View Full Version : What a way to run the "secret War" in Vietnam...
I am now re-reading a book by Richard H. Shultz, Jr. entitled "The Secret War Against Hanoi". In it I am still finding new facts about MAVSOG that I missed before in the first two times I cracked the spine.
However, two facts are standing out as I type these words. They are:
1) Ambassador William Sullivan had too much power in Laos and was completely inept about COIN/Covert warfare. Some SOG Warriors and the commanders in CCC and CCN often referred to him as "The Field Marshall". This was not for his knowledge of warfare but as a slam towards his very unorthodox charracter in the middle of a war and how he ran the war in Laos. Sullivan gave the CIA there full control of ground and air operations in Laos. SOG was not to enter "his" country unless he personnally invited them.
How bad was he at being "The Field Marshall" you ask? Well, consider this discussion he had with Col. D. Blackburn in the fall of 1965. Blackburn asked that helicopters be used to transfer the teams in and out of Laos. Sullivan's response was an emphatic "No"!. All teams that would be on operations in Laos were to walk across the border only. Blackburn than began to give Sullivan the 411 on helicopters and how they are used to transport troops near to the target. Sullivan's response was: "Well you can take (your men) out by helicopter, but don't put them in that way."
My question at this point is how does an Ambassador get so much power and why does the U.S. military commands have to loose their case because he says so?
2) President Kennedy absolutely loved the Special Forces as all the QP's know here. He wanted to get SOG off an running as soon as possible in Vietnam. He also desired that all planning exacution, and AARP's be conducted at the operational level. They knew what to do and how to do it without the JCS and the Civillian leadership getting in the way. Those operations where to be conducted in Laos, North Vietnam, and Cambodia and they were. However when Johnson became president he was even more upset than Kennedy was when so far only one operation had ben conduted in 1964. He demanded that more operations begin as fast as possible along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Johsnon also had the support in this area of the war with McNamara. Until...
Then later in the war Singlaub (the third commander/Chief of SOG) found out that policy makers in the Pentagon and at the Whitehouse were loosing interest in the "secret war" and began focusing on the more popular conventional part (massive ordnance, technological breakthroughs, throwing divisions and battalions into the battle and getting that ever so popular "Body Count). These were the only ways that the U.S could possibly win this war and save face. Hey what better to judje a war than by counting how many were killed compared to your own losses. This was also true because of General Westmoreland and his successor General Abrahms were both conventinal in their way of thinking. Therefore the war could only be one by this means. Comments by these Generals during their tenure were very negative towards SF and the SEALS. They looked upon them as high strung children who were constantly in need of guidance, pretty boys, and arrogant, thus they needed to be kept under lock and key. There was also another way that made these two even more upset than the latter. That was that SF was taking away excellent combat field NCO's and Officers away from them and this had to be stopped. They tried but it never worked out.
More to come...
Also in the early days SOG was plagued with a couple of more serious problems to contend with.
One, was the chain of command that every mission had to progress through in order to be approved. Remember that at any stage in this hierarchy the mission could be approved "yes" or "no" or items/tasks could be added or taken away as each level looked over the operation. For example SOG went through this to get a mission approved:
On a monthly basis all four operational sections of MACVSOG would draw up a schedule of missions to be executed in the next thirty days. These missions would then be submitted to General Westmoreland by the Chief Of SOG. Now the next step was to submit these missions to the Strategic Technical Directorate (STD) which was the South Vietnamese counterpart to SOG. This never happened even though OPLAN 34A demanded that it be done. They were bypassed because the Colonels in charge of SOG always thought that the STD had been penetrated by the NV Government. (NOTE: This was before we discovered that it was one of our own on a communication ship in the South China Sea. His name was Walker). COMUSMACV then sent the op package up the chain of command with the Pacific Command being the first step. Once the missions made it there, comments were made and then they were sent to Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) specifically to the "Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities" which was located in the Pentagon. SACSA would then make their comments on the missions then send it up to the State Department, then to the CIA, and then finally to the White House for a "yes" or "no go". As you can see here not only was there a few military establishments that took a look at the missions but the rest were under civillian leadership. This was a major problem for SOG because you had many people in both establishments who had absolutely no idea of t COIN/Secret Ops/ was all about. Somebody in SACSA could say "hey this particular mission is way too harry so lets go with a 5man team instead of a 7-8 member team. Better to lose less then a whole team!" Thereby loosing another few shooters who might just be able to get you through that mission.
They other problem with MACVSOG back then was that the SF officer's and NCO's were trained during the Cold War. What this meant was that in the event of an attack by the Soviet Union in Western Europe, SF would then be deployed behind enemy lines to hook-up with an already in place CIA Agent. From there they would start to do sabotage, force-multiplying, etc., etc. What SF didn't know at the time was that the government knew that most of SF deployed behind enemy lines during this war would be on their own with no CIA operative.
Also, because of their training for that time was based on the Cold War, SF/SOG in Vietnam would not know how to go behind enemy lines in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam and perform the same operations as were successfully accomplished in World War II. Remember this was the 1940's and 1950's style of warfare. Also, remember that this would change dramatically over the next few years and SOG would become one of the most accomplished group of warriors, if not the best, in the history of modern warfare.
More to come...
My question at this point is how does an Ambassador get so much power and why does the U.S. military commands have to loose their case because he says so?...It's lose, not loose...losing, not loosing...that aside, you should research the relationship between the Armed Forces and ambassadors during times of peace...no war was declared in Laos...while there were military activities, there was no theater of operations there...the ambassador was in charge...
Besides the obvious grammar errors. Do have any other input?:rolleyes:
Besides the obvious grammar errors. Do have any other input?:rolleyes:Very bluntly, the ambassador is in charge...period...it is something that QPs have to deal with downrange when hostilities do not formally exist...that is where the ambassador gets off telling an Army colonel to move into hostile territory by foot...it is that simple...the real question is if operations in Laos were so important to the US Government, why was that ambassador not recalled...?
I understand what you are saying. I will do some history research on the relationship between the POTUS and the Ambassador of the country during undeclared war.
I will say that the relationship between the Ambassador in Cambodia didn't carry that much clout compared to Sullivan.
Just finished the chapter on the ARVN's that were formed into teams and "singletons" (one person) that were trained to report back what the saw, to do some sabotage, and to try and start a resistant movement inside of North Vietnam. This was in the early 1960's and by 1966 all were either captured and/or turncoated on us. Not much to say here other than they were very unsuccessful because of Vietnam's very closed society in which Hanoi did not trust anybody.
Now, I am starting to read the beginings of "Going Across The Fence" which seems to be even more of a mess that was originating in Washington. Seems so far that a number of high ranking officials did their absolute best to sink MACVSOG before she even got under away. The majority of these civillian leaders sided with Ambassadore Sullivan.
more to come...
Sounds like you're attempting to be an authority on history one page and one source at a time.
No doubt you are sincere in your effort, but the whole deal is a lot more complicated than the descriptipns in a couple of books.
The cold war was a pretty big deal in those days.
You're using a a fairly small and unique part of SF as a standard and it's the other way around.
Somebody has to be in charge, or you'd wind up with a bunch of private operations like us A Team Pukes dreamed about.
Here are some sources you should try reading. You may find them interesting.
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/vietnam.htm
Being at the tail end of that affair myself and having many friends who were involved at all levels in all of the countries involved from beginning to well after the official end, it is much more complicated than you can imagine...and for many good reasons.
My father used to tell me that if I had a question for Mr Ed (the talking horse of television), I should go to the end with the teeth.
Also, you speak of SACSA in your remarks - FYI - SACSA was BG Don Blackburn, the first Chief-MACVSOG, not some bureaucrat, and carried enormous influence in the Pentagon. I think that BG Blackburn had a good idea of just what was intended, what was happening, and who was involved.
Richard :munchin
BMT (RIP)
03-11-2008, 06:25
I had a TDY trip to Bangkok and got to read message traffic from various Embassy's in SEASIA. Some of these message's were mind boogling to say the least. AMB. in Laos would get his hand's slapped quiete often by the SEC of State at that time.
BMT
stanley_white
03-11-2008, 15:30
U.S. Ambassador / Non-War Zone = Title 50 USC
Combatant Command / Joint Operational Area = Title 10 USC
During President Kennedy's years in office he had taken steps (formal ones) to empower his ambassadors to ensure that they were in charge of the of the country team in all of the U.S. embassies. Kennedy wanted to harness the Pentagon and all CIA operations overseas, suborning them to the ambassadors. All of the embassies had received this mandate sometime in 1962. Under President Kennedy's orders and guidlines of the mandate, an ambassador could exercise "real Power".
For example, Ambassador Sullivan was considered by many in the White House to be a real "details man" and was more than willing to use it to get what he wanted. He had also earned the nickname of "Field Marshall" for the way he went about fighting over every detail of SOG's operations in Laos. Sullivan was also a high skillful in-fighter who had did his apprenticeship with the master bureaucratic soilder Averell Harriman (aka "The Crocodile). Therefore, if Sullivan was to have anything to do with SOG operations in Laos, they would be very limited in nature. Also Sullivan and Harriman were to make sure that the 1962 Geneva Accords granting neutrality to Laos and signed by the U.S., would be kept and not broken.
Iksteve,
does the part about the "Ambassadors in charge" I wrote above would be a sort of very light paraphrase of the situation?:)
Continuing...
An interesting fact is noted here:
An NVA officer by the name of Colonel Bui Tin had distinguished himself twice in his career according to his superiors in Hanoi and once as a friend of the United States (at the end of the war). The first time occurred in December 1963 when he was involved with the North Vietnamese Politburo and told to expand the use of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The second time was on April 30, 1975 when Hanoi had given him the great honor of receiving the unconditional surrender of the South Vietnamese Government.
His third distinguishing act was made well after the war to a "Human Rights Activist" from Minnesota who participated in the anti-war movement during the 60's and early 70's. He, like his fellow protestors, felt that the North Vietnamese people had the "mandate of Heaven" on its side. Therefore, the NVA could not ever be defeated and its victory was in the stars. A nut case amongst many.
Anyway, they both met together in 1995 and sat down for a long talk. The "HRA" asked allot of questions about North Vietnam and its victory in the south. The meeting was long. Finally, near the end of the meeting the "HRA", pro North Vietnamese poliburo, worshipper of the communist way asked the final question. He asked The Colonel this: "Colonel, was the there anything the United States could have done to prevent your victory?" He asked this question knowing that the answer back then and still would be now (1995) an unequivocal "NO!". The Colonel's answer was a very devastating refutation of this protesting movement orthodoxy and to the person who had just asked it. Colonel Tin answered: ?
I have left the answer blank to see if any of you know the answer or want to take a stab at it.:confused:
Lksteve,
does the part about the "Ambassadors in charge" I wrote above would be a sort of very light paraphrase of the situation?:)The statutes cited are pretty descriptive...but yes, it would serve as a paraphrase.