page_title: Sacred Sword of the Patriots League
section_title: U.S. historical precedent
hierarchical_section_title: Sacred Sword of the Patriots League / Origins / U.S. historical precedent
caption_attribution_description: English: This insignia was designed by American MACV-SOG in the name of the Sacred Sword of the Patriots League, a fictional North Vietnamese liberation organization. The message reads. The implication is that soldiers should defect to the SSPL or to South Vietnam. The Woman tells an officer: "This soldier has malaria and is almost cured but wants to return to the Army." The General Responds: "He has pretended to have malaria three times and he is faking it now. He needs to confess to the committee"
context_page_description: The Sacred Sword of the Patriots League was a sustained black operation that originated in the Central Intelligence Agency and was carried out by the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group during the Vietnam War. It involved a combination of psychological warfare and psychological operations, today known as military information support operations.
  The SSPL was "planned and implemented beginning in April 1963," though it continued to develop through 1968. It formed the centerpiece of various PSYOP directed against North Vietnam, which were codenamed Humidor. It attempted to convince the people—and sometimes the government—of North Vietnam of the existence of an autonomous, non-communist society within North Vietnam. Creating and promulgating the "legend" of the SSPL required U.S. Special Forces to build on PSYWAR techniques established by the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. Some historians believe the SSPL managed to divert the attention of North Vietnamese officials enough to justify its expenses and manpower.
context_section_description: The SSPL drew from a short history of elaborate deceptions in U.S. military history. Historian John Plaster asserts that the MACV-SOG branch which ran the SSPL was "patterned after the old OSS Morale Operations Division," formed by William Donavan in 1943. The comparison is apt, as both largely relied on deceptive radio operations, fraudulent letters, and distribution of leaflets. The SSPL also benefited from the experiences of Herbert Weisshart, who was appointed Deputy Head of MACV-SOG's PSYOP at its inception. Unlike most SOG commanders, Weisshart arrived with experience PSYOP. "Part of a six-man psychological warfare team dispatched to Taiwan in 1952, he had been instrumental in coordinating leaflet drops and radio play against China in support of one of the Central Intelligence Agency's first notional resistance campaigns."  Still operating in 1963, Weisshart's fictional resistance movement against mainland China became the CIA's "longest running notional campaign."
caption: MACV-SOG-designed insignia of the Sacred Sword of the Patriots League
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