiers. Of course with the passage of time I’m glad I wasn’t. The writer reminds me of the opening of The Longest Day. The German in the bunker with the binos tells Berlin the invasion fleet is off his beach. Berlin says nonsense, they’ll invade through Calais.
2
Sorry my post misstated two dates: August 8, 1975 and August 17 should of course be April 8, 1975 and April 17...
1
Human intelligence beat NSA to the scoop in 1967 and 1975, or at least shared the empty glory. As the CIA's declassified history of the war indicates, my colleague in Saigon Bob Layton correctly divined the on-coming Tet Offensive weeks before it happened and was ignored by his superiors at Langley. The CIA's best penetration inside the Communist command advised the CIA Station on August 8, 1975 and me personally on August 17 that the NVA would not stop for a negotiated settlement, and meant to seize Saigon militarily as exactly they did. Ambassador Martin and Station Chief Tom Polgar brushed aside that warning as easily as they did the NSA's indicators. Their capacity for disastrous wishful thinking and deference to multiple false prophets, including the French, Hungarians, Poles, Soviets and Henry Kissinger resulted in a chaotic evacuation of which NSA's Vietnamese employees and counterparts were scarcely the only victims.
3
Yes. A CIA friend told me his reports from the field were totally reversed by someone in Saigon protecting himself and his bosses yet sent reversed under his signature. Not for some years later did he find that out.
Gen. Peers and all the rest were the desperate formr Confederates for whom Vietnam and all it's free blood, guts and guns was life as it should be . The idea that anyone with education might know better was anathema and continued to be through the war. Nixon and LBJ essentially wanted the same thing-some sort of glorious victory. They couldn't allow failure, defeat or, most importantly: facts, to stop them. When the US finally pushed the last desperate South Vietnamese civilians from the helicopters and aircraft , Ford and the North could still claim we had left and obtained "peace with honor". We immediately sent dozens of marines and attack jets to obtain back the crew of a freighter the Cambodians had kidnapped on the high seas. That the men were returned before the operations didn't stop Kissinger and Ford and the media from celbrating returned US military power.
Since that disaster in the air and jungle-we have tried to pretend it never happened or that we -shouldda-couldda won, and fought several other similar fights we could not possibly supply, either with soldiers or arms,(they asked me to fight at age 55!), made promises we couldn't keep,(to stay with Afghanistan, forever, to save them from Taliban), and we get away with it all because we use unemployed teen volunteers from depressed areas of the US. It is reminiscent of at least one Phil K Dick book,
" The Divine Invasion". Guess who runs the Earth in God's absence? Read it & weep.
3
The communist regime in Hanoi has been using the harshest terms to condemn the American retaliatory Christmas bombings in the North in 1972. Yet at the same time they also do everything in their power to justify their own coward, and barbaric campaign of systematically attacking South Vietnamese civilians while the latter was celebrating the most sacred holiday of the year with their loved ones, Tết of 1968. The suicidal campaign caused widespread and un-parallel devastation to both sides, North and South.
2
reply to James smith
Had we, as Ho Chi Minh asked us to, helped to ensure the independence of Vietnam-not the illegal under UN regulations ending all imperial military escapades, the USA would have been in the place of CHina and the USSR, ensuring there might have been a Western style nation and not a Chinese style dictatorship of the Proletariat. It was the US that allowed France to reoccupy all Vietnam, re-replacing the Japanese. Left at the altar by Truman and the USA, Ho turned to the Chinese and Russians and , even though his own Northerners might have appreciated Lucky Strikes, jeeps and plenty of US food aid, but he forced them into another , eventual, dead end communist takeover. Now, regardless of the War's outcome, we are bestest best friends with the government of Vietnam-in Hanoi. We were offered the hand of the bride in 1943 and we spurned it. The US is not some national Count of Monte Cristo, kidnapped to allow another access to his woman. We blew it fair and square.
PS: By '46-48, the new USAF knew that area bombing, especially of cities and civilians, was worse then useless-it made new enemies willing to sacrifice endlessly. Our bombing made bitter enemies for us of anyone who was dumped on.
In From Apes To Warlords Solly Zuckerman, Head of British science research for WW II agreed with you. Tactical bombing worked. ‘Strategic’ bombing increased production by inciting the workers to give it their all and by destroying buildings but not much machinery made it much easier to replace the old with now more effective for war production and to reorganize for more efficient place and interconnection of machinery.
In an interview General Giap offered his thoughts on Tet.
" It would be wrong to think of Tet in purely military terms. The offensive was three things at the same time: military, political, and diplomatic. The goal of the war was de-escalation. We were looking to de-escalate the war. Thus it would have been impossible to separate our political strategy from our military strategy. The is that we saw things in their entirety and knew that in the end we had to de-escalate the war. Your objective in war can either be to wipe out the enemy altogether of to l eave their forces partly intact but their will to fight destroyed. It was the American policy to try and escalate the war. Our goal in the 68 offensive was to force them to de-escalate , to break the American will to remain in the war. By bringing the war to practically all the occupied towns, we aimed to show the Americans and the American people that it would be impossible for them to continue with the war."
Tet also had the effect of showing the Vietnamese people in the South that 500,000 Americans soliders, 80,000 allied soliders, 1,000,000 ARVN, RF, and other militias of the RVN, together with 60,000 men and hundreds of aircraft in 6 bases in Thailand and another 60,000 sailors in 3 aircraft battle groups and wings of B-52 bombers in Guam could not prevent the enemy from striking anywhere in SV. This fact was one contributing factor in keeping a large number of Vietnamese neutral.
7
Thank you Mr Glenn for your apt description of the Battle of Dakto. I was there in October and November 1967
2
I got to Pleiku in November 1967. This brought back memories. I always wondered what that big antenna array up on the hill was for!
Westmoreland knew what he knew and facts were not going to convince him otherwise. This showed up time and time again in ways large and small. Read H.R. McMaster's Derilction of Duty. Of course at the time we were in-country, most of us were too close to the trees to see the forest -- literally and figuratively. Hindsight is 20/20.
7
The US military establishment makes the same strategic mistakes over and over. Based on its super fire-power, the military thinks it can win any war or battle it chooses to enter. The war to surround China (Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia) could not be won; that war proved that small nations with sufficient will power can defeat the largest nations. Afghanistan has done it again and again: British, Soviet Union, now the USA. Cuba stood over all these decades. Overthrowing Gaddafi (a barbaric but stable regime) along with the French unleashed. the horror not only of the Benghazi event but the arming of ISIS-like slaughter in Mali and Niger.
Now there is talk of landing US troops in North Koreas mountain terrain to seize nuclear sites. These are certain death traps for US soldiers, DPRK snipers picking them off from above.
It comes down to hubris, that of generals and politicians alike.
7
It seems that many military "leaders" achieve their positions by being arrogantly self-confident in their own wisdom, and when they are wrong, others die, and they are left to write the history.
Contrary to our idiot in chief, that's not what these brave men, and now women, signed up for.
8
How to determine what "intelligence" is the most valid and important
is always a problem.
From the Germans moving troops closer and closer to the Polish Border
to the Germans moving troops closer and closer to the Polish/Russian Border
to Pearl Harbor and Midway,
to the Allies readying troops for D-Day, to whether the Japanese were
willing to Surrender before August 6th, to North Korea preparing to attack South Korea, to the Yom Kippur war - warnings were given and ignored.
The same could be said to the warnings given to the Steel and Auto
Industry that Japanese Imports were going to dominate the market if they and the Unions did not cut costs.
I wrote a letter to the New York Times in 1972 warning that Nixon's trip to
China was opening a new world competitor but my letter was not printed and the warnings were for naught.
My suggestion that "Stars Wars" proceed "Full Steam Ahead" and subsequent
warnings about a Nuclear Armed North Korea were utterly dismissed by the Liberal Elites.
Finally my warnings about how Trump could somehow not only win the
Republican nomination and the election for the Presidency were denounced and I dismissed as an idiot by the commentators to the New York Times.
4
Practical that I am, what is the point of paying for the "intelligence" NSA, CIA,FBI if no one is going to take that information to take proactive action? Whether it is 9/11, Vietnam, Pearl Harbor or Climate Change, if you big waste of space leaders are not going to listen to/act on what we pay for, shut down the agencies and go it alone. It is what you are doing. Besides we could use that money to feed, heal, and house the people that have to suffer you're entitled ignorance and..... what's the word I am looking for here...denial of reality!
2
American bigotry and racism was at fault as always. Hubris denied the equal divine natural certain unalienable rights of the Vietnamese people.
From the Little Big Horn to Pearl Harbor to Yalu River to Tet to 9/11 to Afghanistan to Iraq to Syria to North Korea we diminish, deny and dismiss the humanity of our foes at enormous costs in blood and treasure.
John 'Empty Barrel ' Kelly , James 'Mad Dog' Mattis, and H.R. 'Stonewall' McMaster have never won a major war nor sustained a major peace. Donald John 'Dotard' Trump is a cowardly dishonorable and unpatriotic military draft dodger working for the Kremlin and his family profits.
10
The generals didn't want to believe the news that was reported to them so they declared it fake news.
5
how do you feel about your war efforts knowing that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was an invention?
4
The Vietnamese were defending their country. You find something wrong with that?
1
reading Hue 1968 by Mark Bowden.
2
Not much new in this - the French before the US were exactly as clueless about their situation, delusional that all was well, and then continuing the charade with a withdrawal treaty that meant nothing at all.
4
This is what always happens when you tell people something they don't want to hear.
1
Seems that the higher up the chain of command the more likely those in positions of authority listen to the voices in their own heads rather than the voices of reality. et tu former general Kelly
3
We Americans have had over seventy years since WW II to realize that a national economy based on using wars as an economic engine is a costly, futile, and immoral way to run a country.
We have no excuse for not correcting this glaring lack of humanity after being warned by Eisenhower to stop the military industrial complex in it's tracks.
Hopefully, Ken Burns' new revealing documentary on America`s war in Vietnam along with the election of a greedy amoral president will spur America to embrace a more humanitarian form of capitalism.
6
Incredible essay from an extraordinary individual. Thanks for publishing, NYT.
5
A sobering piece. Worth reading in conjunction is "CIA and Vietnam Policymakers" by Harold Ford, a retired Vietnam era CIA officer. The book is composed of 3 case studies between 1962 and 1968. The final chapter is on Tet and the unheeded warnings of the CIA's analytic research cell in Saigon.
4
Is this refusal to believe intelligence not exactly like the disbelief about the existence global warming and human behavior as one of its most significant causes?
1
Another thoughtless article on how to win a battle when the whole war was in question and lost to begin with. It is amazing that after all these years the intelligence we totally ignored was the one we always "preached" and we ourselves fought for: freedom and independence. We supported a dictator in the south from a minority Catholic background to rule a majority Buddhist people. Mostly we fought to prevent the full independence of the Vietnamese people. How wrong and mis-guided we were in believing in the totally bogus Communist Domino theory. Yet we have learned nothing from that and continue to put up such articles which still give the impression that: if only so and so had done such and such, we would not have lost the war in Vietnam! We never learn from our mistakes?
3
The seeming incompetence of our generals came from the top. Johnson knew that if Democrats lost this unwinnable war after his civil rights push had given the South to the other party, Republicans could take enough power to roll back the New Deal that he was trying to finish. So he had to hang in and hope.
Nixon's 1972 victory showed that LBJ's analysis was correct, but Nixon overreached by spying on the Democrats and was stupid enough to tape himself and not destroy the tapes. So our loss of in Vietnam was oveshadowed by other developments, and the war suffered the same fate that later befell dubya -- being largely written out of popular history.
4
The wrong war for the wrong reasons executed by the wrong people. The C.I.A.'s own description of how the whole fiasco was fabricated as a result of our missionary zeal to save the Vietnamese from free elections. CIA FOIA(foai.cia.gov) to read how it evolved. Many of us who protested the war knew this,and finally even the "best and the brightest" like Daniel Ellsberg had his doh moment.. We are again in wars with no endgame and no strategy for what happens when we leave.
9
The generals in viet nam were terrible s they have been at most times. kelly is further proof of their abject ignorance and hubris.
5
Reading about the level of incompetence and utter ego bound stupidity of Generals and their ilk in our Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam is hard and disheartening. The thousands of families torn apart and living with profound grief for the rest of their lives is impossible to fathom. Will there ever be peace and goodwill on earth? Not while the human condition exists. But having said all of this, there were and are intelligent, honest and capable generals and leaders throughout the service. They are not to be disparaged or discounted because of their idiotic fellows. So let us give them their due and hope and pray that they have positions of decision making that are not so constrained by the needs of political face.
The level of conversation about North Korea 'with their one bomb, they will soon reach our total of more than a thousand' makes me doubt that are ANY sensible generals around .
1
This article falls under the rubric:
We don't learn that we don't learn that we don't learn.
Does it matter whether the Tet was a surprise or not? I'm sure it was a surprise to some, and no surprise to others. Would it have made any difference? It is a waste of time to keep running counter-factual scenarios.
We lied (Tonkin) to get into Vietnam, stayed way too long wallowing in ignorance, needlessly killed millions, left in embarrassment, achieved nothing, leaving a power vacuum filled by the communists.
A few decades later:
We lied (WMD) to get into Iraq, stayed way too long wallowing in ignorance, needlessly killed millions, left in embarrassment, achieved nothing, leaving a power vacuum filled by ISIS.
15
Colonel Daniel O. Graham in Saigon was responsible for feeding NSA intelligence collection like this into MACV's estimates of enemy strength, but instead he ordered these Order of Battle totals kept below the official tally, the "command estimate" by which General Westmoreland showed that we were winning the war. CIA's Sam Adams and individuals in the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) spent months challenging the figures, to no avail. Graham rose to become a major general and the Director of DIA, and he persuaded General Westmoreland to sue CBS News and Sam Adams when they blew the whistle on MACV's manipulations in a CBS Special Report. Westmoreland dropped the suit after dozens of witnesses had proved Sam right.
8
TET was not a surprise. The GIs over there knew a build up was happening and they were not unprepared.
TET was a tactical failure for the North Vietnamese, they lost every battle. However, it was a strategic success since they proved beyond any doubt that Westmorland's "light at the end of the tunnel" remark was an outright lie. TET was the beginning of the end of our involvement in Vietnam.
2
If I were using this document to teach a history class, I would ask if the author had ever expressed these facts to others, at the time, in any documented way. Would those people corroborate his account? As many commenters have noted, in 1968, the US narrative of the war couldn't accept alternate evidence. Since the US lost the war, this author's narrative fits the current narrative. This opinion piece may or may be true. It would require more evidence. Memories are not reliable, especially fifty years after the events they are recalling.
2
Ich,
Why doubt ?
The war ended in a Truce.
The North Vietnamese violated that truce.
Why don't you put that 'fact' in your comment ?
1
You should start by reading Bernard Fall's book "Hell In A Very Small Place
Then work your way up to Tom.
1
I arrived in Nam in Oct 1968 as an 11B.
My uncle Armand had me buy all of Bernard Fall’s books and go to the socialist bookstores to but everything I could obtain by N Vietnamese such as Giap and Ho Chi Minh along with BG Slam Marshall, the military historian, Nine shelf feet of books.
My LTs did not like that but both of my CPTs in Nam did. We had to learn to see and think like the N Vietnamese. When we did, we were quite good. When we did not bother, we paid some terrible prices.
Unfortunately, Tom Glenn's experiences with skeptical/non-believing senior officers of field intelligence was all too common during this period. In late '66 and most of '67 I was with a bilateral (US-ARVN) unit in I Corps. Members of our unit regularly encountered resistance from USMC commands whenever our information indicated increased infiltration of heavily armed North Vietnamese units moving southward.
One of our units, based in Hue, was personally dressed down by the general commanding III MAF, based in Danang, because they had uncovered and were reporting major sections of Route I (Bernard Fall's "Street Without Joy") were insecure due to North Vietnamese ambushes and control of several villages. It seems the general had been repeatedly telling Washington (DOD/JCS) that all major roads in I Corps were secure.
Regarding these missed signals, General Westmoreland's fixation on Khe Sanh because of the White House insistence that another Dien Bien Phu would not be tolerated played a major role in the rejection of intelligence suggesting a different NVN strategy.
Unfortunately, I think we would behave similarly today. As the French say, "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" (the more things change, the more they stay the same).
6
Not surprising. Westmoreland was the worst theatre commander in US military history. Many of his subordinates were no better. For one thing, as the writer notes in describing the Dak To campaign, US Army consistently violated two principles of war, mass and concentration of forces, in sending battalion sized units or smaller into positions where they were vulnerable to larger Viet forces, forces that could only be repulsed with air power, if available. This gave rise to the body count idea of measuring success, which had little to do with the Viet command's ability to continue the war. Ia Drang Valley in late 65 should have taught Westmoreland a lesson, but it didn't.
6
If you go back to the Sioux Wars of the 1870's
the same "lack of" - strategy pre-vailed.
Small units sent out to find and destroy an enemy who knew
the territory better than the US Army.
3
The South Vietnamese believed that The US governments knew in advance of the big offensive by Vietcong in early days of 1968. During the first 3 days of the offensive US troops remained in their camps. This was to draw more of VC out in order to eliminate them for good. We succeeded beyond expectation, with more than 70,000 killed. After Tet, Saigon was and remained peaceful until the end of the war.
2
I have twice served, briefly, as intelligence officer, once for a Marine Amphibious Unit during the Vietnamese evacuations. This is an excellent essay.
I will add to the comments on the Fall of Saigon. Ambassador Martin, one of the biggest piles of offal in the American government, did much worse than Glenn describes. Martin wired President Ford that it was the unanimous strong opinion of all his senior staff that there would be no battle for Saigon for months. As pointed out on the excellent PBS series, this was a complete lie. Martin did not merely not call for evacuation, he forbade even contingency plans for evacuation
and enforced that order. Ordered to burn US Currency kept at the Embassy (a
similar sum would have been re-issued), Martin as a "matter of pride" he put it on the evacuation flights instead of South Vietnamese. And at the end, he ordered the longtime wife and the children of a Marine Corps Gunny who worked at the Embassy removed from the flight they had boarded to be replaced by AMBASSADOR MARTIN'S DOGS!
A young Marine private ordered to walk those dogs aboard the aircraft carrier refused. Martin demanded that the Commanding General court martial the private. The CG acted immediately, meritoriously promoting the private.
12
How in the world did Ambassador Martin get his position ?
Is is as if a New York Used Auto Salesman became President ?
How, How was it possible...
3
My father was an intelligence officer in the Air Force who retired with the rank of colonel and went to work for the NSA in the mid-nineteen sixties. His experiences mirrored that of this author.
The intelligence is almost always there, but if it doesn't conform to the wishful thinking of those in charge, it is not acted upon and American servicepeople die for no good reason.
It happened before 9/11, when indicators of upcoming terrorist activity within the US were ignored; it happened with the invasion of Iraq, when (As proved by the Downing Street Memo.) our intelligence was tailored to fit the objectives of Dubya's administration; it's happening now with man-made climate change.
Our leaders clearly have problems. That we elect them shows that we do as well.
11
Do remember that all this happened in ancient times, two generations ago. This is the 21st Century and all is well. The Iraqis welcomed us with flowers as we seized their enormous stocks of chemical and biological weapons and barely stopped them from deploying atomic bombs. And now we are lead by President Trump, who frequently told us that he's smarter than all the generals and who is
quick to suppress or rebut intelligence findings he does not like.
Rest peacefully, America.
11
An enthralling but sad story. It reminds me of that old line about how the dictionary lists three types of intelligence -- animal, human and military.
I hope the deaf generals paid a price.
For other readers, I hope you have noticed that all the enemy units were "North Vietnamese." Back then, the anti-war movement assured us that the North Vietnamese role was minimal -- the fighting was being done by the Viet Cong ("communist Viets"). We now know that the North was in charge all along and did most of the fighting.
But since the anti-war movement was convinced that the war was wrong, it considered that the truth was optional.
3
MI used to say “military intelligence is an oxymoron.”.
I was flying out of Tan Son Nhut at the time of Tet and before. There were regular comments in daily intelligence concerning the possibility of an attack around Tet. The surprise was not that there was an attack, it was that the main enemy actions were in the cities by the Viet Cong and not in the countryside.
1
Mr. Chang's experience confirms that of other "grunts," field level personnel, in that period of time.
I arrived in Vietnam in early April, 1969, over a year after Tet and 10 months after the May offensive. Yet the body knowledge of the Tet era still permeated my battalion. In the 14 months I was in country my battalion commander and his officers relied on the intelligence of Echo Recon platoons and LRRP (long range reconnaissance patrol) units in designing infantry company patrols.
Highly effective echo company recon units employed by the 199th infantry brigade had warned brigade senior officers of enemy buildup before Tet. Regardless of what MACV believed, 199th commanders took their intelligence seriously. When the 274th and 275th VC Regiments began staging for an attack on Ho Nai, Bien Hoa and Long Binh they were caught by elements of the 199th, inflicting heavy casualties on all enemy units.
The writer Upton Sinclair is quoted as having observed of human nature, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." That psychological trait permeates much that we do as individuals. The more ideological we are, the more our ambition and motivation have been awarded by other, similar thinking individuals, the more likely we will fall prey to our "beliefs,' however ill informed and misguided.
A case in point: the drive to war in Iraq. A current example: this administration's obsessions with N Korea and Iran.
8
JFM,
What would do or not do about North Korea ?
I was stationed at Chu Lai in I Corps at the time of the Tet offensive. I recall that for several weeks before the attacks commenced, rumors along the lines of 'something big is going to happen' had been rife. However, as events played out, Chu Lai turned out to be one of the (relatively) safer places to be during the offensive.
Two points:
1. Some people, including generals, have open minds and are willing to reexamine previously held beliefs when new information becomes available. Most don't.
2. The war was lost because a Communist victory never represented a serious threat to the US and, therefore, was fought (thankfully) without full mobilization and maximum application of American military power. In the end the US let go because further conflict was simply not worth the destruction being caused and suffered, at home and abroad. Whether "dominos" fell or not was largely an irrelevancy to national security.
2
The Tet offensive was indeed a turning point but I doubt that the results either of that offensive or the war itself would have been different if the Generals in the room had listened to the undercover intelligence. The North was going to undertake a broad offensive in hopes of a general civilian uprising and would have carried through with one sooner or later. If the intelligence about the offensive had been believed, it might have resulted in fewer American casualties and more Vietnamese casualties but this battle was won by the US anyway.
The war's end was decided from the very start: a people who had fought against the Chinese and then the French were willing to fight against the Americans to assert their dignity and independence. The war might have been averted if the US had made a good faith effort to bring the North to view the capitalist state as preferable to a communist state without impugning North's claim for independence and dignity which it never did.
3
All this talk about Vietnamese Independence belies the simple truth that
Vietnam was rarely a united country and that the majority of the Vietnamese never asked to be ruled by fanatical communists such as Le Duan who willingly sacrificed the youth of North Vietnam for his continual military defeats, only to be followed by collectivist policies that lead to starvation.
The French never should have colonised Indochina, but North Vietnam never should have waged war on the South.
1
A few facts
Many of the people who fought the French were liquidated by Ho Ch Minh -- with the cooperation of the French.
Ho snuffed out non-communist freedom fighters.
Remember that up to 10 or 12 million Vietnamese fled the North. Most were Catholics. How many Vietnamese farmers and peasants who stayed behind were murdered?
The US did not invade the North. NVN invaded the South.
Ho Chi Minh was a hard-line communist. It is a fantasy that he might have been converted to capitalism.
1
I was in the same place at the same time and in the same business (135th M.I. Group-counterintelligence). His recollections are interesting, but I'm curious as to why it was necessary that he be 'undercover' inasmuch as his trade was of a technical nature instead of collection or counterintelligence.
4
Interesting but not educational. History is filled with such after the fact analysis. The future will be filled with other actions that will generate similar after the fact analysis. The truth is that War is complicated and so called lessons learned are never applicable to what appears to be a similar situation, but in reality, is not.
8
Your comment seems reductive, unnecessarily pessimistic, and wrong. While the specific factors of any engagement can differ, knowledge of those differences and engagements can and will give valuable insights into future actions.
2
This comment reminds of the Ron Suskind's description of Karl Rove's dismissal of "reality based" intelligence analyses of the situation in Iraq both before and following the occupation of Baghdad and the fall of Saddam.
To lose a war because you are overwhelmed by the military might and superior strategic thinking of your opponent is one thing. To lose it because of the obtuse attitudes and tactical blindness of your own leadership--military and political--is quite another.
I'd recommend Mark Bowden's "Hue" to WSF, but since all things are equal and "War is complicated" (no fooling) and there's no point in learning lessons because "they're never applicable to what appears to be a similar situation but in reality, is not," I'd be shouting down the same empty hallway as the reality based author of this article, who is not arguing from hindsight but from actual on-the-ground experience.
In the meantime, perhaps WSJ could point out the essential differences between Dien Bien Phu and Khe Sanh, both tactical and strategic. Yes, Khe Sanh was relieved (it had to be) and not overwhelmed. It just had to be abandoned before it was overwhelmed. If that constitute's victory in WSJ's mind, that explains a lot.
2
I was an infantry officer, not a "high ranking intelligence analyst" as the author says he was, but I did know even then that the whole stupid situation was murky at best. Senior officials, to the very end, looked for or created "evidence" that their strategy was working (ask anyone who was there how "body counts" were determined). This sounds a lot like a Monday Morning Quarterback loudly proclaiming "See how Smart I Am!!!"
1
The writer - and his fellow intelligence personnel - must have lived through years of intense frustration, sitting on their knowledge of officers' refusal to heed warnings.
There was never any question that Cassandra was cursed: treated as if she were crazy, a liar; held captive by her own father, raped, destroyed - - all to keep the bad news at bay.
6
I was a low level soldier with an Army Security Agency Unit monitoring the Indochinese militaries and insurgents (Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia) in 1959 & 60. France’s experiences at Dien Bien Phu and the Indochinese people’s resolve to rule themselves created situations that made them unbeatable, regardless of how many people were lost in a war. It was pretty obvious back the that the Vietnam war should never had started. However at this time promotion opportunities were very limited in the US military until a military action and manpower increase occurred. Career opportunities combined with opportunities to expand military/industrial relations and economy trumped reasonable advice and common sense.
31
It was to keep the good news at bay - out of the hands of Americans, that we could not possibly beat these people in 100 years.
Thanks, Glenn Eisen, for exposing a big part of Ken Burn's financial-gain based narrative. Burns is selling the Vietnam atrocity in the guise of noble war led by honorable men with good intentions. In reality the perps did it for money -- the politicians, the top brass and the likes of LBJ's funder Root and Brown which became Cheney's Halliburton. Ultimately the unholy threesome ignores the horror of the wars they perpetuate. For them, as well as in large part media like the NYT's "Vietnam 67" wars are just too profitable.
It seems that some generals were not good at evaluating warnings about the enemy, but were very good at covering their behinds. When a military strategy at the highest levels is based on political considerations rather than the facts on the ground, covering the things up that need to be covered up will be the order of the day and ability in this area will be the grounds for promotion. And officers will wonder why some of them are fragged while they occupy themselves with minimizing morale problems.
17
No one was forced to atone for the blood on their hands. No one. Nixon was proven a traitor by notes discovered late last year. Johnson was overwhelmed by events, and never emerged.
And so, so many dead. No one went to jail. No one.
40
Jack Walsh, and while the US set up and ran war crimes tribunals in Germany and Japan, this same US won't countenance such tribunals for actions in Vietnam or Iraq. So much for the rule of law. *That* ends at our borders when the obvious outcome will run counter to the public relations and propaganda rivers that flood the airwaves, the print, and internet media in the US.
Anybody who challenges these floods will be labeled unpatriotic.
1
Those notes do not prove Nixon a traitor.
Do you really think the North Vietnamese would have signed a truce
sometime in 1968/1969 before Nixon became President ?
"American military forces were drawn to the region for two reasons. First, it’s where the enemy was..."
What sort of a war being waged to defend a nation requires going in search of the enemy? People out to get you generally make themselves available.
America lost in Vietnam. Lost decisively. We lost a major WAR. And what did it cost us to lose? One fights a war because you're backed into a corner and you have no choice left but to fight. A nation fights a war so it won't be taken over, pillaged, enslaved, its people murdered. Losing is a total disaster. At least, that's the theory.
The cost to America of losing the Vietnam war was that the immense costs of the war, and the division and discord it sowed among our people, and the endless deaths, and the distraction the war interposed from the work of making our country "great again" were all lifted from our shoulders. Losing the war was the nation's gain.
Vietnam was a bad war. Not a bad decision, or a string of bad decisions. Not a cohort of bad generals (I have yet to learn the name of a good general), or bad civilian leaders. A. Bad. War.
Let it go.
4
Major misconceptions may have been made by our leaders in getting us into the Vietnam War, but by your premise why did we need to fight the Revolutionary War since we were not backed into a corner and 1/3 to 1/2 of the colonists were loyalists to the British Crown!
2
America did not lose the war in Vietnam.
Had North Vietnam respected the Peace Treaty
South Vietnam would not have been defeated.
1
Looking for the name of a good general? General Creighton Abrams is my nomination. Did what Westmoreland should have done from the beginning but never figured it out..
Thank you for this valuable lesson of history.
9
I am only 38 y/o, but have a deep appreciation & curiosity about the many conflicts that our country has been involved in. Time & time again I find myself in awe over what the marines & soldiers on the ground went through in such times of crisis, Ex; Vietnam. One thing that strikes me over & over is the level of integrity & professionalism the average everyday grunt shows while sacrificing so much.
Yet I am always shocked at the apparent incompetence the leaders of our country demonstrate. Say what you will about the gulf of Tonkin incident, but its hard to argue that the powers that be did not lie to start the war, & continue to lie throughout the entire conflict, either outright, or to cover other lies, or lies by omission. All just to save face in vain attempts at swaying the public to do what was only in the best interest of the powers that be.
In the end it was never those in power who bled or died.
Stories like this one are just more examples of the pure incompetency & arrogance of our command structure (a problem that exists to this day & in the war on terror).
As if combat was not hard enough, for our troops to have to deal w/ the enemy on top of a command structure that would rather send them in harms way than to lose face just highlights the bravery, professionalism, & all around heroism our troops achieve daily. My hats off for those on the ground, in the line of fire, that make the best of such impossible situations & persevere regardless
23
Obama tried to reverse the way we look at endless wars and refused to be goaded into sending more troops to be bled to death. We don't win those kinds of wars because we care about the number of casualties. But at every turn, he was labeled a coward and soft on Communism, ISIS, whatever. He had to pull us out to give us time to begin to pay off the debt of 2008 and bury the current dead. And now, America is once again ready to enter the endless fray, actually begging for it, as it has for every generation since 1776.
1
you should watch 'MASH' or read 'Catch 22'
The U.S. Army and Marine troops on the ground in Vietnam fought well, even though most of them certainly were not there by choice. The problem was the arrogance and stupidity of the generals, which was just as bad as that of the British and French high-ranking officers who caused a bloodbath in World War I.
As this excellent op-ed column by Tom Glenn points out, General William Westmoreland was particularly bull-headed and dense. He mirrored the same kind of smug arrogance as that displayed by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.
Fourteen years before the Tet Offensive, President Eisenhower had allowed the Dulles brothers and the French government to con him into a limited involvement in a very unnecessary war. From Tet in 1968 onward, the American leadership was not only inept, it became immoral.
With phony body counts issued by the brass to keep the politicians happy and the folks back home believing in progress, the war hit a downward moral spiral to gratuitous carpet bombing and Agent Orange. Many lives were lost unnecessarily to avoid admitting to American voters that a great error in judgment had been made.
53
Where and when did the US "Carpet Bomb" in the Vietnam War ?
Westmoreland used the only tool available to him: firepower
It is the American style of war, and it was not sufficient.
Cassandra,
http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/operation-rolling-thunder
From the article linked above, "... the North Vietnamese shot down hundreds of American planes over the course of the bombing campaign. As a result, pilots and aircraft weapon systems operators accounted for the majority of the American prisoners of war who were captured and held by North Vietnam."
1
This suggests an organisational flaw in how intelligence was embedded in the armed forces during Vietnam. If for example intelligence comes from the outside of the structure of decision making, in a kind of pre-packaged product, there can be no advocacy for taking it seriously; especially if the decision making people are disinclined to believe the intelligence "product" or are adverse to what they should do were they to believe it.
The Germans had a cultural problem with intelligence during world war 2 where they placed undue emphasis on the Will of the fighting man and their ability in Battle. They did not want to hear anything that would discourage them. This described American problem was probably not of this sort as it would have occurred in Korea and other places too were it a cultural phenomenon.
3
The author of this piece lays out what has become a costly cliche played out over and over again in the course of America's discretionary wars. Evidence is collected, analysed, found to be credible and presented to the "adults in the room". If such evidence fails to immediately confirm the adults' existing biases and/or prejudices it is rejected out of hand; seemingly with little thought that their conventional "wisdom" could, just possibly, lead them astray. The three so called adults in the oval office have collected, among them, eleven stars. I fear such a collection of star studded biases and prejudices disguised as mature wisdom will lead America into its very own 21st Century Tet.
73
Kelly the most recent general to ignore the evidence.
1
Aka; North Korea....?
Overly simplistic, Dudette. Intel is usually pointing several directions at once. The decider has to pick a lane and drive in it. Even a reasonable decider sometimes picks the wrong lane. You can go all the way back to the Greeks and see it. Hubris (so Greek!) plays a large part also. That said, Westmoreland was a poor decider and I agree with you to this extent: our current Big Decider has worse problems than most -- judgment, temperament, experience, . He shouldn't have made it to the ranks of deciders.
1
SEE: "The day it became the longest war"--LtGen Charles G Cooper, USMC
http://thebutter-cutter.com/First_Day_Of_The_Longest_W_.php
5
Some context might help explain the military's failure to grasp the significance of the intelligence provided by Glenn and others. A frustrated President Johnson had just brought General Westmoreland home to help sell the war to an increasingly skeptical public. The brass assured Americans that the Vietcong were nearing the end of their insurgency, that our strategy was succeeding.
For Westmoreland to admit at this stage that North Vietnam retained the ability to launch a major offensive throughout the South would have required him to admit the false premises on which the official narrative depended. It seems quite plausible that the general misled himself as well as the American people, that he believed his own propaganda. Glenn and his colleagues represented a refutation of everything Westmoreland had told the president and the country.
Of course, the American military authorities were not the only ones to misread the true situation in South Vietnam. The leaders in Hanoi expected that a massive uprising in the South would ensure the success of the Test offensive. The failure of that revolt to materialize contributed to the costly defeat of the North's gambit.
The leadership on both sides refused to heed advice they didn't want to hear, and thousands of people paid with their lives for that folly.
40
The "need" to convince the public - or present a desired image is on a different level than the obligation to review intelligence with a cold eye and plan military responses accordingly. I have no patience with self imposed blindness floated as a reason for misreading so much of the Vietnam morass. God help anyone who believes his own propaganda - but keep him out of power.
19
The people managing Westmoreland's home tour believed the bicoastalism myth, "Flyover country supports us," but just to be safe they scheduled him to speak someplace safe, Mississippi State. A kid came after him with a bazooka borrowed from the campus ROTC, and he fled, humiliated.
Bicoastalism turned out to be silly: Universities of North Carolina and Iowa blew up that week.
What I learned in Vietnam was that the ground pounders were little more than canon fodder for that arrogant and stupid generals whose career ambitions outweighed all. The bitterness has all been rekindled by the stumbling, bumbling Middle Eastern adventure in which we are now engaged. The same blind glorification of militarism informs the country today after fifteen futile years in Afghanistan.
94
I do not remember who said that the wars should not be left to the generals. The militaries are about the same everywhere, arrogant and they think they are the last Coca-Cola of the desert. Knows all.
The Tet Offensive ranks as the no.1 annihilation of a military force by another. After the initial successful attacks, the Viet Cong came out into the open where US fire power was overwhelming and the annihilation occurred resulting in the fact that the Viet Cong ceased to exist after the 'Tet Offensive'. and the North Vietnamese took horrific losses. Military history books give it as the no. 1 lop sides battle example ever where one side was decimated, yet most folks still think the US forces lost. It was the start of the left wing fake news by the main stream media. Don't believe it? Do your own research and you will be shocked!!!!
6
The writer argues that in fact the US forces won in Viet Nam. The Viet Cong gambled that their entry into the open after the Set offensive would bring about a civilian uprising. The VC lost that gamble but won the war. In a similar manner, the revolutionary troops lost a great deal but won with the reinforcement and support of the French and others.
Wars are not won or lost by the battles; wars are decided by the final, cumulative effects of all of the forces that come into play.
35
James is correct that the Tet Offensive was an American military victory. Le Duan was wrong in his belief that the South would "rise up" in support of the NVA. Giap, the North's best military mind, argued against the offensive. However, it is a mistake to see Tet in a vacuum. For months the US government had been telling the American public that the NVA/VietCong were a spent force and unable to launch any significant offensive. To quote another Secretary of Defense of another war, they were "just a few 'dead enders' hanging on". It was a huge shock to not only the US military but also to the American public. The political tide forever shifted against the war after Tet. For the North it was a military defeat but a huge political victory.
38
The North Vietnamese were never going to stop trying to liberate the South from foreign domination. As long as the South Vietnamese government was not able to inspire similar loyalty and resist the North on its own, and oppose a powerful nationalist capitalist vision to the North's nationalist socialist vision, the war would go on and the North would have the advantage.
The South Vietnamese were unable to create such a government, even with our help and support. Some South Vietnamese caught the dream of democracy and free enterprise, but most remained mired in the swamp of nepotism, corruption, power politics, and diverting money from the wealthy and well-financed American war effort into their own pockets. North Vietnam was able to control its corruption problems.
Without such a government, we (and the North) would be the only effective fighting forces in Vietnam. Any large effective, motivated South Vietnamese military unit would pose a coup danger for the government, so such units would be kept small and most senior ARVN positions would be filled by corrupt officers whose corruption guaranteed their loyalty to their corrupt leaders. So we would do most of the heavy fighting while the South Vietnamese units would reach a live-and-let-live with their enemies, a tacit truce that the North would break at will.
In spite of our battlefield victories, this was a no-win situation for us; we could only not lose and pay. So we wised up and left after 60000 dead.
2
Thank you Tom Glenn. There is an innate human tendency to incorporate new information that agrees with your position and to disregard information that conflicts with your position. This was a serious problem in the Johnson/MacNamara war effort. The best leaders understand how this can be a problem. An excellent article.
21
This article is well done. Thanks. The same could be done for too many other incidents.
There was a refusal to believe the initial attack in Korea was coming. There was MacArthur's refusal to believe the Chinese intervention was coming. Between them, we lost Korea twice to the same mistake. This is notable because we are playing at certainty in Korea again.
There was Gen. MacArthur's loss of his air forces in the Philippines in the first days of the war. Worse, he put the land forces into hopeless positions, based on make believe evaluations of their ability and Japanese ability. We sincerely believed nonsense about Japanese inability much as we do about China today.
Refusal to believe in the possibility of enemy actions we'd actually practiced ourselves also explains the Pearl Harbor disaster. The background to the Battle of the Bulge is not much better, at the other end of WW2.
Roberta Wohlstetter wrote about this as the problem of seeing signal in the noise, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision, 1962. That seems more like elaborate excuses, much as would be made for the Army in response to the concerns highlighted in this column. There are always excuses, and it keeps happening.
36
Sadly most of those who become Generals have learned to play it safe.
To stick you head out against the prevailing winds only leads to
no promotions and/or a shortened career.
Lieutenant General Frederick Weyand, the American commander for III Corps, paid much more attention to intelligence warnings about the Tet Offensive than Westmoreland did. The Viet Cong attacks on Saigon would have been much more successful than they were if Weyand has not been shifting troops, in the days befre the offensive, to deal with the threat.
30
But how could that be? According to several commenters here today, all generals are bad!
1
The number of mistakes made in Vietnam that young Americans and South Vietnamese paid for with their lives, their limbs or their sanity is something that I don't think Americans will forget, at least not while those who were alive during that war are still with us. The biggest U.S. mistake was going there. 61,000 Americans who would be with us today. 61,000 families that would not have been destroyed.
47
Olivia,
The figure of US Vietnam veterans who have committed suicide back home since the war is up in the 200,000 range already. Way more than 61,000 families have been destroyed by the slow grind of mental anguish these "boys" have endured in the decades since 1975.
1
Lennerd, good point. How many Vietnam veterans have been lost to drug and alcohol addiction? Approximately 100,000. How many are homeless? Approximately 40,000. How many have been imprisoned? The numbers vary in the 10's of thousands.
1
And what of all the youth of North Vietnam that Le Duan ordered to
their deaths ?
The true blame of the Vietnam war lies on the shoulders of the
North Vietnamese Dictatorship that was willing to throw away
the lives of both the North and South Vietnamese while falsely
claiming to want to liberate all of Vietnam.
Thank you Mr. Glenn. I was in the service at that time and had my antennae out. I never could understand how the US command could have discounted and ignored the signs ... I ended up in the burn ward at Ft. Sam Houston just in time to hear stories from my fellow patients of what had actually gone down. The military establishment had lied so much to the civilian government, to the President, to the American people, and in the end it lied to itself.
No one would stand up and tell the truth.
63
In light of what you write, when did the US military "learn" the "lessons" of Vietnam. George H. W. Bush proclaimed in the 1991 Gulf War that the "ghosts of Vietnam" had been laid to rest. I took that statement that we now had "won" a war.
There is very little evidence that the culture of the Pentagon has moved so much as a millimeter since Vietnam in the direction of listening to its own intel and the grunts on the ground, girbs. Where the Pentagon actually has "gone" is to massively increase its public relations, Congressional relations, and public propaganda capabilities, controlling the message with "embedded" reporters instead of, as in Vietnam, uncontrolled "free press" agents running around digging up stuff. (If an embedded reporter gets info out that the Pentagon doesn't like, how long will that person stay "embedded?"
1
I was in Korea when the Tet offensive began. The Koreans were astounded that the Americans had been caught flat-footed.
16