THE VIETNAM CAULDRON: 

Defense Intelligence in the War 

for Southeast Asia

Michael B. Petersen

DIA Historical Research Division

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Defense Intelligence Agency

Historical Research Division

Washington, DC

2012

The ideas and opinions expressed in this publication are 

solely the author’s, and do not reflect those of the Defense 

Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, or the 

United States Government.
Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

THE VIETNAM CAULDRON: 

Defense Intelligence in the War

for Southeast Asia

Michael B. Petersen

DIA Historical Research Support Branch

Michael B. Petersen is a Historian with the DIA 

Historical Research Division. He previously served on 

the staff of the National Security Council and with the 

Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government 

Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) at the 

National Archives and Records Administration. 

He holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of 

Maryland, College Park and is the author of Missiles for 

the Fatherland: Peenemünde, National Socialism, and 

the V-2 Missile (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

About the Author

The DIA Historical Research Division

The Defense Intelligence Agency Historical Research Division 

develops and preserves the institutional memory of DIA, 

conducts historical research and analysis in support of the 

DIA mission, and promotes historical awareness among 

the DIA workforce.
For the Patriots.

Major Robert P. Perry, USA

Celeste M. Brown

Vivienne A. Clark

Dorothy M. Curtiss

Joan K. Pray

Doris J. Watkins

Colonel Charles R. Ray, USA

Chief Warrant Officer Robert W. Prescott, USA

Chief Warrant Officer Kenneth D. Welch, USA

Petty Officer First Class Michael R. Wagner, USN

Captain William E. Nordeen, USN

Judith I. Goldenberg

Staff Sergeant Kenneth R. Hobson II, USA

Master Sergeant William W Bultemeier, USA, Ret.

Shelley A. Marshall

Karl W. Teepe

Patricia E. Mickley

Robert J. Hymel

Rosa M. Chapa

Sandra N. Foster

Charles E. Sabin
i

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives is designed to provide an understanding 

of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA’s) participation in military and intelligence 

developments of the last half century. While history does not repeat itself, it does provide 

context, guideposts, and a framework for understanding the present. In some ways, the 

challenges confronting today’s Intelligence Community personnel are similar to those 

faced by their cohorts from earlier generations. While they differ in their specifics, the 

basic questions surrounding the practice of foreign intelligence and the management 

of large intelligence agencies have not changed. Management challenges such as 

the definition of missions and roles, and analytic pathologies such as groupthink, 

mirror-imaging, and status-quo thinking were all problems confronted by analysts in 

the Cold War and in the 1990s, much as they are in today’s global contingency and 

counterterrorism operations. Examining the ways in which personnel from an earlier 

period recognized, addressed, and resolved these sorts of problems—or failed at all 

three—can inform and hopefully improve current intelligence practices. 

The goal of Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives is to inculcate in DIA and the 

broader Intelligence Community DIA’s historical role during the last 50 years, and to 

educate current and future analysts about the hard-won lessons learned by those who 

occupied their seats before them. To neglect this story, ignore the lessons of the past, is 

to invite failure. 

Defense Intelligence 

Historical Perspectives
Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2
iii

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was the first new agency established by 

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara after he assumed office in 1961. The 

ambitious McNamara intended to reformulate U.S. strategic nuclear policy and reduce 

inefficiencies that had developed in the Department of Defense (DoD) in the 1950s. 

DIA was the lynchpin to both efforts. In the early and middle 1960s, McNamara and 

his subordinates, Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric and new DIA Director 

Lieutenant General Joseph Carroll (USAF), worked hard to establish the Agency, but 

their efforts were delayed or stymied by intransigent and parochial military leadership 

who objected to the creation of DIA because they feared a loss of both battlefield 

effectiveness and political influence in Washington, D.C.1

The work of building the DIA was made all the more urgent by the deteriorating situation 

in Southeast Asia. By the early 1960s, millions of dollars and hundreds of advisory 

personnel sent by the U.S. were having a negligible impact on the anti-communist 

campaign there. As the U.S. continued to commit more resources to the ill-fated 

government in Saigon, the country found itself drawn deeper and deeper into the 

maelstrom.

For DIA, the looming war in Southeast Asia would expose major problems in its 

organization and performance. Especially in the period from 1961 to 1969, DIA, either 

because of structural weaknesses or leadership failures, often failed to energetically 

seize opportunities to assert itself in the major intelligence questions involving the 

conflict there. This tendency was exacerbated by national military leadership’s 

predilection for ignoring or undercutting the Agency’s authority. In turn, this opened up 

DIA to severe criticism by Congress and other national policymakers, some of whom 

even considered abolishing the Agency. During the war, McNamara’s great hope for 

reforming military intelligence would be swept up in quarrels between powerful domestic 

adversaries, and DIA’s performance left the Secretary of Defense deeply embittered 

toward his creation. It was only at the end of the war that DIA assumed a more influential 

role in Southeast Asia. Until then, however, the Agency was consigned to the wilderness 

when it came to questions about the Vietnam conflict.

Introduction
Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2
1

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

DIA Historical Collection

Lt Gen Joseph Carroll DIA’s first 

Director.

Expanding the New DIA

Between 1961 and 1965, DIA personnel faced the double burden of establishing themselves 

as a functioning intelligence agency and producing useful intelligence for military planners 

and policymakers. This would have a direct impact on DIA’s ability to support decisionmaking 

regarding Southeast Asia. During the Agency’s first 14 months, 

Director Carroll focused most of his energy on organizing the phased 

transfer of intelligence resources from the individual Services to 

DIA. By the end of 1962, many of DIA’s bureaucratic management 

mechanisms were in place, and the Agency was capable of 

producing current intelligence in response to the needs of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and the Secretary of Defense.2

Beyond current intelligence, Carroll’s Agency still had not 

established the ability to produce basic intelligence (such as order 

of battle and analyses of enemy military capabilities) and strategic 

intelligence focused on supporting policy and planning. This would 

come in 1963, with the establishment of the Production Center, 

the single largest organizational element within DIA. Planning for 

the Production Center began almost immediately after McNamara 

approved DIA’s Activation Plan in September 1961. Carroll 

submitted his plan to consolidate the Service production elements 

into one function within DIA in April 1962, and Gilpatric approved 

them the following June. The original Activation Plan projected 

that the Production Center would be operational by July, but arguments over resources and 

personnel delayed its opening until 1963.

The Production Center’s first Director was then-U.S. Army Colonel Herron Maples, 

who arrived at DIA in May 1963. Even then, over a year-and-a-half after the Agency’s 

establishment, raw feelings about DIA remained in the Services. When Maples arrived in 

Washington to assume his post, he was surprised to receive a cold welcome from his old 

friend and colleague, Brigadier General Alva Fitch, the Army’s Assistant Chief of Staff for 

Intelligence. Maples visited Fitch in his Pentagon office and was told in no uncertain terms 

that “the Army was not at all pleased with the way this thing was developing with DIA, and we 

would probably be on opposite sides of the fence from this time on, so I should be prepared 

to have a good fight.” By 1963, the Air Force appeared to drop most of its objections to DIA, 

but the Navy, according to Maples, “didn’t want any part of it.”3

The Production Center’s home was on the grounds of a private women’s school turned 

intelligence facility known as Arlington Hall Station. Arlington Hall Junior College for Women 

opened in 1927, but the school suffered badly during the Great Depression and almost 

went into bankruptcy. In 1942, under the War Powers Act, the Army took over the grounds 

of the school and hastily erected two large, gray, temporary, two-story buildings (known 

imaginatively as “Building A” and “Building B”), which would house its Signal Intelligence 

Service for the remainder of the war. In 1945, it became the headquarters of the new Army 

Security Agency and later, Building B housed the Air Force Intelligence Center. The Pentagon 
2

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

did not have enough space to accommodate the large influx of analysts who would staff DIA’s 

Production Center, so Carroll agreed that DIA would take over Building B from the Air Force. At 

the same time, he ordered the set-up of an Automated Data Processing Center in Building A.4

Carroll and his staff would have been hard-pressed to find a worse facility in which to put their 

intelligence analysts. In 1942, neither building was meant to serve as a permanent structure, 

and by 1962, both were badly showing their age. Faulty wiring and shoddy construction 

made them fire traps. Rats and other pests had long since taken residence in the building. 

As a security precaution, many outside windows were painted over with black paint, giving 

the interior of the building the aura of a funeral home. Perhaps most worrisome, the weight 

of dozens of safes moved into Building B by DIA bowed the building’s frame into a concave 

shape. The Production Center’s leadership would take steps to upgrade and refurbish the 

buildings, but even as they were moving in, Carroll and his deputies began lobbying Congress 

for funding for a new home.

The stand-up of the Production Center also almost tripled the number of people working 

for DIA. At the end of 1962, the Agency had 979 civilian and military employees. Manpower 

authorization for the Production Center added almost 1,700 billets to the organization. Most 

of the additional personnel were civilians, and for the first time, the number of civilians in 

the Agency (1,624) outstripped the number of military personnel (1,047). Later in the year, 

the creation of a scientific and technical production organization, the completion of the 

Automated Data Processing Center (which utilized an early database system using punch 

cards and IBM computers), and a directorate for Mapping, Charting, and Geodesy, further 

boosted the Agency’s population. Authorized manpower at the end of fiscal year 1963, DIA Historical Collection

The DIA Production Center Leadership. COL Herron Maples, the Center’s Director, sits at the head of the 

table. 
3

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

for example, was 3,089 personnel, and 

actual manpower was 2,686.5

1964 was a pivotal year for the Agency. 

At the end of March, DIA opened the 

Dissemination Center, which coordinated 

the distribution of intelligence products. A 

month later, the Science and Technology 

Directorate was finally established. In 

August, Carroll merged the Office of 

Estimates with the Current Intelligence 

and Indications Center (CIIC) to create 

the Intelligence Support and Indications 

Center (ISIC) under U.S. Air Force Colonel 

Charles Gillis. This organization funneled 

current intelligence to the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff and the National Military Command Center (NMCC) in the Pentagon. The ISIC would 

be the conduit by which national-level military authorities received military intelligence from 

around the world. 

Separately, McNamara also ordered the establishment of a combined Department of 

Defense Special Missile and Astronautics Center (DoD/SMAC, which would become known 

by the acronym DEFSMAC in 1976) in April 1964. Previously, the Central Intelligence 

Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Services separately collected 

and disseminated intelligence on foreign space and missile events. The system was 

overly redundant and left its recipients with fragmentary and sometimes contradictory 

intelligence reports on the same event. DEFSMAC combined these functions under the joint 

management of DIA and NSA. Initially, 81 people from NSA and 23 from DIA staffed the new 

organization. Their task was to provide 24-hour surveillance of foreign missile and space 

systems, provide tip-offs of pending missile tests to DoD collection elements, and analyze 

the immediate results of these collection missions. DEFSMAC would be the backbone of 

ballistic missile collection and analysis efforts for the next five decades.6

By the end of August 1964, Carroll could report to Gilpatric and McNamara that “all of 

the major organization transfers contemplated in the initial and subsequent organizational 

directives have been effected.” His Agency could by then produce intelligence on 127 nations, 

compared with only 62 countries at the end of 1961.7 Its collection apparatus could task 

assets to answer national-level requirements and validate collection requests emerging from 

the Unified and Specified Commands. Through the Intelligence Support and Indications 

Center in the Pentagon, it could provide worldwide current intelligence to the Joint Chiefs and 

the Secretary of Defense, and through its Production Center, it had begun supplying other 

military intelligence to U.S. forces around the globe.

The Agency had also enlarged its physical presence in Washington and its suburbs. Starting 

from borrowed office space in the Pentagon in 1961, it had expanded to occupy space at DIA Historical Collection

The entrance to Building B, Arlington Hall Station. The temporary 

buildings at Arlington Hall Station were showing their age even 

before DIA moved in. 
4

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

4

PROGRAMS 

DIVISION

OPERATIONAL PLANS 

AND POLICY DIVISION

ASSISTANT CHIEF OF STAFF 

ADMINISTRATION

ASSISTANT CHIEF OF STAFF 

PLANS AND PROGRAMS

CIVILIAN PERSONNEL 

DIVISION

SERVICES 

DIVISION

ARCHITECT ENGINEER 

GROUP

MILITARY PERSONNEL 

DIVISION

WAR PLANS 

DIVISION

SIGINT 

GROUP

RECORDS 

MANAGEMENT 

GROUP

TRAINING 

GROUP

SPECIAL ACTIVITIES 

OFFICE

SPECIAL SECURITY 

OFFICE COUNTERINTELLIGENCE

DIRECTOR

Lt Gen Joseph Carroll, USAF

DEPUTY DIRECTOR

LTG Alva Fich, USA

CHIEF OF STAFF

RADM Allen Reed, USN

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR 

FOR ACQUISITION

COLLECTION 

REQUIREMENTS 

OFFICE

COLLECTION 

MANAGEMENT 

OFFICE

DISSEMINATION 

CENTER

SPECIAL PLANNING 

GROUP

SECRETARY

MILITARY ESTIMATES

GROUP

EXECUTIVE 

MANAGEMENT 

OFFICE

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR 

FOR PROCESSING

PRODUCTION 

CENTER

INTELLIGENCE SUPPORT 

AND INDICATIONS 

CENTER

NMCS SUPPORT 

OFFICE
5

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

MANAGEMENT 

ANALYSIS 

DIVISION

FINANCIAL SERVICES 

DIVISION

ASSISTANT CHIEF OF STAFF 

RESEARCH AND 

DEVELOPMENT

COMPTROLLER

REQUIREMENTS AND 

PROJECTS GROUP

RESEARCH 

GROUP

TECHNICAL 

APPLICATIONS 

DIVISION

MANPOWER AND 

ORGANIZATION 

GROUP

DEFENSE 

INTELLIGENCE 

SCHOOL

AUTOMATIC DATA 

PROCESSING SYSTEMS 

CENTER

Defense Intelligence Agency 

December 1964

WEAPONS AND 

SYSTEMS OFFICE

MANAGEMENT 

OPERATIONS 

OFFICE

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR 

FOR SCIENTIFIC AND 

TECHNICAL INTELLIGENCE

ASSESSMENTS AND 

REPORTING OFFICE

INSPECTOR GENERAL

DIA LIAISON GROUP

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR 

FOR MAPPING, CHARTING, 

AND GEODESY

PRODUCT 

REQUIREMENTS 

OFFICE

PLANS AND 

PROGRAMS OFFICE

SURVEYS AND BASIC 

DATA OFFICE

CARTOGRAPHY 

OFFICE

ADVANCED SYSTEMS 

OFFICE

MISSILES AND SPACE 

OFFICE

SCIENCES AND 

TECHNOLOGIES 

OFFICE
6

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

Arlington Hall Station, Pomponio Plaza (home of the Science and Technology directorate), and 

the Cafritz Building (which it shared with a brewery and in which it conducted reconnaissance 

photo processing), all in Northern Virginia; the Anacostia Naval Annex (the Defense Intelligence 

School) in Southeast Washington; and Fort Meade, Maryland (DEFSMAC). DIA personnel 

were also detailed to various positions at Fort Richie and Andrews Air Force Base—both in 

Maryland—and in Norfolk, Virginia. At the end of 1964, some 3,600 employees were scattered 

across the greater Washington metropolitan area.8

But McNamara was not yet done ordering the consolidation of Pentagon assets under DIA. 

The U.S. military attaché system suffered from the same problems that military intelligence did 

in earlier decades. Duplication, parochialism, and waste had characterized it since the end of 

World War II. In December 1964, McNamara wrote to Carroll, the Service Secretaries, and the 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Earl “Bus” Wheeler, to notify them that “the time 

is now appropriate to establish a single Defense Attaché System (DAS) as an organizational 

function of DIA, in order to improve the management of the total attaché effort.” He ordered 

Carroll to formulate a plan to integrate the various service attachés into the DAS, which would 

be managed by DIA. Brigadier General Richard Whitney, DIA’s Assistant Chief of Staff for Plans 

and Programs, completed the plan in March 1965. McNamara approved it with minor changes 

that same month, and Gilpatric gave final approval in April.9

On July 1, the DAS officially came under Carroll’s authority. The Services, unsurprisingly, resisted 

giving up control of the attachés, arguing that they fulfilled a military protocol function more 

than they did an intelligence function, and in any case, whatever information they did collect 

would be more relevant to the individual Services’ needs. McNamara once again brushed these 

arguments aside in favor of his consolidated system. DIA became responsible for the selection 

and assignment of attachés and for maintaining their operations around the world.10 The 

repercussions of this would be enormous. Defense attachés would play key roles in some of the 

Agency’s most dramatic moments over the next 50 years, including during the Vietnam War.

But all of this growth had a price. While it expanded the Agency’s foreign intelligence 

responsibilities, the bureaucratic aspects of agency building strained the DIA personnel’s ability 

to keep up with intelligence requirements, particularly in analysis. While more personnel could 

be assigned to a wider variety of analytical tasks, Agency supervisors also had the responsibility 

of carrying out analytic duties, building the organizations they ran, and managing DIA’s 

responsibility of supervising external intelligence functions performed by other organizations 

in DoD. “DIA personnel have been planners and builders one day, intelligence analysts and 

managers the next,” noted one official reviewer of the Agency’s development. “It was a difficult 

at times to find the proper personnel to take care of the daily responsibilities of the directorate,” 

complained another reviewer. Thus, in the early ‘60s, a process began in which management 

responsibilities impinged on analytical duties and hindered DIA’s ability to process raw 

intelligence into finished intelligence.11

By the middle of 1964, Carroll’s Agency had assumed virtually all of the functions outlined in 

its Activation Plan of 1961, along with other responsibilities that were not incorporated in the 

original plan. The drawn-out process of establishing the Agency meant that DIA would be 
7

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

bureaucratically hamstrung by its slow development and thus ill-equipped to participate 

in meaningful intelligence assessments on Southeast Asia, especially in the fateful years 

between 1961 and 1965. On those occasions when DIA could provide valuable analysis, 

military leadership would ultimately ignore or disparage this relative newcomer’s opinions in 

favor of analysis done by intelligence specialists already in the region. In any case, as DIA 

became fully operational, the incipient U.S. conflict in Vietnam was reaching a critical state.

The Vietnam Conundrum

While Carroll was struggling to bring DIA into being, the Kennedy Administration was grappling 

with an even larger problem. Since the 1954 departure of French forces from Vietnam, the 

United States had been providing the government of South Vietnam with considerable 

economic and military assistance to aid its fight against a stubborn insurgency conducted by 

the National Liberation Front (NLF), a coalition of various political groups opposing the Saigon 

government. Pejoratively called “Viet Cong” (literally meaning “Vietnamese Communists”) 

by South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, the NLF was supported by North Vietnam 

(DRV—the Democratic Republic of Vietnam), the Soviet Union, and China. 

The political case for the NLF was made easier by the corrupt, capricious, and inept 

government of South Vietnam (RVN—the Republic of Vietnam), led by Diem. Diem prized 

loyalty over effectiveness, and surrounded himself with family members who were more 

crooked than they were competent. He also presided over a fearsome campaign against the 

NLF and its suspected sympathizers, but he could not defeat the dogged insurgency. Diem’s 

hard-line approach drove an even larger wedge between the government and the population, 

and by 1961, the year Carroll began assembling DIA, his government, facing an expanding 

insurgency, was beginning to totter.12

Still in its infancy, DIA’s ability to render meaningful strategic intelligence judgments regarding 

Southeast Asia was limited. Kennedy Administration policymakers chose to rely instead on 

various fact-finding missions taken by its senior members (such as an October 1961 mission 

by military advisor General Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow, the president’s Deputy National 

Security Advisor), as well as input from more established intelligence agencies such as CIA 

and NSA.13 DIA’s work in late 1961 and early 1962 was thus limited to producing current 

intelligence on infiltration corridors and communications networks, and providing weekly 

updates to McNamara and the Joint Chiefs on South Vietnamese military activity. 

In Vietnam, the United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), which was 

established on February 8, 1962, to advise, train, and offer other support to the Army of the 

Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), was the primary body overseeing military assistance to that 

nation. General Paul Harkins, MACV’s commanding officer, and Frederick Nolting, the U.S. 

Ambassador to South Vietnam, shared responsibility for leading MACV, which would come to 

dominate policy discussions about the ongoing insurgency.14 MACV’s intelligence chief (G-2) 

was Air Force Colonel James Winterbottom, a specialist in strategic reconnaissance and a 

man with little understanding of insurgencies.15
8

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

In February 1962, Harkins, on Taylor’s recommendation, set up a Joint Evaluation Center (JEC) 

under Winterbottom in an effort to craft more authoritative intelligence assessments of the 

situation. The JEC was conceptually an early forerunner of today’s intelligence fusion centers. 

Originally, it was to be staffed by embassy personnel and CIA and military representatives, and 

the JCS directed Carroll to support it. Carroll in turn sent DIA’s most qualified Southeast Asia 

analyst, George Allen, as the Agency’s sole representative to the JEC. Allen was an analyst 

in the CIIC and had extensive experience in the region going back to his days as an Army 

intelligence specialist immediately after World War II. Prior to coming to DIA, he was the senior 

Indochina intelligence expert in the U.S. Army, Pacific. In 1961, he coordinated the Army’s 

current intelligence program before DIA absorbed that function into the CIIC, bringing Allen 

with it. He had a vaguely defined portfolio at DIA, serving as a “consultant” to Colonel Gillis, 

the head of the CIIC, which allowed him a degree of professional flexibility and made him an 

ideal representative to the JEC.16

Allen left for Saigon that month. When he arrived, he received a rude welcome from his 

new boss. Upon reporting to Winterbottom in Saigon, Allen was told by MACV’s G-2 “in no 

uncertain terms that though I might have been a ‘hotshot,’ big-time, powerful blankety-blank 

GS-15 back in Washington, in Saigon I was no better then the lowest-ranked private, that I 

would enjoy no special privileges, that I should remember for whom I was working, that I was 

not DIA’s employee but his, and that if I tried to communicate with my home office without 

clearing the message with him, he would fix my wagon (to put it politely).”17 Perhaps already 

aware of how Winterbottom planned to run the JEC, no embassy personnel or CIA staff joined 

the organization. 

The JEC’s task was to evaluate and combine all-source intelligence reporting to provide 

finished intelligence products for MACV leadership and policymakers in Washington.18 Within 

it, Allen was responsible for coordinating the efforts of the different teams working on the order 

of battle (OB) and ensuring that they were following a common methodology. After two months 

of painstaking work, Allen’s group in the JEC concluded that there were approximately 20,000 

North Vietnamese regulars in South Vietnam and “probably at least 100,000 of the guerillamilitia elements.” Winterbottom rejected this latter figure out of hand and forced a revision of 

the estimate to just over 16,300 total enemy fighters. In May, the figure was then presented by 

MACV to a satisfied McNamara, who took it to mean that the U.S. effort was bearing fruit.19

The disagreement over OB in early 1962 and MACV’s assertion of leadership on the issue 

demonstrated the limits of DIA’s capabilities at this very early stage of its development. The 

Agency lacked the administrative capacity (it could only support the JEC with one analyst) and 

bureaucratic willpower to energetically challenge MACV’s conclusions. There is little evidence 

that Carroll, consumed as he was with getting the Agency on its feet, was willing to involve 

DIA in an analytical knife fight with MACV over enemy order of battle. As a general rule, the 

DIA Director preferred not to challenge the Services directly while he was trying to establish 

DIA’s tasking and managerial authority over DoD intelligence assets. He was a conciliator by 

nature, and while the approach won him many friends and admirers, it tended to undercut 

any leverage his position as DIA Director afforded him. It is unclear whether Carroll informed 

McNamara that the JEC effort did little to resolve the differences of intelligence opinion in the 
9

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

OB estimates. The Secretary of Defense appeared to believe that the situation in Vietnam was 

improving.20 With regard to the conflict in Vietnam, it would be the first in a string of missed 

opportunities for DIA to assert the leadership role which McNamara originally intended for it.

Even so, between 1963 and 1965, Carroll’s Agency began reporting more and more grim 

news to McNamara. But in many cases, DIA analysis was undercut elsewhere in the 

Pentagon. For example, an August 1964 DIA intelligence bulletin described a surge of NLF 

attacks on government targets in South Vietnam, and warned that oppressive government 

measures, such as a crackdown against Buddhist war protesters, would only encourage 

support for the communists. But 10 days later, Marine Major General Victor “Brute” Krulak, 

the Pentagon’s Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities (SACSA), 

wrote to McNamara discounting the importance of insurgent activity. He pointed out that 

the level of violence was still below what it was in 1962, and that NLF activity was “neither 

particularly salient nor of long duration” and therefore did not deserve concern.21

That same month, Diem imposed martial law and ordered attacks on Buddhist pagodas, 

which had become centers of non-violent resistance to government abuses. At DIA, Carroll 

sent a memorandum to McNamara warning that these steps “are likely to further alienate 

the public from the Diem government and will have serious repercussions throughout the 

country.” Furthermore, according to Carroll, a coup against the Diem government was a very 

real possibility.22 The report cast more doubt on the situation in Vietnam, and in yet another 

effort to get what he hoped would be an unvarnished appraisal, Kennedy first sent Krulak and 

Joseph Mendenhall, the former political counselor in the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, to South 

Vietnam. Three weeks later, he sent McNamara and Taylor to assess the situation yet again, 

but the results of these fact-finding missions did not clarify matters for the president. The Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University

Buddhist monks protest in Saigon, 1963. DIA analysts argued correctly 

that any crack-down on the protests would weaken South Vietnamese 

President Ngo Dinh Diem. 
10

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

Carroll’s August memorandum to McNamara was prophetic. After the violent raids on the 

pagodas, key ARVN officers became convinced that Diem had to be removed, and made a 

series of quiet contacts with U.S. officials, who indicated their tacit support for Diem’s removal. 

The officers and their men attacked the presidential palace in Saigon, and without U.S. 

approval, murdered Diem and his brother on November 1, ushering in an era of “revolvingdoor juntas” until Nguyen Van Thieu came to power in 1965. After the coup, Kennedy ordered 

a reevaluation of U.S. Vietnam policy, but three weeks later, he was assassinated by Lee 

Harvey Oswald. Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency, leaving Kennedy’s team in place. 

The policy review was not completed.23

As Johnson was settling into the Oval Office, the first small seeds of doubt about Vietnam 

began to appear in McNamara’s mind. This was in part because as U.S. involvement 

deepened, DIA’s reporting to the Secretary of Defense became increasingly pessimistic. 

On December 13, Carroll wrote to McNamara that the insurgency was strengthening and 

its combat effectiveness was improving. His memo directly contradicted the sanguine 

intelligence reports emerging from Winterbottom’s office in MACV, noting that “The Communist 

capability to extend or escalate the insurgency has not been significantly negated.” Six 

days later, McNamara visited Vietnam with Carroll’s report fresh in his mind. The Secretary’s 

own impressions from the trip were just as foreboding: “Viet Cong progress has been great 

during the period since the coup ... The situation is very disturbing.” He concluded that 

further infusion of U.S. troops would not stem the tide, but did argue for continuation of U.S. 

involvement at essentially the same level.24

Over the Precipice

Like Kennedy before him, Johnson’s Vietnam policy sought a middle ground between full 

commitment and full withdrawal; and like Kennedy before him, that middle ground would 

ultimately result in greater escalation. In early 1964, Johnson approved a plan for covert action 

against North Vietnam known as OPLAN 34-A. A key component of OPLAN 34-A was the 

so-called DeSoto patrols. These patrols by specially equipped U.S. Navy vessels would gather 

electronic intelligence on targets in North Vietnam, assist South Vietnamese commando raids, 

and perform other covert activities.25

On the night of August 4, in heavy seas under a moonless sky, two destroyers on a DeSoto 

patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin, the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy, urgently reported 

that they were under attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats.26 The Maddox had been 

attacked two days earlier, but the August 4 attack turned out to be a phantom—the result, 

according to after-action reporting, of freak weather effects and over-eager sonarmen—but 

the consequences were enormous. On August 7, Congress passed what subsequently came 

to be known as the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which gave the president far-reaching authority to 

take action to protect U.S. interests in Southeast Asia. That same day, Carroll forwarded an 

assessment to McNamara predicting that the North Vietnamese would ramp up their efforts in 

South Vietnam in response. Both sides were crossing the Rubicon.27

Armed with his new authority from Congress, Johnson began a review of U.S. Vietnam policy, 

forming the National Security Council (NSC) Working Group on South Vietnam and East 
11

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

Asia. DIA representatives sat on the Intelligence Panel of the Working Group. After evaluating 

the available evidence, the panel concluded that prospects for the Saigon government 

were “extremely grim,” that increased military action against North Vietnam would have a 

negligible effect because “the basic elements of Communist strength in South Vietnam remain 

indigenous,” and that Hanoi could support the insurgency even if it were severely damaged by 

a protracted military campaign. Sustained attacks, the panel also concluded, were not likely to 

break Hanoi’s will.28

But Johnson never heard this argument. The Joint Staff’s representative to the Working 

Group, Vice Admiral Lloyd Mustin, made sure of it. Mustin was a career combat officer 

with little experience in Southeast Asia, but he rejected out of hand the Intelligence Panel’s 

conclusions. Victory was a matter of military force; the United States should simply crush 

North Vietnam. Doing so would force Hanoi to withdraw support for the NLF, and the 

insurgency would whither away. Mustin’s arguments fell on sympathetic ears, and the NSC 

ultimately recommended few changes to Johnson’s Vietnam policy.29 Johnson waited until 

after the elections of 1964 and his inauguration in January 1965 to commit to sustained 

military action, but in March 1965, Operation ROLLING THUNDER, the sustained bombing 

of North Vietnam, began.30

Air War over Vietnam

ROLLING THUNDER was DIA’s first serious test during the Vietnam War. After a series of 

limited and ineffective air raids in February (code-named FLAMING DART), JCS Chairman 

Wheeler complained that “we do not have sufficient or timely information about the results of 

the strikes,” that planning was poor, and the choice of weapons used was “open to question.” 

He ordered Carroll to come up with a standardized and streamlined system of after-action 

reporting that would improve targeting and ordnance selection. In the succeeding months, 

DIA personnel in the Targets 

Division and Estimates Office 

in Herron Maples’ Production 

Center compiled intelligence 

from U.S. Pacific Air Forces 

and the U.S. Pacific Fleet 

(both components under the 

Commander of U.S. Forces, 

Pacific—CINCPAC), MACV 

(itself a subordinate command 

of CINCPAC), and NSA, 

and collated the information 

into finished reports on the 

raids. Agency personnel then 

distributed weekly evaluations 

to McNamara, the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff, and senior 

DoD officials for action.31

 Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University

U.S. soldiers view B-52 strikes at Con Thien, near the demilitarized zone separating 

North and South Vietnam, during Operation ROLLING THUNDER. 
12

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

ROLLING THUNDER quickly progressed into a regular strategic bombing campaign against 

targets in both the North and the South, with the military goal of interdicting the flow of men 

and supplies into South Vietnam. DIA’s analysts were skeptical that this would arrest enemy 

combat operations. Together with CIA and the State Department, analysts in the Southeast 

Asia Branch in the Estimates Office argued in March that NLF forces “had the capability 

and almost the intention [sic] of exerting considerable military pressure even without new or 

augmented support from the North.” But the JCS and civilian policymakers in McNamara’s 

office took this to mean that more force was necessary. A month later, the JCS argued that 

the ROLLING THUNDER target list was too restrictive to be effective, and they successfully 

lobbied McNamara for an expansion of the program, including a more extensive target list 

and the use of B-52s in so-called ARC LIGHT missions. Carroll began submitting even longer 

target lists to the Joint Chiefs, and ARC LIGHT missions began in June.32

DIA’s initial evaluations were a cause for cautious optimism among policymakers. An appraisal 

produced at the end of June, for example, noted that “sustained air strikes against North 

Vietnam have eroded national capacities ammunition storage, supply depots, POL [petroleum, 

oil, and lubricants], power plants and military facilities, as well as causing near paralysis of 

many facets of the national economy.” McNamara published an unclassified version of this 

assessment to the press, and McGeorge Bundy, the president’s National Security Advisor, 

forwarded the report to Johnson, noting that “it suggests that there are real pressures in our 

bombing program.”33

As a result, military and senior civilian leadership argued for a further expansion of the 

ROLLING THUNDER target list to include more political, logistic, and economic targets in the 

North.34 The Joint Chiefs argued in favor of removing many bombing restrictions and attacking 

all of North Vietnam’s industrial capabilities, petroleum reserves, and its infrastructure. Most 

of the Intelligence Community (IC) seemed to agree, publishing a September Special National 

Intelligence Estimate which backed the notion that an extended U.S. air campaign “might 

persuade [Hanoi] that the guerilla war could not be prosecuted to final victory.” Only the State 

Department dissented.35

But by the end of 1965, DIA analysts were having second thoughts about ROLLING 

THUNDER. During a bombing pause in December and January, a December intelligence 

assessment they produced for the JCS questioned whether a sustained campaign could 

have a long-term effect because of the dispersed nature of the targets in North Vietnam. 

When it became clear that the bombing pause had failed to produce the anticipated 

diplomatic talks, their doubts about the potential success of sustained bombing became 

more acute. In January 1966, they briefed JCS Chairman Wheeler and the rest of the 

Joint Chiefs that “the Communists certainly believe that their motivation is superior, 

that lack of clear cut victory combined with domestic and foreign pressures will erode 

U.S. determination, and that they can outlast the US in the contest—even in the face of 

extremely heavy troop losses.” 36 Such assessments were in direct contradiction to what 

the Joint Chiefs of Staff believed would occur with the application of increased force, and 

were met with skepticism among military leadership.
13

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

As a stepped-up bombing campaign against North Vietnamese POL sites continued into 

the middle of 1966, DIA reporting channeled through the JCS kept McNamara abreast of 

its progress. By August 1, targeting analysts estimated that 70 percent of North Vietnam’s 

industrial capacity was destroyed, but the huge risks and expense, coupled with the near 

impossibility of destroying the remaining dispersed sites, forced McNamara to begin rethinking 

his support for the campaign. Another joint CIA/DIA analysis completed a month later 

concluded that the continued attacks were unsuccessful, mainly because the flow of men 

south continued unabated, and North Vietnam was no closer to agreeing to negotiations.37 

With the failure of ROLLING THUNDER becoming obvious, McNamara’s disillusionment 

deepened. The Secretary of Defense joined a small group of policy officials who favored a 

halt to the air campaign. The middle of 1966 also marked an important turning point in his 

relationship with DIA. When Hanoi failed to back down after intensified attacks in July and 

August 1966, McNamara concluded that the Defense Intelligence Agency, his solution for 

eliminating Service intelligence bias and offering civilian Pentagon leadership unvarnished 

intelligence reporting, had not established its independence from its parent Services and 

merely parroted Service thinking about the increased use of force. He requested that CIA set 

up a unit that could monitor the campaign on its own and report its findings to him directly. 

Years later, McNamara recalled that: 

I didn’t believe the DIA was trying to deceive me on the results of the bombing ... But 

I did believe that parties of interest frequently looking [sic] at their operations through 

rose, what I call ‘rose colored glasses’ ... And particularly with respect to the bombing 

operations, I believed that we needed an independent evaluation.38

But McNamara’s criticism was disingenuous. To be sure, in 1965, DIA analysis tacitly backed 

the notion that a more aggressive air campaign might force Hanoi to sue for peace. But as 

early as January 1966, Agency analysts had repeatedly voiced skepticism over the efficacy of 

expanded attacks, and it was impossible to paper over the failures of ROLLING THUNDER, 

which Carroll did not do in any case. DIA had already been coordinating with CIA for a year 

by the time the Secretary of Defense requested a more “independent” evaluation. McNamara, 

never one to rely on intelligence when his own judgment seemed best, was merely searching 

for a scapegoat, and he found one in an already unpopular Agency which had been the object 

of derision since its inception. DIA continued to coordinate with CIA throughout 1967 and 

1968 to provide monthly evaluations of the campaign’s progress.39

But the violent logic of ROLLING THUNDER’s advocates continued to win out. In February 

1967, Johnson again ordered an expansion of the operation’s target list. The joint DIA/CIA 

appraisals of the attacks on the new targets provided policymakers with a blow-by-blow 

account of the failure of this most intense stage of ROLLING THUNDER. A report published 

in June noted that “the massive North Vietnamese construction and repair efforts continue 

to offset much of the effects of air strikes ... The North Vietnamese still retain the capability 

to support activities in South Vietnam and Laos at present or increased combat levels and 

force structures.” Interdiction raids on the Ho Chi Minh trail, a supply network stretching 

from North to South Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia, had little effect beyond short-
14

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

term dislocations. “The North Vietnamese still retain the capability to support activities in 

South Vietnam and Laos at present or increased combat levels and force structures,” the 

same report read.40

Very little progress was apparent even later that year. A CIA/DIA report issued in October noted 

once again that “because the requirements are modest, the North Vietnamese still retain the 

capability to logistically support activities in South Vietnam and Laos at present or increased 

combat levels and force structure.” North Vietnamese morale continued to hold as well. As 

1967 turned to 1968, it was clear to most civilian policymakers, if not the president and his 

military advisors, that ROLLING THUNDER was a failure. The ground war for Vietnam was not 

faring much better.41

Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University

The Dep Cau Bridge, northeast of Hanoi, lies in the Cau River after being attacked by U.S. Air Force F-105 

fighter-bombers. Photographs like this one were key to DIA’s assessments of North Vietnam’s ability to resupply 

their forces from China and therefore sustain the war effort in the South.
15

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

Intelligence Estimates and the Ground War in Vietnam

The first U.S. ground combat troops arrived in Vietnam on March 3, 1965, when the Third 

Marine regiment came ashore in Da Nang. Throughout 1965, the number of U.S. troops in 

Vietnam continued to escalate, reaching 185,000 by the end of the year.42 General William 

Westmoreland, who had taken over command of MACV in June 1964, developed a strategy 

which centered on inflicting insupportable losses on the communists that would force them 

to quit the fight—all while keeping U.S. casualties at an acceptable level. To know whether 

or not Westmoreland’s attrition strategy was successful, it was also necessary to have a 

clear idea of the size of NLF and North Vietnamese regular forces. Thus order of battle 

estimates continued to play a critical intelligence role in the formulation of U.S. strategy and 

policy in Vietnam.43

In 1966, after a year of heavy fighting, a CIA analyst named Samuel Adams completed his own 

investigation into the strength of the NLF irregular forces. He concluded that enemy strength in 

Vietnam totaled some 600,000, twice that of MACV’s OB estimate, which held that anywhere 

from 277,000 to 300,000 enemy fighters, both regular and irregular, were arrayed against U.S. 

forces. Adams’ assessment eventually reached the White House, and in early 1967, National 

Security Advisor Walt Rostow suggested to JCS Chairman Wheeler that the interested parties 

meet to resolve the difference. Wheeler in turn ordered Carroll to convene a conference in 

Hawaii that February.44

Carroll considered the conference important enough that he ordered Brigadier General 

Burton Brown, the Agency’s Deputy Assistant Director for Intelligence Production, to lead 

DIA’s delegation. Brown’s analysts were already sympathetic to Adams’ basic point that 

MACV’s OB needed to be revised. Brown himself favored significant additions to the OB, 

but none of them were willing to agree that Adams’ numbers 

were accurate. MACV’s Colonel Gains Hawkins, who was in 

charge of enemy strength estimates, conceded that the enemy 

troop total, including NLF irregulars, could be around 500,000, a 

substantial increase, to be sure, but still 100,000 short of Adams’ 

figure. Unresolved differences still remained over the nature, 

composition, and size of irregular forces, especially local militias 

and so-called “assault youth” brigades (militia forces composed 

essentially of teenagers), and MACV’s operations personnel 

exerted enormous pressure to keep the number low. Questions 

about OB estimates lingered well into 1967.45

Within DIA, order of battle analysis was done by the Southeast Asia 

Branch of the new Eastern Area Office, located in the Production 

Center. Analysts here began doubting MACV’s estimates in 

early 1967, after Operation JUNCTION CITY, a huge U.S. sweep 

through the Iron Triangle north of Saigon. During the offensive, 

American soldiers captured thousands of enemy documents 

which gave them much more insight into communist forces. The 

intelligence windfall provided more evidence to the OB analysts 

DIA Historical Collection 

BG Burton Brown, DIA’s Deputy Assistant

Director for Intelligence Production, 1967. 
16

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

who argued for an upward revision of the figures. 

Major John “Barrie” Williams, one of the Agency’s 

most experienced Vietnam analysts, recalled that 

“when we started translating these documents and 

everything, it suddenly appeared to some of the best 

analysts in the business that hey gang, there ain’t 

44,000 guerillas. There could be as many as 112,000 

guerillas.” MACV’s response, according to Williams, 

was to redefine the term “enemy combatant.” “So 

what happened at this time is recategorized [sic] 

the enemy, if you will,” he recalled. “It was suddenly 

decided that political infrastructure was not to be 

part of the threat. ... I can tell you that infrastructure 

got zapped, no doubt about it.” Williams estimated 

the true number of enemy fighters to be around 

450,000 to 500,000.46

Differences over the numbers grew into a major 

disagreement between the intelligence agencies in 

Washington and MACV. During the preparation of 

a Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) on 

communist capabilities in Vietnam, CIA wanted to 

use Adams’ figure of 600,000, but Westmoreland 

had different ideas. He wanted to eliminate 

the NLF’s so-called self-defense and secret self-defense forces from all assessments of 

enemy OB. These were the very forces that pushed Adams’ estimate up to 600,000. MACV 

representatives argued that it was impossible to accurately discern self-defense from secret 

self-defense forces. Any effort to count them, they argued, would be pure speculation and 

wholly inaccurate. Moreover, as MACV deputy commander General Creighton Abrams put it, 

these groups “contain a sizable number of women and old people. ... They are rarely armed, 

have no real discipline, and almost no military capability. They are no more effective in the 

military sense than the dozens of other nonmilitary organizations which serve the VC cause in 

various roles.” 47 A marked upward revision in communist forces would also undermine both 

MACV’s public credibility and the White House’s belief in Westmoreland’s ability to prosecute 

the war. 

Complicating Westmoreland’s position was that MACV intelligence and operations elements 

had officially claimed that same month that the effort in Vietnam had reached its “crossover 

point,” that is, enemy losses were exceeding replacements. This argument was spearheaded 

by Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Graham, the chief of MACV’s Current Intelligence, Indications, 

and Estimates Division, who would go on to become DIA Director in 1974 and one of the 

most important figures in the Agency’s history. Westmoreland had made the “crossover” claim 

previously, but it was Graham’s work that provided the claim with more intellectual weight 

and therefore greater legitimacy. Based on an “input-output” model instituted by Graham that Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University

U.S. troops examine equipment found in an NLF hospital 

during Operation JUNCTION CITY, which also led to the 

capture of thousands of enemy documents.
17

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

compared the number of replacements to the number of losses in the North Vietnamese Army 

and NLF, MACV’s OB estimates seemed to show that Westmoreland’s goal of grinding down 

the enemy was working. According to those around him, Graham’s order of battle claims were 

based on this interpretation of the figures and his understanding of the definition of an enemy 

combatant, which did not include the self-defense forces.48 “We honestly believed,” recalled 

one of Graham’s colleagues, “that we had reached a crossover point.” 49

DIA’s efforts to mediate the dispute between MACV and CIA were futile. By the end of June 

1967, Carroll himself had serious doubts about MACV’s estimate. According to Williams, the 

DIA Director believed that the estimate should be revised upward, but, ever the conciliator 

and perhaps unwilling to challenge the Army estimators in MACV, Carroll made it clear that 

he wanted to avoid “a knock-down, drag-out fight over the strength figures.” 50 Later that 

summer, DIA representatives met in Washington with CINCPAC and MACV officials, including 

Graham. DIA’s analysts favored an increase in the estimate to approximately 500,000, but 

the MACV delegation was only prepared to accept an estimate no higher than 300,000. 

Williams later recalled that Graham insisted DIA should go along with MACV because the latter 

organization was “the soldier in the field.” He claimed in 1983, as did others who were present, 

that Graham arbitrarily changed the figures to keep the OB estimate under 300,000.51

Williams’ accusation may have credence, but Graham’s position also may not have been as 

contrived as his critics believed. On one hand, Williams remembers Graham simply crossing 

out figures and replacing them with lower ones, a clear abuse of intelligence analysis.52 On the 

other hand, MACV’s institutional definition of an enemy combatant was entirely different than 

CIA’s. Abrams’ prior assertion that the self-defense forces were hardly military formations is an 

indication that the opposing sides could not agree on a single definition of enemy combatant, 

and their numbers were skewed because of it. The definitional shift made by MACV after 

Operation JUNCTION CITY worsened the problem considerably. DIA’s official position was 

that while the self-defense forces could be, but were not necessarily, enemy combatants, 

MACV’s number was still too low because it did not include other groups, such as the 

Communist political cadres, nor take into account the unique circumstances under which 

individual local militia groups operated. The question of OB therefore may have also centered 

on an honest difference of analytical opinion between different intelligence organizations.53

In any case, the episode did not cast Carroll’s Agency in a good light. By not budging on 

any figure over 300,000, MACV, supported by the Joint Chiefs, demonstrated DIA’s inability 

to resolve intelligence disputes and arrive at a universally agreed-upon estimate devoid of 

Service bias. Carroll repeatedly asked Williams and other subordinates to try to resolve the 

results, which they were unable to do. George Fowler, another Southeast Asia analyst in DIA 

(who would go on to become DIA’s Chief of Estimates for the region), was also unhappy with 

the conclusions, but no one in the Agency could dissuade MACV. DIA was subsequently 

buffeted by howls of protest from CIA—who misinterpreted DIA’s inability to revise the official 

OB as evidence that they actually sided with MACV—and continually rebuffed by MACV when 

it tried to revise the 300,000 figure.54 Months of wrangling between representatives from CIA, 

DIA, and MACV continued. DIA representatives went to Saigon at the end of June to continue 
18

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

their discussions with MACV, but got nowhere. In October, Carroll 

sent another team to Saigon, but still MACV would not budge. 

Worse, according to John Williams, U.S. Air Force Major General 

Grover Cleveland Brown, who was DIA’s Assistant Director for 

Intelligence Production, does not appear to have supported his 

analysts’ efforts to convince MACV to revise its estimate. Brown 

had been the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence in U.S. 

Pacific Command from 1964 to 1967.55 In this position, he had 

backed MACV’s position in the OB disputes. He was assigned 

to DIA in April 1967. Williams recalls that during a meeting at CIA 

Headquarters in Virginia between MACV, CIA, and DIA analysts led 

by U.S. Army Colonel John Lanterman (the chief of DIA’s Eastern 

Area Office), Lanterman’s analysts had struck an agreement on the 

figures with CIA that would have forced MACV’s estimate upward. 

Brown initially backed the agreement, but, according to Williams, 

“Danny Graham would get on the phone and call Grover Cleveland 

Brown, give him a change of position. ‘You’re not backing MACV. 

We need you.’ Lanterman would get back [from meeting with 

Brown] and his positions were changed again.”56 Brown probably 

sided with MACV and Graham out of loyalty to an intelligence position for which he was 

partially responsible when he was at CINCPAC. It appears that even while at DIA, he fell prey 

to a persistent and long-held bias in favor of analysis done in the field and against analysis 

done at a further remove in Washington. This apparent internal discord did nothing to resolve 

the OB question and helped undermine DIA’s position within the Intelligence Community and 

Department of Defense.

The following November, the SNIE that originally ignited the disagreement was published and 

cited an even lower number of enemy combatants after redefining many statistical categories. 

It set the total enemy OB between 190,000 and 220,000.57 On the same day the Director of 

Central Intelligence (DCI) released the SNIE, McNamara announced that he planned to resign 

his position as Secretary of Defense. DIA’s erstwhile champion, “drained in body and spirit,” 

had asked Johnson to call a halt to ROLLING THUNDER and find a diplomatic settlement 

in May 1967. This was too much for Johnson, who orchestrated McNamara’s placement as 

President of the World Bank during the summer.58 McNamara would leave office in February 

1968, but his departure and replacement by Clark Clifford ultimately had little effect on DIA’s 

internal or external relationships. 

Official military estimates on enemy strength, especially as they pertained to communist 

infiltration into South Vietnam, continued to decline in late 1967. DIA was almost entirely 

reliant on MACV for intelligence bearing on enemy order of battle, and the Agency had no 

influence on the OB numbers. Agency personnel sent to MACV the essential elements of 

information they required, but MACV personnel processed and screened the raw intelligence 

before sending it to DIA.59 It was a procedure that opened opportunities for MACV personnel 

to manipulate intelligence data in ways that bolstered their position, and it effectively DIA Historical Collection 

 U.S. Air Force Major General Grover

 Cleveland Brown, DIA’s Assistant Director

 for Intelligence Production. 
19

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

subordinated DIA to MACV. According to DIA’s John Williams, the Agency was almost entirely 

reliant on MACV’s reporting. “We took what MACV gave us on infiltration,” he later recalled, 

“and published it to the Washington community.”60 DIA had failed to exert its independent 

managerial responsibilities over this most critical intelligence issue.

This failure had many fathers. MACV’s early authority over Vietnam-related military intelligence 

issues, coupled with the lingering Service resentment of DIA, meant that military leadership 

in Southeast Asia and Washington were predisposed to ignoring DIA’s analysis in favor of 

MACV’s. This problem was exacerbated by senior leadership within DIA itself. DIA Director 

Carroll, regarded by his peers as an extraordinarily honorable man, nevertheless failed to 

forcefully assert leadership on one of the central questions of the war, and was intent on 

avoiding conflict over the issue of order of battle. Brown, a key senior subordinate, only 

aggravated DIA’s problems by failing to support the independent position worked out by 

the Agency’s analysts. It was in the end another lost opportunity for DIA to exercise exactly 

the kind of authority over intelligence analysis that McNamara envisioned when he ordered 

DIA’s establishment. The failure to seize on this opportunity eroded DIA’s position within the 

Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community, did nothing to restore McNamara’s 

crumbling faith in the Agency, and would badly damage DIA’s public image. Even so, had DIA 

asserted itself more forcefully in the debate, it is still not clear that it would have convinced 

recalcitrant MACV leadership or its backers on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Thus, despite CIA’s protests, leadership in the Department of Defense and the White House 

operated under the mistaken impression that the while the United States was making progress 

in the ground war, even more force was required to achieve victory. But they would be in for a 

shock within months. Between November 1967 and January 1968, MACV began getting hints 

of a major enemy strike. Large numbers of NLF soldiers began infiltrating and gathering in 

major cities, and 20,000 North Vietnamese troops also massed around the U.S. Marine Corps 

outpost at Khe Sanh, near the demilitarized zone and the border with Laos. 

On January 30, 1968, NLF and North Vietnamese troops launched the Tet Offensive against 

virtually every important political and military target in South Vietnam. Several weeks of heavy 

fighting followed, but American and allied forces were able to defeat the attackers throughout 

South Vietnam, inflicting serious losses. Hostilities associated with the Tet Offensive ebbed 

and flowed for months afterward, but the outcome was a military defeat for the communist 

forces, who lost, by some estimates, almost 40,000 men. The Americans had won a tactical 

victory, but given intelligence assessments and public assurances by policy officials, the Tet 

Offensive came as a shock in the United States.61

After the Tet Offensive, Carroll again sent a team to Saigon, this time headed by his Chief of 

Staff, Major General Robert Glass, in an effort to readjust the OB estimate. MACV officials 

still refused to acknowledge any error. According to John Williams, who accompanied Glass 

along with Lanterman, even MACV’s personnel knew the numbers did not add up. “We had 

our respective positions that we had to support for our agencies, and you know, usually these 

[positions] are dictated by your commanders,” he recalled. “But when you privately sit down 

over a beer, you know that a lot of the things you are supporting are total and utter horseshit, 
20

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

just total and utter.” The entire experience was, he related, “Probably the most frustrating 

thing you have ever been into. You were sent out there by General Carroll to do this, and you 

go back with your hat in hand and say ‘Sir, I can’t get them to come off a dime.’”62

Meanwhile, CIA and DIA still could not agree on a specific estimate of enemy strength, but 

the two agencies were able to come to a wary, but working consensus on related issues. 

In March, they jointly published an attrition study which argued that despite the losses 

incurred during Tet, the communists would be able to continue their campaign against 

South Vietnam unabated. “Hanoi retains the capability of meeting all of its manpower 

requirements,” it stated. “We conclude that manpower is not a factor limiting Hanoi’s ability 

to continue with the war.”63 The next day, Johnson ordered an end to ROLLING THUNDER, 

indicated that the United States would take steps to deescalate the conflict, and announced 

that he would not seek reelection.

Despite Johnson’s announcement and the onset of peace talks in May, fighting in Vietnam 

continued in the spring and summer of 1968.64 Carroll sent yet another delegation to Saigon in 

June to negotiate an adjustment in the military OB, but MACV still made no attempt to revise 

its figures. James Meacham, the head of MACV’s order of battle division, wrote to his wife:

The types from DIA were here and badgered me endlessly trying to pry the truth from 

my sealed lips. They smell a rat but don’t really know where to look for it. They know 

we are falsifying the figures, but can’t figure out which ones and how.65

Saigon was the scene of heavy fighting during the 1968 Tet Offensive.

National Archives and Records Administration
21

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

Once again, the DIA delegation returned home empty-handed. For the rest of 1968, DIA 

analysts continued to work with CIA and MACV to come to a mutually agreeable estimate. 

Despite some compromises by each side over the course of the next year, few in the White 

House had complete faith in the OB estimates emerging from Vietnam.

An Intelligence Disaster: The USS Pueblo Incident

In 1968, DIA’s credibility suffered a series of blows. As the Agency struggled to bring order 

to the chaotic intelligence picture in Vietnam, 2,300 miles northeast of Saigon, North Korea 

was embarking on an aggressive campaign to destabilize the South Korean government, 

a campaign that included attacks 

against American targets.66 The United 

States had been conducting intelligence 

gathering missions against North Korea 

in international waters and airspace since 

the 1950s, but tensions had increased 

noticeably in 1966, when the North Koreans 

renewed their efforts to “liberate” the 

South. Important components of the U.S. 

intelligence effort were signals intelligence 

(SIGINT) missions in international waters 

off the coast of North Korea. In 1968, one 

of these missions was to be conducted by 

the USS Pueblo, a World War II-era freighter 

recently refitted as a SIGINT collection ship.

The request for the Pueblo’s mission 

came from Rear Admiral Frank Johnson, the Commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Japan 

(COMNAVFORJAPAN). COMNAVFORJAPAN assessed the operational risk to the Pueblo

as minimal, and forwarded the request to the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet 

(CINCPACFLT) in Hawaii. On December 17, 1967, CINCPACFLT likewise assessed the risk 

to the mission as low, and sent the request to DIA via the Joint Staff’s Joint Reconnaissance 

Center for its own risk assessment and validation.67 DIA’s own evaluation of the Pueblo

mission took place 10 days later as part of the monthly meetings to assess the risk of dozens 

of reconnaissance missions conducted each month. The analysts who conducted the risk 

assessment were from the Special Reconnaissance Branch in the Directorate for Intelligence 

Production and from the Directorate for Collection.68

Like their counterparts at COMNAVFORJAPAN, Agency analysts assessed the mission’s 

risk as low, but they made a fatal error. In their deliberations, they focused on airborne

interceptions of U.S. flights by North Korean fighters, and assumed that North Korean 

boats would only intercept South Korean vessels. The former was occurring with regular, 

but declining frequency, and the latter incidents had increased dramatically in the last two 

years. Since North Korean air and naval assets had not previously intercepted U.S. naval Naval Historical Center

The USS Pueblo lies off California in October 1967, three months 

before its fateful mission. 
22

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

missions, nowhere in DIA’s risk assessment of the Pueblo mission did this possibility come 

up. Moreover, since similar missions against the Soviet Union and China took place with 

minimal incidents, DIA’s evaluators assumed the same would be true in a mission against 

North Korea. They forwarded the CINCPAC request and their own risk assessment to the 

Joint Reconnaissance Center, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the operation on 

December 29.69

Moreover, DIA’s risk assessment process was not built to account for “brushfire” crises like 

the one that occurred three weeks later. On January 21, North Korean commandos stormed 

the “Blue House” in Seoul attempting to assassinate President Park Chung-hee. This 

incident raised tensions to their highest point since the Korean War. DIA began reporting 

on the incident the next day, but there is no evidence that anything was done in the Agency 

to reassess the risk of intelligence missions off the coast of North Korea. Indeed, a whole 

series of indications of increased North Korean belligerence in January was generally 

ignored insofar as strategic intelligence missions around North Korea were concerned, both 

at CINCPAC and DIA.70

Around noon on January 23, a North Korean sub chaser arrived near the Pueblo and ordered 

the vessel to heave to. The slow, lightly-armed U.S. ship attempted to escape, but was run 

down by the sub chaser and three torpedo boats, which began firing on the Pueblo. One sailor 

was killed and four others wounded. The Pueblo’s Commander, Lloyd “Pete” Bucher, gave 

the order to destroy the sensitive SIGINT equipment on board too late, and it fell into North 

Korean hands when the ship was forced to make port at Wonsan, North Korea.71 The crew 

was imprisoned and tortured for a year before the North Koreans released them, and sensitive 

SIGINT equipment fell into North Korean hands.

After the Pueblo was captured, DIA was once again lashed by criticism for its performance. A 

subsequent congressional investigation accused DIA of rubber-stamping its risk assessments. 

Carroll’s performance before the special subcommittee of the House Armed Services 

Committee investigating the Pueblo incident did nothing to help matters: 

General Carroll was queried at length concerning the specific and detailed criteria 

used in risk evaluation which include five specific anticipated reaction criteria and 

five anticipated sensitivity criteria. General Carroll stated categorically that each of 

these criteria were considered in the risk evaluation process by his Agency. However, 

he conceded that he could produce no written evidence or supporting document 

indicating that these criteria had been reviewed in the case of the Pueblo mission. 

When Carroll was asked why DIA took no action on a late December message from the 

National Security Agency warning that the minimal risk assessment might be too low, the 

obviously exhausted Director replied, “I think one would have to take into consideration when 

it occurred. As to why—the fact that it transpired at night over a holiday is about all I can think 

of.” The final verdict of the subcommittee on this issue was unsparing. “The handling of the 

NSA warning message by ... the Office of the Defense Intelligence Agency,” it concluded, “is 

hardly reassuring. At best, it suggests an unfortunate coincidence of omission; at worst, it 

suggests the highest order of incompetence.”72
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It does not appear that DIA analysts rubber-stamped their risk assessment, but neither 

was their analysis particularly well-done. They conducted the assessment with as much 

diligence as could be expected, given the extremely limited time they had to do so. The 

problem was that DIA’s analysts based their assessment on past behavior and did not 

take into account the possibility of anomalous or different Korean reactions. The notion 

that North Korea would use its own military vessels to stop and board a U.S. Navy ship—

something that had never been done before—was never raised as a possibility.73 North 

Korea had also targeted American soldiers across the Demilitarized Zone in 1967, but DIA 

analysts did not link the targeting of Americans on the ground with the potential danger 

to American sailors offshore. Given the historical pattern, it may be asking too much of 

DIA’s analysts to know what was in store, but the failure to raise this as a possibility was an 

error in judgment that had fatal results. Moreover, there is no evidence that DIA personnel 

connected the dangerous Blue House raid with the prospect of increased risk to the Pueblo, 

which was at that point already in the Sea of Japan. The result of this confluence of events 

was one of the worst counterintelligence disasters of the Cold War. 

A “Kiss of Death”

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, DIA was confronted with huge production demands 

that it was unable to meet. Intelligence requirements levied on the Agency, combined with 

staffing shortages and a cumbersome, inefficient bureaucracy, overwhelmed the Southeast 

Asia analysts. In 1968, 517 linear feet of drawer space “with all types of intelligence data 

concerning Southeast Asia” went unprocessed. A survey conducted by IBM found that 

this backlog resulted from an inefficient internal system for disseminating raw intelligence 

to analysts and poor coordination and exchange of information between analysts. Some 

60 percent of the analysts Agency-wide had a production backlog of at least one week.74

Major General Grover Brown, DIA’s Assistant Director for Intelligence Production, argued 

before Congress that the raw intelligence on Vietnam was “low grade ore,” meaning that it 

was of little immediate value to the Agency’s analysts.75 Still, it was impossible to avoid the 

conclusion that there were serious problems in DIA.

Much of the blame for these problems can be assigned to DIA’s inefficient internal structure. 

In November 1966, the Directorate for Processing was reorganized along geographic (instead 

of functional) lines and renamed the Directorate for Intelligence Production. Within the new 

“Eastern Area Office,” a Southeast Asia analysis branch was set up, covering Laos, Cambodia, 

and North and South Vietnam. This was an important first step toward resolving delays that 

occurred under the functionally organized system, which dispersed the Agency’s geographical 

expertise; but despite some operational improvements, it took another three years to work 

out the various planning and administrative deficiencies that still nagged the Directorate for 

Intelligence Production. It was only in 1968, five years after its original establishment, that the 

Directorate came up with an operating plan that allocated resources against its requirements, 

and that plan was found to be so deficient that it was rewritten and republished in 1969.76

DIA’s facilities, scattered as they were around the greater Washington area, did nothing to 

help matters. Current Intelligence was located in several different Pentagon offices, while 
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Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

basic and strategic analysis was done at Arlington Hall. Many of their supporting offices 

were located elsewhere around the Capitol region, making it extraordinarily difficult to 

organize and manage the intelligence process. George Allen, who had since moved on to 

CIA, noted that “in DIA the functions were scattered about in various facilities in Northern 

Virginia, precluding effective integration and coordination.”77 One problem aggravated 

another, and left the Agency open to harsh criticism by Congress, the Intelligence 

Community, and the Department of Defense.

Criticism of the Agency came from powerful sources. In 1968, the House Defense 

Appropriations Committee excoriated DIA for failing to eliminate duplication and overstaffing, 

poor management of its assets, and “a failure to properly analyze current intelligence 

information.”78 “One could only conclude that the management of your intelligence assets 

is in a state of disarray,” complained Representative Jamie Whitten to Carroll.79 During 

his presidential campaign in 1968, it was reported that Richard Nixon apparently even 

considered eliminating the Agency.80 By the beginning of his administration in January 1969, 

DIA had lost the trust of the Joint Chiefs and the favor of the Secretary of Defense. It was 

viewed warily by CIA and accused of incompetence by Congress. Adding insult to injury, a 

flash flood inundated Arlington Hall Station on July 22, 1969, ruining parts of the first floor 

in both buildings, a data processing computer, and uncounted classified documents. The 

database was off-line for nine days, the Agency printing plant, for a week.81

In July, the same month that Arlington Hall flooded, Joseph Carroll stepped down as DIA 

Director. Carroll had been in the position for almost eight years by that point, and for all of 

his work setting up the Agency, he had also overseen its failures in Vietnam and during the 

Pueblo fiasco. In Europe, his Agency—indeed, the entire IC—had failed to provide adequate 

warning of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and DIA’s organizational difficulties 

were legend in Congress. With McNamara and his successor 

Clifford gone, Carroll had few patrons in the Department of 

Defense by 1969. His days as DIA Director may have been 

numbered ever since Nixon named Melvin Laird Secretary of 

Defense the previous January. When Laird was a Congressman, 

he served on the Defense Subcommittee of the House 

Appropriations Committee, which DIA had run afoul of in 1968. 

He removed Carroll, who was apparently experiencing health 

problems anyway, after the two clashed over issues related to 

Soviet anti-ballistic missile developments.82

Laird did not name Carroll’s successor until September, when 

he made U.S. Army Lieutenant General Donald Bennett, the 

commanding officer of VII Corps in West Germany, DIA’s 

new Director. Before reporting for his assignment, Bennett’s 

superiors in Germany warned him about the position. The 

Deputy Commander in Chief of U.S. Army, Europe (USAREUR) 

went so far as to tell Bennett that “it is the kiss of death to go 

to DIA.” VII Corps’ commander, who had no experience running 

DIA Historical Collection

 LTG Donald Bennett became DIA Director 

 in September1969.
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Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

an intelligence agency, was baffled by his selection and could not have been happy with 

the state of Agency leadership when he arrived. According to Bennett, Deputy Director Vice 

Admiral Vernon Lowrance had been out of the office for months because of health-related 

problems. The Agency’s Chief of Staff, Major General Robert Glass, retired, but was not 

replaced because of Carroll’s and Lowrance’s absence. Rear Admiral Donald Showers, 

DIA’s Assistant Chief of Staff for Plans and Programs, was forced to become de facto 

Acting Director while simultaneously running Plans and Programs, an enormously difficult 

task made even more complicated by the demands of the war in Vietnam. “As far as I was 

concerned,” Bennett commented later, “this showed that very few people really cared 

whether DIA functioned or not.”83

Like Carroll, Bennett had little practical experience as an intelligence officer. Unlike Carroll, 

however, Bennett was a fighting man, a man of action with a long and distinguished record 

of martial achievement, and he was a long-time consumer of military intelligence. This 

background would serve him well as DIA Director. Born in Lakeside, Ohio, in 1915, Bennett 

graduated from the U.S. Military Academy and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 

June 1940. During World War II, Bennett fought in North Africa, landed on Omaha Beach on 

D-Day (one of 20 survivors in his landing craft of 65 men), and saw action in all of the major 

operations in the European Theater until the end of the war.84 During the Korean War, he 

served with the Headquarters, Far East Command. After Korea, he occupied various positions 

in U.S. Army Europe, but returned to Korea in 1962, where he commanded an artillery corps. 

In 1968, he became Commanding General of VII Corps, USAREUR, where he was charged 

with preparing for war against Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces, and where he remained until 

Laird summoned him to Washington to serve as DIA Director.85

But Bennett found his Agency marginalized in key strategic decisions regarding the war in 

Southeast Asia. In March 1969, Nixon approved plans to use B-52s to secretly attack NLF and 

North Vietnamese targets in eastern Cambodia, an operation code-named MENU. Creighton 

Abrams’ staff in MACV nominated the MENU targets to the JCS, who submitted them to Laird, 

National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, and Nixon. All of their message traffic on MENU 

passed through back channels, and many of the bomb damage assessments were done 

in theater. While DIA provided some targeting and photo interpretation support during the 

campaign, its input was limited.86

In the first half of 1970, South Vietnamese and U.S. forces launched a series of incursions 

into Cambodia in an effort to destroy the political and military headquarters of the Communist 

effort in South Vietnam (COSVN—Central Office for South Vietnam, believed to be located in 

Cambodia at the time). According to Bennett, DIA was not consulted when military planners 

formulated the plans to expand the war. Indeed, Agency personnel did not even know the 

initial incursions were taking place until after they began. Virtually all of the direct intelligence 

support to the nearly 30,000 South Vietnamese troops and 20,000 American soldiers involved 

came from MACV. The operations caused a massive domestic uproar and failed to locate 

COSVN, but netted more than 9,000 tons of military equipment and 7,000 tons of food.87
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Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

The thrust into Cambodia did have a substantial impact on intelligence debates over 

Southeast Asia. Within a month, U.S. and South Vietnamese troops captured more than 

1 million pages of documents and 32 cases of cryptographic equipment. The documents 

provided enough evidence for DIA and CIA to settle any lingering questions about OB 

questions and to resolve the dispute with MACV in their favor. According to General Bruce 

Palmer, who reviewed the IC’s overall performance in Vietnam in the years after the war, 

the captured records indicated that “the generally higher numbers held by CIA were more 

nearly correct than MACV’s strength estimates.”88 This pyrrhic victory, however, had come 

too late to salvage DIA’s reputation, which absorbed yet another blow when it was revealed, 

despite its claims to the contrary, that most of the North Vietnamese supplies moving south 

were coming through the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville, not down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. 

DIA and much of the IC were lambasted for “a major intelligence failure which resulted 

from deficiencies in both intelligence collection and analysis,” as the President’s Foreign 

Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) put it. It was another setback for an Agency already 

overwhelmed by the war’s demands.89

Raid on Son Tay: A Successful Failure

For several years prior to 1970, Bennett’s Agency was responsible for locating American 

prisoners of war and missing in action (POWs/MIA). Especially after 1966, when it became 

clear to the Johnson Administration that Hanoi was not about to provide any information about 

the number and condition of American POWs, the intelligence effort to fill the gap became 

increasingly urgent. In August 1967, DIA set up an Interagency Prisoner of War Intelligence 

Committee (IPWIC), bringing together representatives from the Services, CIA, the State 

Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other organizations. Its chairman was 

John Berbrich, who would spend most of his career with the Agency and ultimately become 

the Deputy Director for Intelligence Production. Through the IPWIC, DIA gradually took 

responsibility for nearly all aspects of POW/MIA issues in Southeast Asia. CIA and NSA gave 

the issue a high collection priority, and passed any information they collected to DIA. The 

entire program was code-named BRIGHT LIGHT.90

DIA first learned of Son Tay’s existence in September 1967, and spent the next few years 

keeping track of the prison camp as part of its BRIGHT LIGHT duties. When Nixon assumed 

office, he began pressuring Hanoi to begin releasing American POWs, but met with virtually 

no success. The president then began actively considering more direct action, and Son Tay 

appeared to be a good candidate. Aerial photography taken June 6, 1970, revealed that the 

camp was active, and DIA analysts estimated that as many as 61 Americans were held there 

(in fact, it never held more than 55). That June, the JCS proposed a rescue operation to the 

president, who enthusiastically agreed. Immediately, a planning group (code-named POLAR 

CIRCLE) convened by Brigadier General Donald Blackburn, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs 

of Staff’s Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities (SACSA), began 

preparing operational requirements. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Thomas 

Moorer, ultimately had authority over the mission, and he, Blackburn, and Bennett were at the 

center of every major decision made about the raid.91
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Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

Over the next five months, Bennett and his Deputy Director 

for Intelligence, Air Force Major General Richard Stewart, who 

took over when Grover Brown retired in 1970, coordinated an 

interservice, interagency intelligence effort. Tasked through 

DIA, SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft, low-altitude “Buffalo 

Hunter” reconnaissance drones, and U.S. Air Force RF-4C 

aircraft appeared with increasing frequency in the skies 

over Son Tay. Stewart’s analysts poured over hundreds of 

reconnaissance photographs, human intelligence (HUMINT) 

reports, SIGINT intercepts, and other data, forwarding finished 

intelligence to Blackburn’s POLAR CIRCLE planning group. 

In this stage of the operation, code-named IVORY COAST, 

the DIA analysts mapped air defense sites on the infiltration 

and exfiltration routes, developed information on the number 

of ground troops around Son Tay, and determined the 

exact layout of the camp and locations of prisoner barracks 

and guard towers. This massive intelligence effort allowed 

Blackburn’s group and the raid’s overall commander, U.S. Air Force Brigadier General 

Leroy Manor, to develop a plan designed to distract North Vietnamese forces, assault 

the compound, locate the prisoners, and exfiltrate as quickly as possible. Special Forces 

operators who would conduct the raid also trained using the intelligence provided by DIA 

personnel.92

The original raid was scheduled for October, but Kissinger ordered it moved to November 

21 so that the president would have enough time to review and approve the plan. But in 

the early evening of November 18, three days before the raid was to take place, Bennett 

dropped a bombshell on Moorer and Blackburn: Son Tay was probably empty. Richard 

Stewart’s analysts had noticed that since July, activity at the camp seemed to be declining, 

but they believed that the prisoners might still be there. Photography taken through early 

November did not reveal any significant changes. But earlier that day, they had received a 

tip from a HUMINT source in Hanoi that the prisoners had been moved to a different camp. 

Even so, communications intelligence and reconnaissance photos seemed to indicate that 

someone was still in the camp.93

Stewart’s analysts sifted the available intelligence, but could not prove either case 

conclusively. Bennett also hastily ordered several unscheduled reconnaissance flights, but 

poor weather and mechanical problems prevented them from developing new information. 

According to historian Benjamin Schemmer, the DIA Director, in a meeting with Moorer and 

Blackburn, held up an equal stack of intelligence documents in each hand and told the 

generals, “I’ve got this much that says they’ve been moved, and this much that says they’re 

still there.” Bennett, the veteran combat commander, the man of action, then recommended 

they commence with the mission. Blackburn and Moorer agreed, and counseled Secretary 

of Defense Laird to go forward. After hearing from Laird, Nixon, who was eager for a public DIA Historical Collection

 Maj Gen Richard Stewart managed the 

 analytical effort during the planning for 

 the Son Tay raid. 
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Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

relations victory and determined to send a statement to Hanoi, needed no more urging, and 

ordered the operation.94

Just before 11 p.m. on November 20, 1970, 56 members of the U.S. Army Special Forces 

climbed aboard their HH-3 “Jolly Green Giant” and HH-53B “Super Jolly Green Giant” 

helicopters at Udorn Royal Thailand Air Base in northern Thailand and began the final phase of 

the mission, now code-named Operation KINGPIN. The helicopters descended on Son Tay early 

in the morning on November 21, under the cover of diversionary attacks by Air Force and Navy 

fighters over Hanoi and Haiphong. Immediately upon landing, they engaged in a sharp firefight 

with prison guards as they swept through the compound searching for the POWs who were in 

fact no longer there. The Special Forces operators lifted off from Son Tay less than 30 minutes 

later without recovering a single prisoner, but they had also suffered no casualties and achieved 

overwhelming surprise. 

The raid at Son Tay had failed to net any American POWs. Four months earlier, on July 14, 1970, 

the North Vietnamese transferred the last of the American POWs to Dan Hoi, 10 miles east. The DIA Historical Collection

This photo of Son Tay prison camp was taken by a “Buffalo Hunter” drone prior to the mission.
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Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

apparent activity in the camp after the prisoners’ transfer was later ascribed to the presence 

of local farmers. The failure to notice that the raid’s primary objectives were not there was 

due to a combination of poor weather, technological failure, and bad luck. Heavy cloud cover 

in monsoon season helped prevent effective reconnaissance by SR-71 flights and satellite 

missions. Of the eight low-level drone missions flown between August and October, six either 

crashed or were shot down, and two failed to effectively photograph the camp. Bennett’s 

emergency missions fared no better.95

Nevertheless, there was a procedural success in this operational failure. Bennett’s Agency 

conducted a coordinated, disciplined intelligence collection and analysis program in support 

of a joint military operation of enormous complexity and secrecy. Planning for the raid 

occurred during a time in which DIA’s resources were stretched to the breaking point, but 

the Agency was nevertheless able to pull together national- and theater-level resources, and 

then provide Special Forces planners with intelligence that allowed them to achieve complete 

tactical surprise. The Agency was also able to assist the POLAR CIRCLE planners in a 

complex operation involving more than 100 combat and transport aircraft from three different 

Services. “I can unequivocally state,” Manor wrote in his report on the raid, “that other than 

the absence of prisoners at the objective, there were no major surprises in the operation. 

Service and national intelligence agencies’ assessments of enemy capabilities and reaction 

were the basis for the concept of operations and, considering the lack of precedent for this 

type of operation, were highly accurate.”96 The Son Tay raid had shown a glimpse of what DIA 

was capable of, but in 1970, the Agency still bore the burden of its past mistakes.

An American in Paris

Meanwhile, a series of secret peace talks between Kissinger and North Vietnamese 

representative Le Duc Tho had been taking place in Paris since 1969. The talks were 

facilitated by the work of the U.S. defense attaché to France, Major General Vernon Walters. 

Walters, who had previously conducted distinguished tours as the defense attaché to Italy 

and Brazil, was a masterful diplomat and linguist. Prior to his appointment in Paris, he spent 

a month in Vietnam and was a fierce supporter of the U.S. effort there. When Kissinger 

ordered Walters to assist him with his secret meetings, Walters was reluctant. “There 

were few people who felt as strongly against the North Vietnamese as I did and yet I had 

been chosen to deal with them,” he recalled in his memoirs. “As a soldier I took my orders 

and prepared for this task which I had not sought.”97 The task was so secret that neither 

Bennett nor Laird knew about it.

Walters arranged to secretly bring Kissinger into France at least 15 times. The National 

Security Advisor normally arrived aboard Air Force One, and Walters arranged for him to 

enter the country without going through customs and attracting attention. Occasionally, 

Kissinger would fly into Germany, and Walters would have him flown into France from there; 

at one point, when no other aircraft were available, Walters even convinced French President 

Georges Pompidou to lend his presidential plane to the effort. Kissinger and his two assistants 

stayed in Walters’ personal apartment in Neuilly, the attaché giving up his bedroom so that the 
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Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

National Security Advisor could sleep comfortably. Walters, who 

spoke seven languages, also served as Kissinger’s interpreter 

during the negotiations, which were conducted in French.

“These were truly tedious and frustrating talks,” Walters later 

recalled in his memoirs. For two years, the two sides remained 

stalemated. When Kissinger was not in Paris, Walters was busy 

preparing for his next visit or carrying messages to the North 

Vietnamese. When Kissinger was in Paris, Walters chauffeured 

the National Security Advisor around the city, translated, and 

slept on the couch in the sitting room. At the same time, Walters 

was also performing his defense attaché duties and serving as a 

conduit between Kissinger and the Chinese delegation to France, 

an effort that would ultimately lead to Nixon’s famous opening 

to China. It was difficult, stressful work. “Sometimes I felt like a 

juggler with three balls in the air, the attaché to France ball, the 

Chinese ball, and the North Vietnamese ball,” Walters wrote.98

Kissinger, who could be abrasive with Walters on these trips, 

also knew the demanding nature of the attaché’s assignment, 

and could not resist tweaking Walters’ very Roman nose about it. In October 1970, he wrote to 

Walters to thank him for his efforts:

I want sincerely to reaffirm our deep appreciation for what you are doing for the country 

in your many efforts. And we know that your special position does entail sudden and 

extensive inroads into your personal and professional life.

If I said that you carried out your various roles without complaint you would consider 

me either hypocritical or deaf. However, I know that you really don’t mean it and 

beneath the gruff exterior beats a heart that is gruff.99

Meanwhile, the war rumbled on, and pressure on both sides to come to an agreement ebbed 

and flowed. Nixon had been slowly but steadily withdrawing U.S. forces since 1969. For 

much of the period since then, Hanoi focused its effort on rebuilding its supply corridor in 

Laos and reestablishing secret bases in Cambodia. This relative lull in combat allowed the 

South Vietnamese government to improve its military position with limited local offensives 

and make progress in pacifying the countryside.100 In the Pomponio Plaza building in the 

Washington suburb of Rosslyn, Virginia, DIA’s estimators concurred with an April 1971 

National Intelligence Estimate that characterized South Vietnam’s prospects for the rest 

of the year as “reasonably good.”101 For most of 1971, the Agency’s analysts stuck to this 

position, and Nixon could continue drawing down U.S. troops. By March 1972, 95,000 

U.S. Service personnel (only 6,000 of whom were actual combat troops) remained in South 

Vietnam, down from a high of 536,000 at the beginning of 1969.102

But at the same time, Bennett’s analysts were warning that North Vietnam had grown into 

an even more dangerous adversary. As U.S. forces drew down, Bennett informed the Joint DIA Historical Collection

 MG Vernon Walters as defense attaché in

 Paris.
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Staff that, “the Communists are developing the capability to conduct major attacks that 

could exceed any activity since the general offensives in 1968.”103 Those attacks were not 

long in coming. At the end of March, under a dense fog and drizzling rain, Hanoi launched 

what came to be known in the West as the Easter Offensive against South Vietnam. ARVN 

troops fell back in a panicked retreat and South Vietnam’s collapse seemed imminent. 

The U.S. had too few troops on the ground to stop the communist offensive, so planners 

instead turned to tactical and strategic air power, initiating Operation LINEBACKER, the first 

sustained bombing of Vietnam since ROLLING THUNDER ended in 1968. Once again, tactical 

bombers and B-52s filled the skies over North and South Vietnam.104 DIA’s analysts in the 

Pentagon and Arlington Hall helped draft target lists for the B-52 strikes in North Vietnam, 

and Richard Stewart forwarded them to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for specific target selection. 

Agency personnel also carried out bomb damage assessments, and reported on the overall 

effects of the campaign. Overall, they reported that the bomber offensive was inflicting huge 

damage on North Vietnam and that the logistics system into the South was under major strain. 

In December, Operation LINEBACKER II began as talks between Kissinger and Le Duc Tho 

languished. LINEBACKER II was the heaviest air offensive of the war, and by that point, 

both countries were under enormous strain to cease hostilities. In early January 1973, Hanoi 

indicated a willingness to restart negotiations. On January 15, the White House halted all 

military operations against North Vietnam, and on January 27, 1973, signed peace accords 

in Paris.105

But Walters was not in Paris to see his work with Kissinger and the North Vietnamese come 

to fruition. In May 1972, Nixon awarded him for his efforts, promoting the attaché to Deputy 

Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and he learned of the Paris Peace Accords from 

behind his desk in Langley, Virginia.106 His career would last nearly two more decades, and he 

would bear witness to many of the pivotal events at the end of the Cold War, but his job as an 

attaché had come to an end. 

A New Role

The U.S. war in Southeast Asia was over, but U.S. involvement there was not. A new Defense 

Attaché Office (DAO) in Saigon replaced MACV as the chief U.S. military body in South 

Vietnam. The previous November, the Secretary of Defense had ordered its establishment in 

order to take over the residual military functions left by MACV. Limited by the peace accords to 

50 military personnel, the DAO supplemented this small number with 1,200 civilian employees, 

most of whom were contractors. U.S. Army Major General John Murray headed the office. 

It made its home in the sprawling former MACV headquarters, nicknamed “Pentagon East,” 

at Tan Son Nhut Air Base outside Saigon, and it had small field offices scattered throughout 

South Vietnam. Murray retired in August 1974, and Major General Homer Smith took his place 

as defense attaché that month.107

The defense attaché’s primary concern in Saigon was ensuring the smooth delivery of military 

aid and administering the military assistance program to the South Vietnamese. Both Murray 
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Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

and Smith were career logisticians, and focused much of their effort on this task. To ease the 

attaché’s representational duties, DIA sent a small team under the command of a U.S. Army 

colonel to the U.S. Embassy. Their task was to perform the attaché’s daily representational 

functions. But the DAO was also responsible for all American military intelligence activities 

in South Vietnam. Its Intelligence Branch, led by U.S. Army Colonel William LeGro, was the 

primary U.S. military intelligence element for the collection, evaluation, and dissemination of 

information on North Vietnamese activities in South Vietnam. LeGro’s branch was responsible 

for overt intelligence collection and analysis on North and South Vietnamese order of battle, 

as well as enemy intentions and capabilities. The Intelligence Branch also coordinated all of 

the reconnaissance and surveillance activities in South Vietnam and the intelligence sharing 

arrangements with elements of the South Vietnamese Joint General Staff.108 Legro reported 

directly to the defense attaché and the U.S. Ambassador.109

For most of 1973, 10 military and 97 civilian employees made up the DAO’s Intelligence 

Branch. That number was reduced in 1974 to three military and 87 DoD civilians. Most of the 

DIA Historical Collection

The U.S. Defense Attaché Office compound at Tan Son Nhut Air Base was the largest U.S. military installation in 

South Vietnam after the cease fire.
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Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

civilians in the Intelligence Branch were drawn from the ranks of DIA analysts who relocated to 

South Vietnam in 1973. These analysts worked mostly at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, but at least 

two were posted to each of the U.S. Consul-General compounds in Da Nang, Nha Trang, Bien 

Hoa, and Can Tho. They gathered friendly and enemy order of battle, provided early warning 

of cease-fire violations, and attempted to resolve cases of American soldiers missing in action. 

A DIA analyst who was hand-picked by LeGro to set up the DAO’s Current Intelligence Office 

presented the daily morning “walk-through” intelligence briefings to Murray and Smith and 

recruited other analysts from within DIA to Saigon. Analysts also sometimes took dangerous 

trips into Vietnam’s hinterlands to gain first-hand assessments of North Vietnamese ceasefire violations and the state of Saigon’s own military forces.110 Years of battling with MACV 

over issues such as enemy order of battle had tempered DIA’s analysts, and it showed. Legro 

recalled years later that “they were trained and experienced analysts and knew an awful lot 

about Vietnam. A few of them had a great, really strong handle on enemy order of battle. So I 

inherited from DIA a group of people that I think were among the very best in the entire federal 

service as far as analysts on Vietnam.”111

Life in the DAO reflected the changed nature of U.S. involvement in a war that was no longer 

its own, but in which it still played a major role. Stuart Herrington, who served under both 

MACV and the DAO, recalled:

The familiar display of the flags of the nations that had assisted South Vietnam during 

the war remained in the foyer, but the starched military policeman who manned the 

reception desk was missing. In his place was an attractive Vietnamese woman in an 

emerald green ao dai. In the building’s labyrinth complex of corridors, the khaki-clad 

legions of staff officers had been replaced by hundreds of American and Vietnamese 

civilians. Hosts of graceful Vietnamese secretaries glided from office to office as they 

moved the paperwork generated by all large headquarters. The DAO looked like a 

bachelor’s paradise.112

Operationally, the DAO coordinated with DIA and CINCPAC, and DIA assumed responsibility 

for the management and administrative duties required to maintain the intelligence staff in 

Saigon. The Agency could also levy collection requirements on the Intelligence Branch, a right 

that it shared alongside CINCPAC and the U.S. Embassy. Members of the DAO Intelligence 

Branch briefed Murray and Smith every day, but another key recipient of its work was the U.S. 

Support Activities Group/7th Air Force (USSAG), located at Nakhon Panhom in Thailand.113 In 

Washington, most of DIA’s estimates in this period were based on the assessments made in 

LeGro’s Intelligence Branch in Saigon.114

These assessments had enormous importance beyond the battlefield. The main factor 

supporting Saigon’s ability to defeat the North Vietnamese was military aid provided by 

the United States. In 1973, the U.S. sent $3.2 billion of military aid to the Government of 

South Vietnam, but Congressional support for the program was weak. In 1974, that number 

plummeted to $1.1 billion. That same year, Congress cut funding for fiscal year 1975 to $700 

million. The intelligence estimates of North Vietnamese capabilities and intentions framed an 

increasingly rancorous political debate over the level of aid that Washington would provide. As 

the pressure on South Vietnam increased, so too did importance of the intelligence estimates 
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Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

from a policy perspective. More alarmist estimates tended to bolster the Ford Administration’s 

case to provide increased aid, while sanguine estimates undercut it. Decisionmakers on either 

side of the debate could point to either estimate to make their respective cases.115

In 1973 and 1974, fighting between the North and South continued. Both sides spent this 

period in what was essentially a strategic clinch. While the Intelligence Community generally 

agreed that this relative stalemate would last through 1974, DIA and the DAO were somewhat 

more pessimistic. The May 1974 National Intelligence Estimate illustrated the split between 

agencies by noting that a full-scale invasion of South Vietnam during the first six months 

of 1975 was unlikely. DIA analysts dissented, however, characterizing the conclusions on 

prospects for 1975 as “unduly optimistic” and warning that the South was in danger “of a 

major North Vietnamese offensive.” The point became more salient throughout 1974, as 

intelligence analysts in the DAO sent back a steady stream of reporting on Hanoi’s successful 

efforts to strengthen its military forces while whittling down Saigon’s.116 By November, DIA 

reporting echoed its personnel in Saigon, worrying that even a limited North Vietnamese 

offensive would degrade the South’s capabilities to the point that it could no longer fight 

effectively.117 In December, DIA analysts warned the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs 

of Staff that Hanoi had tipped the military balance in its favor, and that “increased NVA [North 

Vietnamese Army] combat activity” was imminent.118 The U.S. Embassy, the Defense Attaché 

Office, and the CIA Station Chief in Saigon agreed.

Ford continued to lobby a skeptical Congress for millions of dollars in military aid, and DIA’s 

analysis enmeshed the Agency in the middle of the aid debate. An appraisal published on 

January 10 by Charles Desaulniers, DIA’s most senior Southeast Asia analyst, noted that 

while an all-out offensive was unlikely in the next six months, “The South’s armed forces 

will finish fiscal year 1975 in a greatly weakened condition at the $700 million US military 

aid level. ... Under current funding and at existing consumption rates, the government’s 

stockpiles of ammunition and other critical combat supplies will be depleted to a near 

30-day intensive combat reserve no later than July 1975.”119 At the end of the month, Ford 

ordered then-DIA Director Lieutenant General Daniel Graham to Capitol Hill to describe 

the dire military situation facing South Vietnam. “Looking downstream,” Graham told the 

assembled representatives, “we think that the South Vietnamese are in for some very 

serious difficulties. This is due partly to logistics drawdown and partly to the impact of 

current events on their will to resist.”120 None of this had any impact, however. In early 

February, Congress rejected Ford’s request for $1.3 billion. 

The final North Vietnamese offensive against the South began in March 1975, and Hanoi’s 

troops quickly overran South Vietnamese forces in the Central Highlands and near the 

demilitarized zone. The rate of the South Vietnamese collapse was stunning, even to the North 

Vietnamese, who had to continually revamp their plans to keep up with the South Vietnamese 

armed forces’ dissolution. With no American troops on the ground, its military stocks 

vanishing, its government rife with corruption, and parts of its army paralyzed by desertion, 

South Vietnam imploded. By the end of March, nearly 40 percent of the country was in Hanoi’s 

hands. “At this rate,” Desaulniers and his colleagues in DIA noted, “the military situation has 

worsened faster than even the most pessimistic observer predicted a week ago.”121 In Saigon, 
35

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

defense attaché General Smith predicted that enemy forces would make for the city as early as 

possible. They arrived on the outskirts of Saigon a month later. 

Operation BABYLIFT and the Tragedy of Flight 68-218

 As South Vietnam crumbled in March and April 1975 and North Vietnamese forces closed 

in on Saigon, the plight of that city’s war orphans surged to the forefront of American 

consciousness. For years, private foundations in the U.S. had coordinated the adoption of 

Vietnamese orphans by American families, but the imminent collapse of the South Vietnamese 

government prompted prospective U.S. parents and private agencies to press for a more 

expeditious evacuation of orphans from the country. After South Vietnam formally requested 

that the U.S. immediately move 2,000 orphans from Saigon to the United States or friendly 

countries, President Ford ordered their evacuation.122

At Tan Son Nhut, Homer Smith moved extraordinarily fast, and what would be dubbed 

Operation BABYLIFT began April 4. The plane used in the first mission was a C-5A/GALAXY 

transport, number 68-218, that was scheduled to deliver 17 105mm howitzers to the South 

Vietnamese army that same day. Ground crews off-loaded the weapons and loaded some 250 

orphans (authoritative estimates differ—an accurate accounting of orphans and Americans 

is difficult because some people who were on the flight were not on the passenger manifest, 

while others who were not on the flight were on the manifest). To supervise them, and to 

evacuate non-essential U.S. citizens under the cover of the operation, Smith ordered his 

division chiefs to identify staff in the DAO who could tend to the children during the flight.123

Among these evacuees were five female employees of DIA. At 4:15 p.m. Saigon time, the last 

of the approximately 300 passengers were loaded on-board and the transport took off.124

Twelve minutes later, tragedy struck. At 23,000 feet and 10 miles off the Vietnamese coast, the 

locks on the rear cargo door of the C-5 failed, and the aircraft suffered a rapid decompression. 

Debris filled the cabin. The aft pressure door, part of the loading ramp, and the cargo door 

all blew off and severed the pitch, trim, elevator, and rudder cables, rendering the aircraft 

unflyable. Despite the pilots’ heroic efforts to make an emergency landing at Tan Son Nhut, 

the C-5, flying at 269 knots (310 mph), crashed in a marsh two miles short of the runway. It 

skidded for 1,000 feet, became airborne again, flying for 2,700 feet, then landed and broke up. 

The impact crushed the cargo deck, where almost all of the orphans were kept.125

Smoke from the crash was visible from the air base. As word filtered into the DAO compound, 

rescue parties were hastily organized. One person manned the Intelligence Branch while 

everyone else moved to the air terminal on base or the crash site to assist the rescue effort. 

The plane was impossible to reach by car, so helicopters ferried out rescue personnel and 

brought back bodies. Robert Edison, an analyst in the Intelligence Branch, recalled:

I worked at the airport taking the bodies off the choppers and carrying them over to 

ambulances to take to the morgue or the hospital or whatever. Some of the babies 

were alive. What got to me was the smell. The vomit, the feces, and perhaps above all 

the smell of fear and death in those so young. A baby can only cry, but these infants 

were so terrorized that they couldn’t even cry. It was horrible and gruesome.126
36

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

Recovering the remains took several days.127 In total, 138 people died in the crash, including 

78 children and 35 DAO personnel. Five DIA employees, Celeste Brown, Vivienne Clark, 

Dorothy Curtiss, Joan Pray, and Doris Watkins, were killed in the crash. It was, as Homer 

Smith recalled years later, “a shattering, shattering experience,” and would stand as the single 

largest loss of life in the Agency’s history until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.128

Exodus 

The next day, the atmosphere in the DAO was suffused with grief, but the war made no 

allowances for mourning. A last attempt by President Ford to secure military support from 

Congress for the government of South Vietnam failed, and North Vietnamese troops advanced 

steadily on Saigon throughout April. By the end of the month, artillery shells and rockets were 

falling inside the city and at Tan Son Nhut. 

U.S. evacuation planning had languished because U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin 

did not want to give the South Vietnamese the impression that the U.S. commitment 

was anything but full and therefore refused to countenance evacuation. Smith, however, 

could see the writing on the wall. In March, against Martin’s wishes, he had begun laying 

plans to evacuate U.S. personnel and their dependents. By April, the North Vietnamese 

forces pouring into the South and advancing on Saigon accelerated his planning. He 

set up a Vietnamese evacuee processing center on April 1 and ordered non-essential 

U.S. personnel to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. But as the month progressed 

and conditions worsened, the DAO staff, working with planners from U.S. Navy Task 

Force 76 in the South China Sea, developed even more elaborate contingency plans to 

evacuate the remaining U.S. citizens and their Vietnamese families, South Vietnamese 

personnel who worked with 

the Americans, and other “high 

risk” Vietnamese, such as the 

families of Vietnamese military 

and government officials.129

“I’m not suggesting that [the 

fall of South Vietnam] may 

happen,” Smith diplomatically 

told the Saigon press corps, 

“but hell, anybody who’s got 

any smarts at all can look 

at the situation and figure 

out what kind of risk there is 

involved.”130

This early work proved to be 

extraordinarily important later 

in the month. On April 20, a 

full-scale U.S. evacuation began 

after North Vietnamese troops 

Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University

COL William Legro (center), chief of the DAO Intelligence Branch, shreds classified 

documents with two members of the 500th Military Intelligence Group on April 29, 

one day before the final evacuation of the DAO.
37

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

arrived outside Saigon. A near panic 

engulfed the city as tens of thousands 

of Vietnamese attempted to leave the 

country, swarming the gates at Tan 

Son Nhut and the U.S. Embassy. With 

Smith’s support, the DAO staff cajoled, 

bribed, begged, and hoodwinked to 

evacuate as many civilians via airlift as 

they could. The DAO Intelligence Branch 

also shut down on the 20th, and its 

staff managed to ship their intelligence 

files to USSAG in Thailand. Intelligence 

Branch personnel either evacuated 

or stayed behind to assist evacuation 

operations.131

North Vietnamese troops broke into the 

city between April 26 and 28, and began 

putting Tan Son Nhut and the DAO, by then code-named ALAMO, under rocket fire on the 

29th. That day, the final evacuation of all U.S. personnel and their Vietnamese dependents, 

code-named Operation FREQUENT WIND, began. Rocket damage to the runways made 

fixed-wing evacuations impossible. U.S. Navy helicopters began streaming in and out of 

the DAO compound and the U.S. Embassy beginning at approximately 10 a.m., airlifting 

the last remaining Americans and several thousand Vietnamese out of the city to waiting 

Navy ships in the South China Sea. In the entire month of April, Smith and his DAO staff 

managed to evacuate some 130,000 Americans, Vietnamese, and third-country nationals, 

a feat for which the general was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal (First Oak Leaf 

Cluster) and the deep affection of generations of Vietnamese Americans. On April 30, the 

Government of South Vietnam formally surrendered, ending some three decades of nearly 

continuous war.132

Epilogue: The Mayaguez Crisis

One last fight remained, however. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge had seized power from 

the government of Lon Nol on April 17. Within weeks, the tiny Khmer coastal defense forces 

began engaging in petty piracy, attacking Thai fishing vessels and harassing larger merchant 

ships in the Gulf of Thailand. On May 12, the U.S. cargo vessel SS Mayaguez steamed into the 

gulf on a regular shipping assignment. 

Just after 2 p.m. (3 a.m. in Washington), a U.S.-made Khmer Rouge swift boat, captured after 

the fall of Lon Nol, sped from the island of Poulo Wai and intercepted the Mayaguez. Khmer 

soldiers boarded the freighter and forced it to make for Poulo Wai, but the American crew 

managed to transmit an SOS, which was picked up by the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta. From 

there, news of their capture reached DIA’s National Indications Center in the Pentagon and the 

White House later that day.133

DIA Historical Collection

A U.S. Marine stands watch as two Navy helicopters land in the 

USDAO compound, April 30, 1975.
38

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

Shortly after the information reached the Indications Center, John Hughes, DIA’s Deputy 

Director for Collection and Surveillance, laid on a collection blitz to locate the Mayaguez. 

Hughes contacted the JCS Joint Reconnaissance Center urgently requesting photo coverage 

of Poulo Wai, and asked CINCPAC for continuous P-3/ORION aircraft operations, as well 

as RF-4C reconnaissance flights over Phnom Penh, Sihanoukville, and Poulo Wai. Hughes 

requested U-2 photographic coverage of Poulo Wai as well. The next day, a P-3 flight 

discovered the Mayaguez anchored off that island.134 Over the next several days, Hughes’ 

directorate continued to coordinate the collection operation between U.S. Pacific Command, 

NSA, Strategic Air Command, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On May 13, after it was located, 

the Khmer Rouge forced the Mayaguez’s crew to steam for the island of Koh Tang, nearly 40 

miles to the northeast, 60 from the Cambodian coast. When it arrived there, its crew was offloaded onto two fishing trawlers.

The Khmer Rouge refused to release the ship and its crew, and President Ford, eager to 

avoid an incident similar to the capture of the USS Pueblo in 1968, authorized the use of 

force to return the ship and crew. All indications were that the Mayaguez’s crew was being 

Kompong Som

(Sihanoukville)

Phnom Penh

Gulf 

of 

Thailand

Tonle

Sap

South

China 

Sea

DAO PHU

QUOC

(VIETNAM)

KOH TANG

POULO WAI

VIETNAM

CAMBODIA

THAILAND

THAILAND

CAMBODIA

BURMA

VIETNAM

LAOS

CHINA

HAINAN

Gulf 

of 

Thailand

Andaman Sea

Gulf 

of 

Tonkin

South

China

Sea

The Mayaguez Incident, May 1975.
39

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

held on Koh Tang. As plans for a combined 

Air Force and Marine assault on the island 

came together, DIA published an estimate of 

Khmer Rouge military forces on the island. 

The estimate held that between 150 and 200 

men, backed by a variety of heavy weapons, 

occupied the island. That estimate, however, 

never made it into the hands of the Marines 

who would conduct the assault. For reasons 

unknown, it arrived at the USSAG base in U 

Tapao, but was never briefed to the combat 

forces preparing to assault Koh Tang, who 

expected meager resistance from 18 to 20 

Cambodian irregulars with small-arms.135

When the Marines assaulted Koh Tang at first 

light on May 15, they met fierce resistance 

from a dug-in force nearly 10 times larger and 

with far more skill and firepower than they 

expected. Helicopters delivering the assault forces were shot to pieces, and the attack stalled.

But the crew of the Mayaguez was no longer on Koh Tang. On the evening of the 13th, they 

boarded a fishing trawler and were sent to Kompong Som (formerly Sihanoukville) harbor on the 

mainland. U.S. reconnaissance aircraft spotted the trawler and its escort boats on the way to 

Kompong Som—they sank the two swift boats escorting the trawler—but assault planners in U 

Tapao believed the crew was still on Koh Tang, and the attack went forward. At 9:35 a.m., in the 

middle of the assault on Koh Tang, the Khmer Rouge released the crew, but combat operations 

on Koh Tang would continue for almost 11 more hours. Fifteen Airmen and Marines were killed 

in action. Three who were accidentally left behind became missing in action, and 50 were 

wounded.136

****

The Mayaguez incident brought to a close one of the most challenging periods in the history of 

the Defense Intelligence Agency. Those years saw the Agency grow in both size and capability, 

but it also quickly ran up against severe limitations as a result of Service parochialism, internal 

management difficulties, and serious foreign intelligence challenges. In the early 1960s, Agency 

personnel had to juggle the difficulties of establishing DIA with managing, analyzing, and 

distributing finished intelligence to civilian and military consumers around the world. With regard 

to the effort in Vietnam, the Agency’s slow development put it several steps behind the more 

robust, yet flawed intelligence effort set up by MACV.

During the war itself, DIA sat at the nexus of disagreements between CIA and military intelligence 

organizations, and between officials in the field and in Washington. This position placed the 

Agency squarely in the cross-fire when disagreements over critical issues such as bomb damage 

assessments and enemy order of battle emerged. Unfortunately, DIA leadership did not move DIA Historical Collection

The Mayaguez off Poulo Wai. Khmer Rouge swift boats can be seen 

alongside the vessel.
40

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

with alacrity or energy to mediate disagreements, and in the case of the order of battle 

dispute, its senior leadership may have even exacerbated the problem by reflexively siding 

with MACV. The Agency’s other missteps, such as its performance in the Pueblo fiasco and 

the accumulation of an intelligence backlog that caused an uproar in Congress, only made 

matters worse. By 1968, influential critics openly doubted the efficacy of a DIA.

In 1969 and 1970, DIA’s performance in Southeast Asia began showing small signs of 

improvement. This very gradual improvement reflected the Agency’s evolution over the course 

of the war. Its analysts had by then the benefit of grappling for years with the conflict’s key 

questions, and late in the decade, DIA received an infusion of new leadership that reenergized 

analytical and managerial efforts by taking advantage of intelligence opportunities as they 

presented themselves. But limited victories, such as its successful support of combat 

operations in the Son Tay raid and later, the Koh Tang assault, were obscured by larger failures 

in those operations that were not entirely of the Agency’s making. When the war between the 

U.S. and North Vietnam formally concluded in 1973, DIA personnel assumed a critical new 

role by systematically providing intelligence assessments from within South Vietnam itself. 

While from the DIA point of view, their work was path breaking, it did not convince a skeptical 

Congress of the need for continued support to the government in Saigon. Despite these 

incremental improvements, in the early 1970s, neither military leadership nor policymakers 

were yet convinced of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s necessity. The next decade would 

determine DIA’s ultimate fate. 
41

Endnotes

1 This history is more fully recounted in Michael B. Petersen, “Legacy of Ashes, Trial by Fire: The Origins 

of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Cuban Missile Crisis Crucible,” Defense Intelligence Historical 

Perspectives, 1 (October 2011).

2 See Petersen, “Legacy of Ashes, Trial by Fire.”

3 LTG Herron N. Maples Oral History Interview, 22 June 1981, Texas A&M University Oral History 

Collection, 204-205. Fitch became DIA’s Deputy Director in 1964.

4 On the Trail of Military Intelligence History: A Guide to the Washington, DC Area (Washington, DC: U.S. 

Army Intelligence and Security Command, undated), 16-17. Does this need a date?

5 Defense Intelligence Agency Manpower Trends, 19 February 1982, HRSB file “Manpower.” The gap 

between authorized and actual manpower was about 13 percent, somewhat higher than what would become 

the agency’s standard eight to 10 percent, and can be blamed in large part over unresolved issues with the 

Services.

6 “DEFSMAC: A Community Asset,” undated, www.nsarchive.chadwyck.com, accessed 

11 July 2011; Richard L. Bernard, “The Defense Special Missile and Astronautics Center,” undated, www.nsa.

gov, accessed 11 July 2011.

7 See collection of weekly strength reports in folder “Manpower,” HRSB Collection; Deane Allen, Working 

Paper, “The Defense Intelligence Agency,” 71; DoD Directive C-5105.32, “Defense Attaché System,” 

12 December 1964, in Allen and Shellum, ed., At the Creation.

8 Defense Intelligence Agency Manpower Trends, 19 February 1982, HRSB file “Manpower.”

9 McNamara to Carroll, “The Defense Attaché System (DAS),” 20 March 1965, in Allen and Shellum, eds., 

At the Creation, 411-412; “The Defense Attachés,” www.dia.mil, accessed 

11 July 2011.

10 “The Defense Attachés,” www.dia.mil, accessed 11 July 2011.

11 Working Paper, “Historical Review of the Growth of the Defense Intelligence Agency,” Vol. I, 

Part I-3, “A Backward Look,” p. 2 and Part IV-2-b, “History of the Directorate for Acquisition, 

p. 11-12. Overtime for DIA employees was ten percent higher than the federal government average.

12 James S. Olson and Randy Roberts, Where the Domino Fell: America and Vietnam, 1945-1995 2nd Ed. 

(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 64-65. On the surface, Diem appeared to be an ideal U.S. ally in South 

Vietnam. He was a dedicated anticommunist, Catholic, and highly educated. Even so, he was no democratic 

politician. Nepotism and cronyism were rampant in the Diem government. Diem’s brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, 

an opium addict and admirer of Adolf Hitler, was the political boss of South Vietnam and privately despised 

the United States. Nhu’s father-in-law collaborated with the Japanese occupation forces during World War 

II, and eventually became South Vietnam’s ambassador to the United States. Between one and two million 

Vietnamese died under Japanese rule, mainly because the Japanese expropriated the annual rice harvest 

and sent it to Japan. See Nicholas Tarling, A Sudden Rampage: The Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia, 

1941-1945 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001), 251. On the selection of Diem to rule 
42

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

South Vietnam, see Thomas L. Ahern, CIA and the House of Ngo: Covert Action in South Vietnam, 1964-1953 

(Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2000).

13 George W. Allen, None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam (Chicago: Ivan R. 

Dee, 2001), 131. On intelligence input to policymaking decisions, see Ahern, CIA and the House of Ngo and 

Robert Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness: American SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945-1975 (Ft. Meade, MD: 

Center for Cryptologic History, 2002).

14 Graham A. Cosmas, MACV: The Joint Command in the Years of Escalation, 1962-1967 (Washington, D.C.: 

Center of Military History, 2006), 36-41; Kaplan, et al., History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. 

V, 274-275. Command over U.S. forces in Vietnam ultimately lay with Pacific Command , which delegated its 

authority to three subordinate organizations: MACV, Pacific Air Forces , and Pacific Fleet . MACV eventually 

acquired air and naval component commands, and commanded all U.S. forces in South Vietnam. See Ronald 

Cole, et al., The History of the Unified Command Plan, 1946-1999 (Washington, D.C.: Joint History Office, 

2003) 33-34.

15 Allen, None so Blind, 133. John Newman, JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power 

(New York: Warner, 1992), 192-193. Winterbottom also uncritically accepted South Vietnamese reports about 

progress being made against the insurgency and included them in his own assessments.

16 Allen, None So Blind, 129-131. 

17 Ibid., 133.

18 The JEC was eventually folded into MACV HQ in May 1962. Allen complained that “lip service” was paid 

to the JEC for some two months, but that “The concept of a Joint Evaluation Center reporting directly to the 

ambassador was never seriously tested in Vietnam.” See Allen, None So Blind, 134.

19 Allen, None So Blind, 133-136; Newman, JFK and Vietnam, 255; Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John 

Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1988), 289-290.

20 One observer has argued that Carroll, an Air Force officer with no combat command experience, did not 

understand or care about ground OB. See T.L. Cubbage II, “Westmoreland vs. CBS: Was Intelligence Corrupted 

by Policy Demands?” in Michael I. Handel, ed., Leaders and Intelligence (London: Frank Cass, 1989). George 

Allen believed that Carroll had caved to the wishes of his superior officers and did not want to challenge 

prevailing opinion on the JCS. See Allen, None So Blind, 133-165.

21 Pentagon Papers, Vol.IV-B-4, 17, www.nara.gov, accessed 5 July 2011.

22 Carroll to McNamara, 21 August 1963, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Vol. III,

Vietnam (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1991) 264-265.

23 Turley, The Second Indochina War, 51-53, 101. Olson and Roberts, Where the Domino Fell, 103-104.

24 Carroll to McNamara, “The Viet Cong Improved Combat Effectiveness and Insurgency Posture,” 13 December 

1963, and McNamara to Johnson, 21 December 1962, both in FRUS 1961-1963 IV, 707-710, 732-735; 

Robert McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1995), 104.

25 Kaplan, et. al., History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. V, 501.

26 “Bay of Tonkin Attack, 4-5 August 1964,” 25 August 1964, and “Chronology of Tonkin Gulf Incident,” 

September 1964, Digital National Security Archive, http://nsarchive.chadwick.com/, accessed 3 January 

2008; Kaplan, et. al., History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. V, 521. See also Robert J. Hanyok, 

“Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery, 2-4 August, 1964,” Cryptologic 

Quarterly, www.nsa.gov, accessed 3 January 3.

27 Gravel Pentagon Papers, Vol. III, 192, 207; Taylor became ambassador on June 23, 1964.

28 Kaplan, et. al., History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. V, 525-526; Gravel Pentagon Papers, 

Vol. III, 212-213.
43

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

29 Gravel Pentagon Papers, Vil. III, 213-215; Kaplan, et. at., History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, 

Vol. V, 527.

30 Kaplan, et. at., History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. V, 527; James Clay Thompson, 

ROLLING THUNDER: Understanding Policy and Program Failure (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina 

Press, 1980), 28. The U.S. began conducting limited airborne “armed reconnaissance” in Laos in December 

under the code-name Barrel Roll. The raids were designed to interdict the flow of supplies south, but were of 

limited success.

31 Gravel Pentagon Papers, Vol. III, 333-336.

32 Ibid., 384.

33 Bundy to Johnson, 29 June 1965, Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library. I am indebted to a fellow DIA 

employee for making this document available to me.

34 Gravel Pentagon Papers, Vol. III, 384; Raborn to Johnson, 8 May 1965, National Security Archive, 

http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com, accessed 1/3/2008.

35 SNIE 10-11-65, “Probable Communist Reactions to a US Course of Action,” Estimative Products on Vietnam, 

1948-1975 (Washington, D.C.: National Intelligence Council, 2005), 297.

36 Gravel Pentagon Papers, Vol. IV., 68; DIA Special Intelligence Supplement, “The Big Picture in Southeast 

Asia,” 13 January 1966, Vietnam National Security Files, 1963-1969 (Frederick, MD: University Publications of 

America) roll 4, frame 71. 

37 Gravel Pentagon Papers, Vol. IV., 6, 11, 111, 354; Thompson, ROLLING THUNDER, 52-53.

38 McNamara Deposition, Vietnam: A Documentary Collection: Westmoreland vs. CBS (New York: Clearwater, 

1985), fiche 331, 87-88.

39 When Clark Clifford succeeded McNamara as Secretary of Defense, the joint CIA/DIA reports became 

known as “Clifford Reports.”

40 “An Appraisal of the Bombing of North Vietnam (Through 19 June 1967),” June 1967, Declassified 

Documents Reference Service (DDRS).

41 “An Appraisal of the Bombing of North Vietnam (Through 16 October 1967),” October 1967; “An Appraisal 

of the Bombing of North Vietnam (Through 18 December 1967),” December 1967, DDRS. There is even 

evidence that the bombing actually helped the Communist Party of Vietnam promote and install some of its social 

programs. See Turley, The Second Indochina War, 93-94.

42 NSAM 328, “Presidential Decisions with Respect to Vietnam,” 6 April 1965, www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/

johnson/archives.hom/nsams/nsam328.asp, accessed 26 February 2008; Findings cited in Raborn to Johnson, 

8 May 1965, DDRS. A June 1965 DIA report noted that the Viet Cong began an extended campaign in May. 

See also DIA Report, “Casualties High in South Vietnam as Viet Cong Activities Increase,” 8 June 1965, LBJ 

Library National Security Files (Frederick, MD: University Press of America, 1985), roll 17, frame 41. Olson and 

Roberts, Where the Domino Fell, 302. 

43 Turley, The Second Indochina War, 64-65; Joseph McChristian, The Role of Military Intelligence, 1965-1967

(Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1975), 3-4. 

44 James J. Wirtz, “Intelligence to Please? The Order of Battle Controversy during the Vietnam War,” Political 

Science Quarterly Vol. 106, No. 2 (Summer 1991), 248; Wheeler to Carroll, “Statistics on Order of Battle and 

Infiltration,” 19 January 1967, in Paul Kesaris, ed., Vietnam and Southeast Asia, 1946-1976 (Frederick, MD: 

University Publications of America, 1982), roll 4, frame 54.

45 CIA Memo, Special Assistant for Vietnamese Affairs to Deputy Director for Intelligence “Revising the Viet Cong 

Order of Battle,” 11 January 1967, in Kesaris, Vietnam and Southeast Asia, Supplement, roll 4, no. 54. The 

OB process took in four types of enemy units: regular PAVN forces, Viet Cong main force units, Viet Cong local 
44

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

units, and Viet Cong irregular forces (including guerillas, “self-defense” forces, and “secret self-defense” forces. 

The latter two were essentially militia forces that planted mines and booby traps, stored supplies, and sometimes 

sniped at U.S. and ARVN troops. They were the forces that drove up the Adams OB estimate).

46 John Williams Deposition, Westmoreland vs. CBS, fiche 438, 19-20.

47 Abrams to Wheeler, 20 August 1967, Joint Exhibit 252B, 1-2, and Westmoreland Interview Transcript, 17 

May 1981, Joint Exhibit 349, Westmoreland vs. CBS.

48 Daniel Graham, Confessions of a Cold Warrior: An Autobiography (Fairfax, VA: Preview Press, 1995), 

54-55.

49 Wirtz, “Intelligence to Please?” 245-246. Douglas Kinnard, The War Managers (Hanover, NH: University 

Press of New England, 1977), 69-70.

50 Williams Deposition, Westmoreland vs. CBS, fiche 438, 30. 

51 CIA Memorandum for the Record, 5 July 1967, Kesaris, Vietnam and Southeast Asia, Supplement, roll 4, no. 

844; Williams Deposition, Westmoreland vs. CBS, fiche 438, 30. 

52 Williams Deposition, Westmoreland vs. CBS, fiche 438, 30. Ford, CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers, 94, 

100-101; T.L. Cubbage II, “Westmoreland vs. CBS: Was Intelligence Corrupted by Policy Demands?” in 

Michael I. Handel, ed., Leaders and Intelligence (London: Cass, 1989), 157.

53 George Hamscher Deposition, Westmoreland vs. CBS, fiche 263, 38-39. Abrams position arguably betrayed 

a misunderstanding of North Vietnam’s supreme military commander Vo Nguyen Giap’s doctrine, which held that 

regular troops, guerillas, and local militias all constituted essential core elements that had key roles to play in the 

communist military effort. 

54 Williams Deposition, Westmoreland vs. CBS, fiche 438, 60; Ford, CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers, 91. 

55 Major General Grover Cleveland Brown Biography, www.af.mil/information/bios, accessed 12 Nov. 2011.

56 Williams Deposition, Westmoreland vs. CBS, fiche 438, 38-39.

57 SNIE 14-3-67, “Capabilities of the Vietnamese Communists for Fighting in South Vietnam,” Estimative Products 

on Vietnam, 429. DCI Richard Helms elected to accept MACVs numbers in the interest of avoiding a split 

estimate. Less than a week after the SNIE was issued, Westmoreland publicly announced that enemy strength was 

approximately 248,000. CIA was incredulous. See Ford, CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers, 102-103.

58 Edward J. Drea, Secretary of Defense Historical Series, Volume VI: McNamara, Clifford, and the Burden of 

Vietnam, 1965-1969 (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2011), 1; Olson and Roberts, 

Where the Domino Fell, 170. See also Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam

(New York: Vintage Books, 1996).

59 MG Grover Cleveland Brown Testimony, House Defense Appropriations Sub-committee, 90th Congress, 2nd 

Session, 10 April 1968, 457.

60 Williams Deposition, Westmoreland vs. CBS, fiche 438, 45-52.

61 Turley, The Second Indochina War, 97-106. Buzzanco, Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the 

Vietnam Era (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 314-315. See also James H. Willbanks, The Tet 

Offensive: A Concise History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).

62 Williams Deposition, Westmoreland vs. CBS, fiche 438, p. 37, 35-36.

63 Joint DIA/CIA Study, “The Attrition of Vietnamese Communist Forces, 1968-1969,” 30 March 1968, DDRS.

64 See Ronald Spector, After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam (New York: The Free Press, 1993).
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Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

65 James Meacham Correspondence, 24 June 1968, Joint Exhibit 214K, Westmoreland vs. CBS. 

66 In 1967, North Korean infiltrators destroyed two U.S. Army barracks, killing or wounding twenty-one soldiers. 

That year, more than 100 South Koreans and Americans were killed by North Koreans. See Richard Mobley, 

Mobley, Flash Point North Korea: The Pueblo and the EC-121 Crises (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 

2003), 14-15.

67 Thomas Johnson, American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945-1989, Book II: Centralization Wins, 

1960-1972 (Ft. Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, 1995), 440, www.gwu.edu/nsarchiv/index.html, 

accessed 2 Sep 2010. 

68 DIAXX to DIAP-2, “Information for DIA DR on Pueblo,” undated, and Commentary/Answers on Pueblo 

Incident, undated, both likely Feb. 1969, Folder “Miscellaneous Pueblo Material,” DIA HRSB Collection. Though 

the Director of DIA’s Special Activities Office, which coordinated intelligence collection with the larger Intelligence 

Community, claimed to have consulted DIA’s North Korea specialists for their risk assessment, North Korea 

analysts denied it.

69 Draft Memorandum, DIAXX-DIAPP-2, “Information for DIADR on the PUEBLO,” undated.

70 Mitchell B. Lerner, The Pueblo Incident: A Spy Ship and the Failure of American Foreign Policy (Lawrence, KS: 

University Press of Kansas, 2002) 60-61).

71 Johnson, American Cryptology during the Cold War, Book II, 443.

72 Inquiry into the U.S.S. Pueblo and EC-121 Plane Incidents, Report of the Special Subcommittee on the U.S.S. 

Pueblo of the Committee on Armed Services, 28 July 1971, 1653-1654, 1656.

73 A study by the historian Richard Mobley also concluded that since the Soviet Union did not harass these 

missions (and indeed conducted their own), risk assessors reasoned that the North Koreans would also act within 

these established norms. See Mobley, Flash Point North Korea: The Pueblo and the EC-121 Crises (Annapolis, 

MD: Naval Institute Press, 2003).

74 Dessert Memorandum, “Information from HACIT Relative to Backlog of Intelligence Data, 6 Mar 1972, HRSB 

“DIA Command ‘70s,” Box 1, Folder “Command Section Signed 1972.”

75 Brown Testimony, House Defense Appropriations Sub-committee, 90th Congress, 2nd Session, 

10 April 1968, 457. Major General Grover Brown was a member of the USAF, while Army Brigadier General 

Burton Brown ran the Production Center at Arlington Hall. DIA employees differentiated between the two by 

referring to “Blue Brown” (Grover) and “Brown Brown” (Burton).

76 “Reorganization of DIAPP in November 1966,” undated, HRSB, DIAC Carousel Records, Cab 1B, Shelf 4, 

Org-Reorg, Misc., Folder “503 Thru 549.” 

77 Allen, None So Blind, 131.

78 Quoted in Department of Defense Appropriations for 1970: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the 

Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, 91/1 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1969) 20. The title 

of the subcommittee’s report was “The Management and Conduct of Military Intelligence Activities in the 

Department of Defense,” published March 1968. 

79 “Spy Output Too Large For Chiefs,” New York Times, 10 July 1968, 41.

80 “Defense Intelligence: Calling Nixon’s Bluff,” OSD History Staff Collection, File “Intelligence, 1969-1970,” 

Box 740. 

81 Richard Homan, “July Flood Ruined Secret Papers,” Washington Post, 9 November 1969, 58. In October 

1966, a three-alarm fire struck a storage area in Building B at Arlington Hall Station, destroying some electrical 

equipment and personnel records, but employees were able to return to work that same day. “Fire Strikes Top 

Secret Defense Hall,” Washington Post, 1 November 1966, C5.
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Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

82 James Carroll, House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power (Boston: Houghton 

Mifflin, 2006) 334-335. Carroll’s removal is examined in Michael B. Petersen, “Up From the Ashes: Defense 

Intelligence in the Era of Détente,” Defense Intelligence Perspectives, Number 3, forthcoming.

83 Donald V. Bennett Oral History Interview (OHI) transcript, U.S. Army Military History Research Collection, 

Senior Officers Debriefing Program, Tape 9, page 30, 32-33; hereafter cited as Bennett OHI.

84 Bennett, an artillery officer, came ashore on the border of Fox Green and Easy Red sectors on the eastern 

portion of Omaha Beach as part of the second wave of U.S. troops. He assumed command of the leaderless 

Third Infantry Battalion and advanced its soldiers off the beach. For his actions, he was awarded the 

Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest military decoration that can be awarded to a member of the 

U.S. Army. See Bennett OHI, Section 1, pp. 67-69.

85 Donald V. Bennett official biography, HRSB. Bennett’s appointment as DIA Director and his efforts to 

reorganize the Agency are discussed further in Petersen, “Up From the Ashes: Defense Intelligence in the Era of 

Détente,” forthcoming.

86 Graham A. Cosmas, MACV: The Joint Command in the Years of Withdrawal, 1968-1973 (Washington, D.C.: 

Center of Military History, 2007) 285-289, 314-315.

87 Donald V. Bennett Oral History Interview, U.S. Army Military History Research Collection, Senior Officers 

Debriefing Program, Section 10, pp. 7-8; Bruce Palmer, Jr., “US Intelligence in Vietnam,” Studies in Intelligence

Special Issue, June 1984, National Security Archive, http://nsarchive.chadwick.com, accessed 26 July 2008; 

Louis Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam (New 

York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), 191-216.

88 Sorley, A Better War, 208-209; Palmer, “US Intelligence in Vietnam,” 81. Sorley concludes, however, that 

the documents backed MACV’s OB estimates instead, though most historians support the point that the findings 

proved CIA’s argument.

89 Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Vol II: Organization and Management of U.S. Foreign 

Policy, 1969-1972, document 224, http://history.state.gov, accessed 5 October 2011. Nixon’s ire was reserved 

mostly for CIA. “Give me a report on those changes [to CIA, recommended by the PFIAB],” he wrote in the 

margin of this memo. “I want a real shakeup in CIA, not just symbolism.” See also Thomas L. Ahearn, Jr., Good 

Questions, Wrong Answers: CIA’s Estimates of Arms Traffic Through Sihanoukville, Cambodia During the Vietnam 

War (Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Intelligence, September 2004).

90 Benjamin F. Schemmer, The Raid (New York: Harper and Rowe, 1976), 29-30; John T. Berbrich Briefing, 

“The Role of the IPWIC,” c. 1971, HRSB working file “POW/MIA.” Stuart Rochester and Frederick Kiley, Honor 

Bound: The History of American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, 1961-1973 (Washington, D.C.: Office of 

the Secretary of Defense, 1998), 204.

91 For a complete history of the raid and its planning, see Benjamin F. Schemmer, The Raid (New York: Harper 

and Rowe, 1976).

92 Commander, JCS/Joint Contingency Task Force Report on the Son Tay Prisoner of War Rescue Operation, Part 

II, C1-C8, www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/, accessed 28 October 2011; Schemmer, The Raid, 37-79.

93 John Mitchell, “The Son Tay Raid: A Study in Presidential Policy,” unpag., www.globalsecurity.org/military/

library/report/1997/Mitchell.htm, accessed 3/8/08.

94 Mitchell, ibid; Schemmer, The Raid, 178.

95 Mark Amidon, “Groupthink, Politics, and the Decision to Attempt the Son Tay Rescue,” Parameters, (Autumn 

2005), 121.

96 Commander, JCS/Joint Contingency Task Force Report on the Son Tay Prisoner of War Rescue Operation, Part 

II, ii, www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/, accessed 28 October 2011.

97 Vernon Walters, Silent Missions (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978), 511.
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Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

98 Walters, Silent Missions, 513-514, 519, 521.

99 Kissinger to Walters, 10 October 1970, Walters Gift Collection, HRSB.

100 Sorley, A Better War, 272-277; Palmer, “US Intelligence in Vietnam,” 96, 91-92.

101 National Intelligence Estimate 53-71, “South Vietnam: Problems and Prospects,” 29 April 1971, 

http://www.cia.foia.gov, accessed 1 August 2008.

102 In July 1971, DIA representatives also joined an ad hoc task force under the Operations Directorate (J-3) 

of the Joint Staff as well as a CINCPAC task force, both of which were designed to improve the Republic of 

Vietnam’s interdiction capabilities on the Ho Chi Minh Trail and plan future interdiction operations. See Webb 

and Poole, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 144-145.

103 DIA Intelligence Summary, “Vietnam,” January 1972, HRSB Vietnam-UN-Tet-Laos, 1969-1981.

104 Olson and Roberts, Where the Domino Fell, 246-247; Webb and Poole, History of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff, 161-162, DIA report quoted on 177-178; Stephen P. Randolph, Powerful and Brutal Weapons: Nixon, 

Kissinger, and the Easter Offensive (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007)181-182. Also in May, the 

U.S. began mining Haiphong Harbor, a provocative move that ran the risk killing Chinese or Soviet sailors on 

resupply missions to North Vietnam.

105 It is unlikely that the bombings accomplished what ROLLING THUNDER had failed to do, that is, force the 

DRV to finally sue for peace. Historians of the Vietnam War indicate that the DRV receptiveness to peace talks 

was tactical, an effort to stop the bombing and create space to build up its armed forces for another major push 

into the South.

106 For a full accounting of Walters’ activities in Paris, see Silent Missions, 506-583.

107 Webb and Poole, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 324-325; Palmer, “US Intelligence in Vietnam,” 101.

108 William LeGro Fact Sheet, “Intelligence Branch Functional Statement,” 22 June 1973, Vietnam Virtual 

Archive at Texas Tech University (hereafter cited as VVA), www.vietnam.ttu.edu, accessed 28 April 2009; 

USDAO Intelligence Collection Plan, May 1973, VVA, www.vietnam.ttu.edu, accessed 28 April 2009.

109 William Legro, Vietnam: From Cease-Fire to Capitulation (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military 

History, 1981), 19.

110 William LeGro, “Intelligence in Vietnam After the Cease-Fire,” INSCOM Journal (March-April 1997), 28-29; 

Legro Fact Sheet, “Regional Liaison Officers and Provincial Observers,” undated (probably June 1972), VVA, 

www.vietnam.ttu.edu, accessed 28 April 2009; Author’s interview notes with James W., 1 July 2010.

111 Laura Calkins Oral History Interview with William Legro, 21 November 2005, VVA www.vietnam.ttu.edu, p. 

439, accessed 25 October 2011.

112 Stuart Herrington, Peace with Honor? An American Reports on Vietnam, 1973-1975 (San Francisco: Novato 

Press, 1983) 14-15.

113 USSAG was the organization responsible for any U.S. military operations in Vietnam should they be ordered 

by the President. 

114 USDAO Saigon, “Annex B to DAO Saigon OPlan 001, Revised; Intelligence,” 15 July 1973, ; USDAO 

Saigon, “Collection Plan,” May 1973; Legro Fact Sheet, “Current Intelligence Production,” 21 June 1973; All 

documents located in VVA, www.vietnam.ttu.edu, accessed 28 April 2009).

115 Olson and Roberts, Where the Domino Fell, 255; Marilyn B. Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990 (New 

York: Harper Collins, 1991), 291.

116 See the collection of DAO Military Intelligence Summary and Threat Analysis (MISTA) documents held by the 

Vietnam Virtual Archive, www.virtualarchive.vietnam.ttu.edu. 
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Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

117 NIE 53/14.3-1-74, “The Likelihood of a Major North Vietnamese Offensive Against South Vietnam Before 

June 30, 1975,” in Estimative Products on Vietnam, 629; Webb and Poole, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 

356-357.

118 DIA Special Defense Intelligence Notice (DIASDIN) 787-74, 4 December 1974, DIA Classified Library 

Collection.

119 DIA Intelligence Appraisal, “The Vietnam Situation,” 10 January 1975, DIA Classified Library Collection. 

DeSaulniers was the Defense Intelligence Officer for Southeast Asia. Frank Snepp has noted that not even 

Defense Attaché General Murray was sure how much equipment the South Vietnamese had left. See Snepp, 

Decent Interval, 108. Olson and Roberts, Where the Domino Fell, 258. 

120 Graham Testimony, Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of 

Representatives, 94th Congress, 2nd Session, 30 January 1975, 13. Graham’s role as DIA’s Director is 

examined in Michael Petersen, Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, No. 3, “The Soviet Target, Part I: 

Sizing Up Colossus,” (Washington, DC: Defense Intelligence Agency, forthcoming).

121 DIA Intelligence Appraisal, “An Assessment of the Current Situation in South Vietnam,” 20 March 1975, DIA 

Classified Library Collection.

122 In the U.S., President Ford had been moved to action by the pleas of New York’s Cardinal Terrence Cooke to 

rescue the orphans, who were housed Catholic orphanages in Saigon.

123 Coy F. Cross II, MAC and Operation BABYLIFT: Air Transport in Support of Noncombatant Evacuation 

Operations (Scott Air Force Base, Illinois: Military Airlift Command, 1989) 33-34; Ron Steinman, The Soldiers’ 

Story: Vietnam in Their Own Words (New York: TV Books, 2000), 297.

124 Stuart A. Herrington, Peace With Honor? An American Reports on Vietnam, 1973-1975 (Novato, CA: 

Presidio Press, 1983), 166; Thomas G. Tobin, et al, ed., Last Flight from Saigon (Washington, DC: Government 

Printing Office, 1978), 29.

125 Cross, MAC and Operation BABYLIFT, 38-39; United States Agency for International Development, Operation 

Babylift Report (Washington, D.C., 1975) 3.

126 Robert Edison internet post, “It Hurt Then and it Hurts Now!,” url unknown, 1994. My thanks to James W. for 

making this document available to me.

127 MG Homer Smith, “The Final 45 Days in Vietnam,” Vietnam Virtual Archive, www.virtual.vietnam.ttu.edu, 

accessed 24 May 24 2011. Smith wrote this paper within a few days after his evacuation from Saigon.

128 Steinman, The Soldiers’ Story, 298.

129 Their tasks were further complicated by the work of a team from the Military Airlift Command sent to 

investigate the C-5 crash. The effort involved arranging transport for search parties and hauling wreckage to Tan 

Son Nhut. For a detailed description of the evacuation planning, see Tobin, et al., Last Flight from Saigon, 14-46, 

and Snepp, Decent Interval, 217-377; Palmer, U.S. Intelligence in Vietnam, 114. In the end, DAO employees, 

worried about the fates of their Vietnamese friends and colleagues, helped evacuate thousands of Vietnamese 

who were neither legally eligible nor “high risk.” 

130 Bert Okuley, “President Ford Orders Massive Evacuations of U.S. Citizens from Saigon,” 17 April 1975, 

Vietnam Virtual Archive, www.virtual.vietnam.ttu.edu, accessed 16 August 2011.

131 Author’s interview notes with James W., 1 July 2010.

132 Palmer, U.S. Intelligence in Vietnam, 114-115; DIA Intelligence Appraisal, “The Fall of the Republic of 

Vietnam,” 10 May 1975.

133 John F. Guilmartin, A Very Short War: The Mayaguez and the Battle of Koh Tang (College Station, TX: Texas 

A&M University Press, 1995), 26-27.
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Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2

134 Log of DIA Activities Related to Mayaguez Incident, File “Mayaguez,” HRSB; Ralph Wetterhahn, 

The Last Battle: The Mayaguez Incident and the End of the Vietnam War (New York: Carroll & Graf 

Publishers, 2001), 334.

135 The assault force planners believed that the total number of men, women, and children on Koh Tang was 

around 100. Comptroller General’s Report to the Subcommittee on International, Political, and Military Affairs, 

Committee on International Affairs, House of Representatives, The Seizure of the Mayaguez—A Case Study of 

Crisis Management, 90-91. An NSA history speculates that since only highly classified SIGINT could provide 

reliable information about the Khmer force on Koh Tang, classification issues restricted the passage of this 

information to combat forces. See Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945-1989, 

Book III: Retrenchment and Reform, 1972-1980 (Fort Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, 1998) 18.

136 For a complete review of events, see Guilmartin, A Very Short War.

Michael B. Petersen is a Historian with the DIA 

Historical Research Division. He previously served on 

the staff of the National Security Council and with the 

Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government 

Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) at the 

National Archives and Records Administration. 

He holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of 

Maryland, College Park and is the author of Missiles for 

the Fatherland: Peenemünde, National Socialism, and 

the V-2 Missile (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

About the Author

The DIA Historical Research Division

The Defense Intelligence Agency Historical Research Division 

develops and preserves the institutional memory of DIA, 

conducts historical research and analysis in support of the 

DIA mission, and promotes historical awareness among 

the DIA workforce.
COMMITTED TO EXCELLENCE IN DEFENSE OF THE NATION

One Mission. One Team. One Agency.

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