VIETNAM

By Topic

Included here:

1. POWs

2. Tonkin Gulf

3. Viet Cong

4. North Vietnam

 

1. POWs

Jensen-Stevenson, Monika, and William H. Stevenson. Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POWs in Vietnam. NewYork: Penguin, 1990.

Sauter, Mark, and David Sanders. The Men We Left Behind: The Abandonment and Betrayal of America's POWs After the Vietnam War. Washington, DC: National Press Books, 1993.

U. S. Congress. Senate. Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. POW/MIAs, Report of the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, January 13, 1993. Senate Report 103-1. 103d Cong., 1st sess.Washington, DC: GPO, 1993.

Report of the committee chaired by Sen. John F. Kerry.

2. Tonkin Gulf

Beard, Barrett T. [LTCDR/USCG (Ret.)] "The Oilcan that Started a War." Naval Intelligence Professionals Quarterly.

Clark comment: Reference here is to an event of 19 September 1964. This is separate from the events of 2 and 4 August 1964.

1. "Part One: Secrets." 24, no. 1 (Jan. 2008).

"Our rules of engagement at that time were ill defined. Our mission was simply to protect our, then defenseless, aircraft carriers by stopping threatening torpedo boats coming out of North Vietnam."

Drea, Edward J. "Tonkin Gulf Reappraisal: 40 Years Later." MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History (Summer 2004). [http://www.historynet.com/mhq/bltonkin/]

"Editor's note:... In the last several years, more information [about the Gulf of Tonkin incident] has been revealed through the declassification of some documents involving sensitive U.S. radio intercepts of North Vietnamese communications. We asked Ed Drea to write an article that would give our readers the flavor of the confusion during some of the most tense hours in U.S. history, when a shooting situation that occurred in one time zone sparked rapid-fire questions, analyses, and decisions in three other time zones."

Goulden, Joseph C. Truth Is the First Casualty: The Gulf of Tonkin Affair -- Illusion and Reality. New York: Rand McNally, 1969.

McDonald, Dick [CAPT/USN (Ret.)]. "A Footnote to the Gulf of Tonkin Affair: Why the Second Attack Could Not Have Happened, [Part I]." Naval Intelligence Professional Quarterly 14, no. 2 (Apr. 1998): 1-5. [Part II] Naval Intelligence Professionals Quarterly 14, no. 3 (Jul. 1998): 1-4.

Ostensibly a review of Edwin E. Moise, Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War, this two-part article is well worth reading on its own, even though the author arrives at the same conclusion as Moise. Part II centers on the author's involvement in the aftermath of the operation, and on how he has arrived at his conclusion.

Moïse, Edwin E. Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Ford, I&NS 12.4, finds that Moïse's work on the Tonkin Gulf incidents of 2 and 4 August 1964 and of U.S. planning prior to deepening involvement in the Vietnam conflict is "a valuable addition to the Vietnam War literature." Moïse believes that the North Vietnamese did not attack on 4 August but avoids crawling into bed with conspiracy theorists, attributing the reports of such an attack to a Clauswitzean fog of war rather than a deliberate effort by the Johnson administration to deceive.

Although McDonald, NIPQ 14.2, disagrees with Moïse's findings on a number of points (but not on the conclusion that the 4 August 1964 attack did not occur), his overall evaluation of the book is very positive. He says that this "is an extraordinarily thorough and well-researched work.... Prof. Moïse does a good job of sorting through all th[e] radar contact data, which to the ships in the heat of the moment provided believable evidence of hostile craft."

See also the letters in the "NIP Forum," NIPQ 15.2, from Moïse and McDonald, as well as from Edward J. Marolda, co-author of the Naval Historical Center's official history covering the Tonkin Gulf incident, The United States Navy and the Vietnam Conflict, Vol. 2: From Military Assistance to Combat, 1959-1965.

Showers, D. M. [RADM/USN (Ret.)] "The Second Gulf of Tonkin Attack: Revisited, Revised, Rejected; ADM Stockdale Remembered." Naval Intelligence Professionals Quarterly 21, no. 3 (Sep. 2005): 14.

This is a brief review of the refutation of a second North Vietnamese attack in the Gulf of Tonkin on 4 August 1964.

Showers, D. M. [RADM/USN (Ret.)], with Dick McDonald [CAPT/USN (Ret.)] "The Tonkin Gulf Attack, August 1964." Naval Intelligence Professionals Quarterly 24, no. 2 (Apr. 2008): 4-6.

The author reviews the state of play on assessing the reporting of North Vietnames attacks in the Tonkin Gulf on 2 and 4 August 1964. Yes, there was an attack on 2 August; no, there was no attack on 4 August.

Tuthill, Don. "Tonkin Gulf, 1964." Naval Intelligence Professionals Quarterly 9, no. 2 (Apr. 1993): 13-14.

Whitelaw, Kevin. "The Attack that Wasn't: How Erroneous Intelligence Reports Led to a Previous War." U.S. News & World Report, 12 Dec. 2005, 42.

A newly declassified study by NSA historian Robert Hanyok -- and over 140 formerly top secret intelligence reports -- confirm ... not only that there never was a second attack [in the Gulf of Tonkin on 4 August 1964] but that the NSA had plenty of contradictory evidence that was actively suppressed."

3. Viet Cong

Air Force Times. Editors. "Gathering Intelligence Thwarts Viet Cong Plans." 25 Nov. 1970, 16. [Petersen]

Army Information Digest. Editors. "The Viet Cong -- Its Political, Military, Intelligence Organization." May 1965, 38-45. [Petersen]

Bain, Chester A. "Viet Cong Propaganda Abroad." Foreign Service Journal 45, no. 10 (1968): 18-21, 47. [Petersen]

 

4. North Vietnam

Gaddy, David W., tr. and ed. Essential Matters: A History of the Cryptographic Branch of the People's Army of Vietnam, 1945-1975. Ft. George G. Meade, MD: National Security Agency, Center for Cryptologic History, 1994.

Although "political rhetoric is present" in this translation of a 1990 Vietnamese publication, Kruh, Cryptologia 19.1, finds it to be "a unique document with a great deal of interesting information, cultural, socioeconomic, and political, in addition to cryptologic."

Goscha, Christopher E.

1. "Intelligence in a Time of Decolonialization: The Case of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam at War (1945-50)." Intelligence and National Security 22, no. 1 (Feb. 2007): 100-138.

The focus here is "the birth, development, and major functions" of the DRV's "Public Security and Intelligence services in a time of decolonization." It includes three case studies "as a way of considering wider themes relating to the question of intelligence and decolonization."

2. tr. "Three Documents on Early Vietnames Intelligence and Security Services." Intelligence and National Security 22, no. 1 (Feb. 2007): 139-146.

3. Pribbenow, Merle. "Commentary." Intelligence and National Security 22, no. 1 (Feb. 2007): 147-150.

The documents unearthed by Goscha "illustrate several important stages in the development of the Vietnamese communist intelligence and security services into a powerful and effective apparatus."

4. Marr, David. "Commentary." Intelligence and National Security 22, no. 1 (Feb. 2007): 151-154.

5. Thomas, Martin. "Insurgent Intelligence: Information Gathering and Anti-Colonial Rebellion." Intelligence and National Security 22, no. 1 (Feb. 2007): 155-163.

"[T]hese Vietnamese intelligence documents offer numerous insights into the evolution of the Viet Minh as a national movement." They also "confirm that intelligence was as critical a factor for all warring parties in struggles of decolonialization as in other, more conventional conflicts."

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