Vietnam Declassified: CIA and Counterinsurgency in
Vietnam
Thomas L. Ahern, Jr. (Lexington: The University Press of
Kentucky, 2009), 480 pp., index.
Hayden Peake
In his preface to Vietnam Declassified, Thomas
Ahern writes that when he left Vietnam in 1965, “I knew we
were losing, but I had no idea why the Saigon government was
in retreat in the countryside, and the VC ascendant.”(12) In
this book, originally published internally in 2001 as a
classified history entitled CIA and Rural Pacification in
South Vietnam, Ahern provides many answers, formed with
the benefit of hindsight, deep research into classified
documents, candid and revealing interviews, and his own
experience as a clandestine service officer.1
Vietnam Declassified is narrowly focused on
operations related to “the struggle to suppress the Viet Cong
and win the loyalty of the peasantry”(9), although major
military and political events are mentioned for context. The
story is told from the perspective of the CIA officers
involved — many of whom are named — the insurgents they
battled, and the peasants they labored to empower. The
narrative covers six chronological periods. In the first, from
1954 to 1956, the Agency, as a temporary expedient to get
things going, dismissed orthodoxy and operated with two
distinct stations. One, labeled the Saigon Military
Mission (SMM), was headed by Col. Edward Lansdale, who
reported to Allen Dulles. Its mission was to establish
military and civic action programs in the countryside where
none existed. The conventional station, subordinate to the Far
East Division of the Directorate of Plans (since renamed the
Directorate of Operations and then the National Clandestine
Service), focused on rural political mobilization. While the
two stations cooperated on some projects, for the most part
they operated in parallel, often with the reluctant toleration
of the Diem government, which was struggling to consolidate
power on its terms. By the end of 1956 the SMM, having laid
some groundwork with the Diem government, left Vietnam, while
the conventional station continued the work in the
provinces.
Agency activity diminished during the second period
(1956–61) as Diem attempted to destroy communist elements in
the countryside, alienating peasants in the process. The
station reasserted itself in the third period (1961–63) by
“launching a series of programs designed either to stimulate
village self-defense or attack the insurgent organization at
the village level.”(17) Internal Vietnamese conflicts
persisted and Diem was overthrown in November 1963.
During the fourth period (1963–65) the Vietnamese generals
competed for power while station officers worked at the
provincial level trying to find a successful pacification
formula. The fifth period (1966–69) was characterized by an
expansion of the pacification effort and the massive military
buildup of US troops, which eventually led to the unification
of intelligence and countryside action programs under the
Military Assistance Command (Vietnam) or MACV.
The final period (1969–75) brought the Nixon policy of
Vietnamization, which sought to turn over CIA-sponsored
programs to the Vietnamese. A major element of this period was
the Phoenix program — called Phung Hoang by the
Vietnamese. Its objective was to integrate “all government of
Vietnam activities against the VC” aimed at penetration of the
VC and the collection of intelligence.(295) The CIA provided
advisory support. Ahern devotes considerable space to the
bureaucratic machinations from which this program evolved, its
operations in the field, and details of CIA support.
In the end, of course, CIA efforts to help the South
Vietnamese in the countryside failed. The reasons are evident
in the pages of Vietnam Declassified. Ahern quotes
exchanges with Headquarters, cites conflicts with MACV, and
documents the complex political terrain. From the CIA
standpoint, it battled for success with two constituencies,
one American, the other Vietnamese, and yet it never conducted
a comprehensive analysis of the insurgency's political
dynamics. The Americans, under MACV’s rigid bureaucracy, first
resisted involvement in and then demanded control of all
intelligence and counterinsurgency operations, often with
methods the CIA station considered counterproductive. The
Vietnamese insisted on the final say on all programs — it was,
after all, their country. But they could never control their
own bureaucracies, whose competing equities led them to
interfere with agreed-upon CIA operations that were seen as
challenges to power.
The story is not one of unremitting failure, however. The
success of the People’s Action Teams (PATs), described in
chapter 10, is an example of what could be achieved.
Informants were recruited to identify communist cadres and a
civic action program trained security teams and strengthened
provincial administration. Roads were repaired, haircuts
given, security provided, and the villagers responded by
informing on VC forces. For a while it appeared that a
workable formula had been found for replacing the VC
infrastructure and expanding “the government’s popular base in
the countryside.”(169) But attempts to sustain and expand the
program and others like it — the Rural Development (RD)
operations conducted by the Marines, for example — failed in
battles of competing bureaucracies.
Ahern identifies many reasons for the collapse of the
pacification efforts. Some South Vietnamese recognized them as
well. One general noted that commanders in the Army of South
Vietnam (ARVN) were actively “sabotaging pacification,”
charging the government itself with “preferring to let the US
bear the burden of the war.”(313) Others cited “indifference
and lack of empathy at all levels among Vietnamese
officials”(328), and there was corruption like the phantom
platoons that existed only on payrolls. It wasn’t until after
the Tet Offensive of 1968 that national mobilization was
decreed, but it was never vigorously enforced. Despite all the
programs designed to disrupt VC infrastructure, it remained
virtually intact. One complicating factor was the decision of
the Vietnamese government to treat captured VC as criminals,
not prisoners of war, with the result that after short
sentences they were free to return to the fight. (339) The
Provincial Interrogation Centers posed additional
difficulties. Cases of brutality resulted when old traditions
among the Vietnamese prevailed, a problem aggravated by the
lack of trained interrogators. The CIA regarded the practices
“as not only inhumane but counterproductive.”(367) In the end,
Ahern concludes, “Whatever the theoretical merits of
democracy, the GVN version could not compete with the
communists’ discipline and cohesiveness, which the democratic
forces lack.” (337)
Experiments conducted under flawed assumptions are likely
to provide unsatisfactory outcomes. In the final chapter Ahern
discusses what he believes to have been the fatally flawed
assumptions of the war in Southeast Asia, for example,
conflict in Vietnam was between communism and democracy rather
than a battle for national liberation — this prejudiced policy
and operations. Likewise, the tenacity of the North Vietnamese
was consistently misjudged, and operations based on the
assumption that resistance could be overcome by winning
“hearts and minds” had little chance of success, especially
absent government efforts to “mobilize the countryside.”(426)
The assumption that the peasants abhorred VC-style communism
and longed for democracy also proved unjustified.
In this edition, Ahern includes a preface that reflects on
the Vietnam precedents and the lessons they suggest for
battling insurgencies. The circumstances are not identical,
but the similarities are significant, though complicated by
the magnitude and complexities of an insurgency incorporating
fanatical religious beliefs. Still, the United States again
faces the problems of foreign forces trying to protect
populations that do not fully participate in their own defense
and the alienation brought on by the destruction inherent in
counterinsurgency and counterterrorist operations. Ahern does
not provide answers for today’s dilemmas, but he makes vividly
clear what did not work when one nation tried to fight another
nation’s war. He also provides the foundation for a greater
understanding of the CIA’s potential roles in
counterinsurgencies.
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Footnotes
1 Ahern was an
operations officer in the CIA for 35 years. He served five
tours in Asia, including three in Indochina. Since retirement,
he has served as a CIA contract historian. A slightly redacted
version of Rural Pacification was released in 2006.
Five other Ahern histories of CIA efforts in the region were
declassified with varying degrees of redaction in 2009. All
six can be found at
http://today.ttu.edu/2009/03/cia-releases-documents-of-vietnam-war-era-intelligence/.
Published in-house by the CIA History Staff of the Center for
the Study of Intelligence between 2001 and 2006, Ahern’s works
have been widely used in the Intelligence Community for
education and training purposes. The last of the series,
Undercover Armies: CIA and Surrogate Warfare in Laos,
1961–1973, is the most frequently accessed history book
CSI has produced.
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All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed
in this article are those of the author. Nothing in the
article should be construed as asserting or implying US
government endorsement of its factual statements and
interpretations.
