One of the untold stories of the Vietnam era, a tale that lies
at the very heart of the nexus of Washington's war decisions and
its appreciations of that conflict, is how America's own diplomatic
intelligence service contributed to United States understanding
of affairs in Vietnam and their likely consequences. This is a story
of steady efforts to piece together a wide range of unknowns into
a coherent vision of how things appeared to Hanoi and its allies
and what those parties would do about Vietnam themselves. It is
an account of sometimes breathtaking, sometimes frustrating efforts
to speak truth to power in a situation of primary importance to
the United States, its leaders, and its people.
Decisions on U.S. intervention in South Vietnam, on bombing campaigns
against North Vietnam, on policies with respect to adjoining nations
such as Laos and Cambodia, on troop levels and strategies, all hinged
on appreciations of consequences as well as likely responses from
the nations ranged alongside America's adversaries in the war. Most
key events of the conflict have an intelligence subtext to them,
and these aspects are among the least-known of that tragic history.
During the Vietnam War intelligence remained a constant headache.
Through much of the conflict there were uncertainties regarding
progress in the war, the degree of support for the side the U.S.
had elected to help, the reliability of reporting from American
commanders as well as civilian officials in the field, the aid which
adversaries were receiving from their allies, and the intentions
as well as capabilities of the nations assisting American opponents.
Sorting through the formerly classified records of the Vietnam War
furnishes glimpses of the intelligence story, but even today that
record is barely beginning to come into focus.
Intelligence is the arm of government that has the task of informing
policymakers. In the United States, when asked about intelligence
people usually think of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the
independent agency that works in this field. Those more knowledgeable
of activities in this area might name also the Defense Intelligence
Agency (DIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) or the National
Reconnaissance Office (NRO) or their component units. In fact there
is an entire constellation of entities, including staffs within
many government agencies, that together comprise what is termed
the intelligence community. Most of the intelligence history of
Vietnam that has been told concerns those high visibility agencies
such as the CIA. That is important history but it is far from the
whole story.
A small but nonetheless quite important member of the community
is the intelligence arm of the Department of State. These cousins
of the big agencies participated in all the debates and controversies
that beset the community as a whole and made their own contributions
besides. The Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), as the cousins
were known, amounted to a small-scale version of the CIA's Directorate
of Intelligence. Their story furnishes a window into the intelligence
history of Vietnam never before opened, and also provides new insights
into U.S. policy in Southeast Asia during the period of the war.
In 1971 there was a leak of a massive Department of Defense study
of the origins and conduct of the Vietnam War that became known
as the Pentagon Papers. This study surveyed the inner workings and
content of U.S. strategy and decisionmaking for Vietnam. Commissioned
in 1967 by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, the Pentagon
Papers opened many eyes when they first appeared, for they constituted
an authoritative account of U.S. actions in Vietnam which relied
upon and even reprinted many of the documents used in compiling
the study. It turns out there was an equivalent study done within
the State Department of the role of INR in the war. In the 1990s
Dr. Edwin Moise of Clemson University and the National Security
Archive separately learned of this State Department study and requested
its declassification under the Freedom of Information Act. An initial
version, with a certain number of deletions by government censors,
became available in 2003. That document forms the content of the
present work. This paper introduces that material.
The State Department study was commissioned in 1968 by Thomas L.
Hughes, then director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
Titled "A Review of Judgments in INR Reports," the study
was completed early in 1969 and has remained unknown until this
day. It consists of a substantial paper that summarizes State Department
views on various intelligence subjects through the 1960s, an annex
that presents excerpts or the entire contents of documents that
are referred to in the paper, a set of thematic summaries on certain
subjects of special interest, a critique of the INR analysis, and
a set of special annexes as authorized by the director of INR. Written
by W. Dean Howells and Dorothy R. Avery, both of whom had worked
for INR on Southeast Asia, the main paper and thematic summaries
present a comprehensive overview of State Department's positions
on the key intelligence questions of the era. Fred Greene, who headed
INR's office for Far East research from 1966 to 1968, contributed
the interpretative critique. The study essentially covers the period
of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
In a way typical of internal analyses, the INR Study (as we shall
call it here) focuses on the exact substance of various reports
by the State Department intelligence bureau. It is devoid of context,
whether of larger aspects of the intelligence debates with which
it deals, or of the nature of work at INR, the way that organization
functioned, its own responsibilities and problems, and so forth.
Similarly the document says nothing about where the INR analyses
came from, what they were supposed to accomplish, or what other
business had been on the unit's plate in addition to this high level
reporting on Vietnam. These gaps are worth filling.
In addition the INR Study, like the Pentagon Papers, was produced
at a moment in the conflict, a moment near its most intense point.
Thus its conclusions are inevitably colored by views and positions
of individuals still laboring in the midst of war. A more reflective,
retrospective assessment is possible today when positions and careers
are no longer on the line in this analysis. For example, the Thematic
Critique in the INR Study is written as if the purported second
(August 4, 1964) incident in the Tonkin Gulf had actually taken
place. This claim, already in doubt when the INR Study was compiled,
was accepted by the author of this portion of the report. Today
it is known that reports of a second incident were false. There
are a number of points in the INR Study at which later knowledge
sheds important light on the wartime work of the State Department
analysts. This too is vital in understanding the INR contribution
during the Vietnam War.
The remainder of this essay will supply the context necessary for
a full appreciation of the INR Study and of the State Department
intelligence unit's role in the Vietnam War. Among the subjects
to be dealt with will be the character of the Bureau of Intelligence
and Research, how it changed over time, the work of analysts, its
importance within the State Department and to senior U.S. diplomats,
and so on. Also necessary is to set the interagency context: INR's
relationship with the CIA, with the national security bureaucracy,
and with U.S. officials in South Vietnam. Much of the INR Study
concerns itself with disputes on key issues in Vietnam intelligence
estimates, making it important to understand what function the Bureau
had in the estimating process and how this was reflected in the
resulting reports. On the issues themselves the long view of history
helps us understand the value of INR's work during the Vietnam conflict.
With staff and budgets dwarfed by that of the CIA, even moreso its
sister agencies, INR contributed far more in proportion to its weight
than most others; INR truly proved to be the mouse that roared.
INTO
THE FRAY
World War II created the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. In
fact it was the Bureau, not the CIA, that would be the lineal descendent
of the Research & Analysis division of the famous wartime Office
of Strategic Services (OSS). When President Harry Truman abolished
the OSS in September 1945, the Research & Analysis unit went
to the State Department, where it became the foundation for an intelligence
analytical capability American diplomats have had ever since. In
the calm after the war, and with the much diminished prestige of
Research & Analysis (R&A) in its State guise, many of the
wartime staff drifted off to other occupations. Across the street
in Foggy Bottom, later across the river at Langley, the CIA replicated
the capabilities of Research & Analysis, including using some
of the same people. Too fine a point ought not to be put on the
R&A claim to longevity, but the fact is that, with various name
changes and standing with secretaries of state, the Bureau has existed
for nearly six decades, longer than the CIA.
As the Office of Intelligence Research in the 1950s, the Bureau
had an active part in the big intelligence disputes of the age,
including the Bomber Gap and Missile Gap episodes, in which it took
a less pessimistic view than the U.S. military or the CIA. State
Department intelligence helped to hold the projections made by the
military services within some sort of bounds. There was a modicum
of agreement between State intelligence and the CIA, enough to induce
the agency to farm out some necessary work to the Bureau. One of
the CIA's responsibilities was to produce the "National Intelligence
Survey," a massive compendium of basic data about foreign countries,
everything from the capacity of ports to the current price of a
pound of rice. The agency gave this work to State, and by 1960,
veterans recall, the survey project was paying the salaries of about
half the people at the Bureau, which the Department around this
time elevated from the status of a mere "office."
When President John F. Kennedy entered office his fresh wave of
political appointees included a new director for the Bureau of Intelligence
and Research (INR), Roger A. Hilsman, who had previously held senior
roles at the Legislative Reference Service (the predecessor of the
Congressional Research Service). Hilsman wanted to make INR relevant
to policymakers, he initiated a series of changes that greatly altered
its profile both at State and within the U.S. government. The intelligence
survey was cast off as tangential to INR's mission of supporting
the secretary. Hilsman accepted the loss of money and staff that
went with the evaporation of CIA money, but he re-oriented INR.
President Kennedy liked to reach down into the bureaucracy for advice
on all sorts of subjects, and Hilsman had Kennedy connections from
Capitol Hill days. Hilsman became one of the people Kennedy relied
upon, in particular on intelligence. He would answer any Kennedy
question; colleagues believe he did not necessarily keep Secretary
of State Dean Rusk appraised of all these contacts. The INR director
also had another route to Kennedy through the National Security
Council staff person on Southeast Asia, Michael Forrestal, with
whom he had worked during the Kennedy campaign. Hilsman's perch
between Kennedy and Rusk frequently put him in a somewhat ambiguous
position.
When the Cuban Missile Crisis came in 1962 Hilsman played an important
role in coordinating intelligence and attended meetings of Kennedy's
exclusive EXCOM (Executive Committee of the National Security Council).
Years later he regularly wore the tie clasp the president had given
to associates, even while teaching classes at Columbia University.
Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research Hilsman
was a World War II veteran of Burma (now Myanmar), where he had
worked alongside OSS, which in that country organized anti-Japanese
partisan groups from indigenous tribespeople. Hilsman came away
with an appreciation for unconventional warfare techniques with
fit well with President Kennedy's focus on counterinsurgency. At
the outset of the administration he edited a monograph on guerrilla
warfare that was published first as a pamphlet by the Army and later,
in slightly changed form, as a book. Hilsman's approach emphasized
popular mobilization in support of the counterinsurgent side, and
in the case of the Saigon government led by Ngo Dinh Diem, it was
easy to see that mobilization was not taking place. Attuned to the
subject, Roger Hilsman kept a weather eye on issues of Vietnam intelligence
and had enough knowledge to spot questionable assertions and ask
for INR analyses.
The Bureau's views on Vietnam emerged in the INR reporting, which
under Roger Hilsman assumed the form it would take throughout the
war era. There were four essential categories of contributions by
State's intelligence analysts. The first would be the Bureau's efforts
to inform the secretary. Hilsman and his successors would brief
the secretary of state early each morning, then present the intelligence
briefing at meetings of the senior leadership. For this INR crafted
paragraph-long reports that were used either as talking points for
the meetings or items to hand out. More extensive treatments were
possible in Intelligence Notes, the second category of INR product,
which were page-and-a-half to two-page memoranda that presented
the Bureau's impression of breaking developments. Both of these
categories centered on current intelligence. Detailed and increasingly
probing analyses were in longer papers that could be requested by
senior officials, commissioned by the INR director, or initiated
by the Bureau's regional offices. That constituted the third element
in the INR effort. The last contribution was the Bureau's effort
in the formulation of the National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs)
and Special National Intelligence Estimates (SNIEs), high level
reports that presented the considered views of the entire U.S. intelligence
community on whatever subject was at issue. The INR Study presented
here primarily surveys the Bureau's efforts in the last two categories
of intelligence, although there are scattered references to the
Intelligence Notes series.
All this material was created by a unit that remained among the
smallest in the U.S. intelligence community, never more than about
350 persons, including its support staff. The Bureau had two major
divisions, one for liaison and the other for actual intelligence
reporting and analysis. The liaison division handled everything
to do with the State Department's interactions with the intelligence
community as a whole, including such issues as helping the secretary
of state define his agency's position on various CIA or military
proposals for covert operations. The research division that produced
the reports that are surveyed here. It was organized along regional
lines with offices like Research Soviet Bloc (RSB) that concentrated
on intelligence regarding the Soviet Union and its satellites.
In fact the contrast between the small size of INR and its considerable
output is even sharper since there were only about a dozen analysts
working the Southeast Asia accounts. During the early period there
was just a single analyst for South Vietnam and one other on the
North. They worked for the Far East division (known as Research
Far East, or RFE, until 1967 and then retitled East Asia, or REA)
which as a whole numbered just twenty-three, "womanpower"
as its then chief describes the staff. Many of the analysts were
women. It was only at the height of the war, in 1968, that the South
Vietnamese account had the attention of as many as four analysts,
with the North Vietnam section grown to two.
The analysts were high-powered people, as a few illustrations will
suggest. Allen S. Whiting headed RFE from 1962 through 1966. A senior
analyst at the RAND Corporation, Whiting was known for his pathbreaking
study of policy and intelligence failures in the Korean War, China
Crosses the Yalu. Roger Hilsman and his deputy, Thomas L. Hughes,
made the conscious decision to enrich INR with outside experts and
recruited Whiting to lead the Far East effort as early as February
1961. The new analyst, however, lacked all the security clearances
necessary to head the division and thus focused simply on the China
issue until the required background checks were completed. A State
Department officer who would be deputy, Bradford Coolidge, acted
as director during the interim. Whiting was confirmed in the position
in early 1962.
Whiting himself recruited Evelyn Colbert to head Southeast Asia
analysis within the office. A prime example of the impact of the
Hilsman reforms, the forty-three year old Colbert was first-generation
U.S. intelligence. She had worked in the famed Research & Analysis
branch of OSS on Japan research under Jane Smith-Hutton who sparkplugged
that effort. Though Colbert stayed with State Department intelligence
through the 1950s, she shifted over to coordinate the National Intelligence
Survey project, working part-time (three days a week) and have time
for her family. When Hilsman let go of the project Colbert left
INR. Whiting brought her back. Evelyn Colbert led the branch, supervising
the reporting and editing the INR reports, until the spring of 1968
when she was promoted to deputy director of the REA division.
Another of the fresh analysts, Dorothy Avery, would become INR's
key analyst on North Vietnam. Avery had earned her masters degree
on the East Asian program at Harvard, then was hired into the CIA's
Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) by Arnold Horelick,
where she focused on propaganda analysis. A China specialist, Avery
came to know Allen Whiting during that time and he brought her into
INR in October 1962, initially in the "Asian Communist"
section of RFE. "Dottie" Avery gradually extended her
expertise to Sino-Vietnamese relations, then to North Vietnam proper,
and was widely recognized for her analysis, ultimately receiving
a medal for outstanding contributions to U.S. intelligence.
Almost the first thing Dorothy Avery did upon arriving at the Bureau
was to participate in something of an INR intelligence coup. In
the fall of 1962 China fought a border war with India at almost
the same time as the Cuban Missile Crisis. The conflict began with
a series of incidents, followed by a stand down, succeeded by a
brief, intense invasion, after which the Chinese halted and ended
the engagement. Whiting's office accurately predicted the initial
clashes, the resumption of hostilities, and where the fighting would
end. When President Kennedy sent a mission headed by Assistant Secretary
of State W. Averell Harriman to South Asia to calm the waters, INR's
performance resulted in temporary duty orders for Whiting, Avery,
and their colleague Rhea Blue, RFE's institutional memory, archivist,
and a Tibet specialist. The INR group embarrassed the U.S. military,
and helped Harriman's mission, because their excellent maps, which
Blue had put together with INR's cartographer, were much better
than anything the military had and formed the basis for policy discussions.
The office's South Vietnam analyst, Louis G. Sarris, followed a
trajectory similar to those of Roger Hilsman and Thomas Hughes-from
Capitol Hill to INR. A doctoral candidate who needed money, Sarris
worked for a senator for a year before learning of a job opening
at the Office of Intelligence Research, INR's predecessor. He went
to the State Department in 1957 to handle Vietnam intelligence,
shortly after Ngo Dinh Diem's only visit to the U.S., when the Saigon
leader had been hailed by the Eisenhower administration. Sarris
replaced Paul Kattenburg, another individual who would later have
an important role in U.S. policy on the war. For thirteen years
Sarris continued to be the lead analyst on South Vietnam.
THE
BUREAU MARCHES INTO VIETNAM
The INR Study makes clear that from the outset of the Kennedy administration
State Department intelligence retained a clear concept of the major
issues in U.S. understanding of events in Vietnam. On the military
side these were the source, nature and extent of National Liberation
Front capabilities, and the nature of the techniques and tactics
necessary to defeat them. On the political side the issue was the
degree to which the Saigon government could inspire support from
Vietnamese villagers. An associated issue which the study notes,
the manner in which the United States could provide aid to Saigon
yet still maintain leverage over the South Vietnamese, appears somewhat
in the early reporting but became a major intelligence issue in
1963. (In fact, the whole question of U.S. leverage remained a central,
and unsolvable, problem during the Vietnam War and seems to have
been confronted insufficiently by both INR and CIA.) In any case
the inventory of problems was the right one and INR would be forthright
in its reporting.
During President Kennedy's first year, INR played a hand in major
policy reviews on Vietnam in the spring and in the fall of 1961,
two key National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs), and preparing a
variety of spot reports. The Bureau continued to maintain that there
were other potential leaders in South Vietnam besides Diem, that
Diem neutralized potential U.S. leverage by arguing his indispensability,
that U.S. problems in South Vietnam were partly the result of Washington's
own aid programs, and that the National Liberation Front's strength
flowed from the villages of South Vietnam, not from any infiltration
of North Vietnamese troops. The latter point flew in the face of
the U.S. military, which insisted on the primacy of North Vietnamese
support to the war in the South, and even of the diplomatic side
of the State Department, which issued a white paper in 1961 on aggression
from the North.
The Bureau also followed proclivities of its director; Hilsman
wanted to act on a stage larger than that provided by intelligence
analysis alone. When the Kennedy administration undertook its fall
1961 policy review, the result of a mission carried out by the president's
special military representative, General Maxwell D. Taylor, and
his deputy national security adviser, Walt W. Rostow, INR was direct
in its critique of their concept: "The basic weakness of the
counterinsurgency plan is the US assumption that the crisis in Vietnam
can be solved virtually by flooding the country with US aid."
President Kennedy's policy directives resulting from the Taylor-Rostow
report had been in place for barely a couple of months when, in
January 1962, he asked Roger Hilsman to visit South Vietnam and
bring back a new view. The INR director saw the counterinsurgency
effort's emphasis on military security as insufficient. Hilsman
was much more receptive to ideas for population resettlement and
control along lines advanced by Robert G. Thompson, a British consultant
to the Diem government, and adopted them as his own. Kennedy asked
Hilsman to prepare a paper showing how this concept could work.
Hilsman, in turn, brought Louis Sarris into the project and they
spent several weeks elaborating the paper, "A Strategic Concept
for South Vietnam." According to Sarris, Hilsman wrote the
first draft, after which the work bounced between the two as Sarris
supplied corrections, alternative language, and insights, and Hilsman
shot back revisions of the text. The Hilsman paper would eventually
be accepted by Kennedy as the basis for U.S. policy, implemented
in South Vietnam as the "strategic hamlet program," and
christened "Operation Sunrise." The South Vietnamese government
exhibited little serious commitment to the initiative, however,
and it ultimately failed. Kennedy sent Hilsman on a follow-up inspection
trip to South Vietnam in January 1963, but nothing done to energize
this effort succeeded in reversing its course.
One of Roger Hilsman's last acts at INR involved the NIE process.
A most notorious NIE of the Vietnam period went through during his
final weeks at the Bureau. This was NIE 53-63, "Prospects in
South Vietnam." The standard procedure of the time was for
a unit run by the Director of Central Intelligence, then John A.
McCone, called the Board of National Estimates, to assign one of
its members to manage the creation of an NIE. The Board's manager
might solicit contributions from member agencies in the intelligence
community, and would use analysts at a subordinate unit, the Office
of National Estimates (ONE), to produce a draft text. These drafts
would come to INR where analysts would comb over them, possibly
preparing alternate views. There would then be one or more coordinating
meetings at CIA in which a Board member would lead a discussion
at which the draft NIE was gone over line by line to craft language
as acceptable as possible to all the participating agencies. In
the case of NIE 53-63, the Board manager at CIA was Willard Matthias
and his chief drafter from ONE was George Carver, who wrote a paper
that was fairly pessimistic about Diem's prospects and pictured
the Soviet Union and China as sympathetic to but not overlords of
Hanoi on its policy towards South Vietnam.
Hilsman went along with INR analysts who objected that the draft
was not pessimistic enough. Draft NIEs at the final stage were reviewed
by the United States Intelligence Board (USIB), the intelligence
community board of directors chaired by McCone; the Board was obliged
to review the draft carefully because of the INR objections. McCone
decided to remand the NIE for a complete rewrite, ordering the drafting
team to interview officials with in-country experience in Vietnam,
primarily the military and CIA operations people, before completing
the paper. The result would be a diametrically opposite view, an
NIE that made only caveats to problems in Vietnam and foresaw great
progress. Events almost immediately revealed the estimate to be
wildly off the mark.
Evelyn Colbert participated in the panels of estimators who interviewed
various officials in the preparation of the revised NIE 53-63. With
Director McCone having planted his feet there was no alternative
to an estimate the analysts considered wrong. Striving to salvage
something from the debacle, Colbert and Carver worked up a paper
on the more general question of intelligence resources on Vietnam
that found huge gaps in collection in all areas and prescribing
corrective actions. McCone agreed to issue the memorandum along
with the revised NIE. The INR Study notes that the Bureau participated
in this initiative and helped monitor its implementation for almost
a year.
That summer a revised estimate was issued that painted a much gloomier
picture-and it used verbatim lengthy passages from INR's more cautionary
reports.
In the spring of 1963 President Kennedy appointed Roger Hilsman
to Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. Hilsman's
successor as INR director was his former deputy, Thomas L. Hughes.
Like Hilsman, Hughes had excellent contacts on Capitol Hill. He
had been legislative counsel to his homestate senator, Hubert H.
Humphrey, from 1955 to 1958 and had then worked with Chester Bowles,
in Congress at that time but later a senior State Department official.
A skilled raconteur, Rhodes Scholar, and sharp editor, Hughes was
also a ready listener and willing to stick to his guns when necessary,
a good combination for the Bureau. He brought in George C. Denny
as the new deputy, a fellow with good links to the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, enabling INR to pass messages to its redoubtable
chairman, J. William Fulbright, when that became necessary.
As assistant secretary, Hilsman continued to have problems with
the military reporting from South Vietnam. He felt the military
were claiming progress where there was none, and using claims of
infiltration of troops from North Vietnam to explain away the continued
resilience of the National Liberation Front. His action may also
have been a counterattack after NIE 53-63. Hilsman's concerns led
to one of the most celebrated INR efforts of the period, when he
called in Hughes and asked the Bureau chief to have Louis Sarris
compile a report on statistics from South Vietnam. By this time
the Diem government was in great difficulty, propelled by its hamfisted
attempt to repress South Vietnam's Buddhist religious majority,
which greatly concerned INR analysts. The Bureau had been doing
serious analysis of the Buddhist crisis since June, a month after
the onset of the crisis, when Diem conducted some sham negotiations
with religious leaders. Sarris took U.S. military reports from South
Vietnam before and after the crisis. Using the military's own data
he found adverse trends in the war situation that were simply not
reflected in the steady stream of claims to progress. Sarris found
that National Liberation Front attacks were up since July while
reports of prisoners taken, defectors, and weapons captured were
all down. These results were embodied in the paper RFE-90, "Statistics
on the War Effort in South Vietnam Show Unfavorable Trends,"
of October 22, 1963.
Louis Sarris briefed his paper to Roger Hilsman, and the document
circulated throughout government, as was normal with INR products.
A tempest then erupted. The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) compiled
an extensive complaint about the INR paper, listing items that the
military were experts on and civilian analysts supposedly inexperienced,
and forwarded this critique to Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara,
arguing that the South Vietnamese offensive effort had not reached
its optimum level but "is on the way thereto". McNamara
forwarded the JCS memo to Secretary of State Dean Rusk with a cover
note that said:
Attached
is the State memo re the war in Vietnam. Below it are the comments
of the Chiefs. If you were to tell me that it is not the policy
of the State Department to issue military appraisals without seeking
the views of the Defense Department, the matter will die.
Secretary Rusk called both Thomas Hughes and Louis Sarris into
his office. After telling them how much he appreciated INR's work
he asked what he ought to do about the Pentagon diatribe. Sarris
believes that McNamara's implicit threat was to take the matter
to the president and that he meant it. Sarris sees Rusk's motives
as complex: he held the military in great respect from his own experience
in World War II, but he also wanted an opportunity to get at Roger
Hilsman, whose direct access to the Kennedys had troubled him. Hughes
recalls that at a certain point Rusk asked Sarris to leave the room
and that, afterwards the INR director himself told Rusk that he
had not become bureau chief to be told what to report. Rusk acknowledged
that but asked if f he could mollify McNamara anyway. Hughes also
sees Rusk's motives as complicated; on the one hand, the secretary
wanted to defer to the people on the spot (the military); on the
other hand, he was a fierce defender of INR's independence.
On November 8, 1963 Hughes sent Rusk a memorandum prepared by Sarris
that took the military claims against RFE-90 and dissected them,
adding further commentary but conceding that "we naturally
agree that military assessments are basically the responsibility
of the Department of Defense." Rusk then sent McNamara a note
which gave McNamara the assurance he had sought in identical language,
adding, "I have instructed that any memoranda given interdepartmental
circulation which include military appraisals be coordinated with
your Department."
In practice the instruction turned out to mean exactly nothing.
When the community moved ahead to a new SNIE {Special National Intelligence
Estimate] on Vietnam in February 1964 it noted that statistics from
the Diem government had been doctored. Director Hughes observes
that Secretary Rusk never made any effort to enforce the restriction,
and that no later INR reports were subjected to similar complaints
even though there were many on military subjects. Louis Sarris explains
that the Southeast Asia office was preoccupied with political reporting
for long after these events, and that by the time he returned to
the subject, Secretary McNamara had himself joined the ranks of
those doubting the veracity of reporting from South Vietnam and
was actively seeking other sources of enlightenment.
This is a good place to spend a moment on Dean Rusk. The secretary
of state held views considerably at odds with those of his Bureau
of Intelligence and Research. Rusk favored an aggressive stance
in Southeast Asia while INR reporting constantly cast doubts on
such a course. Yet Rusk never intervened in INR's efforts to influence
the reporting in any way, and he ensured these reports with their
different conclusions circulated throughout government. Hughes and
other INR veterans uniformly agree that Secretary Rusk never wavered
in his support of the INR analysts. Meanwhile, INR's reports went
forward, even RFE-90. John F. Kennedy passed from the scene at this
moment, assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963. His successor,
President Lyndon B. Johnson, notes in his own memoirs that in December
he read, and was impressed by, an INR review of the military situation
that can only have been RFE-90.
THE
HANOI AND CHINA FACTORS
Many key decisions on the Vietnam War occurred during President
Johnson's first two years in the White House, among them the decision
to pursue covert operations against North Vietnam, that to send
American combat troops to South Vietnam, later one to intervene
massively with ground forces, the decision to initiate a bombing
campaign against North Vietnam, and decisions on successive bombing
halts and peace feelers. Certain key intelligence questions remained
at the fore throughout this period because they were material to
all the Johnson decisions. Principal among those questions were
what impact each course of action would have on Hanoi's support
for the war in the South, and whether the given action might induce
the People's Republic of China to intervene in the war. Throughout
this time the Bureau remained at the cutting edge of U.S. intelligence
on these issues.
This is a story of the National Intelligence Estimates, although
there were certainly other INR products that spoke to the same issues.
The INR Study shows that the Bureau worked away steadily on the
matter of North Vietnam and the potential that various U.S. measures
might influence its actions. The Study demonstrates that INR argued
from at least as early as 1963 that Hanoi had decided it held the
advantage in fighting alongside the National Liberation Front and
that no American action was likely to dissuade it. From late 1964
through 1966, when Washington considered a range of options, especially
certain escalations or pauses in bombing North Vietnam, there was
a premium on intelligence as to what the impact would be in Hanoi.
A succession of SNIEs was prepared on this question. In a number
of them the military, and often the CIA as well, contended that
the application of force would induce Hanoi to make concessions
or send tacit signals of willingness to negotiate. Dorothy Avery
with the support of Hughes and Whiting considered those views unrealistic.
In several estimates when the paper came before the United States
Intelligence Board (USIB), Hughes dissented in behalf of his agency.
In practice, in the U.S. intelligence system, when an agency dissents
on an estimate it presents its own position, in its own language,
in a short passage appended to the report. During the Vietnam period
these dissents appeared as footnotes below the main text of the
NIE or SNIE, and the act of dissenting was termed "taking a
footnote." State Department intelligence took several footnotes
on the subject of Hanoi's intentions.
The Bureau was wrong in perceiving the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
(DRV, or North Vietnam) and the National Liberation Front (NLF)
as a single actor, with at most Hanoi calling the shots for a proxy
in the South. In fact there were and continued to be significant
differences between the DRV and NLF despite their close relationship.
The INR Study, written in 1968-69, at the height of the Vietnam
War, itself fails to note this error. That is explainable in the
sense that no U.S. government agency could admit at that time that
the DRV and NLF might be separate entities, since much of the U.S.
justification for its war rested on the contention that it was defending
South Vietnam against an invasion from North Vietnam, a classic
alliance and warfare situation.
INR nevertheless had a good feel for the decision process in North
Vietnam. Avery's assessment that Hanoi felt it was on a roll and
held the advantage in South Vietnam led INR to with some regularity
to predict accurately that North Vietnam would up the ante in the
South, increase its support to the NLF and perhaps send its own
troops to fight. In December 1963 a high level meeting in Hanoi
actually made the decision to expand that support, a decision which
gradually became visible in Washington, bearing out the Bureau's
arguments. Until the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964 there
was no judgment by U.S. intelligence that Hanoi would actually send
regular troops to South Vietnam. The Bureau contested that view,
and after the Gulf of Tonkin insisted on its own position. The DRV
actually did begin sending regulars to the South in November 1964,
and it had started preparations for the move in August, so that
there is some evidence for the claim that the Gulf of Tonkin led
to Hanoi's decision. However, the information we now have from a
Vietnamese official history is that the decision to send troops
South was made by the DRV Politburo at a September 1964 meeting.
In effect INR analysts were correct but premature in their reporting
on Hanoi's intentions to send regular troops to South Vietnam.
North Vietnamese forces first actually engaged South Vietnamese
troops in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam in February 1965.
The State analysts, who had been right on Hanoi's disposition to
intervene, briefly doubted that North Vietnamese regulars were actually
involved. Capture of the first North Vietnamese prisoners settled
the question.
On the Gulf of Tonkin incident itself, the INR Study concludes
that the Bureau was surprised by this naval engagement, but no more
so than the rest of the U.S. intelligence community. American intelligence
had been arguing that the DRV would do what it could to avoid antagonizing
the United States, which suggested Hanoi would avoid any such naval
encounter. We now know that the North Vietnamese naval action resulted
from the decisions of local commanders and did not represent any
decision by Hanoi. The INR Study shows that the Bureau argued at
the time that this was the probable origin of the naval attack of
August 2. However, the study, as already noted, erroneously takes
the position that the alleged August 4 North Vietnamese attack actually
took place.
Possibly INR's finest hour came in 1964-1965 when the intelligence
community mulled over whether Beijing would enter the war alongside
Hanoi. Thomas Hughes has previously written a short account of this
based on material that appeared in the Pentagon Papers, but the
emergence of the INR Study, as well as progressive declassification
of the underlying intelligence estimates, makes it possible to address
this subject more directly. A major question for President Johnson
and his cohorts as they pondered escalating the Vietnam War continued
to be whether China (Russia also, but the People's Republic of China
posed the immediate threat) would come into the war in response
to Johnson's dispatch of large numbers of troops, U.S. tactics (invasions
of North Vietnam or Laos), or intensifications in U.S. bombing of
North Vietnam. LBJ-as President Johnson was known-recalls that most
of his advisers felt the risks of triggering Chinese or Russian
intervention, particularly from any sharp increase in the air war,
greatly outweighed the advantages and that "I accepted that
judgment."
John McCone of the CIA became a notable exception, telling President
Johnson that as the U.S. deployed ground forces to South Vietnam
the North needed to be hit harder to inflict greater damage. McCone's
sanguine views on bombing were reflected in the NIEs. The Bureau
under Hughes broke with the consensus view starting in October 1964,
constantly warning of a greater danger of Chinese action. In mid-February,
just as LBJ considered the sustained bombing that became known as
Rolling Thunder, a special estimate considered the impact of such
a campaign. Where the community consensus predicted a fair chance
that China would introduce limited numbers of "volunteers"
into North Vietnam, INR dissented with a judgment that the probability
was considerably higher, and where the estimate noted that China
"might" use its jet fighters over the DRV, the Bureau
insisted that word should be changed to "would probably."
In late February, as LBJ approved the bombing, an SNIE attempted
to predict reactions to the program, and found that Hanoi would
make concessions to "secure a respite from U.S. air attack."
Hughes inserted an INR footnote which not only argued that the DRV
would calculate its gains in the South outweighed damage from a
U.S. air campaign, but went on to warn that vigorous attacks on
major targets "could easily coincide with the probable use
over the DRV of Chinese air defense from Chinese bases."
In late April, in fact on the day John McCone resigned as Director
of Central Intelligence, a fresh SNIE stated a unanimous community
view-INR's. Both North Vietnam and the People's Republic of China
(PRC) were pictured as hardening their positions. Then in early
June, in SNIE 10-6-65, the community reversed its analysis of February
and agreed with INR that Hanoi would not be dissuaded by the bombing
from its course in the South. Evelyn Colbert, who attended the coordinating
sessions where the language of estimates was hammered out before
it the final drafts went to the USIB, recalls writing between the
lines of the papers in her workups for Hughes and Rusk, then seeing
her language adopted wholesale for the NIEs.
In late July President Johnson finalized his decision to commit
major U.S. ground forces to the Vietnam War and open up the rules
of engagement for American forces to conduct all types of operations.
Another estimate was drafted to consider reactions to that eventuality.
Hughes and INR dissented on the impact of bombing, correctly predicting
that North Vietnamese supply routes to the South would not be blocked
even by greater damage by bombing; and also on the chances of PRC
air intervention in the case of attacks on the Hanoi-Haiphong and
northeast DRV areas-where the community foresaw an even chance of
that happening, the Bureau judged this as higher.
Then in September Washington postulated another extension of bombing
and asked the intelligence community to evaluate that. The contemplated
program included all the Hanoi-Haipho g and northeast corridor targets
considered a couple of months earlier. The consensus view was that
the DRV's resolve had weakened, and as for the PRC, "It is
possible that Hanoi and Peking [Beijing] have an agreed plan for
the Chinese to intervene from their own bases in response to the
kind of US air attack assumed in this estimate. We doubt this."
In a move unprecedented for INR and indeed for the entire community,
Director Hughes dissented from the entire SNIE, filing a sixteen-paragraph
alternate estimate that comprised nearly half the text of the estimate.
Among other things, INR judged that the escalation would be seen
in Beijing and elsewhere-not just in Hanoi-as marking a fundamental
change in the war with great military significance, that the DRV
would counter the escalation by intensifying its effort in South
Vietnam, and that the PRC would immediately increase its defensive
preparations and its presence on the ground in North Vietnam. Further,
"It is almost certain that Hanoi and Peking have concerted
their preparations and discussed plans for Chinese action in the
event of US attacks such as the ones assumed here." After two
more months the Johnson administration asked for one more estimate.
That paper, SNIE 10-12-65, would be littered with footnotes. Though
not all of the dissents came from INR, it was joined by other agencies,
especially the National Security Agency and Army intelligence.
The Bureau of Intelligence and Research was literally correct that
Hanoi and Beijing had had talks and concerted actions. We now know
that military talks had occurred in April and June 1965 and political
ones in May. The Chinese moved thousands of troops into North Vietnam.
Beijing reached a specific understanding with Hanoi on the conditions
that would trigger their full-scale intervention. They indeed agreed
to send "volunteer" pilots and regular air units to the
DRV, and to fly jet interceptors from bases in China to fight American
planes over the DRV, only landing at North Vietnamese airfields
to refuel. Beijing never did fulfill these latter provisions of
the agreements, apparently telling Hanoi that July that the aircraft
intervention was inappropriate and increasing the strength of antiaircraft
artillery units instead. The latter action undoubtedly reflects
a Chinese calculation that the use of ground troops would be less
provocative than air forces.
The lack of an overt Chinese aerial intervention resonates in retrospect
with INR analysts. Both Allen Whiting and Dorothy Avery concede
perhaps having gone too far with their view of the threat of Chinese
action, but argue essentially that INR was wrong for the right reasons.
The appreciation that China was ready to intervene was a correct
one, and the Bureau was exactly correct that the dynamics of the
situation would lead Hanoi and Beijing to concert action. That the
Chinese did not ultimately carry out their agreement, or rather
carried it out in modified form, is due to at least three factors.
First and of key importance, China was diverted by internal developments-the
Cultural Revolution-from military actions it had clearly anticipated
and made preparations for. Those preparations were observed by U.S.
intelligence and were the basis for INR analysts' prognostications,
while the internal developments only gradually became visible and
were subjects of dispute in themselves. Second, INR and U.S. intelligence
as a whole underestimated the size of the Chinese ground force deployments
into North Vietnam, so that the modified PRC action (substituting
ground for air forces) was missed. Third was the synergistic relationship
between U.S. intelligence and decisionmaking.
Studies of the process of American decisions on Vietnam have often
remarked on the incremental nature of the process. This had a bearing
on the third factor just mentioned. The decisions were partial and
incremental in part because U.S. officials resisted pushing Hanoi
to the wall precisely because they feared the responses, not only
in Beijing, to full bore escalation. Secretary of State Dean Rusk,
who benefited from the observations of INR's analysts, was one of
the major incrementalists. He took credit in retrospect for helping
to keep China out of the war. At the time Rusk began many of his
morning meetings with Tom Hughes by asking, "Any sign of Chinese
movement?" Ultimately the intelligence helped encourage an
incrementalism which helped keep INR's most dire predictions from
coming true.
Allen Whiting had a major interest in China, of course, and he
kept a close eye on the intelligence collected bearing on this question.
With his all source clearances Whiting was up to date on such things
as the odd airfield development in southwestern China, where two
duplicate fields were built in a place they would not have been
needed except to optimize air action over the DRV. "These were
my hobbyhorses and I rode them," recalls Whiting. Eventually
North Vietnamese aircraft were seen on one of these fields and U.S.
intelligence became aware Beijing was indeed doing things like those
the NIEs had considered. Beijing simply never went as far as the
Bureau had anticipated, and the Cultural Revolution, which turned
the PRC inward, has everything to do with that. By 1967 INR was
estimating that Beijing would restrict itself to low level actions,
such as permitting North Vietnamese aircraft to operate out of Chinese
bases. That was exactly what the Chinese did.
Meanwhile, a story Whiting tells throws interesting light on the
U.S. military's blithe discounting of the dangers of Chinese intervention.
Passing through Honolulu on one of his trips to Vietnam, Whiting
was invited by the Commander-in-Chief Pacific (CINCPAC), then Admiral
U.S. Grant Sharp, to attend the CINCPAC morning intelligence briefing.
During the show the INR analyst noticed there was nothing to indicate
the Chinese airfields on maps or charts or in documents. He inquired
as to whether this was an "all-source" briefing, that
is, one at the highest level of classification where all intelligence
information was accessible. When Sharp, who did not know, asked
his aide, that officer ruefully admitted that indeed it was not-in
deference to the admiral's proclivity to bring in all sorts of people
on these briefings whose levels of clearance were unknown to staffs,
the briefings were not done with the all-source information. The
possibility thus arises that CINCPAC, who bore command authority
for Rolling Thunder and was constantly pressing for maximum escalation,
was himself unaware of indications of Chinese response to the actions
he had advocated. Whiting, incidentally, was warned by a naval officer
on one of his trips not to go aboard any aircraft carriers, as INR
had been marked as a source of opposition to the air war and he
could be in personal danger from disgruntled pilots who saw themselves
as being held back. The intelligence war in Vietnam had many fronts.
THE
LATE WAR PERIOD
Director Hughes concluded after the war that the intense disputes
of 1964-1965 were costly to the intelligence community. Hughes told
a conference in March 1991: "I think the receivers got impatient;
it's clear the Secretary of Defense got disgusted with the process
and started asking for his own estimates . . .This splitting of
the community really did tend to discredit us in many ways-probably
with the President, too."
In 1966 dissents became less frequent in the NIEs, while the focus
of dispute shifted to questions of the rate of North Vietnamese
infiltration into South Vietnam and the size of the North Vietnamese
and National Liberation Front armed forces, where the infighting
tended to be between the CIA and military intelligence. The INR
Study makes clear that the Bureau took an active role in questioning
the infiltration reporting. But the Bureau lacked resources for
any intensive approach to this question, limiting itself to critiquing
the reports received based on internal evidence. Evelyn Colbert
remarks that the CIA had platoons of analysts combing over the infiltration
data while INR had to rely on just one or two people.
INR had an impact in other places. Tom Hughes, through his long
association with Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey, played a role
as a sort of private adviser, and helped Humphrey craft some important
papers the vice-president floated within the administration. Allen
Whiting had a similar role with Undersecretary of State George W.
Ball. Noted as the Johnson administration's devil's advocate on
Vietnam, Ball had repeatedly cautioned against escalation, both
the ground troop commitment and the projected massive escalation
of Rolling Thunder. His intelligence inputs came from Whiting, who
is cited in some of the massive policy papers Ball wrote. Whiting
provided advice as well for W. Averell Harriman, whom Johnson made
special envoy for negotiations with North Vietnam.
Until January 1966 Whiting always had a channel into the White
House, because national security adviser McGeorge Bundy would listen
to what he had to say and, if it made sense, circulate Whiting's
paper. But Bundy left government and, following a brief interregnum,
Walt Rostow took over the security adviser post. Not only did Rostow
have a much more hard-line attitude than Bundy, some of his own
schemes for escalation had been shot down by INR analysis in 1964-1965.
Whiting's channel closed. He then accepted a posting to Hong Kong
as the number two at the U.S. consulate, leaving the Bureau but
gaining a new channel to Washington since his cables would circulate
widely. For Whiting that also turned to be an incomparable opportunity
to observe the Chinese Cultural Revolution up close.
Director Hughes appointed Fred Greene the new division chief for
East Asia (as the unit was retitled in 1967). Greene got on better
with the military than Whiting, and though he was more conservative,
many considered him fair and a brilliant analyst, although somewhat
disorganized. Sarris thinks Greene was the best division chief REA
ever had, a category that includes Sarris himself, who briefly held
the position later on. As an example he cites Greene's calling him
in one day and telling him that a certain new diplomat was headed
for South Vietnam, making it the moment for Sarris to write a paper
that had been on hold for a long time, resisted in the bureaucracy,
but which the diplomat could carry to Saigon.
Little has been said so far about INR's briefing paragraphs and
Intelligence Notes, which total many hundreds of pages, probably
the Bureau's most voluminous products. These were timely and designed
to highlight immediate issues. For example there were Notes produced
instantly on the occasions of coups d'etat in Saigon. Even events
that might have been coups but turned out not to be, such as the
bombing of Diem's presidential palace by South Vietnamese air force
pilots on February 27, 1962, sparked INR reactions. In the Diem
coup of November 1963, the coup mounted by General Nguyen Khanh
in January 1964, as well as the coup against Khanh in February 1965,
the Bureau was quick off the mark with its analysis. The Bureau
also supplied commentaries when the Tonkin Gulf incident occurred,
during the Buddhist crisis of 1966, at the time of the Tet Offensive
in 1968, and on other occasions. When the U.S. actually did bomb
Haiphong in the summer of 1967, an INR intelligence note described
Beijing's initial reaction as muted. Not only events but opinions
could provide occasion for INR commentaries: when scholar Bernard
Fall was arguing, as early as 1962, that bombing could make Hanoi
give up supporting the war in the South, in a preview of its position
on the NIEs of the 1964-1965 period, INR issued an Intelligence
Note rejecting that prescription.
Louis Sarris notes that his branch was preoccupied with political
reporting for much of the time after his Pentagon fight of 1963.
That was certainly true with the intense period of 1964-1965, when
a succession of coups d'etat rocked Saigon. Then 1966 brought another
Buddhist crisis and the first South Vietnamese elections, and the
summer of 1967 a presidential election. In the national assembly
elections of 1966 INR argued that the size of the turnout, by indicating
a level of support for the Saigon government, was a more critical
value than the question of who won the elections. Going into the
presidential elections of 1967 the Bureau had begun doubting the
leadership of South Vietnamese Air Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky, who was
then prime minister. Sarris argued that Ky was using the National
Police, headed by an ally, General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, much like Diem
had used his Can Lao political movement, to ensure victory, to such
an extent this action might affect the credibility of the election.
Allen Whiting once asked Sarris, as they worked late into the night
on the Diem issue, how he could know so much about Saigon politics.
Sarris quipped, "I'm Greek. It's just like Greek politics.
There's no problem."
In late 1967 INR again did a research memorandum on statistics
from the war in Vietnam. It was a product very similar to the infamous
1963 paper. Sarris recounts that he got back into the issue after
one of his visits to South Vietnam, which were extensive and during
which he would speak to junior and middle-level officers, not merely
listen to briefings at the U.S. embassy or Military Assistance Command
Vietnam (MACV). At the time the MACV commander, General William
C. Westmoreland was in the United States, rallying support for the
war and declaiming that he saw light at the end of the tunnel. In
Vietnam, Sarris sat down for a three-hour conversation with one
of Westmoreland's corps commanders, General Fred Weyand, who told
him, "I don't know what Westy's saying with this light at the
end of the tunnel thing. We could be hit at any time and we wouldn't
know where it came from." When Sarris got back to INR he did
his fresh critique of the field reporting. This time there were
no complaints from Rusk, McNamara, or anyone else.
Like other U.S. intelligence agencies, the Bureau was surprised
at Tet. INR fell into the trap of expecting North Vietnam to attack
the U.S. base at Khe Sanh, or Khe Sanh plus other objectives, rather
than mounting a widespread urban offensive. In an intelligence note
the first day of the offensive the Bureau called the initial urban
attacks "unusual and unanticipated" and went on "we
do not expect that the Communists have chosen to mount them as a
substitute for a major military threat." Within days, however,
INR had shifted to reporting Hanoi's primary intent as creating
a "revolutionary situation." In defense of the Bureau,
however, the INR Study cites another intelligence note, ten days
before Tet, in which the Bureau correctly observed that numerous
small scale attacks and selected big ones "have drawn US forces
from core population areas," leaving these and the pacification
program open to increased military pressures.
When Lyndon Johnson asked his President's Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board to do a postmortem on the surprise at Tet, the CIA
assembled its own report as a contribution, the first draft of which
read like the agency was absolving itself of all blame. The Bureau
did not have that luxury and read the CIA postmortem with a jaundiced
eye. A new analyst, a Foreign Service Officer fresh from service
in Vietnam, looked at the paper, walked into Fred Greene's office,
and threw it on the desk exclaiming, "This is utter bullshit!"
Greene did not bat an eye. "Ask a stupid question and you get
a stupid answer," he replied.
The main military actions of the Tet Offensive came in three successive
waves, the last of them in August 1968. The Bureau also missed the
last of those waves, arguing days before it occurred that Hanoi
did not consider 1968 a "necessarily decisive period."
In this case the surprise was not so great because the third wave
attacks were anticipated by other U.S. agencies.
Intelligence on peace feelers and negotiations was another subject,
one where INR had special difficulties, not so much because of any
lack of expertise, but due to the fact that it was deliberately
cut out of the key events. Thomas Hughes was a member of Averell
Harriman's "Non Group" interagency unit that watched over
all diplomatic feelers, but under ground rules that kept data from
the working level analysts. The East Asia office was thus confined
to making general observations about the predispositions to negotiation
of the players on the international scene. Here it had some help
from INR's Soviet Bloc office, which contributed memoranda on the
Soviet and Eastern European countries. Later in the Nixon administration,
INR was kept almost completely ignorant, but then so too would be
most of the U.S. government.
Nevertheless the Bureau had some success at identifying the negotiating
positions of allies and adversaries. As early as April 1965 the
Soviet Bloc analysts correctly characterized Russia's position.
In February 1966 INR informed Rusk that Hanoi's denunciation of
a U.S. proposal (Johnson's "14 Points") as a "sham
peace" was a definitive one-and indeed that remained the DRV's
position for two years. In April 1968 the Bureau correctly appreciated
the South Vietnamese stance on negotiations proceeding as one of
"quiet bitterness," and equally accurately saw the DRV's
foreign minister as attempting to leap from contacts, where the
process had been stuck since 1965, to actual negotiations. Later
that year INR made reasonable assessments of the assignment to the
talks of Hanoi Politburo member Le Duc Tho and of diplomatic maneuvers
by delegation deputy chief Xuan Thuy.
Another special subject, from an early date, was National Liberation
Front (NLF), and then North Vietnamese, use of Cambodia. From 1962
on INR took the position that the NLF was making extensive use of
Cambodia as a sanctuary but its overall value in their war effort
remained marginal. The question of NLF and DRV supplies through
Cambodia assumed increasing importance over the course of the war.
By 1964 INR recognized this use but saw it as limited, judgments
repeated in 1965 and 1966. In 1967 the Bureau "objected strenuously"
to the consensus view in a USIB paper that saw Cambodia as having
an important impact on the outcome of the war.
By 1968 the question of NLF/DRV supply through Cambodia had assumed
such importance that it was made the subject of special study by
an interagency task force from the intelligence community. Faced
with contradictory reports from the military and CIA, and with INR
skeptical of both, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and
Pacific Affairs William P. Bundy pushed for the study group, which
formed under James C. Graham of the Board of National Estimates.
The INR representative was Steven Lyne, a Foreign Service Officer
who was among a fresh contingent of INR analysts who had had field
service in Vietnam. Both Louis Sarris and Dorothy Avery benefited
from this new crop of people, and both appreciated the fresh expertise.
Lyne, who had served in South Vietnam's Central Highlands, was expert
on Cambodia, and made direct inquiries into the sources of NLF supplies
in the Mekong Delta area as part of this study, which concluded
that NLF/DRV supply activities through Cambodia were increasing
and the Cambodian government was complicit, but that Hanoi's use
of the Ho Chi Minh Trail remained its main supply source.
Lyne by this time had moved up to head the Indochina branch of
REA, with Sarris promoted to chief of the division. He had another
Foreign Service Officer, Richard Teare, and later got a third, David
Engel. Dorothy Avery on North Vietnam had the help of Richard Smyser.
Fred Greene left REA, replaced as chief by John Holdridge, who had
been deputy since 1966. Evelyn Colbert became deputy in succession,
and her former place was the one that went to Sarris. The Bureau's
Vietnam intelligence effort had assumed the shape that would carry
it into the Nixon years.
FINAL
REFLECTIONS
The INR Study covers much more ground than can be covered here.
It is clear from that study, as well as this examination, that INR
was quite prolific at its work. Analyst for analyst, and dollar
for dollar, INR was possibly the most effective agency in the intelligence
community. One of the greats of U.S. intelligence in the Vietnam
era, George V. Allen, who served with Army intelligence, the Defense
Intelligence Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency, years
later accosted Lou Sarris to tell him, "I just want you to
know, you guys were great!"
This account can do little more than put some flesh onto the bones
of the INR Study, but even from this it is clear that there is another,
little explored, dimension to the intelligence story of the Vietnam
War. The INR story is also evidence of a different proposition-that
there is real value in a multiplicity of analytical units poring
over the intelligence data. The Bureau of Intelligence and Research
helped hone U.S. intelligence conclusions, called attention to the
poor data and inadequate intelligence collection taking place in
Vietnam, saved the CIA and other agencies from going even farther
out on a limb than they climbed, and brought the community to a
consensus view on the Indochina conflict's potential to escalate.
It also helped limit the war by contributing to the reluctance of
top officials to escalate too far. These were real contributions
and they deserve both attention and praise.
Notes
1. See, for example, Harold P. Ford, CIA and
the Vietnam Policymakers: Three Episodes, 1962-1968. Central
Intelligence Agency, Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1998;
Major General Joseph A. McChristian, Vietnam Studies: The Role
of Military Intelligence, 1965-1967. Washington (DC): Department
of the Army, 1974; General Philip B. Davidson, Secrets of the
Vietnam War. Novato (CA): Presidio Press, 1990; Sam Adams,
War of Numbers: An Intelligence Memoir. South Royalton
(VT): Steerforth Press, 1994; George W. Allen, None So Blind:
A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam Chicago:
Ivan R. Dee Publishers, 2001; Willard C. Matthias, America's
Strategic Blunders: Intelligence Analysis and National Security
Policy, 1936-1991. University Park (PA): Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2001; John Prados, Lost Crusader: The Secret
Wars of CIA Director William Colby. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2003. For a review of CIA reporting of scope similar to the
present document see General Bruce Palmer, "US Intelligence
and Vietnam," Studies in Intelligence Special Issue,
v. 28, no. 5, 1984. The Ford monograph, the Palmer study and the
present INR report all form parts of the "Intelligence"
subset of the Vietnam collection (I) issued by the National Security
Archive and Proquest.
2. The most widely available version of this study
is in The Pentagon Papers as Published by The New York Times.
New York: Bantam Books, 1971. The most comprehensive set is The
Pentagon Papers: Senator Mike Gravel Edition: The Defense Department
History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam. Boston:
Beacon Press, 1971. The U.S. government put out its own edition
of the Pentagon Papers as a print from the House Armed Services
Committee, United States-Vietnam Relations 1945-1967. Washington
(DC): Government Printing Office, 1971. Both the Gravel and U.S.
government versions of the Pentagon Papers form parts of the "General"
subset of the Vietnam (II) collection from the National Security
Archive and Proquest. For additional perspective see Daniel Ellsberg,
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. New
York: Viking 2002. Also see John Prados and Margaret Pratt Porter,
eds., Inside the Pentagon Papers. Lawrence(KS): University
Presses of Kansas, 2004.
3. John Prados, The Soviet Estimate: U.S.
Intelligence Analysis and Soviet Strategic Forces. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1986, pp. 38-95.
4. Hilsman's first account of the Cuban Missile
Crisis (he has a more recent book on this subject) is also an important
source on the early period of the Vietnam war, as well as his work
at INR. See To Move A Nation: The Politics of Foreign Policy
in the Administration of John F. Kennedy. Garden City (NY):
Doubleday, 1967.
5. Interview, Allen S. Whiting, January 11, 2004.
6. Allen S. Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu:
The Decision to Enter the Korean War. Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1960.
7. Evelyn Colbert Interview, January 12, 2004.
8. Most of this material comes from an interview
with Dorothy Avery, January 12, 2004, though some comes from other
interviews.
9. Louis G. Sarris Interview, January 10, 2004.
10. INR, "Critique of US Policy in South
Vietnam," November 6, 1961, Excerpted in INR Study, B-I-19.
11. Hilsman, To Move A Nation, pp. 427-439.
12. The most recent treatment of this theme is
in Philip E. Catton, Diem's Final Failure: Prelude to America's
War in Vietnam. Lawrence (KS): University Press of Kansas,
2002. Catton argues that the U.S. failed to understand Diem, whom
he casts as a social reformer intent on sparking a national revolution
from internal sources, and that Diem for his part spared little
effort for U.S.-sponsored initiatives. North Vietnam certainly appreciated
strategic hamlets, which it characterized as U.S. "special
warfare," as a potential threat, and Hanoi possibly overestimated
the degree of their success. In Washington both INR and CIA pointed
out shortcomings in these pacification efforts.
13. Willard Matthias, America's Strategic
Blunders, pp. 185-191. The summary conclusions of NIE 53-63
appear in the INR Study at B-II-29.
14. Later in 1963 the CIA issued a memorandum
correcting the mistaken estimate, and another SNIE that called Diem's
political problems much more accurately. McCone apologized to his
estimates people as well.
15. Sarris recalls this provenance. In an interview
on January 10, 2004, Thomas L. Hughes did not recall that specific
Hilsman request, but did not dispute Sarris's account.
16. The full text of this paper can be found
in the Gravel Edition of the Pentagon Papers, v. 2, pp. 770-780.
Excerpts appear in Section B of the INR Study.
17. See "Draft Memorandum for the Secretary
of Defense," undated, attached to memorandum Thomas L- Hughes-Dean
Rusk, November 8, 1963 in Department of State, Foreign Relations
of the United States: 1961-1963, v.IV: Vietnam August-December 1963.
Washington (DC): Government Printing Office, 1991, p. 585.
18. Reprinted in Louis G. Sarris, "McNamara's
War and Mine," The New York Times, September 5, 1995,
p. A17.
19. Sarris and Hughes interviews, op. cit.
20. FRUS 1961-1963, v. IV, pp. 582-586, quoted
p. 583.
21. Sarris, "McNamara's War and Mine."
22. Lyndon B. Johnson, The Vantage Point:
Perspectives on the Presidency, 1963-1969. New York: Holt,
Rinehart & Winston, 1971, p. 62.
23. John Prados, The Blood Road:
The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War. New York: John Wiley's
Sons, 1999, p. 109-110.
24. Military History Institute of Vietnam, Victory
in Vietnam: The Official History of the People's Army of Vietnam,
1954-1975 (tns. Merle L. Pribbenow). Lawrence (KS): University
Press of Kansas, 2002, p. 137-138.
25. Thomas L. Hughes, "The Power to Speak
and the Power to Listen," in Thomas M. Franck and Edward Weisband,
eds., Secrecy and Foreign Policy. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1974.
26. Lyndon Johnson, The Vantage Point,
p. 140.
27. Letter, John McCone-Lyndon Johnson, April
1965 (undated but internal evidence indicates a date shortly after
April 2, 1965). Department of State, Foreign Relations of the
United States, 1964-1968, v.II, Vietnam: January-June 1965.
Washington(DC): Government Printing Office, 1996, pp. 521-524.
28. CIA, "Communist Reactions to Possible
US Actions," SNIE 10-3-65, February 11, 1965 (declassified
September 10, 1993), p. 10-11. Lyndon Baines Johnson Library: Lyndon
Baines Johnson Papers: National Security File (hereafter LBJL:LBJP:NSF):
NIE Series, box. 1, folder: "10-65, Communist States."
29. CIA, "Communist Reactions to Possible
US Courses of Action Against North Vietnam," SNIE 10-3/1-65,
February 18, 1965 (declassified September 8, 1994), p. 5. Ibid.
30. Colbert Interview.
31. CIA, "Communist and Free World Reactions
to a Possible US Course of Action," SNIE 10-9-65, July 23,
1965 (declassified September 8, 1994), pp. 3-6, 9-11. Ibid.
32. CIA, "Probable Communist Reactions to
a US Course of Action," SNIE 10-11-65, September 22, 1965 (declassified
September 8, 1994), p.14. Ibid.
33. Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars,
1950-1975. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2000, pp. 132-135.
34. See, for example, Leslie H. Gelb and Richard
K. Betts, The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked. Washington(DC):
Brookings Institution, 1979.
35. Dean Rusk, As I Saw It. New York:
W.W. Norton, 1991.
36. Ted Gittinger, ed. The Johnson Years:
A Vietnam Roundtable. Austin: Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public
Affairs, University of Texas Press, 1993, quoted, p. 93.
37. See especially, Allen S. Whiting, The
Chinese Calculus of Deterrence: India and Indochina. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1975.
38. Whiting Interview.
39. Ibid.
40. Ted Gittinger, The Johnson Years: A Vietnam
Roundtable, p. 63.
41. Colbert Interview.
42. Sarris Interview.
43. Whiting Interview.
44. Sarris Interview.
45. Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Intelligence
Note 84, January 31, 1968. Department of State: Foreign Relations
of the United States, 1964-1968, v. VI, Vietnam: January-August
1968. Washington (DC): Government Printing Office, 2002, fn.
P. 93.
46. Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Intelligence
Note 97, February 3, 1968. Ibid., fn. P. 109.
47. INR Study, quoted p. A-VI-23.
48. Steven Lyne Interview, January 9, 2004.
49. INR Study, A-VII-14.
50. Department of State, Foreign Relations
of the United States, 1964-1968, v. IV: Vietnam, 1966. Washington(DC):
Government Printing Office, 1998, p. 192.
51. FRUS, 1968, op. cit., fns. pp. 370, 544,
572, 701, 746.
52. INR Study, A-VI-15.
53. John Prados, The Blood Road, p.
297.
54. Sarris Interview.