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Old 08-14-2012, 14:07   #25
Badger52
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Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Western WI
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ambush Master View Post
Not in RVN, but up North and in Laos, YES!! Also Red Chinese!!
AM, for you & BMT and others I'll never know, took some time from rec-reading over some hours of the past evening & lunchtime, pouring over some declas'd NSA archives I've got, with relevant snippets over several volumes on different topics. Finding your hot or booby-trapped LZ (or someone talking to your team on your freq) seems to have a variety of contributing factors. Oh what a tangled web was woven in many ways.* A few impressions from the SIGINT/COMINT side of things (most hindsight being 20/20):
  • The NSA clearly ID'd Chinese participation by '65.
  • OPSEC programs to control the lack of surprise RE many Rolling Thunder or Arc Light missions revealed that a variety of bad practices gave a very vigilant enemy lots of indicators to the extent that they often had 8 hours notice of an impending strike in an area. Such things as reluctance to encrypt, simple plain-text by support elements in laying out an artillery fan for a ground op, and actually coordinating IAW civil aviation practices the altitudes & routes so good old NOTAMs could be published. The list goes on and they had people on Okinawa, Guam, NKP...
  • A long standing relationship with supposedly stellar ARVN SIGINT personnel in Saigon, especially their commander, an ARVN Lt.Col. who was regarded as so diligent & squeaky clean that I thought references to him were describing Robert Hansen. Funny, at one time advance transmissions to extreme NE DRV regarding upcoming Rolling Thunder missions were so timely that when the Christmas halt came, so did a halt in the transmissions.
  • Also, we vastly underestimated the sheer numbers of enemy personnel, technically trained, who lived at the tactical level and had very good SIGINT and DF skills. Plenty of instances of us intercepting THEM relaying their plain-text take from us. They didn't need to apply cryptanalysis to alot of our stuff because we often broke down and used plain-text, busting every OPSEC rule in the book. (I'm not talking about MACV-SOG Soldiers here, but those further back who may have any role in pre-mission coord.) A couple of ARVN SF units in particular were singled out as being notorious for reverting to plain-text when they had to make something clear in terms of coordination.
  • PW interviews revealed they really were more aware of the rhythms of their "hood" than given credit for.
Certainly relevant to SOG opns it would seem they had some tragic level of success with all their moles, prostitutes, corrupt ARVN, long-term well-placed agents, foreign advisors - and maybe a particular single source in Saigon that didn't care if his HF CW transmissions were heard because no one was gonna touch him anyway...

They also were sometimes very good at exploiting a simple OPSEC screw-up to manhandle an ARVN Ranger Bn. Some of these findings came out over time, some as a direct result of the initial Purple Dragon OPSEC studies at the time. By the way, much of the declas'd stuff is still heavily redacted. However, MOO, the redactions taken in context as the volume "flowed" seem not so much to protect a living technology or person, but a relationship. Not that we'd alter the badguys in a movie remake to switch them from Chicoms to North Koreans...

* There was a special SIGINT person operating out of a village right ON the border, a person who'd previously been an advisor to the Royal Thais. Viewed as a rogue by the Pacific Dep Dir who was gonna shut the op down & substitute their own assets. Said Dep Dir was told in no uncertain terms that he would not be reporting this to NSA HQ and to go about his business. This was just prior to the April '70 Cambode opns, and that analyst operating out of the hut reported only to 2 people: Ambassador Bunker and GEN Abrams.

I have learned that where 1 furball could exist, others are capable of concocting more. If there was a specific POS to point to who was blowing SOG operations I hope someone made chum out of him. Sharks gotta make a livin' too.

Hindsight gives a wider angle lens.
No matter what was in your way, well done gentlemen & Salud.
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