much of his strength, but he was getting increasingly concerned about his wounds—

that he might lose his right arm to gangrene.

We were fortunate to have some food and a

ready source of water. No one got sick, and

we quietly urinated into a small bottle and

then poured it into an urn full of rice. The

room was small, about four feet by six feet,

but being together kept our spirits up.

Throughout the next few days, we saw no

other people. We only heard sporadic firing

nearby. Frequently we would hear a loud

gun go off, followed by automatic fire. The

firing would build in intensity and then

gradually taper off. I wasn’t sure if it was antiaircraft fire or other defensive fires. Often

this firing sequence was preceded by a whippoorwill-like birdcall, to the point where I

thought it might be a signal. Then again, I

thought to myself that perhaps I’d been

watching too many war movies where people would use birdcalls as recognition signals.

To this day, I do not know what if there was

any significance to the birdcall, or if it were

an actual birdcall.

Sergeant Vaughn was getting increasingly

weaker. He lay under the bed, not making a

sound. We knew that we could not move him,

and the best bet was that friendly forces

would recapture this part of the city and we

would be able to medevac him. We were still

confident that U.S.forces would win this area

back. It was just a matter of time before they

would, though whether it would be in time to

save Vaughn was more in question. Thinking back, I cannot recall if he was conscious

at any time during the last two days we were

in the room. If we had to move quickly, the

decision was made that we would hide

Vaughn under the bed. If we tried to move

him, he would surely die.

By the third day (2 February), we were

wondering when the U.S.forces would recapture Hue. Where were they? Jim was getting

increasingly nervous about his wounds. He

feared they would become gangrenous and

he would lose his arm. We were becoming

desperate. We were thinking of crazy plans

for escape. One plan had us find the aluminum wrapper from cigarette packs to fashion a mirror to signal friendly aircraft.

Another plan had me pretend to be aVC and

march the others at gunpoint toward a

checkpoint and then rush the guards and

blast our way through. We had been watching too many movies, and we realized that

the chances for success were slim to none.

Amidst this reverie, we heard a commotion outside our door. We quickly bolted the

door and listened as a number of NVA soldiers entered our building and interrogated

a local Vietnamese, just outside our room.

There was a lot of yelling, screaming, crying,

and an occasional shot. It was confusion.

The best we could make out was that the NVA

found Sergeant Vaughn’s blood-stained

clothes, which we had stripped off him when

we first came into the building. The only barrier between us and the NVA was a sevenfoot-high concrete wall, open at the top, and

a flimsy wood-and-tin door held shut by a

small bolt lock. We knew it was a simple matter for the NVA to kick down our door or

throw a grenade over the wall.

We made hand signs as to who would do

what. We quieted our breathing, and the

sweat was streaming off our faces. Suddenly,

someone tried our door. It was obvious that

the door was locked from the inside, and we

were certain someone would kick the door

in. We readied ourselves to blast our way out.

We waited for what seemed like forever, but

nothing happened, and just as suddenly, the

NVA left. We all let out a huge sigh of relief.

We could never figure out what brought

them to our house and why they suddenly

left, but we were grateful that we did not

have a firefight in such close quarters.

The relief of that close call was still with

us the next morning. Someone had found a

can of sweetened evaporated milk, and we

were trying to figure out how to open it when

we heard footsteps. This was about 11:00

a.m. A number of NVA marched into the

house, straight to our door, and kicked it

down. Bob Hubbard rushed to the door and

37
sprayed the room with his Swedish-K. After a

couple seconds, he pulled back, saying he

was out of ammo. I jumped into the doorway with an AK-47 and fired one round. I

thought that I had placed the AK on full automatic, but much to my surprise, it was on

semi-auto. I stood there white knuckled, and

only one round came out. I quickly realized

my mistake and pulled the trigger in rapid

succession. The two NVA soldiers who barged

in were lying on the floor, but we did not

wait around to see who else was there, so we

bolted out the door.

We ran to the corner of the compound and

climbed over, through what I believe was the

Montagunard Center. It wasn’t until later

that we learned that an NVA Regiment had

made it their headquarters. We skirted the

compound, climbed over another wall, and

into a garage. It was then that I realized that,

in the heat of the firefight, we had left Sergeant Vaughn behind. A couple of us were

ready to go back, but after a brief discussion,

we figured we would never be able to get him

out alive and that his best chance was to remain hidden under the bed in the house.

(We were convinced that the NVA couldn’t

hold the city much longer and our side

would recapture the city soon.) We weren’t

even sure he was still alive. He had not made

a sound for the last couple days. To this day,

I am haunted by the question whether we

did the right thing.

We left the garage and slowly made our

way, half submerged, down a water-filled

canal. We quietly passed a woman cooking

in her backyard. I can remember thinking

that she could not help but have noticed us,

or she purposely avoided looking at us....The

canal came up to a rusted barbwire fence.

On the other side was a road—and our way

out. We broke a hole through the fence and

slithered through. I ended up at a culvert in

the road. I quickly slid into the culvert. As I

crawled forward, I could see mosquitoes on

the water and thought to myself, “Oh shit,

after all this, now I am going to get bitten

and die of malaria.” But that thought was

quickly pushed from my mind as the culvert

narrowed and I found my nose under water.

I quickly turned over on my back so my nose

would be out of the water as I squeezed out

the other end. Good thing I was all of about

125 pounds and could get through. Being exposed on the side of the road, I ran forward,

hid in a ditch, and waited for the others.

Unbeknownst to me, they had decided that

they would never get through the culvert and

had run across the road and south toward

the Phu Cam district, expecting me to catch

up. I, however, got turned around and found

myself headed back toward the city. I recognized a compound that was just down the

road from our house. It was the public works

department for the city. The roads were

empty, though I could still hear gunfire in the

distance. As soon as I heard a break in the

shooting, I pushed up, ran across the road

into the compound, and climbed up into a

concrete water tower.

There I felt I was safe and could dry off. I

was soaked from crawling through the canal,

and I was shivering as the temperatures

dropped. I stripped off my clothes and laid

them out to dry, just sitting in the dry water

tower in my underwear. No sooner did I strip

down than it started to rain, so reluctantly I

put back on my wet clothes. I was cold, miserable, and hungry, so I decided to approach

the Vietnamese in the compound. I had no

better ideas.

I jumped down and started to run but

thought better of it, so I slowed to a walk and

walked across the compound to aVietnamese

woman. Using my scant Vietnamese, I explained that I was an American and that I

wanted to know what the situation was. The

woman ushered me into her house and told

me that the NVA had overrun all of Hue and

Phu Bai. She gave me some rice mixed with

some red sauce, and I wolfed it down. I never

found out what the red sauce was, but at the

time, it tasted great. I wasn’t sure what I

would do, but I wanted to get out of the wet

clothes, so I asked for something dry to wear.

They gave me a white shirt and a pair of

blue schoolboy trousers and a pair of shower

38
shoes. Nervously, they took my clothes and

buried them in the yard, but not until I retrieved my wallet and dog tags. As I started

to leave, they told me that I could not leave

the compound since the NVA were everywhere and I would be killed or captured for

sure. Instead, they led me to a small pen that

best I could tell was an old pigsty. They motioned that I should hide there.

The pigsty was low, and I could not stand

up, so I sat leaning against a wooden side.

The next couple days were uneventful. The

family brought me food twice a day, and I

occupied myself doing isometric exercises to

keep from cramping up. At other times, I

looked for things to keep me occupied. Once

I found some wire and spent time sewing the

buttons back on my shirt. On the second day,

the husband came over to me and handed

me a rusty knife blade. He explained that

during the night, the NVA had come to him

and asked if they could cut through to the

next compound, through where I was hiding.

Wanting to give me something to defend myself, he gave me this knife. I took one look

and thought it would be useless. It was

rusted and dull, and I couldn’t even use it to

cut my own throat, if it came to that. But I

thanked him nonetheless.

Sitting in the pigsty, I continued to hear

sporadic gunfire throughout the city, along

with the staccato of automatic fire. Increasingly, I could hear artillery rounds going

overhead, which I assumed were from Phu

Bai.

By the second day, my existence was turning into routine. I was trying to keep myself

entertained when an artillery shell exploded

less than 30 feet from me. All I could remember was that everything turned to slow

motion, and I could see the fireball and the

billowing cloud of red brick dust move toward me. The force knocked me over, and all

I could think of was,“Oh shit, it’s going to

break my leg!” The walls of the pigsty and

the overhead corrugated roofing collapsed

on top of me. I pushed off the ground and

back into an upright sitting position, only to

see another fireball, almost at precisely the

same spot, and another wave of red brick

dust knocked me over again.

As I pushed back upright again, I checked

myself and noticed that I was still in one

piece—no broken leg. I did have a small

wound on my head, probably from the

falling roof and timbers, but the building fell

in such a way as to create a small lean-to—

very much like a 1950s nuclear bomb shelter—and I was lying in this lean-to. I checked

around and noticed gouges in the cinder

blocks next to me. I did not recall seeing

them before the blasts, but I couldn’t say for

sure that they were caused by the blasts. If

the latter, that I survived was a miracle. As it

was, it was a miracle anyway.

That day, for the first time, theVietnamese

family did not bring any food to me. I fashioned a drinking cup from a discarded C-rations tin and caught rain water dripping

from the corrugated roofing for drinking

water. I would simply collect the water, allow

for sediment to settle to the bottom of the tin,

and sip the “clean” water off the top. It

worked well, especially since the weather cooperated with a light drizzle all day. It wasn’t until the next day that someone from the

Vietnamese family came around looking for

some roofing material that they realized that

I had not died in the explosions. When I

waved to them, the person blanched, looked

as if he’d seen a ghost, and scurried away. He

soon returned with a bandage and some

food, which was greatly welcomed. Later that

day, they brought me food again.

I continued to “live” in my makeshift shelter. My only concern now was the threat of

rats, and I wrapped the mosquito net that the

family had given me tightly around my body

to ward off any rat attacks, as well as to keep

warm. No rats came. They were probably too

smart to venture out during this fighting. I

only mention it because it reflects my state

of mind—I may survive the fighting, but

something else would do me in, like malaria

or rats, or something else.

On 7 February, the firefights grew in in39
tensity, and I could hear American English

on the other side of the wall. It was the

Marines, and I would hear,“Don’t worry, the

Marines are here,”“U.S. Marines,” and other

such phrases, occasionally punctuated with

gunfire. A lot sounded like so much bravado,

but to me it was a welcome sound and hope.

It was now only a matter of minutes, I

thought. It turned out to be a couple hours

before the Marines came through the hole in

the wall made by the two artillery shells.

Now my concern was how do I come out

without being mistaken for aVC and get shot.

I got out my dog tags and my military ID

and held them in my hand. When I could actually see them, I called, “Hey Marines, Captain Lau, U.S.embassy. I’m coming out.”

A voice called back, “Come on out. We’ve

been looking for you.” Holding my military

ID card and my dog tags, I crawled out of my

shelter and introduced myself to Captain J.T.

Irons of the Marine ITT team, resplendent in

his handlebar moustache. He was ugly, but

a most beautiful sight.

Shortly thereafter, Captain Irons escorted

me back to the MACV compound. I must

have been quite a sight—an eight-day

growth on my face, a white shirt and blue

schoolboy trousers, and shower shoes. The

guard at the MACV compound called out to

us as we entered, “Hey, he can’t go in there!”

Capt.Irons yelled back,“He’s okay. He’s a Marine captain.” We continued walking, and

soon I was greeted by my chief, Billy G.

Melton. He greeted me with a big smile and

a pat on the back. It was great to see him.

That day, several others were to make it

back to friendly lines. Dave Harper and John

Coffey walked in. They had a similar harrowing story to tell, but that’s their story. I

also learned that Jim Harris had made it

down to Phu Bai and had been medevaced

to the U.S. Bob Ennis took refuge at theVoice

of America Station just south of Hue, was

safe, and would later be exfiltrated out of the

area. Sadly, Bob Hubbard had been killed

about three days earlier as they crossed the

bridge to Phu Cam District. He had been shot

at close range and likely died instantly.

Over the next couple days, I identified the

bodies of Tom Gompertz, Tom Krause, and

Jeff Lundstedt as their bodies were brought

in. A Marine was driving one of the USAID

Ford Scouts and would come screeching

around the corner to the MACV compound,

horn blaring, and I would go down to ID the

bodies. I got to dread the sound of the horn

since I knew it meant bodies. But I thought

it was the least I could do, to help get their

bodies back to their families. I would have

wanted them to do that for me if the roles

were reversed.

For the next month or more, we tracked

others who were missing, and I brought back

the bodies of Sergeant HowardVaughn and a

USAID officer, Steve Miller. I found Sergeant

Vaughn’s body in a ditch outside the building where we were hiding. I looked, but I did

not see any more wounds than those he had

suffered that first day. All told, 10 people from

the embassy team in Hue were killed during

or as a result of the fighting in Hue—Bob

Hubbard, Howard Vaughn, Tom Gompertz,

Tom Krause, Jeff Lundstedt, Steve Miller, and

four others. Gene Weaver was captured and

ended up as a POW in North Vietnam for

seven years. Tom Ragsdale was captured but

died of dysentery along the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Sol Godwin and Steve Haukness were never

found or their whereabouts never determined. They will all be remembered by me

as long as I live.29

Ray Lau left the Marine Corps and went on

to a distinguished career with the CIA.

Sergeant Rodney H. Pupuhi:

I Corps, Post-Tet 1968

Sergeant Rodney H. Pupuhi, a native of

Hawaii, enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1954

and served until 1957 when he left the active

Marine Corps and joined the Marine Corps Reserve. In 1962, his reserve infantry unit was

reorganized as the 6th Force Reconnaissance

Company,and he began several years of intensive training in parachuting, scuba diving, and

other reconnaissance skills.

40
As a highly trained reconnaissance Marine

with a strong urge to test his skills in combat,

Sergeant Pupuhi decided to rejoin the active

Marine Corps in 1965 and volunteer to go to

Vietnam. He served in a detachment of the 1st

Reconnaissance Battalion assigned to the 5th

Marines in I Corps. When the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion deployed to Vietnam,Sergeant

Pupuhi joined the battalion at Chu Lai. In

March 1968 he received orders to report to

the PRU as the replacement for Sergeant

William A.Polchow,the Marine PRU advisor in

Hoi An, Quang Nam Province, who was killed

in action near Hoi An on 23 January 1968,just

a few days prior to the Tet Offensive.

Pupuhi’s introduction to the PRU started

with a jeep ride from the 1st Reconnaissance

Battalion’s base at Camp Reasoner on the eastern slope of Hill 327 west of Da Nang City to

a meeting with his “CIA contact.” The CIA officer drove “an old beat-up 4x4 Ford Bronco,

wore a shoulder holster, and was dressed in

civilian clothes.” He drove Pupuhi to the embassy house in Da Nang City,which Pupuhi remembered as “a villa surrounded by barbwire

with four guard towers at each corner of the

compound and manned byVietnamese guards

in camouflage uniforms.” Inside the villa, he

was introduced to a U.S. Marine “Colonel

Moon,”30 who welcomed him aboard and gave

him strict instructions about who he was to

take orders from and what he could and could

not do while assigned to the PRU.

Sergeant Pupuhi was quickly processed into

the program. He had his picture taken for a

Vietnamese police ID and was told the ID identified him as an officer, not an enlisted man.

The ID was signed by a SouthVietnamese general, whom he believed was the senior Vietnamese officer in Quang Nam Province. He

was assigned a Mitsubishi Jeep and sent to the

CIA armory to sign for his personal weapons,

a Swedish K submachine gun, a Browning 9-

millimeter automatic pistol, and a 25-caliber

41

Photo courtesy of GySgt Rodney H. Pupuhi

Sergeant Rodney H. Pupuhi, second on the left in civilian clothes, with unit leaders of Quang Nam Provincial Reconnaissance Unit during his tour in 1968.
Berretta pistol. He was also issued a case of

ammunition for each weapon.

Pupuhi was given $200 to buy civilian

clothes at the Freedom Hill PX and then, after

a few days, he was flown to Saigon’s Tan Son

Nhut air base on anAirAmerica flight from the

Da Nang air base. In Saigon,he was briefed by

a CIA officer called John in one of the upper

floors of the American embassy, then he was

driven to the MACV headquarters, where he

was briefed by a woman Marine major who

was in charge of the section that would take

care of his personal records and pay.

While in Saigon,Sergeant Pupuhi was given

a room at the Duc Hotel, which was leased to

the CIA for the agency’s exclusive use. He,

along with three other new PRU advisors, received two weeks of training from a CORDS

instructor who seemed to go out of his way to

stress the danger awaiting them. Pupuhi also

spent a few days at the CIA training facility at

VungTau before he was sent north to take over

his PRU teams in Hoi An. His instruction at

Vung Tau was cut short because of the necessity to replace the PRU advisor in Hoi An, Sergeant Pulchow, who had been killed during a

combined PRU-Vietnamese Navy operation

against theVCI. When he leftVungTau,he was

told that his immediate mission was“to restore

the unit at Hoi An.”

In Hoi An, Pupuhi lived in what was called

“the little embassy,” a very large white onestory villa with an adjacent warehouse in

which were stored“uniforms,web gear,boots,

weapons, and anything else needed for war.”

Twenty Chinese Nung guards protected the

house, with four of them on duty at all times.

In addition to Pupui, there were three other

Americans living in the villa. They were the

POIC,who was a retired U.S.Air Force colonel,

and two Marine lieutenants,one of whom was

in charge of the Rural Development Program.

The POIC had several Vietnamese working

for him,but they did not live in the house;they

only worked there doing administrative jobs.

According to Pupuhi, these Vietnamese workers “were very dependable and loyal” and appeared to enjoy the complete trust of the

POIC since they often typed classified letters

and reports for him.

Pupuhi’s right-hand man was his interpreter,

Bu Than Ming, whom Pupuhi described as “a

tall, lanky Vietnamese man who wore an Air

Force baseball cap, soft-type flak jacket, skin

tight trousers,and pilot’s sunglasses.” Ming had

worked as an interpreter for the U.S.Air Force

before coming to the PRU, and he spoke English fluently. Ming worked with Pupuhi to resurrect the Quang Nam PRU from a force of

only seven members to over 100 in just a few

short weeks. He helped Pupuhi to create the

personnel folders for each PRU recruit,to have

them receive their initial medical exams at the

German hospital in Hoi An, and to make sure

the new recruits were fed and clothed properly and their families cared for.

Since the PRU was newly formed—or more

42

Sergeant Pupuhi on the right with a Swedish K

submachine gun. On the left is his interpreter, Mr.

Ming. Taken in Quang Nam Province in 1968.

Photo courtesy of GySgt Rodney H. Pupuhi
accurately, reformed—Pupuhi spent a lot of

time training his new recruits so they would

be able to begin patrolling and conducting

counter-VCI missions. This included a lot of

time teaching them the proper care and cleaning of their individual and crew-served

weapons, scouting and patrolling techniques,

land navigation, marksmanship, first aid, and

communications. His PRU was equipped with

M-16 rifles,M-79 grenade launchers,45-caliber

Colt automatic pistols,and M-60 machine guns.

He conducted a weapons inspection every

morning before training. They also had two

4x4 Honda trucks,which were inadequate for

all the PRU members to ride in at one time.

This resulted in the vehicles often being

“packed like sardines with standing room

only” when they were used to transport the

PRU on a mission.

Most PRU missions involved night ambushes near or in VC-controlled villages.

Pupuhi recalled that only once did they encounter a VC effort to penetrate the Quang

Nam PRU. A VC had married into the family of

a PRU member and used this family connection to enlist in the PRU. However, since the

PRU had several former VC among their ranks,

they soon became suspicious of this individual and began an internal investigation into his

background. His family members provided information that cast doubt on his loyalty, and

objects were found among his personal effects

that proved he was in contact with the VC.

A few days later, the PRU took the VC spy

on a patrol near Hoi An. When the patrol returned, they informed Pupui that the spy had

been killed in a contact with the enemy and

they had buried him in a shallow grave approximately a mile from the PRU compound.

The spy’s family was informed that he had

died while on patrol, and they were given the

normal death gratuity that all the families of

PRU members killed in action were given.

Pupuhi was suspicious about the death of the

VC spy and cautioned the PRU members that

in the future,they were never to take summary

action against any person,regardless of the evidence. Pupuhi reported the incident to the

province chief for his action but never heard

anything further regarding it.31

Sergeant Pupuhi retired from the Marine

Corps in 1973 with the rank of gunnery sergeant and went on to complete a second career with the Hawaii State Sheriff’s Office.

First Lieutenant Douglas P.

Ryan: I Corps, 1968-69

Douglas P. Ryan was a first lieutenant serving in Vietnam as the S-2 of 1st Battalion, 4th

Marines,when he received orders to report to

Da Nang City to take over as officer in charge

(OIC) of the five provincial PRU teams in I

Corps. He served with the PRU in several capacities from October 1968 untilAugust 1969.

The following are excerpts from an e-mail sent

to the author by Ryan that relate his experiences with the PRU:

Initially I was based in Da Nang City and

placed in charge of the five provincial PRU

units in I Corps which were commanded by

Marine NCOs and SNCOs. These provinces

were stretched from the Demilitarized Zone

to the beginning of the Central Highlands in

the south. From north to south, they were:

Quang Tri, Thua Thien, Quang Nam, Quang

Tin, and Quang Ngai. After a month in this

job, the“powers that be”raised the rank level

of the PRU advisors in I Corps. I was replaced by U.S.Army Major Raupach, and the

enlisted province PRU advisors were replaced

by officers. As a result, I was sent to Tam Ky

to take over the PRU unit for Quang Tin

Province. I spent eight months in Quang Tin,

and then during the last two months of my

tour, I was sent north to replace a U.S.Army

officer in Quang Tri Province as the PRU advisor for that province.

We had about 110 PRU members in

Quang Tin Province, and they came from

many sources. Some came from the PRU

predecessor unit, the Counter Terrorist Team,

while others were hired from workers who

had been involved in the construction of the

U.S.Marine base at Chu Lai. They had varied

backgrounds and education levels. I don’t

think we had any former VC or criminals in

43
the unit, an“urban legend”that often was ascribed to the PRU. The Quang Tri PRU was

much larger than the Quang Tin PRU, but I

am not sure of the exact numbers because

they were disbursed throughout the province.

My guess is they had approximately 150

men.

I lived in the“embassy houses”in both Tam

Ky and Quang Tri, which I shared with my

POICs and assorted contractors who advised

the Provincial Interrogation Center, the Police Special Branch, and the Census Grievance Program. While I was in Tam Ky, I had

a deputy PRU advisor assigned with me,

Gunnery Sergeant Sean Kennedy. The PRU

in Quang Tri did not have a second American assigned to the PRU as deputy advisor.

When I am asked the question,“Was your

unit effective in their mission of rooting out

the VCI?”I can only reply that we may never

know the answer to that question. I say this

because the first thing I needed to do when I

took over my PRU was to transition the unit

from serving a dual role of gathering military intelligence and VCI intelligence to focusing on targeting VCI for capture. We had

very little PIOCC help because the Phoenix

family of intelligence gathers kept their information to themselves and did not share

operational leads with the PRU as they were

supposed to. We had good success in capturing several significant VCI, but it was done

using PRU intelligence assets exclusively.

We often found that our small three-man

cells had to fight their way in to get VCI because the VCI were normally protected by

party security cadre and VC guerrillas. I

think we were effective because we were focused. The lingering question is whether or

not the targeting was accurate and not just

score-settling or non-political activity, such as

debt collection, “blue on blue” political feuding between the VNQDD and the Dai Vet, or

simply factional fighting within these political parties.

The PRU was much better when it was

concentrated than when it was farmed out

to the districts to fend for themselves. We were

encouraged to do this while I was there, but

it did not work for us, primarily because of

command and control problems and logistics difficulties. Some of the districts were in

“Indian Country,”particularly Tien Phouc district in Quang Tin and the districts in western Quang Tri, so it was much better when

we were concentrated in central compounds

in Tam Ky and Quang Tri.

I think the main strengths of the PRU were

courage, focus, and agility. Their weaknesses

involved marksmanship and tactical training. We spent a lot of time training to overcome these two weaknesses. We also

concentrated our training on helicopter

raids, the use of supporting arms, communications, and fire control. While I was there,

we developed a corps of local hospitaltrained PRU corpsmen, greatly improved our

communications capabilities, and worked

on fire and maneuver tactics. They had outstanding movement skills and got the job

done. They were especially adept at conducting a raid and consolidating an objective

once it was taken. Several PRU cells received

outstanding training at the PRU National

Training Center at Vung Tau. Operationally,

we did much better when we operated alone

rather than with U.S. or other Vietnamese

forces.

As far as what were the best and worse intelligence sources for my PRU, I can only say

that my strong suit was infantry operations

and not intelligence gathering. I never had a

handle on intelligence sourcing. I do know

that the PRU developed their own intelligence

on targets, and it must have been good because we had a very good track record ofVCI

captures and kills. Our best intelligence was

intelligence acted upon within hours of receiving it.

I got along well with the province chief

in Quang Tin, and so did the PRU. He

needed us for perimeter security because

we shared the provincial compound with

him. I had access to him and cleared some

of our operations with him, but I never

fully trusted him. I don’t believe the PRU

44
chief had any relationship with him.

Our most successful operation involved

one that was supported by the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division. They provided a five-helicopter

package for us, which included two Huey

transports, two gunships, and an observation

helicopter. Responding to excellent intelligence, we surrounded a village and picked

up a number of middle-level VCI and captured several local guerrillas and weapons.

We also killed 29 VC that day.

Some of our more creative operations

were not successful, such as night raids on

VC political meetings where we disrupted the

meeting but were unable to secure any prisoners. On one operation we had precise information on the location of a VCI cadre—

the bed he would be sleeping in—but when

we walked into the village at night and approached his house, we were noticed and

had to retreat under fire to a CIDG Special

Forces camp using preplanned single-shot artillery fire behind us so as to deter the pursuing VC.

On another occasion, we went after 20 reported district-level VCI, but when we approached the target, we found ourselves in

the middle of a local battalion-sizedVC unit,

and it took us all day and a lot of air support to get our PRU out. We lost eight PRU

killed in action on this operation and did not

come back with any prisoners.

The lesson we learned from these operations was the VCI tended to work and sleep

with sizeable protection forces, and this often

made it very difficult to capture VCI with a

small PRU force.32

After leaving active duty in 1969,Lieutenant

Ryan worked for the CIA from 1972 to 1980

and with the United States Foreign Service

from 1980 through 2003. He continues to

work part time for the State Department’s Political-Military Bureau.

Captain Frederick J. Vogel:

I Corps, 1969

A 1965 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy,

Frederick J.(Fred) Vogel served from February

to September 1969 as the PRU advisor in Hoi

An, Quang Nam Province, I Corps. The following are comments derived from two e-mail

interviews he provided to the author:

I was self-recruited for the PRU. I had

heard about the PRU from another officer

and went to Da Nang to the PRU Regional

Office to check on available assignments.

There were none at the time, but when I returned from extension leave (a voluntary

six-month extension to my normal 13-month

tour of duty in Vietnam), a position had

opened up. I learned later that the former

PRU advisor in Hoi An had been reassigned

rather suddenly because of a conflict with

the ROIC.

Historically, the Quang Nam PRU was the

“bad boy” of the PRU Program. It was originally created at the same time as the country-wide program, but in about 1967 or

1968, it was disbanded and not reconstituted

for about a year or so. This was all before my

time, but the story of its demise and resurrection was described to me in detail by U.S.

officials but never mentioned by the Vietnamese.

The problem for the PRU—and for Quang

Nam Province in general—was the often violent power struggle between the DaiVet and

theVNQDD political parties for control of the

province. These two political parties probably

spent more time fighting each other than

they did the Lao Dong Party and its VC minions. The provincial capital, Hoi An, was in

a constant state of turmoil as a result. The

PRU were naturally involved, and there were

rifts within the unit itself along party lines.

In fact, the day I arrived in Hoi An to take

over the unit, we had to medevac a PRU

member who had just been seriously

wounded in a barracks firefight.

To go back further in time, at some point

in the mid-1960s, the internal conflict had

become so serious, and the PRU so badly diverted from its stated mission, that the PRU

Program management in Saigon decided to

disband the Quang Nam unit entirely. By

45
this time, the Quang Nam PRU was conducting more operations against the various

legal South Vietnamese parties than against

the VCI. This included assassinations. The

POIC at the time, in a moment of colossal

bad judgment, actually called for a formation of the PRU in the POIC compound, told

them they were a bunch of thugs and malcontents, and then fired the lot of them on

the spot. This did not go over well at all. A

firefight erupted in the compound with the

former PRU trying heroically to make one

more assassination—of the POIC himself!

The hapless fellow did manage to extricate

himself, but that was the end of the Quang

Nam PRU. The POIC was transferred out of

the province, replaced, and Quang Nam went

for one or two years without a PRU. When it

was once again established, it was put under

the leadership of a RD cadre lieutenant and

staffed with all new members, and many if

not most had little combat experience.

The reconstituted PRU had an uphill struggle to regain any momentum in the fight

against the VCI. Although there was very little coordination with or overt control over

the PRU by the province chief, clearly everything the PRU did was cleared at province

headquarters level. Unfortunately, it was a

one-way street, with no real guidance or direction by the province and no intelligence

provided by the Vietnamese side. The atmosphere was one of the provinces trying to rein

in the activities of the Dai Vet and the

VNQDD, as they might have been exercised

through the PRU. As a result, the PRU were

somewhat passive and had to be constantly

pressured by me to be more proactive in developing actionable intelligence and launching operations against the VCI.

I wish I could say something more positive

about the support we received from the POIC.

Although he and his staff were very supportive, they really did not relate to combat

operations as such. I do not recall a single

intelligence lead developed by the POIC that

resulted in a PRU operation. It was virtually

entirely up to me to ferret out the sources of

actionable intelligence. For the most part,

this came from the interrogation of POWs

who were held at province level or had been

captured by the U.S.military.

I was criticized at times for relying too

much on the U.S. operations, but this did

seem to work for the otherwise directionless

PRU. Our services were often called upon by

the American military for support, but just

as often they attempted to use the PRU for

police-type missions. Once I had corrected the

misapprehension of the American officers,

they were amenable to allowing the PRU to

operate more or less independently when a

military operation penetrated VC territory.

This was not always a good thing. I recall

one such operation on Go Noi Island south

of Da Nang when we were totally cut off and

effectively abandoned by elements of the U.S.

Americal Division. We ended up in a running gunfight withVC main-force units as we

made our way back to safety across the sand

dunes. We inflicted a good number of casualties on the VC and captured a few, with no

losses to ourselves, but it was a bit tight for a

while.

One other source of intelligence served us

well, and it was developed by the PRU themselves. About midway through my PRU tour,

two young male students came to our compound in Hoi An and volunteered information about aVCI effort to suborn their village

in central Quang Nam Province. They were

very concerned and volunteered to accompany us on an operation to eliminate theVC

threat to their village.

My Gunny, Gunnery Sergeant Richard

Henrickson, who had come to the PRU from

the infantry, later described this operation as

the best he had witnessed in two tours of

duty in Vietnam. We first enlisted the aid of

the U.S. Marine battalion in the area of the

village and then we set up a cordon of the

village. Under the cover of darkness, we entered the village. At first light we sprang our

trap. There was a bit of fighting at first, but

for the most part, theVCI attempted to simply

lay low and hope to wait out the operation.

With our two students, however, we were

46
able to identify virtually every VCI cadre in

the village, and soon we had arrested all of

them and began to interrogate them on the

spot. The captured VCI were surprisingly cooperative. They gave us everything we

wanted to know. We were able to exploit the

leads these captives, gave us and they led to

further captures. We offered to reward the

two young students, but they refused, saying

they only wanted to protect their village. I

heard later that they went to Saigon to further their studies.

As my tour with the PRU came to an end,

we made some changes in the PRU leadership. I was allowed to approach the province

chief and ask him to return the PRU chief to

the RD Program and to have his deputy take

over the unit. The new PRU chief was a

much more aggressive combat leader, but I

departed before I could assess any results of

his new leadership style. I can only surmise

that it was more effective than under the old

chief. 33

After leaving the active Marine Corps, Captain Vogel joined the Marine Corps Reserve,

where he attained the rank of colonel. As a

civilian, he went on to a distinguished career

with both the CIA and the U.S.Department of

State.

A Typical Operational Scenario:

Tay Ninh, 1970

Although it would be difficult to characterize PRU operations as “typical” in any respect,

the following scenario is based on the author’s

own experience as a PRU advisor in Tay Ninh

Province in III Corps and is taken from a

monthly report filed with the PRU Headquarters in Saigon in early 1970 just before the invasion of Cambodia. It describes how the

Phoenix program and the PRUs functioned in

the latter stages of the U.S.involvement in the

Vietnam War just a few months before MACV

removed its military advisors from the PRU

Program:

My operations officer, Mr.Tho, came to the

embassy house next to the MACV Advisory

Compound in Tay Ninh City for his usual

0900 morning meeting with me. As was our

daily custom, Mr.Tho was escorted from the

front gate to the front porch of the embassy

house by one of our Nung guards, and then

we began to review the results of the previous day’s activities and discuss any future

plans. We met on the porch of our house because it was cool in the shade there, we could

share a cup of coffee, and it was secure.

Our security officer never allowed anyVietnamese or American visitors inside the embassy house unless they possessed a security

clearance and were cleared for entry in advance of their visit. The CIA officers in Tay

Ninh Province—The Provincial Officer in

Charge (POIC), the Police Special Branch

(PSB) Advisor, the Provincial Interrogation

Center (PIC) Advisor, and the PRU advisor—

all had their offices in the house, and many

47

Photo courtesy of Col Andrew R. Finlayson

Capt Andrew R. Finlayson, left, with members of

the Tay Ninh Provincial Reconnaissance Unit near

Nui Ba Den Mountain in 1969.
highly classified subjects were discussed there.

In addition, classified working documents

were frequently on desks in the embassy

house offices during the working day so it

was important for access to the villa to be

tightly restricted. The embassy house had an

annex behind the villa in which severalVietnamese workers had their offices. These

annex offices were used by our Vietnamese

financial manager and his clerk, our radio

48

DI Cartography Center/MPG 779019AI (G01294) 7-07
operator, and our two interpreters during the

work day.

Mr. Tho informed me that a PRU source,

the family member of a PRU soldier, had reported to him that a commo-liaison cadre

(secret courier used to transport VC documents) working for the Tay Ninh Provincial

Party Committee would be traveling to the

An Tan Border Station on the Cambodian

border the next day. He further stated that

this commo-liaison agent could well be carrying documents for the enemy’s Central Office South Vietnam (COSVN). Mr. Tho, who

had an extensive knowledge of the VCI from

many years as a PRU operative, thought

these documents would likely be turned over

to another courier in the An Tan free market

for ultimate delivery to COSVN, which at the

time was thought to be located near the

Cambodian town of Kratie.

The only person who could identify this

commo-liaison cadre was the source since he

had actually been introduced to her previously by a village VC security cadre. The

source only knew the party name of the

commo-liaison cadre, not her real name, but

he felt confident he could identify her if he

saw her again. He described her as darkcomplected, of average height and weight, approximately 45 years old, with her hair tied

in a knot at the back of her neck. He thought

she lived in a village on the southern border

of Tay Ninh Province.

Considering the short time we had to act

on this information, I took the arrest order

that Mr.Tho had already drafted into the embassy house so I could show it to the POIC.

The POIC, Charles O. Stainback, was an extremely intelligent and seasoned CIA veteran

having spent many years in Afghanistan

prior to coming to South Vietnam. He asked

me only two questions. First, did I trust the

49

Capt Finlayson on the left with other Vietnamese and American members of the Tay Ninh Provincial reconnaissance Unit in garrison, in this case for the presentation of awards for bravery while supporting

the U.S. Army 25th Infantry Division.

Photo courtesy of Col Andrew R. Finlayson
source of the information;and second, was I

sure the source could identify the commo-liaison cadre if he saw her again? I told him

Mr. Tho had confidence in the source since

the source had provided valuable and accurate information in the past. I also told him

that the source had stated he could identify

the VCI in question because he had met her

previously. This was good enough for the

POIC, and he initialed the arrest order and

instructed me to take it to the province chief

immediately for his authorization to arrest

this VCI courier.

As we turned to go, Mr. Stainback asked

me how the PRU intended to arrest this

commo-liaison cadre. I told him that it

would not be a good idea to arrest her at her

home, given that we probably could not locate her home in time, and besides, we

needed to capture her with the enemy documents in her possession if we wanted to obtain any worthwhile intelligence and a

conviction in court. I felt it was highly unlikely she would have the documents in her

possession at her home. Mr.Tho had told me

that Mr.Chinh, the chief of the Tay Ninh PRU,

wanted to intercept this woman while she

was actually traveling from her village to the

An Tan Border Station and to use the source

to identify her to a PRU capture team. The

POIC agreed to this plan and instructed us

to get the arrest order approved as quickly as

possible.

Mr.Tho and I immediately drove my Toyota Jeep to the provincial headquarters in

Tay Ninh City, a short five-minute ride from

the embassy house, and walked into the

outer office of the province chief, Colonel

Thien, who we knew well and respected for

his honesty and administrative ability. The

province chief was very supportive of the

PRU, but we all knew he took his job seriously, and he would not sign our arrest order

unless we had our facts in order. If we failed

to produce solid reasoning or evidence for an

arrest, the province chief would likely disapprove the arrest order.

When we arrived at the provincial headquarters, we were ushered into Colonel

Thien’s office, where we quickly briefed him.

We did not reveal the source of our information to him, and he did not want to know

anyway. Instead, he asked us if we had evidence that this woman was indeed a VC

commo-liaison cadre, and were we confident

we could capture her without causing any

harm to either her or any civilians in the immediate area of her capture. We stated that

our source could provide definitive identification of the courier since he had met her before. We also told him that commo-liaison

cadre seldom traveled with armed guerrillas

as security, unlike other VCI, so we felt confident that we could capture her without violence of any kind.

50

At the Tay Ninh West Airbase prior to the launch of

Operation Cliff Dweller II in November 1969. From

left to right: Deputy PRU Chief Mr. Ngiem, Deputy

PRU Advisor Sergeant First Class Robert Smith,

USA, PRU Chief Mr. Chinh, and Captain Finlayson.

Photo courtesy of Col Andrew R. Finlayson
Mr.Tho stated that the PRU would take the

source to a small drink shop near a bridge

leading to the An Tan Border station, and

when the source saw the commo-liaison

cadre cross the bridge, he would signal the

PRU by taking a towel from around his neck

and putting it on his lap. A three-man PRU

cell would be seated at another table in the

drink shop or at an adjacent vegetable stall

so they could easily see the source’s signal yet

not arouse suspicion. The PRU had borrowed

a taxicab from a PRU family member, and

they planned to use this cab to rapidly transport the prisoner once the arrest was made.

Since the commo-liaison cadre had to walk

across this small bridge to get to her final destination, the PRU felt very confident that she

would not escape once she was identified. A

second three-man PRU cell, also in civilian

clothes and with hidden weapons, would be

stationed at the intersection of Route 22 and

the dirt road leading west to the An Tan Border Station to act as a security backup if the

arrest did not go as planned and to help escort the prisoner after she was captured.

With the province chief’s signature on the

arrest order, we left the provincial headquarters and walked to the PRU headquarters and barracks located inside the same

compound. There we met with Mr.Chinh and

his deputy, Mr. Ngiem, and together we went

over the plan for the capture of the commoliaison cadre. Mr. Chinh planned to capture

the VCI cadre using cells from the Tay Ninh

City PRU team instead of the PRU Hieu Thien

District team. Although the An Thanh Border

Station was in Hieu Thien District and the

PRU in that district knew the area quite well,

he felt it would make for better operational

security if PRU cells from outside the district

were used since the capture team would be

in place for several hours and most people in

Hieu Thien, including theVC, knew the identities of the PRU in that district. He did not

want anyone to recognize the members of

the PRU cell making the arrest and possibly

give warning to the VCI cadre before she

crossed the bridge.

He also stressed the need to make the arrest at the bridge since it was a natural choke

point and it was located in an area surrounded by rice paddies with few people in

the vicinity aside from those people in a few

shops near the bridge’s west side. He ruled

out any attempt to capture the VCI cadre at

the An Tan Border Station because he knew

that location was astride the VietnameseCambodian border and a favorite meeting

place ofVC and NVA agents. They could quite

easily hinder the arrest or attack the PRU cell

before the prisoner could be transported to a

safe location.

Once the plan was finalized, Mr.Chinh directed that the two PRU cells that were to conduct the operation be placed in isolation,

meaning they would remain at the PRU

headquarters until the operation was

launched and would have no contact with

anyone outside the PRU barracks, even family members. This was done to avoid any

chance of the VC being tipped off by a possible penetration of the PRU. It was standard

operating procedure for the Tay Ninh PRU to

isolate teams before they were sent on a mission. They trusted their troops, but they

made sure their operations were not compromised in any way.

Mr. Tho also took the arrest order to the

Provincial Intelligence Operations Coordinating Committee (PIOCC) and briefed them

that a PRU operation would be conducted

the next day. He gave the PIOCC members

the time and place of the operation so

friendly forces would not interfere with its

execution. The DIOCC in Hieu Thien district

was also notified, and the Hieu Thien PRU

team was alerted to stand by to assist the

PRU cells from the city team if called upon.

Coordination with American and South

Vietnamese units was essential to preclude

friendly fire casualties, but it was also risky

since we never knew if any of these friendly

units had been penetrated by enemy agents.

By launching our operations very shortly

after notifying these units, we hoped that any

enemy agents in these units would not have

enough time to warn their colleagues.

51
All of the above actions were completed in

just five hours on the day the target was

identified. This rapid planning and approval

process for a PRU operation was achieved because the Phoenix program was highly organized in Tay Ninh Province—each district

maintained a fully operational DIOCC—and

the PRU enjoyed the cooperation and support

of the province chief. This cooperation was

further aided by the positive reputation of

the PRU among the Cao Dai religious community, which made up the bulk of the

province’s population and from which the

majority of the Tay Ninh PRU members were

drawn. Speed was a necessity because the

Tay Ninh PRU knew from experience that intelligence was a very perishable commodity,

and successful exploitation within 24 hours

of receiving the intelligence was a major factor in a fruitful operation. Any longer than

that and the intelligence often was of little

use.

Early the next morning, before first light,

the PRU capture cell left their barracks

dressed in civilian clothes with their

weapons hidden inside the taxicab. The

source was picked up on the way to the operating area. The second PRU security cell

and a radio operator drove a PRU Toyota

three-quarter- ton truck south from the city

to the intersection of Route 22 and the road

leading west to the An Tan Border Station.

My interpreter, Mr. Nguyen Hoang Lam, and

I drove to the PRU compound at the headquarters of Hieu Thien District at Go Dau Ha

to coordinate the operation with that district’s DIOCC and to arrange for a PRU rapid

reaction force if the capture operation went

bad.

At approximately 1145, I received a radio

call from the PRU security cell informing me

that they had arrested the prisoner and all

PRU members were on the way to the district

headquarters. Thirty minutes later, the taxicab and the PRU truck drove into the district

compound with the prisoner and a bag of oranges she had been carrying when she was

captured. Rather than interrogating her at

the district compound, we decided to immediately take her to the Provincial Interrogation Center (PIC) in Tay Ninh City for questioning.

At the PIC, she did not cooperate and stuck

to her story that she was simply traveling to

the An Tan Border Station free market to sell

her oranges. She denied that she was a

commo-liaison cadre or knew anything

about the VC. The interrogation was conducted by a Vietnamese Special Branch interrogator assigned to the PIC with the

American CIA PIC Advisor observing. Her

story began to come apart when she was informed that she was positively identified by

a witness and she could not explain the

small scraps of coded paper she had secreted

into two of the oranges she was carrying. She

insisted the oranges came from her own trees

and she had not inserted anything into them.

She continued to be uncooperative, despite

the evidence against her, and she was

handed over to the Vietnamese National Police for trial. She later was convicted and sentenced to two years in jail. The documents

she carried were sent to Saigon for decoding

and exploitation.34

Conclusions

Without exception, every person interviewed for this book stated that they considered the PRU highly effective in defeating the

VCI. The statistics for VCI captured and killed

by the PRU are still classified by the CIA. Probably the most accurate open-source estimate

of VCI killed and captured by the PRU from

1967 and 1972 is the figure cited in Mark

Moyar’s book,Phoenix and the Birds of Prey,

which places the number between 700 and

1,500 per month for each month during those

years.35

The author’s experience in Tay Ninh

Province during 1969 and 1970 tends to support Dr. Moyar’s figures. During the eight

months the author was a PRU advisor in Tay

Ninh Province, his PRU killed or captured approximately 12VCI per month. If extrapolated

nationwide,this produces a figure of over 500

VCI eliminated per month by the PRU during

the same eight months. Of course, aggregate

52
numbers of VCI killed or captured were not

necessarily the best indicator of “success” unless the aggregated losses far exceeded the

ability of the enemy to replace his losses. We

now know that the North Vietnamese were

unable to replace the trained and experienced

Southern VCI cadre at a rate that made up for

the losses inflicted upon them by American

and South Vietnamese forces. It was this inability to find suitable replacements for the

VCI after Tet 1968 that convinced the North

Vietnamese that they needed to change their

strategy to one that did not rely on VC forces

to achieve their objective of unifying all ofVietnam under their control. They recognized the

pacification programs of the SouthVietnamese

were proving to be successful and any strategy

that called for a “General Uprising” under the

leadership of the southern wing of the Lao

Dong Party was doomed to failure since both

the number and quality of the VCI needed to

accomplish this uprising were being systematically eroded by the Phoenix program. There

was no more cogent proof of this than the actions taken by the North Vietnamese when

they finally came to power in South Vietnam

in 1975. In many provinces, the North Vietnamese victors found that too few VCI remained who could effectively administer the

captured provinces. They had to resort to

using sizeable numbers of Communist cadre

sent to SouthVietnam from NorthVietnam just

to provide basic governmental services.36

When the author asked the CIA and U.S.Marine advisors why they thought the PRU were

so effective, they gave the following reasons:

• The PRU were locally recruited

and, therefore, they had an intimate

knowledge of their area of operations,

the people living there, and the enemy

they were fighting. As a local,the typical

PRU soldier had years of experience in

the province where he was employed,

and he had a heightened sense of his surroundings that an outsider would not

possess. Local knowledge made it easy

for them to move at night and to move

rapidly. It also facilitated the development of their organic intelligence system.

• The PRU had strong leadership

and discipline. While not all PRUs had

exceptional leaders for their chiefs and

team leaders, most did, and this paid off

handsomely in terms of unit cohesion,

sustained personnel stability,and combat

effectiveness. Most PRU chiefs and their

team leaders were local men who enjoyed reputations for integrity, maturity,

toughness, and intelligence. The Marine

advisors often spoke highly of their PRU

chiefs,their team leaders,and their interpreters and compared them favorably

with the best combat leaders they had

ever known. It follows that the recruitment of leaders for PRU-like units and

their selection for advancement must be

conducted with great care and consideration.

• PRU members were highly motivated due to the many VC atrocities they

had witnessed and by the VCI attacks

against their families. Many PRU members had experienced terrible crimes

against their families by VC assassination

squads, and these atrocities engendered

in the PRU members a visceral hatred for

the VCI. It is safe to say that the PRU

were “true believers” who had clearly

come to the conclusion that their very

survival depended upon their ability to

defeat the VCI completely. Efforts by the

enemy to proselytize the PRU failed miserably.

• The PRU had excellent organic

intelligence systems. Because of the

problems with cooperation and coordination among the various U.S. and Vietnamese agencies involved with

counter-VCI operations, the PRUs developed their own intelligence-gathering apparatus. The PRU undercover agents

were usually unpaid informants, often

family members, and, importantly, typically old women. They relied primarily

on agents who did not have a financial interest in spying, but had a strong family

or religious commitment to the PRU leadership and the defeat of the Communists.

53
54

Older women were more effective than

any other PRU agent since they were able

to move around their provinces more

easily than men and could develop plausible stories for why they were in a certain area and asking questions.

Although most PRU operational leads

were developed by their own organic intelligence system,they could on occasion

benefit from other sources. Another very

good source of intelligence for the PRU

was information gleaned from the interrogation ofVCI prisoners andVC who rallied to the government—the Hoi Chanhs.

Many PRU were adept at recruiting formerVC to provide information about the

VCI in their villages,and some were even

able to convince these former VC to return to their villages and spy on their former colleagues.

A third good source of operational

leads,albeit one that required a great deal

of labor-intensive data mining, was the

maps created by the Census Grievance

cadre, which identified the houses in

each village by their political loyalty to

the GVN. These color-coded maps that

had houses marked in red as pro-VC or

anti-GVN could, with much effort, produce valuable information on theVCI and

their families. If the information on these

Census Grievance maps had been digitized, they probably would have played a

larger role in developing operational

leads,but the amount of time-consuming

research needed to analyze these maps

made it less effective than it should have

been.

Of course,had all of the DIOCCs functioned more effectively and had all the

U.S. and Vietnamese entities involved

with the fight against the VC cooperated

and shared intelligence more freely, the

need for the organic PRU intelligence systems would not have existed.

• The PRU network was very difficult for the enemy to penetrate or recruit as spies because the PRU members

had strong family, religious, and civic affiliations that were decidedly anti-Communist. Captured VCI and Hoi Chanhs

confirmed the difficulty the enemy had

penetrating the PRU during the Vietnam

War, and they attributed this difficulty to

the “political and social attitude” of the

PRU members.

• There was little doubt in the minds

of the Marine PRU advisors interviewed

for this book that a very important element in the PRU’s success was the fact

that the PRUs were organized,

equipped, supplied, paid, and controlled by the CIA and not the U.S. military. Before their assignment to the PRU,

the U.S. advisors were used to the cumbersome command and control mechanisms used by the U.S. military to plan

and launch operations. They were

amazed when they were assigned to the

CIA and saw how quickly decisions could

by made by on-scene POICs for PRU operations. They were also used to the very

paperwork-intensive and slow-moving logistics system that served the military in

Vietnam,so they were equally amazed by

the flexibility of the CIA’s logistics system

and the rapid way it responded to field

requests by the PRUs for everything from

transportation and uniforms to construction materials and ammunition.

The CIA way of doing business allowed the PRU advisors to concentrate

on planning and conducting anti-VCI operations and not on tiresome and slow

bureaucratic actions. PRU advisors enjoyed a great deal of autonomy and were

left to use their own initiative in the field.

They were not subject to having to report via radio to higher headquarters

what their situation was or to file lengthy

reports on every operation. In short,they

were freed from the burdens that many

other U.S. military personnel were subjected to,and this had a dramatic and positive impact on their ability to do their

jobs properly.
Since the end of the Vietnam War, many

writers,few of them with any firsthand knowledge of the PRU or the Phoenix program,have

made outrageous claims about both. Most of

these claims have been exposed as fraudulent,

often made by people who were never assigned to the Phoenix program but claimed

they were.37 In fact, in the research done on

this book, the author encountered one such

person who claimed he had been a Marine advisor with the PRU when he clearly had not

been.

The most pernicious claim has been that

the Phoenix program was an out-of-control assassination program that killed innocent Vietnamese civilians in a profligate and

indiscriminate manner. While there is no objective evidence to support such claims, they

continue to persist, casting a dark cloud over

the program and those associated with it. The

U.S. PRU advisors and CIA officers who were

interviewed by the author were asked directly

if they were ever given a written or verbal

order to assassinate anyone,VCI or otherwise,

while they were assigned to the PRU. In every

case, these former PRU advisors and CIA case

officers were categorical in their denial that

they had ever received such orders,with many

adding that if they had, they would not have

carried them out. They did receive orders to

capture VCI, and often these attempts to captureVCI led to firefights andVCI deaths. Since

most VCI traveled with armed guards or lived

in VC-controlled or contested villages where

VC guerrilla units provided protection to the

VCI, it was highly likely that operations

mounted to capture VCI would lead to violence and casualties on both sides.

In such cases, the PRU were well equipped

and trained to handle such violent resistance.

It is instructive to note that the Marines interviewed mentioned that most of their PRU casualties were the result of combined U.S. and

jointARVN military operations where the PRU

were employed in a purely military role. It is

also important to note that the Marine PRU advisors stated that they captured moreVCI than

they killed. U.S.PRU advisors and CIA officers

were emphatic that the primary intent of the

55

PRU anti-VCI operations was the capture of

VCI so they could be interrogated and the intelligence gained from these interrogations exploited. Dead VCI were of no intelligence

value to the PRU or the CIA, while every captured VCI was a potential double agent to be

turned against the enemy or a source of valuable political intelligence.

Finally, the Marine PRU advisors stated that

they received explicit instructions from Saigon

that they were never to take any action that

was in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and to report immediately

any violation of the UCMJ by the PRU or any

other unit they observed.38 While it is impossible to say that no PRU member ever committed a violation of the UCMJ or the GVN

laws concerning the rules of war, it can be

stated emphatically that the policy of the

MACV leadership and the CIA was abundantly

clear on this issue: the PRUs and their U.S.advisors would take no action in violation of the

UCMJ.

Lessons Learned

U.S. Marines have been involved in counterinsurgency operations throughout their history. From Central America, the Caribbean,

and Vietnam in the 20th century to Iraq and

Afghanistan in the 21st, the Marine Corps has

been involved in combat against insurgents.

One of the questions asked by the author in

his interviews with the Marines who were

PRU advisors was, “If you were confronted

with an insurgency today,what lessons learned

from your experiences with the PRU Program

inVietnam would you want to pass on to those

who are assigned the difficult mission of defeating an insurgency?” The following lessons

learned are a composite of their answers in

terms of forming an organization similar to the

PRU:

• The units should be imbued

with both a professional and civic

ethos, one that makes them accountable to the people for their actions.

They should not be used by political leaders for partisan reasons,such as harassing

local politicians from legally established
political parties or providing assistance

to further the interests of local commercial entities. They should be focused on

one mission only—the defeat of the insurgency’s political infrastructure.

• They should be equipped and

trained to a high level of professionalism. One way to accomplish this is to

establish organic logistics and training capabilities. The PRU had an excellent logistics system in the form of the CIA

in-country logistics system, which the

PRU advisors identified as superior to

their own military logistics systems, especially in terms of rapid delivery of

needed items and the lack of a cumbersome administrative and approval

process. The mission of PRU-type units

requires specialized training, so best results will be achieved if they have a training program specifically tailored to their

needs.

• They should be well paid and

rewarded for tangible results. The

PRU were paid a salary each month, and

they were also paid for captured

weapons. Additionally,they received special monetary awards for high-level VCI

captures. The fact that they were regularly paid and rewarded for superior results contributed in a very significant way

to their very low desertion rates and the

inability of the VCI to penetrate or proselytize them.

• They should be organized into

small, tightly knit teams whose

ranks are filled with members from

the communities they serve. The fact

that most PRU members were locally recruited was a key factor in their success.

They knew the people and terrain in

their area, and this local knowledge allowed them to move about freely and to

develop an effective intelligence-gathering system. It also meant that their families often had well-established ties to the

commercial and civic organizations in

their provinces,a fact that contributed to

their loyalty and dedication to their communities, as well as unit cohesion.

• They should be subject to effective judicial and political oversight

and not free to conduct missions

without orders from a competent

legal authority. PRU-like units can be

misused by corrupt government officials,

so it is essential that mechanisms to ensure their proper employment are in

place and rigorously imposed. Having

the CIA in control of the PRU greatly diminished the capacity for corrupt South

Vietnamese officials to misuse them.

• They should not be given responsibility for the interrogation of

captured prisoners beyond seeking

perishable tactical information and

holding them until transfer can be

arranged. Interrogations are far more

effective when conducted by professional interrogators in facilities such as

the Provincial and National Interrogation

Centers that the CIA maintained during

the Vietnam War.Untrained interrogators

are often counterproductive, and the

product of their interrogations can often

result in false leads and unreliable intelligence.

• There should be a clear separation between the PRU-type units and

other police units, especially those

involved in criminal investigations

and arrests. Using the specially trained

units like the PRU for routine police

work is a waste of a valuable asset and diminishes the high level of training required to execute PRU-like missions. PRU

assets should never be diverted to other

roles they are not trained or equipped for,

such as military, executive protection, or

static security missions.

• The PRU-type units and their

families must be protected from retribution and given assurances that

their identities will not be revealed

to the press or any other unauthorized source. To do so makes them

56
Rank. Since maturity and experience

are needed for such duty, the PRU advisors and their CIA colleagues felt the optimum rank for an enlisted advisor should

be that of E-7 (USMC gunnery sergeant)

and for an officer 03 (USMC captain). In

many cultures, the ability to interact effectively with your counterparts is determined by rank, so careful consideration

should be given to this fact, if it applies.

Experience. PRU advisors were emphatic about the skill sets necessary for

their jobs,and they identified experience

in the infantry, ground reconnaissance,

and intelligence fields as the most valuable.

Language Proficiency. Although

most PRU advisors were not fluent in

Vietnamese,they all stated that their jobs

would have been much easier if they had

possessed at least a basic fluency in that

language, such as a score of 3/3 on the

Department of Defense Language Proficiency Test. All too often, the PRU advisors were at the mercy of their

interpreters,and this situation sometimes

militated against their ability to exercise

strong leadership and influence over

their PRU counterparts. It was also a

problem when PRU advisors went on operations with their units and the instantaneous response to orders was impeded

by the need to have an interpreter translate orders and directions in a combat

venue.

Cultural and Political Sensitivity.

Simply possessing the military skills necessary to advise a PRU-like unit is often

not enough. CIA officers felt PRU advisors needed to be culturally sensitive and

politically knowledgeable in order to be

fully effective. It helped if the PRU advisor understood the underlying dynamics

of the people in his province, such as

their history, religion, and civic relationships. Many PRU advisors had difficulty

understanding the political influences in

their provinces, and this sometimes led

57

highly vulnerable to retribution by the

enemy and causes them to worry about

the safety of their families more than

their mission. Consideration should be

given to housing family members in secure compounds or locating them outside of the area where PRU-type units are

stationed.

• They should be provided with

the highest level of professional and

ethical leadership. The PRU advisors

were unanimous in their belief that there

was a strong correlation between the

leadership abilities of the Vietnamese

PRU chiefs and team leaders and the effectiveness of the overall PRU program in

their province. This means that the selection process for leadership positions

must be based on an objective analysis of

the character and abilities of the personnel selected for leadership positions,and

this selection process should not be

viewed as arbitrary by the rank and file.

• They should be provided with

full access to pertinent targeting intelligence through some mechanism

similar to the South Vietnamese

DIOCCs. Most PRU advisors interviewed

for this book stressed that their PRU was

required to generate most operational leads

through their own organic intelligencegathering system and that the agencies represented on their respective DIOCCs did

not regularly share operational leads worthy of exploitation. This is a key point

when considering any counterinsurgency

program. There must be cooperation and

coordination between all the agencies involved in the counterinsurgency effort. No

matter how good the organizational structure for combating the insurgency is,it will

fail or be manifestly less effective unless

there is acceptance at every level for the

need to cooperate and coordinate.

• If U.S. military advisors are to be assigned to a PRU-like unit,they should possess the following characteristics and

experience:
58

to misunderstandings about the proper

role of their PRU teams. Some political

sophistication on the part of the PRU advisor helped him bridge the gap between

American and local perceptions about

the proper way to pursue counterinsurgency goals and to find ways to avoid

conflicts stemming from local political

activity.

Training. The USMC advisors interviewed by the author had differing opinions on the training status of their

respective PRU teams. Most considered

their PRU team “well trained,” and they

spoke highly of the training that the PRU

teams received at the CIAVungTauTraining Facility in III Corps on the South

China Sea.

Some advisors, however, identified serious training deficiencies in their units,

especially in the areas of marksmanship,

communications,and the use of supporting arms. Most USMC PRU advisors instituted local training programs to correct

deficiencies and to maintain critical skills.

They recommended that PRU-like units

receive training in the following areas:

marksmanship,small-unit tactics,raids,intelligence operations, staff planning, coordination of artillery and air support,

first aid,scouting and patrolling,communications, military ethics, and the handling of prisoners to include field

interrogation techniques. Since training

was viewed as a critically important facet

of the PRU’s success, the advisors

strongly recommended that all advisors

have practical experience with these military skills or have formal training in the

subjects before they are assigned to PRUlike duty.

Although not all U.S.Marine PRU advisors came from a reconnaissance background, the advisors felt Marines with

ground reconnaissance experience were

best suited for assignment to units similar

to the PRU. The former PRU advisors also

suggested that training for PRU-like units

should be done at a national-level facility

devoted entirely to the subject matter

needed for these specialized units. For

security reasons and for continuity of effort, they felt all indigenous personnel assigned to operational units should be

required to attend a basic course in the

subjects mentioned above. They also recommended the creation of mobile training teams, which would be used for

refresher training. This would free the advisor to concentrate on intelligence management and operational planning,

instead of training.

Staff Planning. The duties of a PRU

advisor required a demanding level of

planning and coordination with friendly

units. Since so many PRU operations involved raids, the PRU advisors felt a high

level of competency in planning and rehearsing raids should be a requisite skill

for any advisor. Although many PRU operations were conducted in a very short

time after identifying a target, some took

days or even weeks to plan and rehearse.

In this regard,advisors should know how

to prepare written orders for their operations and to ensure that these orders are

coordinated with friendly units so as to

avoid casualties from friendly fire. With

this in mind, every PRU advisor should

possess the knowledge of the rudimentary steps in staff planning and the ability

to write clear and concise operational orders.

Personality Traits. As stated earlier,

PRU advisors were often given a degree

of autonomy by their CIA leaders that

they would not normally be given in their

military units. At times they were free to

exercise their initiative with little supervision because their CIA bosses respected their expertise and judgment.

“Special trust and confidence”was a term

that was given great credence by the CIA

POICs in their dealings with their Department of Defense assignees. Given

the nature of their work and the level of

autonomy granted them by their CIA
bosses, the PRU advisors identified several character traits that should be considered when assigning military

personnel to a PRU-like unit. They recommended that only personnel with ma59

turity, patience, integrity, aggressiveness,

and moral leadership be assigned to the

independent duty of an advisor with a

PRU-like unit.
60
61

Sources

In writing this work,the author wanted to rely as much as possible on primary sources—people with firsthand knowledge of the Marine Corps’ contribution to the CIA’s Provincial Reconnaissance Unit Program. The individuals listed below were either USMC PRU advisors or CIA

officers who worked closely with the PRUs during theVietnamWar. Interviews were conducted

by the author via numerous telephone calls and e-mails between January 2007 and June 2008 as

additional questions were developed, points of clarification required, and memories strengthened. These interviews involved individuals who represented every level of PRU association,

from the province level to the national level. Several former Vietnamese PRU members, now residing in the United States,were also interviewed by the author,but they wished to remain anonymous and the author respected their wishes.

Terence M.Allen

William Cervenak

Rudy Enders

Raymond R.Lau

Ronald J.Lauzon

Warren H.Milberg

Rodney H.Pupuhi

Douglas P.Ryan

Hank Ryan

Charles O.Stainback

Wayne W. Thompson

Frederick J.Vogel

Paul C.Whitlock
62
Ahern,Thomas L., Jr. CIA and Rural Pacification in South Vietnam. Langley,Va.: Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central

Intelligence Agency, 2001.

Andrade, Dale. Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix

Program and the Vietnam War. Lexington,

Mass.: Lexington Books, 1990.

----------, and James H. Willbanks.

“CORDS/Phoenix: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam for the Future.” Military

Review, March-April 2006, 9-23.

Bass,Thomas A. The Spy Who Loved Us: The

Vietnam War and Pham Xuan An’s Dangerous Game. NewYork:Public Affairs,2009.

Bergerud, Eric, M. The Dynamics of Defeat:

The Vietnam War in Hau Nghia Province.

Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991.

Berman, Larry. Perfect Spy: The Incredible

Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist

Agent. New York: Smithsonian/Collins, 2007.

Burkett, B. G., and Donna Whitley. Stolen

Valor: How the Vietnam Generation was

Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History. Dallas,

Verity Press, 1998.

Colby,William E., with James McCargar. Lost

Victory: A Firsthand Account of America’s

Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam.

Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989.

Corn,David. Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and

the CIA’s Crusades. New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1994.

Davidson, Phillip B. Vietnam at War: The

History, 1946-1975. Novato, Calif.: Presidio

Press, 1988.

Enders, Rudy. Unpublished manuscript.

2007.

Finlayson, Andrew R. “The Tay Ninh Provincial Reconnaissance Unit and Its Role in the

Phoenix Program 1969-70.” Studies in Intelligence 51-2 (2007): 59-69.

----------. “Vietnam Strategies.” Marine Corps

Gazette, August 1988, 90-94.

Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History. New

York:Viking, 1983.

Lau, Ray. “TET 1968.” Unpublished manuscript. 2002.

Moyar,Mark. Phoenix and the Birds of Prey:

The CIA’s Secret Campaign to Destroy the

Viet Cong. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute

Press, 1997.

----------. Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War,

1954-1965. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

----------. “Vietnam:Historians at War.” Academic

Questions 21 (March 2008): 37-51.

Pike, Douglas. Viet Cong: The Organization

and Techniques of the National Liberation

Front of South Vietnam. Cambridge, Mass.:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press,

1966.

Plaster, John L. SOG: The Secret Wars of

America’s Commandos in Vietnam. New

York: Onyx, 1997.

Pribbenow, Merle L. “The Man in the Snow

White Cell.” Studies in Intelligence 48-1

(2004): 45-58.

Race, Jeffrey. War Comes to Long An: Revolutionary Conflict in aVietnamese Province.

Berkeley: University of California Press,1972.

Rodriguez, Felix I., and John Weisman.

ShadowWarrior:The CIA Hero of a Hundred

Unknown Battles. New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1989.

Sorley, Lewis. A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam. New York:

Harcourt Brace, 1999.

Sullivan, John F. Of Spies and Lies: A CIA Lie

Detector Remembers Vietnam. Lawrence:

University Press of Kansas, 2002.

Summers, Harry G. On Strategy: The Vietnam

War in Context. Carlisle Barracks,Pa.: Strategic

Studies Institute,U.S.ArmyWar College,1981.

63

Bibliography
U.S. Department of the Army. The Communist Insurgent Infrastructure in South Vietnam: A Study of Organization and Strategy.

Department of Army Pamphlet 550-106.

Washington, D.C.: Department of Army,

March 1967.

Valentine, Douglas. The Phoenix Program.

New York: Morrow, 1990.

64
Appendix

U.S. Marine Provincial Reconnaissance Unit Advisors

This is a tentative list compiled by the author from documents, from information supplied by

surviving PRU Marines, and from names provided by Dr. Mark Moyar and Mr. Steve Sherman. As

far as the author can determine,the last U.S.military PRU advisors left the program in early 1970.*

Allen,Terence M., Lieutenant Colonel, 20 February 1968 to 1 March 1970, National PRU

Headquarters, Saigon

Below, Jack W., Staff Sergeant, 17 July 1967 to 13 January 1968, Regional Headquarters,

I Corps, Da Nang, and Thua Thien Province, I Corps

Brause, Bernard B., Jr., Lieutenant Colonel, October 1968 to October 1969, Regional

Headquarters, III Corps, Bein Hoa

Bright, Robert B., III, Sergeant, October 1966 to March 1967,Thua Thien Province,

I Corps

Burlem, Ernest F. J., Gunnery Sergeant, September 1968 to May 1969, Quang Ngai Province,

I Corps

Castaneda, Eugene, Sergeant, 17 July 1967 to 12 August 1967, Quang Tri Province, I Corps

(Killed in Action)

Clark, James A., Captain, 3 November 1968 to 1 June 1969, Quang Tin Province,

I Corps

Costa, John H., Gunnery Sergeant, January 1969 to August 1969,Thua Thien Province,

I Corps

Coyle, Eugene R., Staff Sergeant, September 1969 to June 1970, Kien Tuong Province,

IV Corps

Cox, George B., Jr., Staff Sergeant, September 1968 to May 1969,Thua Thien Province,

I Corps

Croxton, Hoyt J., Jr., Staff Sergeant, May 1969 to February 1970, Rung Sat

Special Zone

Davis, Bruce E., Captain, January 1969 to October 1969, Regional Headquarters,

I Corps, Da Nang

Finlayson, Andrew R., Captain, October 1969 to June 1970,Tay Ninh Province,

III Corps

65

*Felix Rodriguez was in charge of the PRU operations in III Corps in 1971. He did this largely by himself since the PRU advisors assigned by MACV were just about all gone by then and only a handful of contract CIA officers were assigned. He used U.S. military

advisors to help him run his operations in III Corps, but these advisors were not PRU advisors and were not assigned to the CIA in

any capacity.
Gardner, Joel R., First Lieutenant, 1967-1968, Khanh Hoa Province, II Corps

(Wounded in Action, evacuated)

Gray, James K., Staff Sergeant, September 1969 to April 1970, Binh Long Province,

III Corps

Gum,William E., Staff Sergeant, February 1969 to April 1969, Rung Sat Special Zone

(Wounded in Action, evacuated)

Harmon, Clyde E., Staff Sergeant, October 1968 to July 1969, Quang Ngai Province,

I Corps

Henrickson, Richard, Gunnery Sergeant, November 1968 to January 1970, Quang Nam

Province, I Corps

Hyslop, Kenneth D., Major,August 1969 to 20 September 1970, National PRU

Headquarters, Saigon

Jansen, Laurens J., Second Lieutenant, 9 July 1967 to October 1968, Regional Headquarters,

I Corps, Da Nang

Jarboe, Edmond J., Gunnery Sergeant, September 1969 to May 1970, Long An Province,

III Corps

Jones, Jack W., Staff Sergeant, June 1969 to December 1969,Vung Tau Training Center,

III Corps

Karkos, Norman, Sergeant, September 1968 to December 1968,Vung Tau Training Center,

III Corps

Kennedy, John V., Gunnery Sergeant, October 1968 to July 1969, Quang Tin Province,

I Corps

Kingrey, Robert N., Captain,August 1969 to October 1969, Quang Nam Province,

I Corps

Lauzon, Ronald J., Sergeant, 24 March 1967 to 8 October 1967,Thua Thien Province,

I Corps

Leach, Harold W., First Lieutenant, May 1968 to May 1969, Regional Headquarter,

I Corps, Da Nang

McAllister, Carlisle J., Gunnery Sergeant, June 1969 to July 1970, Kiang Giang Province,

IV Corps

Maher,Vincent F., Captain, October 1968 to August 1969, Binh Duong Province,

III Corps

Martin,William L., Staff Sergeant, 5 October 1968 to 24 June 1969, Quang Tin Province,

I Corps

66
Mayo, George O., Gunnery Sergeant, 7 May 1969 to 22 May 1969, Quang Ngai Province,

I Corps (Killed in Action)

Meeker,Thomas H., Captain, 3 November 1968 to 3 August 1969,Thua Thien Province,

I Corps

Molnar, Ronald F., Sergeant, 18 March 1968 to 18 December 1968, Quang Nam Province,

I Corps

Necaise, Gerald I., Gunnery Sergeant, May 1969 to July 1969, Quang Tin Province,

I Corps

Perice, Carl D., Sergeant, 16 March 1968 to 20 December 1968,Thua Thien Province,

I Corps

Polchow,William A., Sergeant, unknown start to 23 January 1968, Quang Nam Province,

I Corps (Killed in Action)

Prater, Gerald W., Staff Sergeant, September 1969 to January 1970, Quang Tin Province,

I Corps

Pupuhi, Rodney H., Sergeant, 11 March 1968 to 16 December 1968, Quang Nam Province,

I Corps

Purlem, Ernest F., Gunnery Sergeant, 13 September 1968 to 24 May 1969, Quang Ngai

Province, I Corps

Rich, James D., Sergeant, 6 July 1967 to 14 November 1967,Thua Thien Province,

I Corps

Robinson, Leland M., Sergeant, 28 February 1968 to 28 September 1968, Quang Tin

Province, I Corps

Ryan, Douglas P., First Lieutenant, 13 October 1968 to 30 July 1969, Regional Headquarters,

I Corps, Da Nang; Quang Tin and Quang Tri Provinces, I Corps

Shields, Rodney P., Corporal, 15 January 1968 to 20 November 1968, Quang Ngai Province,

I Corps

Stepro, Allen D., Staff Sergeant, 30 October 1968 to 8 July 1969, Bien Hoa Province,

III Corps (Wounded in Action, evacuated)

Tafaoa, Fitu, Staff Sergeant, November 1968 to May 1969, Quang Nam Province,

I Corps, and Vung Tau Training Center, III Corps

Thompson,Wayne W., Staff Sergeant, 9 July 1967 to March 1968, Quang Tin Province,

I Corps

Vaughn, Howard G., Sergeant, 1967 to 3 February 1968,Thua Thien Province,

I Corps (Killed in Action)

67
Vialpando, Herman P., Staff Sergeant, 9 July 1967 to August 1967, (no province indicated on

orders), IV Corps (Wounded in Action, evacuated)

Vogel, Frederick J., Captain, February 1969 to September 1969, Quang Nam Province,

I Corps

Watkins, Lee H., Staff Sergeant, 8 July 1967 to 1 January 1968, Quang Ngai Province,

I Corps

Whitlock, Paul C., Staff Sergeant, December 1966 to June 1967, Quang Tri Province,

I Corps

Williams, Roderick D., Gunnery Sergeant,April 1969 to October 1969, Quang Ngai Province,

I Corps

Yorck, David C., Captain,August 1969 to September 1970, Regional Headquarters, Bein Hoa,

III Corps

68
Endnotes

1. Mark Moyar,Phoenix and the Birds of Prey (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1997), 346-

65; see also Dale Andrade,Ashes to Ashes:The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War (Lexington, Mass.:Lexington Books,1990),185-88;John F.Sullivan,Of Spies and Lies:A CIA Lie Detector

Remembers Vietnam (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 118-21.

2.Throughout this book, the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) personnel assigned to the PRU Program

are called“advisors,”but this is technically incorrect,especially for those Americans assigned before November 1969,when MilitaryAssistance Command,Vietnam (MACV) Headquarters changed

the title of the U.S.military assigned to the PRU from“commander”to“advisor.” At this same time,

MACV ordered these American military personnel to no longer accompany the PRU teams on

operations. Despite this change in policy, there was no doubt in the minds of the PRU teams

who their commander was. There was no doubt who gave the orders, who paid them, and who

equipped them—it was theAmerican assigned to them. Unlike otherAmerican advisors to South

Vietnamese military forces, the Americans assigned to the PRUs were both doctrinally and factually in command of their units.

3. Mark Moyar, Triumph Forsaken:The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Lewis Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of

America’s LastYears inVietnam (NewYork,Harcourt Brace,1999);Harry G.Summers,On Strategy: TheVietnamWar in Context (Carlisle Barracks,Pa.:Strategic Studies Institute,U.S.ArmyWar

College,1981);Andrew R.Finlayson,“Vietnam Strategies,”Marine Corps Gazette,August 1988,90-

94.

4. Rudy Enders, e-mail to author, 11 July 2008.

5. Mark Moyar,“Vietnam: Historians at War,”Academic Questions 21 (March 2008): 40-43.

6.Larry Berman,Perfect Spy:The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent (New York: Smithsonian/Collins, 2007), 137. For additional sources on Communist verification of the effectiveness of the Phoenix program,see Dale

Andrade and James H.Willbanks,“CORDS/Phoenix Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam for

the Future,”Military Review, March-April 2006, 21.

7. Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix Program (New York: Morrow, 1990), 166-67.

8. Felix I. Rodriguez and John Weisman, Shadow Warrior (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999),

189-93; David Corn, Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA’s Crusades (New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1994), 291.

9.Terence M.Allen, telephone interview with author, 26 June 2008.

10.Andrade, Ashes to Ashes,87-88; Andrew R.Finlayson,“TheTay Ninh Provincial Reconnaissance

Unit and Its Role in the Phoenix Program, 1969-70,” Studies in Intelligence 51-2 (2007): 66-67.

11. Rudy Enders, unpublished manuscript, 3-4.

12. Moyar,Phoenix and the Birds of Prey, 167.

13. Ibid., 167-69;Valentine,Phoenix Program, 167.

14. Finlayson,“Tay Ninh PRU,”66.

15.Warren H.Milberg,e-mail to author,19 July 2008. Milberg,a CIA officer,was assigned to Quang

Tri Province in 1967 and was the senior CIA official there. He was responsible for bilateral intelligence operations with the South Vietnamese in that province and,as part of that assignment,

he was the supervisor of the USMC military PRU advisor.

16. Rodney Pupuhi, letter to author, 12 February 2008, author’s possession.

69
17.The tactical advantages that accrued to PRU teams on operations when they were wearing

enemy uniforms and using enemy weapons was cited by Ronald J.Lauzon and Rodney Pupuhi in

telephone interviews with the author on 15 January and 7 February 2008, respectively.

18.John L.Plaster,SOG:The SecretWars of America’s Commandos inVietnam (NewYork:Onyx,

1997), 133-37;Warren H. Milberg, e-mail to author, 19 July 2008.

19. During telephonic interviews and in e-mails, Ronald J. Lauzon, Paul C.Whitlock, Rodney H.

Pupuhi, and Frederick J.Vogel mentioned the varied use of public and private means of transportation by the PRU for operations in their provinces.

20.The author believed having the signature of the province chief on each arrest order, as well

as that of the provincial magistrate,gave his PRU the political and legal protection needed for the

PRU to make a capture. Without these signatures on the arrest order, the PRU could later be accused of making an arbitrary capture.

21. Rudy Enders, e-mail to author, 20 June 2008.

22. Paul Whitlock, e-mails to author, 20 and 28 June 2008.

23. Rudy Enders, e-mail to author, 5 July 2008.

24.William R. Redel was a CIA officer who wore a Marine colonel’s uniform. Valentine,Phoenix

Program, 166-67.

25. Ronald Lauzon, letter to author, 7 February 2008, author’s possession.

26.Wayne Thompson, interview with author, 28 July 2008.

27. Joel Gardner, e-mail to author, 17 November 2008.

28.Terence M.Allen, letter to author, 11 July 2008, author’s possession.

29. Ray Lau,“The TET Offensive”(typescript, 2002).

30.This individual was probably CIA officerWilliam Redel who often introduced himself as a Marine colonel and wore a Marine colonel’s uniform.

31. Rodney Pupuhi, letter to author, 7 February 2007, author’s possession.

32. Douglas P. Ryan, e-mail to author, 19 April 2008.

33. Frederick Vogel, e-mail to author, 18 April 2008.

34.Author’s notes and memory, drawing from PRU Monthly Activity Report, March 1970, in author’s possession.

35. Moyar,Phoenix and the Birds of Prey, 173.

36.Author interviews conducted in 1985 with two formerTay Ninh PRU who had escaped from

Vietnam in 1983 and relocated to the United States. There is probably no stronger confirmation

of the success of the Phoenix program than the statements made by the foremost Viet Cong spy,

Pham Xuan An, to journalist Thomas A. Bass in 2007, in which he noted the efficiency of the

Phoenix program in neutralizing the opposition in the South after the Tet Offensive.Thomas A.

Bass, The Spy Who Loved Us: The Vietnam War and Pham Xuan An’s Dangerous Game (New

York: Public Affairs, 2009), 253.

37. Rudy Enders, e-mail to author, 18 April 2008. For a comprehensive and devastating critique

of these fraudulent claims, see B. G. Burkett and Donna Whitley, Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam

Generation was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History (Dallas,Verity Press, 1998).

38.The author received verbal orders to comply with the Uniform Code of Military Justice and

the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war on two separate occasions. The first

was during his initial briefing at the PRU Headquarters in Saigon with Lieutenant ColonelTerence

70
M.Allen in late September 1969. The second was during a staff visit by Major Kenneth D.Hyslop,

USMC, in Tay Ninh City in early October 1969. He was also told by Charles O. Stainback, the Tay

Ninh POIC, to obtain written concurrence with this policy from the chief of the Tay Ninh PRU,

Mr. Chinh, and to cosign this document on 30 October 1969. All PRU chiefs and their advisors

were required to sign these concurrence documents.

71
72
Front Cover: The Tay Ninh Provincial Reconnaissance Unit near Nui Ba Den Mountain in 1969.

Then-Captain Andrew R. Finlayson, the author of

this book, is on the bottom left.
Front Cover: The Tay Ninh Provincial Reconnaissance Unit near Nui Ba Den Mountain in 1969.

Then-Captain Andrew R. Finlayson, the author of

this book, is on the bottom left.