MAB32

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...