War of Numbers (38 page)

13.
CIA cable, Saigon Station to CIA Headquarters, 19 August 1967. Although Komer was using the station’s communications facility, he was not at this time an agency employee. In Saigon, he worked for General Westmoreland.

14.
MACV cable, MAC 7840, of 20 August 1967. Another addressee of the cable was Admiral Sharp, who, as CINCPAC (Commander in Chief, Pacific), was technically Westmoreland’s boss.

15.
MACV cable, MAC 7859, of 20 August 1967. Apparently, Westmoreland was away from Saigon when MAC 7840 was sent, and Abrams was minding the store.

16.
The firm no longer exists.

17.
Graham and Morris had accompanied Davidson to Saigon from Honolulu in June. Sidle had taken over the PR slot on 13 August.

18.
Lieutenant Colonel Graham’s remarks are based on notes I took at the conference.

19.
Here are the actual service troop numbers involved:

Clearly, to make up for the 5,000 district troops added in September, MACV “scaled down” the national, region, and province levels, and did away with the “independent units.” Source: CIA memorandum for the record “History of Strength Estimates of the Communist ‘Administrative Services,’ ” of 2 April 1968.

20.
His note survives.

21.
The lieutenant colonel was David Morgan, now retired.

22.
The document about Long Dat is translated in CDEC log number 06–1409–67. Source: CIA memorandum for the record “History of Strength Estimates of the Communist ‘Administrative Services,’ ” of 2 April 1968.

23.
The lieutenant colonel was Everette S. Parkins, now retired.

24.
Unfortunately, no copy of this note survives (so far as I know). However, a number of interviewees recall it, including the chief order-of-battle analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, then-Captain Barrie Williams, U.S. Army, who was present at the conference.

25.
CIA cable, Saigon Station to CIA Headquarters 12 September 1967. Conceivably, this was sent the next day. The cable was classified “RYBAT,” meaning it was considered especially sensitive.

26.
The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesburg
(London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1839) Vol. 7, p. 73.

27.
As taken from Carver’s memo to Ambassador Bunker of 15 September 1967, relaying the already-worked-out agreement.

28.
William Hyland later became chief of State Department intelligence.

29.
Memorandum for Mr. George Carver “MACV Press Briefing on Enemy Order of Battle,” from Paul Walsh, then acting deputy director of the Office of Economic Research, 11 October 1967. Among the other words and phrases Walsh applied to the proposed MACV briefing were “nonsense,” “truly impossible,” “unbelievably cavalier,” “shocking,” and “wanton.” Mr. Carver also received derogatory comments about the briefing from William Hyland and Dean Moor.

30.
Memorandum for the Honorable Philip Goulding, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, “Transmittal of Requested Comments,” from George Carver, CIA 13 October 1967.

31.
Cable, Saigon Station to CIA Headquarters, “Summary of Vietcong Activities in Chuong Thien Province During September 1967,” of 17 October 1967.

32.
Internal memorandum for the DDI, “N.I.E. 14.3–67, Capabilities of the Vietnamese Communists for Fighting South Vietnam,” of 23 October 1967, drafted by Paul Walsh.

33.
Cable, from Ambassador Bunker to the White House via CIA channels, of 23 October 1967, Serial Number: “Bunker 325.”

34.
CIA cable, Saigon Station to CIA Headquarters, 3 November 1967.

35.
The document appears in MACV translation report 03–1499–67 of 20 September 1967. As Mr. Parry suggested, see p. 10.

36.
Although sent out under a Board of National Estimates letterhead, the Introductory Note was at “the request of one director.” Dated 3 November 1967.

37.
Memorandum for the record “Comments on the Current Draft of the Introductory Note and Text of National Intelligence Estimate 14.3–67” by the author, on 9 November 1967, p. 7 and 8.

38.
SNIE 14.3–67, Serial Number 186035, 13 November 1967, then classified “Top Secret, Controlled Dissem. Limited Distribution.”

39.
The Estimates staffer William Hyland snipped this headline out, and posted it over his desk.

40.
Westmoreland’s briefing of 22 November failed to mention the exit of the militia. Neither did an earlier briefing which he’d given in Saigong on 11 November. At that time, he’d ascribed the drop in the VC army from 285,000 to 242,000 to “heavy casualties” and “declining morale.” A third press briefing on the numbers, given at the Pentagon on the 24th, did mention the militia’s disappearance, but with one exception, the press failed to catch its significance. The exception was Andrew Hamilton, who wrote about it in the
New Republic
magazine’s edition of 16 December 1967. When Ambassador Komer read the article in Saigon later in December, he angrily cabled Washington, saying, in effect “See what happens when you tell the truth? I told you we shouldn’t have done it.” See his cable of 19 August 1967.

41.
Mr. Allen’s comments were directed at an internal memo which contained the same numbers as those in the newspaper articles.

42.
MACV Bulletin 7,872, published under CDEC log number 11–1166–67 in early November 1967.

43.
The first version of the cable, like later versions, was divided into three parts: An “Overview,” the “VC Winter-Spring Campaign,” and a part concerning negotiations. The key part was part two.

44.
Quotes are from the version that went to the White House on 15 December 1967.

45.
OCI’s comments were prepared by the newly appointed head of its South Vietnam Branch, Thaxter Goodell. Although a good analyst (who’d gained a solid reputation during the Cuban Missile Crisis), he had virtually no experience in Indo-China. His appointment resulted in part from OCI’s preference of “generalists” over “specialists.” See remarks of OCI’s deputy chief, Mr. Lehman concerning a specialist namely Molly at the end of Chapter 1.

46.
My remarks were dated 14 December 1967. They noted that the Vietcong main battle forces are “considerably larger than we give them credit for. The order of battle omits myriad small, but elite units; it frequently
underestimates the size of units it does carry; it does not take into account many North Vietnamese soldiers who are already in the south.” They went on to say the service troop number was “fraudulent,” that the guerrilla number “overlooks major VC documents which indicate it is much higher,” that the OB also omits “over 100,000 self-defense militia, tens of thousands of assault youths” (a category which this book skips), “scores of thousands of armed political cadres, and goodness knows what else.”

47.
Memorandum for the Honorable Walt W. Rostow, special assistant to the president, entitled “Papers on Vietcong Strategy” from George Carver, of 15 December 1967. Quotes are from Carver’s cover sheet.

48.
CIA memo to Secretary McNamara entitled “A Review of the Situation in Vietnam,” dated 8 December 1967.

49.
MACV Order of Battle, 31 December 1967.

50.
As noted in the last MACV “update” message for the end-of-year OB. The message was sent on 4 January 1968.

51.
Whether Helms actually gave the briefing, I don’t know.

52.
Memorandum of conversation, between Colonel Hawkins and the author, dated 16 January 1968. (The conversation, held on 12 January, was witnessed in its entirety by Mr. Ronald Smith of the Office of Economic Research, of whom more later.)

53.
MACV Order of Battle 31 December 1967.

54.
This document is unavailable. However, a second document, taken in February 1968, lists the same units. See CDEC log number 02–1261–68. The second document’s date of information was 24 September 1967.

55.
See CDEC log number 07–3050–67, one of several captured near Danang in July 1967 concerning the T89 Battalion.

56.
NSA study 2/0/VCM/R32068 of 25 January 1968.

57.
DDI memorandum “The Situation in Vietnam,” SC number 00895/68, 29 January 1968.

C
HAPTER
6: N-D
AY

Sources

The documents cited in this chapter are from the same general sources as Chapter 5’s. They include the CIA’s Central Intelligence Bulletins for the period of 30 January 1968 through 8 February 1968; the Vietnam Situation Report for 30 January 1968; additional reports connected with the CIA’s Post Mortem on Tet; and a chronology I maintained during my various attempts to get an investigation started. The reader will observe that in the footnotes below, I state that certain conversations were “based on” notes or memorandums of
conversation I wrote either during or shortly after they occurred. The reason for the phrase “based on” is that parts of the conversations—as they appear in the book—are not verbatim quotes. Kept for legal purposes, notes and the memorandums of conversation tended to be dry. In the book, I have tried to re-create the original phraseology. I feel the result is reasonably accurate.

The following books were again used for background information: Don Oberdorfer’s
Tet!
; the unpublished manuscript about Tet by Larry Pennsinger, then an analyst in MACV J-2’s Strategic Research and Analysis Branch; Peter Braestrup’s
Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1977) 2 vols; and Dr. Stephen T. Hosmer’s
Vietcong Repression and Its Implications for the Future
(Lexington, Mass.: Heath Lexington Books, 1970). My involvement with Dr. Hosmer’s book is discussed in
Chapter 7
.

Supplementing these sources are several interviews—including ones with Thomas E. Becker, Joseph Hovey, Robert Klein, and Robert Appell—and as usual, my memory.

Notes

1.
Based on my interview with Thomas E. Becker. It is quite possible that some readers would recognize Becker if they saw him after resigning from the CIA, he appeared as an actor in the movie about Vietnam,
The Deer Hunter,
which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1978. Becker played an extremely unsympathetic army doctor—so well, that Eleanor, who was sitting beside me when he came on the screen, remarked: “Typical Army.” I said: “No, no, that’s old Tom Becker. He’s a nice guy.” As to the movie itself, I, like many others who saw or heard combat in Vietnam, found it harrowingly realistic. The scenes of torture by the Vietcong—which raised the hackles of some Americans who had been against the war—to me rang true. I have read too many accounts of Vietcong brutality to feel otherwise. For me the scenes brought to mind an individual: Mr. Minh, the chief interrogator of COSVN, who shot prisoners “while trying to escape.”

2.
CIA’s Central Intelligence Bulletin, 30 January 1968.

3.
Draft cable, from which I quoted in my testimony to the House Select Committee on Intelligence on 18 September 1975.

4.
Check stub, dated 30 January 1968. I include this in as an example of the information I used to compile my chronology.

5.
I can’t recall who the dignitary was. Another person who was there seemed to think it was Nicholas Katzenbach. Don Oberdorfer’s
Tet!
recounts the same episode.

6.
Memorandum for the Honorable Walt W. Rostow, special assistant to the president, entitled “Papers on Viet Cong Strategy,” from George Carver, 15 December 1967.

7.
Buckslip, initialed by Drexel Godfrey, also quoted in my testimony to the House Select Committee on Intelligence, 18 September 1975.