Category Archives: The Communists

Articles about the communists involved; Ho Chi Minh, North Vietnam, China, Russia, North Korean, Russian satellites, etc.

RESPONSE TO L.A. TIMES ATROCITIES SERIES

Readers note: The following was written in 2007 in response to a series of articles in the Los Angeles Times discussing American atrocities in Vietnam.  The author is a founding member of VVFH and a Vietnam Veteran and has given his permission to reproduce the article here.

The article was originally published here and included graphic photos of Viet Cong violence.

By Bill Laurie

           The recent Los Angeles Times article on U.S. Military atrocities in Viet Nam should only be the beginning of a comprehensive investigation of war crimes and unwarranted brutality in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia. This has never been done and is long over due.  Culmination of such a study would produce results not expected by the American public, misinformed as they have been about Viet Nam.

It should be noted as a preface that this Viet Nam veteran neither excuses nor justifies actual war crimes committed by American forces. I would not stand in a long line to argue any American serviceman guilty of murder should not be spending the rest of his life in Leavenworth, breaking rocks. These vile events did happen, and are inexcusable and seen as such by Viet Nam veterans themselves. I have personally heard any number of Viet Nam veterans state forthrightly that they never did or saw anything like My Lai, and that Lt. Calley should be executed as a war criminal.

That said, let’s consider the report the L.A. Times examined. It reports 7 massacres resulting in 137 civilians killed, along with 78 other attacks killing 57 civilians, and 141 instances of torture. A total of 320 incidents are in the Army report, and another 500 alleged atrocities that were either unproven or were otherwise discounted. Altogether, there are 820 cited instances, and at least 194 civilians killed. These exclude My Lai so the total civilian atrocity death toll is presumably about 694. This is far less than the 36,000 Viet Namese assassinated by the communists, and that is an absolute minimum, exclusive of combat fatalities.

During the American involvement there were approximately 900 infantry platoons in Viet Nam at the high point, excluding Naval riverine, combat engineers, artillery, armor, and other units exposed to combat. These infantry platoons, excluding other unit types cited above, spent in the order of 729,000 platoon-days in the field, involving about 22 million man days in the field. In other words, 729,000 daily opportunities for platoons to commit war crimes, and a total of 22 daily million opportunities for an individual to commit an atrocity. The Army report cited by the L.A. Times suggests 820 atrocities occurred and even if these extended over a two-day period, meaning 1,640 “atrocity days,” it would represent 0.22% of total platoon days, or 2 out of 1000. Most vile atrocities, even My Lai, took place in one day, so the ratio is somewhere between 1: 1,000 and 2:1,000. For individuals the incidence is similarly low. Presuming 15 people were involved with each of the 820 atrocities, and these occurred on one day, the individual atrocity-day equals 12,300, or .0006, 6 out of 10,000. If riverine, engineer, artillery and other were included, the “atrocity rate” would plunge even further. No apologies made for what might appear to be obscene McNamarian number-juggling; it is simply a means to show that barbaric behavior, as measured by the report’s own data, was not a common occurrence and these disgusting examples do not come close to representing the whole. It’s also called “analysis,” something reporters are supposed to do, and most often do not. In the interest of honesty and historical integrity, it must be added that atrocities, per se, were not the full extent of the problem. There were simply too many, however much a minority, Americans who behaved with crass rudeness and sometimes drunken-or stoned-grotesque idiocy. The US government is culpable, as is the military, for not properly training troops on Viet Nam’s intricacies(it is doubtful if many in government knew enough to teach anything) and the utmost importance of dignified and civilized behavior in dealings with the people of Viet Nam.

This was and is not a mere rhetorical statement. The Viet Namese people were and are my friends. In two instances of inexcusably rude and disgusting American behavior I physically threatened the American perpetrators with instant violent retribution; they stopped their rancid and utterly intolerable obnoxiousness. I, along with several others, also initiated an investigation of wrong-doing which we knew would destroy the career, deservedly so, of a U.S. Army “lifer” NCO whose actions were a disgrace to the uniform he wore, and to his country.

American forces went on literally thousands of MEDCAPs-Medical Civil Action Projects and DENTCAPs-Dental Civil Action Projects, bringing welcome relief to Viet Namese rural people suffering from disease, infections, broken bones, or decayed teeth. Lives were saved, faces were saved from ravaging skin disease, scalded feet from an upturned caldron of boiling water were saved from possible amputation. Hundreds of schools and maternity clinics were built, a number of which would be burned or destroyed by the VC. This is not to say ALL U.S. forces were involved with such programs, but it is a far greater number than those involved with or committing atrocities.

This writer spent almost three years in Viet Nam. At one time or another I was in 18 of the former RVN’s 44 provinces. VC/NVA war crimes and atrocities were a daily -DAILY- routine occurrence, whether in the form of rocketing civilian areas(a war crime acknowledged by anti-war activist Richard Falk), assassinating civilians, raping women, etc. At Cai Lay district town the NVA put a mortar round into a school yard, killing 23 children and wounding 40 or 50. NVA artillery slaughtered thousands of Viet Namese on QL(Highway) 1 and on QL 13 south of An Loc in 1972; this was deliberate, observed and aimed fire, not accidental carnage.

Allied malfeasance and atrocities were rare exceptions, most due to simple human idiocy rather than policy. Rude behavior was all too common however. Since returning to the U.S., and utterly amazed and disgusted at inability of U.S. public to comprehend the most elemental aspects of the war, I’ve continued the quest for more information. Having talked with and interviewed scores of veterans, having talked with scores of Viet Namese(I speak the language), having read scores of personal memoirs and battlefield accounts, having plodded through reams of operation reports and declassified material, the inescapable conclusion arises: U.S. war crimes, as vile and disgusting and treasonous as they were, simply were not a common occurence. This is not said as a light dismissal, as one war crime is far, far too many, and a vile betrayal of what was arguably honorable cause in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia(and along the Thai border where Hanoi’s war spilled over). To repeat what has been mentioned above: anyone guilty of outright, clearcut murder should have been punished severely by either a multi-decade or life prison sentence, or execution. Those committing war crimes, atrocities, rapes, etc. were providing aid and comfort to the VC/NVA, whose deceitful propaganda was given undue credibility because of the actions of morons and sub-humanoid scum. They shamed and vilified the uniform worn by better people than they. They were traitors.

One point seldom discussed: Under Secretary of Defense McNamara’s “Project 100,000,” almost 300,000 people, who would normally have been rejected for military service by virtue of mental or psychological deficiencies, or sociopathic tendencies, were allowed into the military, against the military’s wishes and preference. Research shows these “Project 100,000” people caused a disproportionate number of problems, sustained higher casualties, and it can be safely assumed were involved in a disproportionate amount of uncivilized behavior if not atrocities and war crimes.

What is the purpose of the L.A. Times expose? What is to be achieved by these revelations? Is it a concern for the people of SE Asia? A concern for justice? When all is considered, there seems to be no purpose beyond the desire to wallow in habitual masochism and national flagellation regarding U.S. involvement in SE Asia. It can’t be a concern for the SE Asian people or justice. A content survey of the L.A. Times internet archives, extending from 1 Jan 1985 to the present, shows the following:

• My Lai-695 entries

• Dak Son Massacre(where 250 Montagnards were killed and burned alive in 1967 by NVA using flamethrowers-NO entries.
http://www.11thcavnam.com/main/dak_son.htm

• VC/NVA Assassinations(over 36,000 South Viet Namese teachers, district chiefs, agricultural extension advisors, civil servants were killed, often in hideously brutal fashion, by the VC. Another 60,000 or so were abducted with only several thousand returning, indicating tens of thousands others were assassinated. The 36,000 figure alone, given Viet Nam’s 17 million population, represents a national mortality proportion that would equal about 420,000 Americans assassinated, exclusive of combat fatalities, of which South Viet Nam’s military sustained 275,000)-NO entries

• Mrs. Nguyen Thi Thu, a Hoa Hoa Buddhist widow who immolated herself in 1999 to protest Hanoi’s religious oppression-NO entries
http://www.pghh.org/news/hot_news/102699_ngthu_en.html

• Mr. Ho Tan Anh, a Buddhist who immolated himself in 2001 to protest Hanoi’s religious oppression- NO entries.
http://www.radicalparty.org/vietnam/imolation_e.htm

• Thich(Venerable) Chan Hy, a Buddhist monk who immolated himself in 2003 to protest Hanoi’s religions oppression-NO entries.
http://www.news14charlotte.com/content/local_news/mecklenburg/?ArID=49737&SecID=3

• The 2004 fatal beating of Buddhist Monk Thich Duc Chinh in a Hanoi prison-NO entries
http://www.queme.net/eng/news_detail.php?numb=640

•  Hue Massacre, 1968, when the VC/NVA systematically executed as many as 5,000 civil servants, teachers, etc. who were systematically rounded up and executed, some buried alive in mass graves, some tied up and shot in the back of the head, around Hue City during 25 day NVA occupation of the city-NO entries.
http://ngothelinh.50megs.com/Hue.html

• Oppression of Montagnards-systematic cultural genocide of the indigenous highland people, resulting in scores dead, scores jailed, scores beaten in past 2-4 years-NO entries
See Montagnard-Foundation.org

• Decimation of Hmong people in Laos by Pathet Lao and North Viet Namese troops
(See factfinding.org and http://www.huntingtonnews.net/national/060708-staff-laos.html)-NO entries

• Recent republication of North Viet Nam dissident poet Nguyen Chi Thien’s book, “Flowers from Hell/Hoa Dia Nguc.” Mr. Thien, dubbed the “Solzhenitsyn of Viet Nam” by author Michael Lind, spent 27 years in Hanoi prisons(12 years in solitary confinement) for writing anti-communist poetry. He recently in Garden Grove and spoke before a crowd of about 600 people-NO entries
http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=article&DocID=43

• Egregious Hanoi Human Rights violations, documented by Human Rights Watch(hrw.org), Free Viet Nam Alliance(fva.org), Amnesty International (amnesty.org), Transparency International (transparency.org), Mother Land(queme.net), Global Witness(globalwitness.org), and scores of others.- NO entries.

• Hanoi economist Le Dang Doanh’s revelation that Viet Nam’s per capita income, 80% of Thailand’s in 1950, was only 20% of Thailand’s in 2000, all due to smothering dictatorial communist policies and endemic corruption-NO entries.
http://www.fva.org/2005/03Mar/story02.htm

• Inimical result of communist economic policies producing average infant and maternal mortality rates, for the three communist Indochina countries, twice that of the average for the nearby non-communist countries of Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand(UN and World Bank data for 2002)-NO entries

The pattern is clear and evident: L.A. times stories for the past 21 years dwell disproportionately, and hence dishonestly, with American atrocities, and ignore far more lethal and wretched established behavior patterns, in the form of VC/NVA atrocities committed as a matter of routine. Were the L.A. Times, or readers sanctimoniously gloating over the recent article, even remotely concerned with the well-being of the Viet Namese, Laotian and Cambodian people, these topics would have been discussed, in excruciating detail. They have not been, and the fetish of obsessing over what is demonstrably unrepresentative behavior of U.S. forces must be attributed to a presumed ecstasy of psycho-political masochism and perverted sadistic voyeurism. It also reflects a craven, vile hypocrisy of the worst order. Make no mistake about it, many people ENJOY the fact that hundreds of Viet Namese were murdered at My Lai. It validates their presumed, and quite vicarious, sense of “revolutionary” righteousness. Conversely, it’s not FUN to talk about honorable U.S. and South Viet Namese behavior and performance. This leads to a parallel conclusion: the L.A. Times, and those reading this article with smug righteousness, do not want to hear anything that might nullify their perceptions of virtuous superiority.

They do not want to hear of either admirable U.S. or South Viet Namese or Australian troop performance or squalid VC/NVA atrocities, atrocities routinely committed as a matter of policy, not as a despicable breakdown of leadership as characterizes U.S. atrocities. It is interesting to note that Viet Nam and SE Asia veterans outnumber former “anti-war” people among the ranks of those concerned with human rights in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia.

So, hats off to Nick Turse and Deborah Nelson for for STARTING a thorough examination of the subject of atrocities in Viet Nam(and Laos, Cambodia). Now let’s follow through with a thorough, comprehensive, documented, complete and no-holds-barred look at the entire picture. After all, half the truth, or one-tenth of it, is still a lie. Mr. Turse and Ms. Nelson, or anyone else, can start by examining this data:
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP6.HTM
and reviewing this brief article:
http://www.asianpacificpost.com/portal2/ff8080810c22f24f010c3f99950c0073.do.html

The completion of such a study will lead to the conclusion that America’s biggest “war crime” was Washington’s refusal to adopt and implement an appropriate strategy(NEVER done), properly train its troops, and then ultimately abandoning the people of Southeast Asia to a bigoted and ignorant collegium of near-medieval thugs who were, in essence, the Taliban of Southeast Asia, responsible for the death of millions for no valid reason. It will reveal that more Indochinese people died violent deaths after 1975, when the war was supposedly over, than during the war. It will discover names of many Viet Namese who once ardently supported Ho Chi Minh, only later to discover to their terror and disgust, that Ho Chi Minh was, as Nguyen Chi Thien called him, “the devil king,” and his followers were ruthless adherents to an ideological cult. Reporters willing to earn their pay will research the lives, and shattered hopes, of Nguyen Chi Thien, Duong Thu Huong, Chan Tin, Hoang Minh Chinh, Phan Khoi, Truong Nhu Tang, Hoang Cam, Doan Van Toai, Nguyen Cong Hoan, Duong Quynh Hoa, and scores of others whose faith in the communist cause was brutally betrayed, and who now denounce the power-hungry goons running Viet Nam. Further research will also show the news media’s abject failure to report the war in comprehensive depth and detail, leaving the American public abysmally mis-reported and under-informed, a deplorable situation that continues today (Of note is fact that former L.A. Times Viet Nam reporter Jacques Leslie admits to sitting around at night in his Saigon apartment, getting loaded on marijuana, hoping to come up with a good idea for a story). Yes, there is much for the voyeuristic sadists to gloat over: American idiocy in Viet Nam contributed to the eventual conquest by even more primitive vengeful idiots, and a total inability of this country to comprehend what took place, how, why, with what effect, and at whose expense. Now, the final question remains: why do some people actually LIKE this?

Ho Chi Minh’s Entreaties to Truman

By Paul Schmehl

Whenever discussing the Vietnam War, one of the topics that comes up is that the OSS worked with Ho during WWII, Ho requested help from the US by sending both letters and telegrams to President Truman and Ho quoted the American Declaration of Independence in his own declaration of independence.

While all these things are true, they often lead to a false conclusion.  It is argued that because the US ignored Ho, he turned to China and Russia for help with his nationalist movement.  Nothing could be further from the truth, but that doesn’t stop people from arguing it.  Ho was a committed communist and skilled deceiver, as our lengthy treatise establishes thoroughly.  He had no intentions of turning Vietnam into an American-like republic.  His assignment, as a member of the Soviet Comintern, was to establish communism in Indochina. To that end, he established the Indochina Communist Party in 1930 and worked assiduously to strengthen it to seize power when the opportunity presented itself.

The vacuum created by the end of World War II provided his opportunity, and he seized it.

It is also claimed that Truman ignored Ho Chi Minh’s entreaties because he wanted the French to re-establish their colony in Indochina.  However, the text of telegrams sent to the consulates in Saigon and Hanoi by the Secretary of State and Acting Secretary of State demonstrate that the Truman administration was not fooled by Ho’s claims of nationalism.  Ho’s entreaties were ignored because they were known to be deceitful.

In February, 1946, the US Secretary of State of the Truman administration sent a telegram to the Ambassador to France asking to be kept up to date on whether “Leclerc the intransigeant and uncompromising colonial-minded and d’Argenlieu the conciliatory and moderate” had the support of the French government. 1

In his response two days later, the US Ambassador indicated that it was his belief that the French government was inclined toward “a liberal and progressive colonial policy in Indo-China” 2

Ten days later, the Assistant Chief of the Division of Southeast Asian Affairs cabled the US Secretary of State and stateed, “It seems certain that Annamese plan desperate resistance to French.” 3

Two weeks later, the Consul of Saigon cabled the Secretary of State that “there were additional incidents last night including sacking of house of one of signers of “motion” calling for Vietnam independence and cessation of hostilities. He himself was severely beaten by military.” 4

On August 9th, the Chief of the Division of Southeast Asian Affairs cabled the Director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs and informed him that “Recent developments indicate that the French are moving to regain a large measure of their control of Indochina in violation of the spirit of the March 6 convention. The evidence, as set forth below, suggests that the French are attempting to gain their objective by manoeuvres designed to confine and weaken Viet Nam. In the event that Viet Nam decides to resist these encroachments, which is by no means unlikely, widespread hostilities may result.” 5

The March 6 agreement to which he refers is the modus vivendi signed between the French and the Viet Minh government (Ho Chi Minh), and the reason for the rising animus was that the Viet Minh felt that should have the right to Cochinchina, including the Mekong Delta, Saigon and Cholon, and the French disagreed. They were willing to recognize Ho’s government, but did not what to give up the rich, fertile lands of the South.

He closed with this: “In conclusion, it is SEA’s view that the Annamese are faced with the choice of a costly submission to the French or of open resistance, and that the French may be preparing to resort to force in order to secure their position throughout Indochina. It may not be advisable for this Government to take official notice of this situation during the Peace Conference,56 but the Department should be prepared, SEA believes, to express to the French, in view of our interest in peace and orderly development of dependent peoples, our hope that they will abide by the spirit of the March 6 convention.”

So, in 1946, the US was opposed to the French reoccupation of Indochina (at that time Annam, Tonkin, Cochinchina, Cambodia, and Laos.

On September 11, the Ambassador in France cabled the Secretary of State and reported that he had met with Ho Chi Minh, who had requested assistance from the US in his failing negotiations with the French. He wrote, “The principal point on which they failed to reach agreement concerns Cochin China: the French representatives insist that Cochin China be an “independent” entity in an Indochinese federation, while the Viet-Nam representatives insist that one central government in Indochina must dominate the whole country. He said that he and his party aspired to Viet-Nam “independence” in an “Union Franchise”. He said that they would like to receive some “help” from us, but did not specify what he meant by that. He took occasion to say that he was not a communist.” 6 Ho was, of course, a paid Comintern agent at the time and lied to the US Ambassador.

On September 17, the Ambassador reported that Ho had signed a modus vivendi with the French. 7

One of the elements of that agreement was that all fighting in Cochinchina would stop. It did not, of course, and this became the second diplomatic agreement that Ho violated. In point of fact, Ho violated every international agreement he signed. He refused to agree that the armed forces in Cochinchina would disarm.

In October, State cabled Saigon asking for an explanation of Ho’s flag, particularly the use of a gold star in the center of a red field, since that clearly hinted at communism. 8

In December, the Secretary of State cabled various missions abroad informing them that the nature of the government in Vietnam was communist. 9

So, before the end of 1946, the US was already aware that Ho and his government were communist, not nationalist, and US policy proceeded accordingly.

In January 1947, the Secretary of State cabled the Embassy in France asking them to convey US consternation with French attempts to “place US in partisan position” and asked they contact the French Foreign Office and request a retraction. 10

So, even after becoming aware that Ho was a communist and his government was communist, the US still refused to take a partisan position regarding the unrest in Annam, Tonkin and Cochinchina.

On January 15, 1947, the Ambassador cabled the Secretary of State to update him on affairs in Indochina. He wrote regarding Ho’s government, “the small Communist group which now dominates, and which is composed, he says, of a coterie of Moscow-trained young men.” 11

By January 15,1947, the US was well aware that Ho and his government were Soviet-trained communists.

FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES – TRUMAN – 1946 100
851G.00/7-746: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Consul at Saigon (Reed)
SECRET WASHINGTON, September 9, 1946— 2 p.m.
Intelligence reports of uncertain reliability state USSR (a) anxious to see Ho Chi Minh succeed unite three Kys under Viet Nam for possible eventual weapon against National Govt China and (b) has instructed French Communists manoeuvre reliable French Officers to Indochina, for training cadres future Viet Nam army. Keep Dept informed indications subservience to Party line by Ho and other leaders, relative strength Communist and non-Communist elements Viet Nam, and contacts with Communists other countries.
Inform O’Sullivan.Sent Saigon. Repeated
Paris59 for info.
CLAYTON
— — — — — — — — — —
59 As Telegram 4680

FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES – TRUMAN – 1946 108
851G.00B/10-946: Airgram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Consul at Saigon (Reed)
SECRET WASHINGTON, October 9, 1946.
A.29 Reference Department’s telegram Number 241 of September 9 and Consulate General’s telegram Number 374 of September 17.
Department would appreciate information on the origins and significance of the use of a gold star in the center of a red field as the Vietnam flag. The flag of the Malayan Peoples Anti-Japanese Union forces in Malaya (an organization undisguisedly controlled by Chinese Communists) was red with three gold stars in the upper right corner. Three stars were used to symbolize the three races in Malaya. Although the MPAJU has been disbanded, the Communist movement in Malaya is still known as the three-star movement. The official Vietnam explanation of the Vietnam flag would be especially interesting in view of Ho Chi Minh’s denial of Communist orientation on the part of his government, since the Vietnam Government must, certainly realize that the use of a gold star on a red field will inevitably lead nationals of other countries to form conclusions which the Vietnam Government would apparently not wish them to form
ACHESON
— — — — — — — — — —

FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES – TRUMAN – 1949 54
851G.01/5-1149: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Consulate at Hanoi1
SECRET WASHINGTON, May 20, 1949— 5 p.m.
Reur informative tel 36:2
In talks Xuan and reps his govt you may take fol line as representing consensus informed Americans: In light Ho’s known background, no other assumption possible but that he outright Commie so long as (1) he fails unequivocally repudiate Moscow connections and Commie doctrine and (2) remains personally singled out for praise by internatl Commie press and receives its support. Moreover, US not impressed by nationalist character red flag with yellow stars. Question whether Ho as much nationalist as Commie is irrelevant. All Stalinists in colonial areas are nationalists. With achievement natl aims (i.e., independence) their objective necessarily becomes subordination state to Commie purposes and ruthless extermination not only opposition groups but all elements suspected even slightest deviation. On basis examples eastern Eur it must be assumed such wld be goal Ho and men his stamp if included Bao Dai Govt. To include them in order achieve reconciliation opposing polit elements and “national unity” wld merely postpone settlement issue whether Vietnam to be independent nation or Commie satellite until circumstances probably even less favorable nationalists than now. It must of course be conceded theoretical possibility exists estab National Communist state on pattern Yugoslavia in any area beyond reach Soviet army. However, US attitude cld take acct such possibility only if every other possible avenue closed to preservation area from Kremlin control. Moreover, while Vietnam out of reach Soviet army it will doubtless be by no means out of reach Chi Commie hatchet men and armed forces.
1 Repeated as 84 to Saigon and 1713 to Paris and in 379, May 24, 5 p.m., to New Delhi, 286 to Bangkok, and 636 to Manila.
2 May 11, p. 25. [0524]

The Rest of the Story

So often the story of Viet Nam is told from a singular point of view.  Only part of the story is told, and that part impacts people’s lives in multiple negative ways because the truth is not known.  One of the most impactful photographs of the 2nd Indochina War is the famous Eddie Adams photograph of Brig. General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing Bay Lop.

When this photograph hit the front page of the New York Times there was universal outrage.  The brutality of the act repelled people.  The New York Times continued to condemn Loan’s actions after he became a US citizen.  Not once did they ever mention what Bay Lop had done to deserve execution.

However, what the media didn’t report might have completely changed the reaction of people worldwide.  Had they published this picture, the execution of Bay Lop might have been put in a different context and changed the reaction to the photo of his execution.

The caption under the photo explains the scene.  Before Bay Lop was executed, he and his fellow Viet Cong executed an entire family because of the father, Lt. Col. Nguyen Tuan, refused to give them the information they wanted. Lt. Col. Tuan was decapitated, and his wife and six children were murdered with machine guns.

The communists admitted to this atrocity in a document that was captured after Tet.1

The units from the North could not arrive in time; therefore they attacked the Armor and Artillery [Camps] at Go Vap, killed the entire family of an Armor Colonel. Then coordination was effected among friendly troops in order to attack the Quang Trung [Training Center] and the [RVNAF] Joint General Staff.

This is a photo of the family’s burial after Tet, including the small coffins of the children.

Bay Lop was the leader of that operation and was captured and executed shortly after for the murders.  Before his capture, he used civilians as a human shield, the second war crime he had committed that day. (The first was the murders of the Tuan family.)

Brig. General Nguyen Ngoc Loan’s execution of Bay Lop, although brutal, was legal under international law.  Assassins in civilian clothes do not enjoy any of the protections of international law and are subject to immediate execution if captured.

This story is a microcosm of what went on in Vietnam.  The communists routinely committed war crimes yet the media seldom reported them.  The legal actions taken by the South Vietnamese and their allies, however, were often described as war crimes and routinely criticized as inhumane.  This perspective affected the way people worldwide thought about the war and the actions of the South Vietnamese and their allies.

Meetings of Antiwar Activists With Communists

Comrades—Meetings 1963-1975

Appendix IA–American “Peace Activist” Meetings[1] with Enemy During War, 1962-1975 by Roger Canfield in Comrades in Arms: How the Americong Won the War in Vietnam Against the Common Enemy-America available http://americong.com

1962

March, Hanoi, Ruth Gage-Colby, Women Strike for Peace, WSP

July, Moscow, Dagmar Wilson, Ruth Gage-Colby, WSP

July, Havana, Brad Lyttle, Fellowship for Reconciliation, FOR

July 29-August 6, Helsinki, Rabinowitz, Myer, Supriano, Frank, Coffin and 445 others, CPUSA etc.

1963

Prague, FOR

Havana, Brad Lyttle, FOR

September, Moscow, Brad Lyttle, FOR

Hanoi, trade unions.

Hanoi, Ralph Schoenman, Russell War Crimes Commission

1964

May, Havana, Dave Dellinger, FOR

June, Hanoi, Phillip Abbot Luce, PLP

June, Prague, Hassler, Jim Forest, Phil Berrigan

Sept, Moscow, Aptheker, Bloice, Goodlett, CPUSA

November, Hanoi, Robt Williams, Rittenberg, Coe, Worthy, Strong

1965

March, Hanoi, Robert Williams

July, Helsinki, Aptheker, John Lewis, Myerson, Koch, Supriano, Ward, CPUSA

May-July, Moscow, Hanoi, Jakarta, Clarke, Gordon, Frances Herring, , Margaret Russell, Phyllis Schmidt Shirley Lens, Bergman, Nanci Gitlin, Bev Axelrod, Mary Lou Packard (Randal), Ruth Gage-Colby WSP

August, Hanoi, Myerson, Koch, Supriano, Ward, CPUSA

October, Toronto, Cora Weiss, Duckles, Taylor, Ayers and 225 others

Prague, Lightfoot, CPUSA

December, Prague, Hanoi, Peking, Moscow, Aptheker, Hayden, Lynd.

1966

February 8, Cambodia,Robert Scheer.

April, Moscow, Morris Childs,

Spring, Hanoi, Ralph Schoenman,

Summer, Geneva Staughton Lynd,

June, July and August 1966, Japan, Howard Zinn, Cynthia Quenton Basset, Kay Boyle, David Dellinger, Donald Duncan, Israel Dresner, Russell Johnson, Donald Keyes, Murray Levin, Floyd McKissick, David Ernest McReynolds, Robert Morris Ockene.

July 27, Phnom Penh, Cambodia Dagmar Wilson, Donald Duncan, Floyd McKissick, Kay Boyle, Rabbi Israel Dresner and Russell Johnson.

October, Hanoi David Dellinger.

December and January, Hanoi, Harrison Salisbury.

December 22, Hanoi, Barbara Deming, Grace Mora Newman, Patricia Griffith and Diane Nash

Late December 1966, Hanoi, AJ Muste, Rabbi Abraham L. Feinberg, Ambrose Reeves, Pastor Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemoller.

1967

April, Puerto Rico Tom Hayden.

May 2-10, Stockholm, Carl Oglesby, Courtland Cox.

Summer, Stockholm, Dave Dellinger, Oglesby, James Baldwin, Stokely Carmichael, Gabriel Kolko.

April 19, Hanoi, Nick Egelson.

July 6-9, Stockholm, Spock, Herbert Aptheker, James Bevel, Amy Swerdlow, Simon Casady, Arlene Eisen Bergman, Bernardine Dohrn, Jeff Shero and 442 other Americans.

Montreal, students.

July 28 – August 5, Havana, SDS, SNCC.

August 29, Hanoi, Stokely Carmichael.

August 1967, Hanoi, David Schoenbrun and wife.

September 2-18, Hanoi, Wilfred Burchett, Dagmar Wilson, Ruth Krause and Mary, WSP.

September 6-13, 1967, BRATISLAVA, CZECHOSLOVAKIA, Hayden and David Dellinger, Robert Allen, Malcolm Boyd, Carol Brightman, John “Jock” Pairman Brown, Bronson Clark, Robert “Stoney” Cooks, Rennie Davis, Dave and Betty Dellinger, Thorne Webb Dreyer, Nicholas Egleson, red diaper baby Richard Flacks, Ross Flanagan, Norman David Fruchter, Tom Gardner, Carol Glassman, Steve Halliwell, Christopher Jencks, Russell Johnson, Carole King, Andrew David Kopkind, Robert Kramer, Carol Cohen McEldowney, Leon Moore, Linda Moore, Raymond Mungo, Douglas Craig Norberg, Vivian Emma LeBurg Rothstein, Steve Schwarzchild, Sol Stern, Dennis Sweeney, John Tillman, Barbara Webster, Eric Weinberger, Hank Werner, John Wilson, Willie Wright, Ron Wright.

September 30- Oct.18, Hanoi, Hayden entourage.

OCTOBER 28, NOVEMBER 4, Hanoi, Tom HAYDEN ON RADIO HANOI.

(November 4-11) Phnom Penh, Hayden.

1968

January 23, Haiphong and Hanoi, Quaker Action Group, AQUAG.

February 28, Japan, deserters.

February 1968, Budapest, 67 Western Hemispheric Communist parties.

November, Stockholm, American Deserters Committee, ADC

February, Havana, Tom Hayden, Carl Davidson, Todd Gitlin, Gerry Long, Susan Sutheim, Ed Jennings, Joe Horton, Paul Hugh Shinoff, and Les Coleman and 40 other Americans.

Moscow, North Korea, two SNCC leaders.

February, Havana, Ted Gold, Mark Rudd and twenty other SDS.

February 9, Vientiane, Laos Daniel Berrigan, Professor Howard Zinn.

February 17, Hanoi,. Berrigan, Zinn.

March, Hanoi Mary McCarthy, Franz Schurmann, Harry Ashmore, William Baggs and Charles Collingwood.

March, Hanoi, Charles Collingwood, Harry Ashmore and William Baggs.

April, Hanoi, Steve Halliwell.

April, Sweden, Ken Cloke.

April 3-6, Paris WSP.

Paris, American contacts.

May 3-17, Hanoi, Robert Greenblatt, Susan Sontag and Andrew Kopkind.

May 15, Hanoi, Naomi Jaffe and three other SDS members.

June 16, July, Paris, Greenblatt and Dellinger.

July, Hanoi, Richard Barnet and Marcus Raskin of IPS.

Prague and to Budapest, Greenblatt.

July 3-6, Paris, Hayden, Stuart Meacham, Vernon Grizzard, and Anne Weills Scheer.

July 17-August 1, Hanoi Hayden, Stuart Meacham, Vernon Grizzard, and Anne Weills Scheer.

July 26, Havana, five SDS and 300 others.

June 16, Prague, Robert Greenblatt and Dellinger.

July, Grenoble William Standard, Carey McWilliams, Richard Falk, Hans Morganthal, and Quincy Wright.

July 28-August 6, Sofia, Bulgaria Howard Jeffrey Melish, Leslie Cagan and some fifty to seventy-one other Americans.

August 11-14, Kyoto, Japan, 23 Americans.

August 25-28, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, Bernadine Dohrn, Judi Bernsten, Larry Bloom, Jeff Blum, Ruth Chamberlain, Bernardine Dohrn, Bryan Flack, Ruth Glick, Martin Kinner, Ellen and Fred Lessinger, Miles Mogulescu, Paul Schollmen, Mollje Struerer, and Daniel Swinney.

August 26-27, Mexico, Havana, Douglas Bernhardt, Michelle Clark, Ross Danielson, Pam Enriques, Larry Erander, Nancy Figeroa, Nick Freudenberg, Daniel Friedlander, Thomas Good, George Greunthal, Fred Halper, Louise Halper, Mark Hershel, (illegible) Iglesias, Hilda Ignatin, Jim Kulk, Jim Mitchell, Holly Moore, Steve Moore, Thomas Mosher, Mary Nalcoln, Morris Older, Sue Orrin, Mark Shapiro, Helen Shiller, Russell Smith, Jeffrey Swanson, Cliff Taylor, Joseph Webb, Marilyn Webb, and Bill Yates.

summer Cuba, Barbara Stone.

July–October, Cuba, Carol “Kali” Grosberg.

August and September, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Germany and Sweden, Bernadine Dohrn.

September 3, Budapest, Hungary, twenty-eight Americans

September 10- September 23, Paris, John Davis.

Prague Stockholm, John Davis.

September 12-16, Frankfurt, West Germany, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers.

Late September, Paris Howard Zinn, Jonathan Mirsky, George Kahin of Cornell, Marilyn Young and Douglas Dowd.

October 24-30, Paris and Stockholm Rabbi Balfour Brickner.

November 8, Japan Ernest P. Young,

November 28-December 1, Montreal, Douglas Dowd, Howard Zinn and 500 other Americans.

1969

January 1-10 Havana, Carl Oglesby, Bruce Goldberg, Russ Neufeld and Dan Friedlander.

May 14-16, Stockholm World Peace Council’s Conference on Vietnam, 1969.

April Cuba, East Berlin, Hanoi, new left.

April Prague office of the SDS Bernardine Dohrn and Steve Halliwell.

May 16-18, Stockholm, George Carrano, Donald McDonough, Anatol Rapaport, Noam Chomsky and Gabriel Kolko, John Wilson, Sherman Adams, Amy Swerdlow, Serita Crown, Althea Alexander Noam Chomsky, Joseph Elder, Bob Eaton, Bronson Clark, Joseph Crown, Richard Falk, Stanley Swerdlow, Doris Roberson, Carlton Goodlett, John McAuliff.

June 10-17, Phnom Penh, Hanoi, Joseph Elder

June 5-17, Moscow, Irving Sarnoff, , Barbara Bick, Arnold Samuel Johnson, Charles Fitzpatrick, Barbara Ruth Bick, Rennie Davis, David Tyre Dellinger, William Douthard, Douglas Fitzgerald Dowd, Carlton Benjamin Goodlett, Terrence Tyrone Hallinan, Gersho Phineas Horowitz, Arnold Johnson, Sylvia Kushner, Stewart Meacham, Sidney Peck and Irving Sarnoff

June 21-23, East Berlin, Dick Gregory; Stanley Faulkner, , Valeri Mitchell, Sonia Karose, Estelle Cypher, Susan Borenstein, Karen B. Ackerman, Herbert Aptheker, Barbara Bick, Mary Clarke, Martin Hall, Jarvis Tyner, Irving Sarnoff; Mary Angie Dickerson, Eleanor Ohman, Pauline Rosen and Carlton Goodlett.

July, Stockholm Irving Sarnoff.

July 9-15, July, Havana, Carlos Antonio Aponte, Robert Jay Barano, Christopher Kit Bakke, Thomas Wilson Bell, Edward “Corky” Benedict, Kathie Boudin, Cristina Bristol, Aubrey Brown, Robert Burlingham, George Cavalletto, Peter Clapp, Luis John Cuza, Lucas Daumont, Carl Alfred Davidson, Dianne Donghi, Bernardine Dohrn, Diane Westbrook Faber, Richard Rees Fagen, Ted Gold, Kenneth Alan Hechter, Frank Petras James, Nino Jeronimo, Gregory, Nina, Saul Irwin and Valerie Landau, Sandra Hale Levinson, Gerald “Jerry” William Long, Robert Schenk Love, Beth Susan Lyons, John “Shorty” Marquez, Albert Martinez, Howard Jeff Melish, David Millstone, Robert Edward Norton, Orlando Ortiz, Diana Oughton, Rose Paul, Verna Elinor Richey Pedrin, Jesus Maria Ramirez, Jose Ramirez, Eleanor Raskin, Patricia Ellen Shea, Jane Spielman, Jeronomi Ulpiano, Joanne Washington, Robert Wetzler, Myra Ann Wood, and Mary Woznich

August 4, Hanoi , SDS group

October 10-17, Paris, Rennie Davis and David Dellinger.

October 11-12, Stockholm, Irving Sarnoff and Ron Young.

October 15, Havana, George Cavalletto.

Late November, Havana, Julie Nichamin, Diana Oughton, John Butney (phonetic), Bruce Goldberg, Brian Murphy, Bill Thomas, Bill Drew, Phoebe Hirsch, Jerry Long. Arlene Bergman, Allen Young, Jerry Long; John McAuliff, Al Martinent. Weathermen: : Nichamin, Pierre Joseph Barthel, Neal Birnbaum, Marianne Camp, Sonia Helen Dettman, Linda Sue Evans, Laura Ann Obert, Nicholas Britt Riddle, Sheila Marie Ryan, Jeffrey David Sokolow, Mallorie N. Tolles, Robert Greg Wilfong, and Donna Jean Willmott, Willie Brand and Wendy Yoshimira, Bert Garskof, Sandy Pollack, Leslie Cagan.

December 1969 Hanoi, Cora Weiss, Ethel Taylor and Madeleine Duckles.

1970

January 31, 1970 Quebec, Montreal, Sylvia Kushner Katherine Camp, Arnold Johnson, and Stewart Meacham Stanley Faulkner, Joseph Crown, Pauline Rosen, Rev. Richard Norford

February 7-8, Vancouver, British Columbia, Carlton Goodlett and Irving Sarnoff and 125 others.

March 24- June 10, Hanoi, Stockholm, Moscow, Nancy Kurshan Rubin, Anita Susan Kushner Hoffman, Judith Gumbo Genie Plamondon.

March 28-30, Stockholm Robert Greenblatt, Irving Sarnoff, William Davidon, Doug Dowd, Carlton Goodlett, Sylvia Kushner, Noam Chomsky, Richard Fernandez, Nancy Kurshan Rubin, Anita Hoffman Judith Clavir and 34 other Americans.

February 13-April 28, Havana, Venceremos: Second Contingent, Edith Crichton, David Ira Camp, John De Wind, Nancy Frappier, Vicki Gabriner, Joyce Greenways, Ann Hathaway, Robert Hackman, Marguarita Hope, Lenore Ruth Kalom, Jonathan Lerner, Jeffrey Melish, Jed Proujansky, Daniel Ross Slick, Marguerite “Mini” Smith, Carlie Tanner, “Daren” [Karen] B. Ackerman, David L. Berger, Carol Brightman, Angela Davis, Ellis Jay Goldberg, William Joseph Maher, Karen Beth Nussbaum, Stephen William Shriver, Shari Whitehead.

April 13, Hanoi Noam Chomsky, Douglas Dowd and Rev. Richard Fernandez

April 12-22, Hanoi 1970 Institute for Policy Studies—Charlotte Bunch-Weeks, Gerald Shin, Frank Joyce and Elisabeth Sutherland-Martinez.

late May, Paris, John Kerry and his new wife Julia Thorne.

May 22-24, Toronto, Joseph H. Crown, William Standard, Richard Falk and 97 other U.S. lawyers.

May, Prague, Czechoslovakia, Ann Hathaway, Eleanor Ruth Kalom, Jonathan David Lerner and Carlie Tanner

June 25-July 2, Paris, Adam Schesch and 31 Minnesotans.

July 27, Havana, third Venceremos Brigade, Jon Frederic Frappier, Eda Godell Hallinan, Richard Gutman and others.

August 27, Cuba Robert Greenblatt,, Nancy Kurshan (Rubin), and Judy Clavir, Judy Gumbo)

Continuous, Cuban intelligence, Bernardine Dohrn, Martin Kenner, Mark Rudd, Julie Nichamin, Karen Koonan, Kathy Boudin, Gerry Long, Karen Ashley, Jeff Jones and Jennifer Dohrn.

August 25-27, Helsinki, Dave Dellinger, Bernardine Dohrn and others.

August and early September 1970, USSR, North Korea, North Vietnam, Algeria, and China, Eldridge Cleaver, Robert Scheer, Regina Blumenfeld, Randy Rappaport, Alexander Hing, Janet Austin, Hideko Pat Sumi, Anne Froines Janet Kranzberg Elaine Brown, Judith Clavir Andrew Truskier.

September 18-23, Pyongyang, Eldridge Cleaver and Byron Booth.

Algeria Cleaver.

September 23, Canada, Jane Fonda, Tommy Douglas

October 22-25, New Delhi, India, Moscow, three Americans.

November 9-23, Hanoi, Peter Weiss, William Standard and Morton Stavis.

November 28-30, Stockholm, David Dellinger, Rep. Ron Dellums, William Douthard, Sidney Peck, Jerrie M. Meadows, Willie Jenkins, Janey Hayes, Pauline Rosen, Bruce Beyer, Gerry Condon, Mike Powers, John Woods, Estelle Cypher, Eleanor Fowler, Carlton Goodlett, Gil Green Rev. Thomas Hayes, Stan Faulkner Ron Young Silvia Kushner and 15 other Americans.

December Moscow, Saigon, Paris, Hanoi, Mark Rasenick, Doug Hostetter, Keith Parker, David Ifshin and eight other NSA members. People’s Peace Treaty, Robert Greenblatt, Douglas Hostetter.

December 18-26, Hanoi, Anne M. Bennett, Ron Young, Trudi Young, Mary Luke Tobin

1971

March 3-10, Paris, Gabriel Kolko Rev. William T. Gramley, Allan Brick, Mrs. Allides Christopher, Rev. Richard McCollum, Mrs. Jane Whitney, Elaine Schmitt Urbain, Bud Ogle, Rev. Bruce Pierce Harriet Price and 160 other Americans.

Paris. Jane Fonda, Mark Lane, and Michael Hunter.

April 1-6, Vancouver and Toronto, Canada, 600-1,000 American women.

May 10, Paris, Sidney and Louise Peck, Robert Greenblatt, Carol Kitchen and Jack Davis

May 12-16, Budapest, Hungary, Ruth Gage-Colby, John Rankin Davis, Pauline Rosen and 25 other Americans including VVAW.

June 5, 1971, Stockholm, Larry Levin, Tom Hayden and others

June 20-26, Moscow, Oslo and Paris. VVAW Larry Rottman, John Onda, John Randolph “Randy” Floyd or Ken Campbell

Late June, Paris Cora Weiss, Richard Falk, David Dellinger and Ethel Taylor.

September 11-12, Paris. George McGovern, Frank Mankiewicz, Pierre Salinger

On September 21, Stockholm American Deserters Committee, ADC.

Late October, Hanoi WSP’s Amy Swerdlow and two others.

December 21, Paris, Rev. Richard Fernandez, a COLIFAM courier.

August, Paris, John Kerry

Paris VVAW staff member Joe Urgo’s trip to along with a [redacted] member of the War Resisters League, WRL, and [redacted] of Women’s Strike for Peace, WSP.[2]

Hanoi, David McReynold.

Paris, Al Hubbard.

1972

February 5, Paris, Richard J. Barnet and Peter Weiss of IPS.

late February Hanoi, China, George Wald.

January-March, Paris, Budapest, Moscow, Hanoi, and Japan, Al Hubbard.

Mid-February-March, Hanoi, Al Hubbard, Seymour Hersh and Pete Seeger.

February 11-13, Versailles, France, John Gilman, Elizabeth Moos, Sidney Peck, Evelynne Perry, Pauline Rosen, Irving and Ruth Sarnoff, Abe Weisburd, Bernard Weller, Michael Zagarell, Deborah Bustin, Fred Halstead, Daniel Rosenshine, Rennie Davis, Jane Fonda; Al Hubbard, [Richard?] Joe Bangert, Edward Damato, Robert Greenblatt, Fred Branfman, Delia Alvarez, Ron Ridenour, Margery Tabankin, Howard Zinn.

End of March, Hanoi, David Livingston and other labor leaders.

April 6-8, Paris, Cora Weiss, Bob Levering Marcus Raskin, Sister Mary –Luc (sic, Luke) Tobin, Stoney Cookes and Maria Jolas. .

April 20 Paris, Rep. Bella Abzug, Rep. Patsy Takemoto Mink and Amy] Swerdlow.

May 19-21, Canada, a VVAW member.

Mid-May? Paris, Rennie Davis

On May 25, Hanoi, Robert Lecky, Rev. Paul Mayer; Marge Tabankin, William Zimmerman

Late June Paris, Peter Mahoney, Rich Bangert, John Bochum, Stanley Michelson, Joseph Hirsch, Gary Steger, Forest Lindley, David Baily, John Turner, “Jack” Bronaugh, Willie Sykes, Ronald Sable, Thomas Zangrilli, Sean Newton, Toby Hollander, Paul Richards, Donald Ullrich all sixteen VVAW members

July 5, Cuba, Jean-Pierre Wendell, Leland Lubinsky, Fred Werner, Alan Morris, and Albert Morgafive members of VVAW in Venceremos Brigade.

June 6-10, Paris, Tom Hayden, David Dellinger and Rennie Davis

Most of July 1972 Hanoi, Moscow Jane Fonda.

August 4, Hanoi ,Dr. George Perera and John A. Sullivan.

July 29 to August 12, Hanoi, General Ramsey Clark.

End of August, Paris, David Dellinger and Cora Weiss.

September 11, Hanoi, Mrs. Charles, Mrs. Gartley, Elias, Weiss, Dellinger, Coffin, Mrs. Mary Anne Hamilton and Rev. Harry Bury.

October 4-17, Hanoi, 1972, Drs. Gardner, Simon and Wolf and one other.

In October 1972, Copenhagen, Denmark, CALC, and VVAW member assisting ADC.

During October Hanoi, Jane Hart (nee Senator Philip Hart), Mrs. D. Goodwin, Muriel Rukeyser and Denise Levertov COLIFAM sponsored.

End of October 25, Hanoi, Joseph Crown, Malcolm Monroe, Lawrence Velvel and John Wells.

Late October Paris, Cora Weiss and Richard Barnet.

November 12, Hanoi, Hayden, Howard Zinn, Rev. David Hunter, Fred Branfman, Susan Miller, Carolyn Mugar, Jan Austin.

December 11, Hanoi, Joan Baez; the Episcopal Rev. Michael Allen of Yale Divinity; Barry Romo , Gen. Telford Taylor.

1973

Hayden and Fonda Paris. They marched off to the Vietnamese mission.

January 23-February 3, Hanoi Dorothy R. Steffens,[3] Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, and Marii Hasegawa all WILFP.

February 19-24, Rome, Sidney Peck, John David Musgrave

July 28-August 4, East Berlin, 1973, Robert Diaz, Maria Elena Gaitan, Tony Herman, Maggie Block, Tim Brick, Judy Simmons, Joe Rhodes, Mary Clemons, Jeanne Woods, Linda Weber, Beatrice Siskind Johnson, Karen Ackerman, and some 285 other Americans.

August 2-15, 1973, Tokyo, Gensuiko,

August 8-August 26, Moscow, Kiev, Leningrad, and Odessa, many Americans.

October 20-27, Paris, Hayden, Jane Fonda and others re: Germantown strategy meeting.

October 25-November 2, 1973, Moscow, Brian Adams, Joan Elberg, Andre Souquire, Ann Bailey, John Naveau, Tim Butz, Pete Zastrow, Paul Mayer, Grace Paley, Noam Chomsky, David Dellinger, David McReynolds, Sidney Peck, Noam Chomsky, Father Dan Berrigan and 1805 other Americans.

November 1973, “liberated” South Vietnam, Cora Weiss, Don Luce and professor Sam Noumoff.

Sometime, Hanoi, Karen Nussbaum and six other IPC.

December 8-9, Paris, Barry Romo and Peter Zastrow.

December 1973 Hanoi, professor Gabriel Kolko.

1974

March 29-31, Stockholm, Fred Branfman, Richard A. Falk, William Goodfellow, Gabriel Kolko.

April 1-24, North Vietnam “liberated South Vietnam, Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda.

1975

March, Moscow, Jane Fonda.

March 1975, Hanoi, Professor Gabriel Kolko.

March 13, Cuba, 125-135 Americans in Eighth Venceremos Brigade.

April, Cuba, 200 Americans travel in 9th Venceremos Brigade.

On April 7 Paris, Cora Weiss and Gareth Porter.

April 16-27, Hanoi, Larry Levin

April 29, Hanoi, John McAuliff.

May 17, Vancouver, Arlene Eisen Bergman and 250 other Americans.

Amsterdam, American “peace” organizations.

June 20-22, Stockholm, Cora Weiss, Fred Branfman and Ira Arlook.

1985

April and May, Hanoi, David Dellinger, George Wald, John McAuliff and two others celebrate the 10th anniversary of the conquest of South Vietnam. Invited ,Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, do not go.

[1] Does not include Radio Hanoi, correspondence, telephone contacts in FBIS broadcasts and NSA intercepts.

Comrades In Arms – An Excerpt

One of our members, Dr. Roger Canfield, has published a massive book detailing all of the associations and actions of the anti-war activists involved in the Vietnam War, demonstrating their close cooperation with worldwide communism.  (The book is over 2,100 pages and more than 6,000 footnotes.)  When I suggested, on an academic discussion list, that Dr. Canfield’s book had merit and should be studied, the response I got was that no reputable scholar would read a book with that title.

So much for the spirit of inquiry.

Father Daniel Joseph Berrigan was a Jesuit priest who became actively involved in the Vietnam War’s anti-war movement.

Comrades—BerriganDanielExcerpts

What you will not see in obituaries for Daniel Berrigan

Excerpts from Roger Canfield’s Comrades in Arms: How the Americong Won the War in Vietnam Against the Common Enemy—America. An e-book at http://americong.com

Catholic Peace Fellowship at Christian Peace Conference in Prague

Fellowship of Reconciliation’s John Heidbrink invited Catholic Worker’s Jim Forest, Father Daniel Berrigan, Herman Evans and James Douglass to, very curiously, the Communist capitol of Prague to formalize the Catholic Peace Fellowship as an affiliate of FOR.[1] Happy coincidence?

Christian Peace Conference, June 1964, Prague

At the end of June 1964 in Prague, Czechoslovakia the Christian Peace Conference, CFC, met. A U.S. based committee recruited Americans to attend the CPC.[2] Alfred Hassler of Fellowship of Reconciliation, FOR, had tasked John Heidbrink to recruit American Catholics into FOR and the peace movement. Though formed in 1963 in the USA by Jim Forest, Marty Corbin and Philip Berrigan,[3] FOR’s John Heidbrink invited Catholic Worker’s Jim Forest, Father Daniel Berrigan, Herman Evans and James Douglass to, very curiously, the Communist capitol of Prague to formalize the Catholic Peace Fellowship as an affiliate of FOR.[4] Could members of the universal Catholic Church become recruits to international Communism? Unfortunately, yes.

Communist controlled East European leadership, (Joseph Hromadka, Alexander Karew, Archbishop Nikodim, Bishop Barta, and Prof. Schmauch) entirely dominated The Christian Peace conference, CPC.[5] …

….As LBJ was signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, David Dellinger was leading a protest against the Vietnam War in Lafayette Park across from the White House. Joining Dellinger were A.J. Muste, Joan Baez, Rabbi and Democrat fundraiser[6] Abraham Feinberg, and Catholic priests Daniel and Phillip Berrigan. The protest was to draw attention to a “Declaration of Conscience” against the draft.[7] Meanwhile, Catholics faced the gentle touch of the Vietcong in South Vietnam. July 14, 1964, the Viet Cong executed Pham Thao, chairman of the Catholic Action Committee in Quang Ngai, …

…In 1967 Berrigan had had considerable conflict with superiors in his Jesuit order over his desire to go to Hanoi with the Fellowship of Reconciliation, FOR, to bring medical supplies. Thomas Merton, a Communist while at Columbia University and then a dupe of communist front groups,[8] advised Berrigan to follow his conscience.[9] …

…Writers and Editors Tax Protest against “Immoral” Vietnam War

During late 1967 and early 1968 Gerald Walker of the New York Times Sunday Magazine organized a protest against an LBJ proposed 10% tax on telephones and “many of us” opposed “23% of current income to …finance the (‘morally wrong’) Vietnam War. The ad was printed in Ramparts, New York Review of Books, and the New York Post in January and February 1968.

Many had far left, including Communist, credentials and engaged in pro-Hanoi activities. Out of 528 signers the most noteworthy were. M. S. Arnoni[10], Robert B. Avakian, James Baldwin, Irving Beinin, Daniel Berrigan, S. J., Philip Berrigan, …

…Declaration of Conscience

For some it was their last pretense of neutrality before going over to the other side.

The Catholic Worker, the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA), the Student Peace Union (SPU), and the War Resisters League (WRL) published the “Declaration of Conscience Against the War in Vietnam.” Some 6,000 signed including Daniel and Phil Berrigan, ….The Declaration argued that opposing Communist would spread it further. “There is not one shred of credible evidence that the bulk of munitions used by the Vietcong originate in the north.”

… On February 16, 1968, Father Daniel Berrigan and Professor Howard Zinn traveled to Hanoi and met Pham Van Dong. According to Berrigan’s notes, Dong said, in part, “…We have a common front. We are in combat here and you there.”[11] As comrades in arms, they were surely on the same side….

In March 1968, Mary McCarthy, self-described utopian socialist and member of the international literati arrived in Hanoi in the midst of the Tet Offensive and on the heels of the release of three American POWs to Father Daniel Berrigan and Professor Howard Zinn. …

…On tour [in Hanoi] Dellinger saw bombed hospitals. Thereafter the now Hanoi-credentialed Dellinger, like Tom Hayden before him, helped arrange trips to North Vietnam for others such as Diane Nash Bevel, Patricia Griffith, Daniel Berrigan, Howard Zinn and various women and clergy groups.[12] Hayden and Dellinger, joined by Cora Weiss, the three became Hanoi’s major gatekeepers for fellow travelers to Hanoi and Paris.

…The most noteworthy and published American and western contributors to the Bulletin of Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars during the Vietnam War and its immediate aftermath, 1968-1977, were: Iqbal Ahmad, Doug Allen, Frank Baldwin, Dan Berrigan, Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, CCAS, for the expressed purpose to oppose The “brutal aggression of the United States in Vietnam” and to encourage “anti-imperialist research.” …

It was socialism of the peculiar communist kind. As uncritically Marxist the CCAS promoted Mao’s cultural revolution.[13]

MaoistPoster

CCAS supported several generations of pro-Hanoi historians of the Vietnam War …

…Hanoi POW Releases—Berrigan and Zinn

After a telegrammed request from the Vietnamese Peace Committee citing “a repentant attitude” of several POWs on January 28, 1968 to David Dellinger, on February 17, 1968, Tom Hayden and David Dellinger coordinated[14] a second POW release to Father Daniel Berrigan and professor and secret Communist Howard Zinn. …

Upon arrival in “the destroyed city” of Hanoi, Catholic priest and poet, Daniel Berrigan thought, “the loveliest fact of all was the most elusive and insignificant, we had been received with flowers”[15] also sandals, and the poems of Ho Chi Minh.[16] …

…“Feeling of victory in Hanoi during the Viet Cong Tet offensive.”

At the North Vietnamese Embassy in Vientiane, Laos during Tet on February 9 Berrigan says the Hanoi Vietnamese “are too humane to rake over our losses [in Tet]. …Time has gone over to their side, in the night.” They are so courteous and gentle “during a week of humiliation of the Allies.”[17] Zinn said, “there was a lot of feeling of victory in Hanoi during the Viet Cong Tet offensive. …the NLF is a force in its own right.”[18]

… “We wanted badly to wander by ourselves, but the danger was explained to us.”[19]

Instead of going to see what was going on, Zinn and Berrigan listened to a six-hour lecture from Col. Ha Van Lau[20] followed by days filled with an orchestrated tour of bomb debris, damaged hospital, war museums, commune, folk art and a film on the life of Ho.

They were shown the damaged body parts (e.g. “brain and skull and heart and viscera”) in jars of victims of bombings. It all proved America was waging “a monstrous and intentionally genocidal war.”[21] Berrigan believed black ghettos in the USA were also evidence of “genocidal intent.” Berrigan’s hate for America seemed to fuel his love for Hanoi.[22]

Premier Pham Van Dong: “great intelligence…great reserves of compassion.”

On February 16, 1968 Berrigan and Zinn met Premier Pham Van Dong at his French villa and garden behind armored doors.

Berrigan saw in the “face of this man…complexity dwells…life and death…great intelligence, and yet also great reserves of compassion.” (Seven years later in 1975 Dong’s mother saw no such compassion and fled her son’s invasion [of South Vietnam]. …

“We are in combat here, and you there.”

According to Berrigan’s notes, Dong said, in part, “Your visit is of some importance… We ask…that you clarify the meaning of war for your fellow Americans.” Dong said, “public opinion in your country is of the essence.” Further “we have a common front. We are in combat here, and you there.”[23] Comrades in arms, they were on the same side.

POWs: Correct Attitude

The Vietnamese explained to Berrigan and Zinn why they were releasing POW pilots. “We are trying to educate the pilots. …It is not easy to convince these men of a new way; long and patient explanation is requires. …. Is it possible, that (the pilots will)…do something for the antiwar movement in the United States?”[24]

Bratislava comrade Ray Mungo of Liberation News Service, received a Telex, “doubtless written by some of the Vietnamese I’d met in Bratislava, and this from Zinn and Berrigan”:

RELEASE OF THREE AIRMEN IMMINENT.

NORTH VIETNAMESE OUTRAGED AT CONTINUING BOMBARDMENT BUT RETAIN COMPASSION FOR AIRMEN WHO ARE TRAPPED BY WASHINGTON DECISIONS.

HOPE RELEASED AIRMEN NEVER AGAIN BOMB YET AWARE POSSIBILITY THREE RELEASED PILOTS RETURN TO BOMB VIETNAM.

WE ARE MOVED BY NORTH VIETNAMESE STATEMENT “EVEN IF THIS HAPPENS WE RETAIN FAITH IN ULTIMATE DECENCY OF AMERICAN PEOPLE.[25]

No Longer Hostages

There was one hitch in the propaganda driven release.

The prisoners were “escorted as far as Vientiane, where the [POW] officers elected to transfer to US military aircraft.”[26] Instead of Father Berrigan and Professor Zinn, the POWs soon had official U.S. government escorts.[27] …

…Berrigan wrote to POW families that the mental and physical condition of the men was good and so was their weight. Berrigan had every reason to believe that the Vietnamese acted “humanely toward prisoners.”[28]

Berrigan believed the North Vietnamese. The POWs were reformed just like the French prisoners before them by “a process of inward change.” And so “without prompting,” the POWs readily told Berrigan how good their food and medical care was.[29] …

…POW Escort Berrigan: Jesuit Napalms Draft Cards

Maj. Norris Overly’s escort Daniel Berrigan and eight others –Philip Berrigan, David Darst, John Hogan, Tom Lewis, Marjorie Melville, Thomas Melville, George Mische and Mary Moylan– had earned considerable media notoriety as the Cantonsville Nine.

They staged the napalming of the draft files of 378 persons in wire trashcans before an assembled crowd of reporters at the Catonsville, Maryland draft board. FOR’s Allan Brick characterized it all as a nonviolent act of conscience.[30]

“Their major accomplishment was scaring the hell out of the little old ladies at the office of the Catonsville draft board,” remembers Pat Joyce, an editor at the Baltimore Evening Sun and of several Catholic newspapers.[31] Convicted and sentenced to three years in prison, Berrigan went underground, was captured and served 18 months before being paroled in 1972.  …

…Entertainment Industry for Peace and Justice

In planning for Hollywood celebrations of May Day 1971 and other causes, Jane Fonda, Shirley and Donald Sutherland formed the Entertainment Industry for Peace and Justice, EIPJ,[32] in March 1971. …

Donald Sutherland introduced film excerpts of “Winter Soldier,” which had premiered at Cannes and at the Whitney Museum in New York, focusing on VVAW that war crimes were American policy in Vietnam. Lancaster read a statement from Daniel Berrigan and introduced Fonda who described EIPJ as part of a broad coalition for peace and justice. Only later would Jon Voight describe how he “was surrounded by people were heavily programed Marxist…very, very deep.”[33] He concluded there was “Marxist propaganda underlying the so-called peace movement.” He told Glenn Beck, “I didn’t even realize it at the time…the communists were behind organizing all of these rallies and things.” [34]

CP World Assembly for Peace Versailles, France February 11-13, 1972

“A horde of Communist-controlled agitators”

Soviet controlled fronts, World Peace Council, WPC, and the Stockholm Conference on Vietnam joined by 48 French Communist Party and associated organizations sponsored a World Assembly for Peace in Versailles, France from February 11-13, 1972.

…The plenary session of the Assembly in Versailles then adopted a specific six week antiwar program, virtual instructions, for the U.S. antiwar movement for April and May: April 1 defense of Harrisburg defendants Berrigan et al, Angela Davis; April 15, Tax Resistance Day; and in early May, actions inside military bases.[35]

Protests were to encourage “draft evasions, desertions, resistance, demonstrations which now effect even soldiers.”[36]

…On March 20, 1972 New York Times man, Seymour Hersh, returned from Hanoi to hand off Hanoi’s POW mail to Daniel Berrigan who held a press conference at New York’s Main Post Office at 8th Avenue and 33rd Street announcing he was joining COLIFAM.[37] Berrigan, escort to three POWS, was surely on Hanoi’s approved list since it had selected all of COLIFAM’s members.

Americans Begging to Dissent, Nicely…Please

…In Moscow, a group of Americans—Paul Mayer, Grace Paley, Noam Chomsky, David Dellinger, David McReynolds and Sidney Peck– chose to send a tepid message of support for political dissenters in the Soviet Union. A stronger message was not sent because of differences with “Russian friends.”[38] The American “friends” argued they had “earned a right” to a slight dissent because they were “outspoken critics” of the “monstrous …attacks on Indochina” and, like their friendly hosts, sought “social justice.”

They certainly were not seeking to make any invidious comparisons between the Soviet’s relatively bloodless Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia with the truly “hideous loss of life” in Chile. Solidarity with Allende’s Chile was a major program of the CPUSA and its fronts.[39]

…Genuflections complete, the group simply announced, “We support the Soviet dissidents.” Grace Paley, Father Paul Mayer, Noam Chomsky, Dave Dellinger, David McReynolds, Sidney Peck, Father Dan Berrigan and unrecorded others signed the pathetic petition.[40] The whole body of the World Congress of Peace Forces, including over 150 of the 200 American delegates, “disassociated itself from [the] statement.”[41] The “dissent” message appears to have been meant for an American headline, perhaps in the New York Review of Books.

Vietnam: Fulfilling the Obligations of National Security With Restraint

…Acting with restraint unknown to government institutions elsewhere, the FBI, NSA, DIA, ONI, local police and CIA[42] did attempt to discover collaboration with the enemy.

…The FBI was wiretapping the telephones of 17-30 individuals in 1970 out of over 220 million Americans.

…Of 2,370 COINTELPRO operations over 15 years 58% were against the Communist Party.[43]

Again the list of alleged targets is long including Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., AIM leader Leonard Peltier, Black Liberation Army (BLA) Sundiata Acoli, Assata Shakur, Dhoruba Al-Mujahid Bin Wahad (formerly Richard Moore), and the New York 3 (Herman Bell, Anthony “Jalil” Bottom, and Albert “Nuh” Washington), Cesar Chavez, Fathers Daniel and Phillip Berrigan, Rev. Jesse Jackson, David Dellinger.

…As we have seen above many of these individuals and groups were worthy of FBI attention.

…COINTEL operations against the New Left were 8.3% of the total. 91.7% had little or nothing to do with the New Left opposition to the war.

Joan Baez …Open Letter to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Co-Signers . Daniel Berrigan, serial supporter of Communist Party USA (CPUSA) fronts, the Socialist Workers party (SWP), traveled to Hanoi in 1968 with secret Communist Howard Zinn to take custody of American POWs, joined Hanoi front COLIFAM[44] exploiting POWs, member of Cantonsville Nine which napalmed local draft files, attended Citizens Conference on Ending the War in Indochina in Paris[45] meeting Vietnamese communists, in March 1971 joined Jane Fonda’s Entertainment Industry for Peace and Justice, EIPJ,[46] and later allied with the Workers World Party (WWP).

Baez remembered, “A campaign was launched to stop me.

…Previous Associates of Hayden-Fonda Left Joined Joan Baez

Despite such pressure, many friends of Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda did sign the Joan Baez ad: Ed Asner, Daniel Berrigan, Pat Brown (not Jerry Brown), David Carliner (ACLU), Caesar Chavez, Benjamin Dreyfus, Douglas Fraser, Allen Ginsberg, Lee Grant, Terence Hallinan, Nat Nentoff, Norman Lear, Staughton Lynd, Mike Nichols, I.F. Stone, William Styron, Lily Tomlin, Peter Yarrow….

[1] Thomas C. Cornell, “Catholic Peace Fellowship Ten years Old,” The National Catholic Reporter, April 25, 1975; Christian Peace Conference 1964-66, correspondence of Jim Forest and John Heidbrick, Catholic Peace Fellowship, CCPF 2/12 Folder, Notre Dame Archives, CPF 002.

[2] United States Committee for the Christian Peace Conference, 1966-1967, Box 11, Records of the Church Peace Mission, 1950-1967, Collection: DG 177, Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore, PA.

[3] Relationship of FOR to CPF, Catholic Peace Fellowship Records, University of Notre Dame Archives, CCPF boxes 11-17.

[4] Thomas C. Cornell, “Catholic Peace Fellowship Ten years Old,” The National Catholic Reporter, April 25, 1975; Christian Peace Conference 1964-66, correspondence of Jim Forest and John Heidbrick, Catholic Peace Fellowship, CCPF 2/12 Folder, Notre Dame Archives, CPF 002.

[5] Radio Free Europe June 10, 1964, Open Society Archives, U.S.A.BOX-FOLDER-REPORT: 17-1-95. at http://files.osa.ceu.hu/holdings/300/8/3/text/17-1-95.shtml.

[6] 8/25/1972, FBI, Information Digest, Special Report on VVAW, http://www.wintersoldier.com/staticpages/index.php?page=InfoDigestGuide

[7] Andrew E. Hunt, David Dellinger: The Life and Times of a Nonviolent Revolutionary, New York: NY University Press, 2006, 135 cites James Tracy, Direct Action: Radical Pacifism from the Union Eight to the Chicago Seven, Chicago; Chicago University Press, 1996, 128 and New York Times July 4, 1964; Nancy Zaroulis and Gerald Sullivan, Who Spoke Up: American Protest Against the War in Vietnam 1963-1975, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984, 20.

[8] Paul Kengor, Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century, Wilmington: ISI Books, 2010, 86, n29 528.

[9] Berrigan, Daniel. Night Flight to Hanoi: War Diary with 11 Poems. New York: Macmillan, 1968.

[10] M.S. Arnoni was the publisher of Minority of One which printed many Soviet propaganda articles according to Oleg Kalugin, Arnoni’s control officer. Kalugin also had KGB-written and funded ads placed in the New York Times and the Nation.

[11] Daniel Berrigan, Night Flight to Hanoi, New York: Macmillan, 1968, 128.

[12] James W. Clinton interview of David Dellinger, January 23, 1991 and November 16, 1990 in James W. Clinton, The Loyal Opposition: Americans in North Vietnam, 1965-1972, Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1995, 47-51.

[13] Richard Baum, China and The American Dream: a Moral Inquiry, Seattle: University of Washington, 2010, 236-9.

[14] FBI, FOIA, Howard Zinn.

[15] Daniel Berrigan, Night Flight to Hanoi, 38, 134 cited in Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims, 356.

[16] Daniel Berrigan, Night Flight to Hanoi, XIV, cited in Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims, 371.

[17] Daniel Berrigan, Night Flight to Hanoi, New York: Macmillan, 1968, 31.

[18] FBI, FOIA, Howard Zinn, BS 100-35505

[19] Daniel Berrigan, Night Flight to Hanoi, New York: Macmillan, 1968, 41.

[20] Daniel Berrigan, Night Flight to Hanoi, New York: Macmillan, 1968, 50-6.

[21] Daniel Berrigan, Night Flight to Hanoi, New York: Macmillan, 1968, 65.

[22] Daniel Berrigan, Night Flight to Hanoi, New York: Macmillan, 1968, 55; Daniel Berrigan, Night Flight to Hanoi, 78-9, 86, 111 cited in Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims, 201.

[23] Daniel Berrigan, Night Flight to Hanoi, New York: Macmillan, 1968, 128.

[24] Daniel Berrigan, Night Flight to Hanoi, New York: Macmillan, 1968, 42-3.

[25] Ray Mungo, Famous Long Ago: My Life And Hard Times With Liberation News Service, Citadel Press, 1970, 28. http://www.sunrisedancer.com/radicalreader/library/famouslongago.pdf

[26] CIA, FOIA, case number EO11978-00207, “International Connections of US Peace Groups—III,” 2-3.

[27] Tom Hayden, “Impasse …” Ramparts, Aug. 24, 1968, 18.

[28] (Rev)Daniel Berrigan to Dear Friends, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, March 3, 1968.

[29] Daniel Berrigan, Night Flight to Hanoi, 78-9, 86, 111 cited in Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims,353.

[30] Allan Brick, Report on the Cantonsville Nine: What is Nonviolence Today? Pamphlet at Political Pamphlet Collection, University of Missouri Special Collection; Marion Mollin, Radical Pacifism in Modern America: Egalitarianism and Protest, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.

[31] Joyce to author.

[32] Contemporary flyer announcing event in possession of author.

[33] Glenn Beck show, Fox News, June 11, 2009.

[34] Jon Voight, op ed. Washington Times, July 28, 2008, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/28/voight/

[35] FBI, Denver, Memo, “VVAW National Steering Committee Meeting, Denver, Colo, February 18-21, 1972, Internal Security-new Left,” March 17, 1972, 31-33.

[36] [Unsigned, likely John Dougherty and or Bernard Wells], Intelligence Evaluation Group Committee and Staff, “Foreign Support for Activities Planned to Disrupt or Harass the Republican National Convention,” 21 March, 1972, CIA, FOIA, Family Jewels,553-4.

[37] Daily World, March 21, 1972; FBI, SAC New York to Director, COLIFAM IS-New Left AIRTEL, March 21, 1972;

[38] Ray Ellis, “The World Congress of Peace Forces,” Political Affairs, Journal of Marxist Thought and Analysis, January. 1974, 14.

[39] e.g. National Conference in Solidarity with Chile, February 8-9, 1975 at Concordian Teachers College in River Forest outside of Chicago. CPUSA fronts as Trade Unionists for Action and Democracy, TUAD; the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, NAARPR, National Lawyers Guild, NLG; Emma Lazarus Clubs; Venceremos Brigade; CPUSA-controlled or influenced International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union — ILWU; Local 1199 of the Drug and Hospital Workers; United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers; Amalgamated Meatcutters; Marxist organizations Puerto Rican Socialist Party, People’s Party, New American Movement, and Socialist Party.

[40] “American Dissent in Moscow,” The New York Review of Books, Volume 20, Number 20, December 13, 1973. nybooks.com/articles/9657.

[41] Thulani Davis, “Remembering Grace Paley (1922-2007),” Alternet.org, August 25, 2007. http://www.alternet.org/story/60693/; also Grace Paley 1922-2007: Acclaimed Poet and Writer Dies at 84, Democracy Now, August 24th, 2007 http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/24/1322211

[42] Much is made of CIA involvement in domestic affairs.

The CIA did assist the Washington Metropolitan Police Department during the 1969-1971 anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. It provided a radio receiver and several automobiles equipped with radios and manned by two Field Office Agents. See: CIA, FOIA, “CIA support to Washington metropolitan police department during anti-Vietnam War demonstrations 1969-1971 described,” reference: 1983-000131, 1.

[43] Ray Wannall, The Real J. Edgar Hoover: For the Record, Paducah: Turner Publishing Company, 2000,77.

[44] Daily World, March 21, 1972; FBI, SAC New York to Director, COLIFAM IS-New Left AIRTEL, March 21, 1972;

[45] FBI, Memo, “Travel of U.S. Citizens to Paris, France, sponsored by Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam, American Friends Service Committee, and Fellowship of Reconciliation, March 3-10, 1971,” March 23, 1971 File No. 100-11392 at FBI, FOIA, A, AFSC.

[46] Contemporary flyer announcing event in possession of author.

WHY NO KHMER ROUGE TRIAL FOR THE HANOI COMMUNISTS?

This article is posted at the request and with the permission of its author.

The Khmer Rouge trial grinds on slowly on the outskirts of Phnom Penh largely ignored by the world and the citizens of Cambodia. As a Vietnam Veteran listening to testimony in February of 2015 describing the Maoist-inspired genocide that killed two million Cambodians, I was suddenly struck by the obvious- that the Vietnamese communists in Hanoi were just as guilty as the Khmer Rouge; after all, Ho Chi Minh and the Hanoi communists created the Khmer Rouge. And Hanoi should also be held responsible for the war crimes they committed against their own people after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Not only did the Hanoi Stalinists kill as many innocent people as the Khmer Rouge, but they are still doing it in the Central Highlands of Vietnam and the World gives them a free pass on it.

The Hanoi inspired Stalinists also forced masses of their population into 150 concentration/slave labor camps similar to what the Khmer Rouge did after April of 1975. According to R.J. Rummel in his statistics on democide, the number that Hanoi killed of their own people, and to include the Hmong in Laos and the Montagnards in Vietnam could have reached over two million from 1975 through 1987.

On a lesser scale, the communists are still doing it in Vietnam, incarcerating the Buddhist, Christian, Hoa Hao , and the Cao Dai religious leaders who still languish in prison if they don’t submit to the thought control policies of the State. And they still aggressively perpetrate an under-the -radar genocide in the Central Highlands against the Montagnard nation that had fought with the Americans in the Vietnam War. So how does Hanoi escape the scrutiny that is now applied to the five former leaders of the Khmer Rouge on trial? The answer is that they were much more clever and devious about killing large numbers of people and in a direct way, they control the outcome of the Khmer Rouge trial in Phnom Penh because they are the power behind the scenes in Cambodia and Southeast Asia.

The first Khmer Rouge to be found guilty since the trial began in 2006 was Comrade Duch, the chief torturer of the notorious S-21 detention center in Phnom Penh. When the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1979 and their forces entered Phnom Penh, they found the Toul Slung prison where Duch and his henchman first tortured, then obtained signed confessions from the 14,000 suspected spies and traitors who were then murdered. In the eyes of” Brother Number One”, Pol Pot, they were all guilty of being CIA agents, or were tainted and under the influence of the Hanoi-trained Khmer Rouge. Under the Orwellian nightmare the Khmer Rouge created, all the inmates were guilty because they had confessed their sins, albeit under torture, and signed their confessions under the direction of Duch.

The Hanoi Stalinists did exactly the same thing in their 150 Gulags. In 1981, Amnesty International wrote a protest letter to the Hanoi crowd demanding they release the hundreds of thousands they still held in their prison camps. Hanoi responded in Khmer Rouge fashion with a written response. “In all cases of people being sent to reeducation camps, the competent authorities have established files recording the criminal acts committed by the people concerned.”

To those they trusted, the Hanoi communists boasted in private about their bloodletting. Nguyen Cong Hoan, a member of the Buddhist antiwar opposition in the old South Vietnam and member of the National Assembly until he defected, has said, “The party leaders have told me they are very proud of their talent for deceiving world opinion. We’re worse than Pol Pot they joke, but the outside world knows nothing.”

There are many peculiarities connected to the trial that outside observers are unaware. Yes, a Khmer Rouge trial in a country governed by a former Khmer Rouge Commander put into power by the Vietnamese when they invaded Cambodia in 1979. Prime Minister Hen Sen is still in power after 40 years assisted by many former Khmer Rouge leaders and soldiers who run the country today serving in the Army and Police that run the dictatorship there. He is assisted by Vietnamese “advisors” who can be found at every level of the Cambodian government. Hun Sen controls the trial and he has limited the prosecutions to only five former Khmer Rouge leaders, one of whom has died, Ieng Sary, former Deputy Prime Minister, and his wife, Ieng Thirith, former Minister of Social Affairs, whose case has been dismissed because she suffers from dementia. Many believe that if any more Khmer Rouge leaders are put on trial they will rat out Hun Sen and leaders of The Cambodian Communist Party and tell of their role in the genocide in Cambodia.

Most citizens of Cambodia have lost interest in the trial because they believe it is a whitewash of the Chinese and Vietnamese involvement behind the scenes in the killing of two million Cambodians after 1975. Says Youk Chhang, survivor of the genocide and executive director of the documentation center at Toul Slung Prison, “China was there with the prison guards and all the way to the top leaders. “ Cambodians today refer to Prime Minister Hun Sen as a man with a Cambodian body with a Vietnamese mind.

After years of negotiation with the United Nations, Hun Sen allowed the establishment of a new Cambodian court that included international judges and staff. The trial is a hybrid concoction of international judges controlled by a majority of Cambodian judges of questionable judicial skills appointed by Hun Sen to try only the five former leaders and not go beyond that.

So now there are only two old leaders of the Pol Pot Khmer Rouge left, Nuan Chea, former Deputy of the Communist party, and Khieu Samphan, former head of state for Democratic Kampuchea, both who face life behind bars without parole. Samphan and Chea, both in their 80’s, face additional charges of crimes against humanity. What the five former leaders have in common, is that they were trained in France by the French communist party (co-founded by Ho Chi Minh) in the 1950s before going back to start the revolution in Cambodia. What is lesser known, and this is what the defense lawyers are trying to bring out at the trial, is that there was a 4000- member Vietnamese faction of the Khmer Rouge trained in Hanoi and that a civil war broke out between the two factions, causing many of the Cambodian deaths. The Vietnamese faction of the Khmer Rouge run Cambodia today, countering the argument that the domino theory was a US concocted theory.

During the Vietnam War, Ho Chi Minh, masquerading as patriotic nationalist, but whose first allegiance was to international communism and the communist party, on orders from Moscow set up a powerful and highly secret organization in Cambodia staffed by Vietnamese to run revolutionary affairs in Laos and Cambodia. The North Vietnamese Army hiding in Ratanakiri Province in the Eastern Cambodia on the Ho Chi Trail, helped train Khmer Rouge guerillas and in actuality fought many of their battles against the American- backed Lon Nol regime. Hanoi trained and maintained three divisions (the 5th, 7th and 9th), often referred to as the Vietnamese Khmer Rouge divisions, fighting Cambodian government forces in the Eastern Zone of Cambodia. After the American congress ignobly abandoned their South Vietnamese allies in April of 1975, the iron lid of communism clamped down on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia and the killing began in all three countries out of sight and out of mind.

To insure that Khmer Nationalism would not override Vietnamese interest in Cambodia, Le Duc Tho, the North Vietnamese communist party official who refused the Nobel Prize, was sent south to set up an organization to control Hanoi’s trained agents in Cambodia. In January 1979, a Vietnamese army of one hundred thousand troops with a token Cambodian force overthrew the Khmer Rouge and installed their carefully groomed former Khmer Rouge officer, Hun Sen who is still in power today. Hun Sen had fled from Eastern Cambodia to Vietnam, along with a number of other junior leaders of the Khmer Rouge and their soldiers, rather than be killed by the Pol Pot faction.

In November of 1978, Tho invited Hun Sen to Saigon, along with 7 other former junior leaders to prep them for the overthrow of Cambodia. After the fall of Phnom Penh in early 1979, this group was flown to Phnom Penh on a captured American DC -3 along with Tho to set up the new government.

The Vietnamese invasion army with the token Cambodian force was trained at a former American army base at Xuan Loc just across the border in Vietnam. Le Duc Tho and Col Bui Tin, an information specialist who was rewarded by Hanoi by being allowed to retire in the West, spent several years in Cambodia to insure that the Vietnamese communists dominated all levels of the new Cambodian government from top to bottom. Russian KGB and Eastern German Stasi personnel provided them direction on how to set up and control a government in police state fashion, just as they did in Vietnam, which holds true today.

In the handout literature to visitors at the trial, it is stated that one of the goals is to build a culture that will prevent the recurrence of such crimes as genocide occurring elsewhere. While the trial was in session in February of 2015, over a hundred Montagnards escaped into Cambodia from the Central Highlands of Vietnam fleeing ethnic genocide by their Vietnamese oppressors. Their goal was to meet with UNHCR representatives so they could present their cases as legitimate refugees fleeing religious/ethnic persecution.

Apparently the governments of Cambodia and Vietnam have ignored the lessons of the War Crimes trial because the current Cambodian government has tried to block the UNHCR representative, Wan-Hea Lee from meeting the Montagnards who were hiding in the jungle in Ratanakiri Province. She was able to rescue 13 of them for the UNHCR before being blocked by Cambodian police/military, preventing them from rescuing any more. This is in direct defiance of the United Nations International refugee law which both countries have pledged to honor. The Montagnards fear for their lives if they are captured and sent back to Vietnam where they will disappear in a prison gulag specially designed for Montagnards who choose to practice their Christian religion in their own homes.,

While this writer was in Ban Lung , Ratanakiri, in February, the Cambodian Police/Military used hunting dogs to track down the Montagnards hiding in the jungle in O’Yadow district. One Jarai villager reported, “The Montagnards told me they fled from Vietnam because the authorities threatened to kill them because they were practicing Christianity. They begged me to help them because they told me they would be killed if I refused.”

One Jarai acquaintance told this writer that to frighten the local Jarai Montagnards, the Cambodian police threatened local villagers that they would kill the Vietnam Montagnards if they found them and they would kill the UN if they showed their cowardly faces.” It is against Cambodian law to give food and shelter to the fleeing refugees from Vietnam. The Hun Sen regime has refused to allow UNHCR to meet with escaping Montagnards hiding in the forests.

What’s it like in the Central Highlands today where the Montagnards have suffered since the fall of Saigon in 1975? Their rich land has been taken from them by the Northern communist conquerors, those who resisted were either killed or imprisoned, former military leaders and public officials were executed right after the war, just like the Khmer Rouge did to the former Lon Nol soldiers, and the oppression continues to this very moment.

The secret police in the Highlands, deny all access to outside visitors, even the UNHCR last year. UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Heiner Bielefeldt reported after his visit to Vietnam in July of 2014, “The rights and freedom of religion are grossly violated in the face of constant surveillance, intimidation, harassment, and persecution. “ Mr. Bielefeldt was closely monitored by “undeclared security or police agents” to prevent him from traveling in the Central Highlands where the Montagnards call their traditional homeland. He said he was “outraged” by the intimidation, police interrogations and even physical injuries of some of his interlocutors during and after his visit.

According to human rights advocate Mike Benge, former POW, he received a dated list of 344 Montgnard political prisoners from the Jarai tribal group in Gia Lai province who are languishing in prisons and jails under horrendous conditions. (The list does not contain the names of hundreds of others from the numerous Montagnard tribes that have also imprisoned for their Christian beliefs.) The Khmer Rouge are being prosecuted for such war crimes of genocide against the Muslin Cham population and the world is outraged but the Hanoi monsters get a free pass from the World media and Western governments.

In conversation recently with a former Montagnard interpreter who spent 7 years in a prison camp after the war, he describes a large prison camp in the middle of Gia Lai province south of Pleku where Montagnard Christians are taken to “disappear” never to be heard from again. Their crimes are minor offenses such as using the internet, owning a cell phone, or attending a house church.

The US State Department secretly ordered their people in Vietnam to ignore and play down the human rights abuses so Vietnam could be taken off the Religious of Particular Concern List that allowed them to become a member of the world trade association. But a Wikileaks document released several years later caught the US State Department in their despicable actions against the Montagnards who had helped the Americans fight the Vietnam War. Holding hands also with the communist liars and perpetrators of War Crimes was Ellen Sauerbrey , State Department Official responsible for refugees and migration, who in 2007 said she believed the communist officials in Hanoi when they told her the Montagnards enjoyed religious freedom, were not being persecuted and could travel freely to the US Consulate in Saigon and to the United States.

The Khmer Rouge trial of the five old leaders can be viewed as a smoke screen to cover the past and ongoing human rights abuses in the three Indochina countries of Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia-all currently controlled and ruled by sleight of hand by the Hanoi communist party. The perpetrators of the Indochina genocide skate free in Vietnam as well as China who had their advisors with the Khmer Rouge at all levels. Pol Pot visited his allies in Beijing at the height of the cultural revolutions where cities and educated people were viewed as evil. He also learned the importance of purges from his close association with the Chinese leaders who designed the Cultural Revolution for Mao that killed 35 million people.

Other war crimes charged against the Khmer Rouge were the establishment of people’s courts where thousands were executed without trial and the forced removal from the cities of hundreds of thousands of people into labor camps where they were worked unmercifully with little food and medical care where 2 million Cambodians died. The educated Cambodians, the doctors, civilian officials, former soldiers were executed and all else who couldn’t work like an animal in the killing fields.

The Hanoi thugs did just the same thing. After their takeover of the South, the front line peasant soldiers in the North Vietnamese Army discovered their masters had lied to them in the North when they discovered their Southern Vietnamese brothers had been living in luxury compared to the peasants back home. Hastily contrived people’s courts exacted their revenge by executing 100,000 former South Vietnamese government officials and military officers.

The Hanoi conquerors then imprisoned over a million South Vietnamese in 150 prison camps which they euphemistically called “reeducation camps.” Those Vietnamese on the wrong side in the war went there to discover the error of their ways and to learn silly Marxist doctrine taught to them by barely literate cadre in exact parallel to what the Khmer Rouge were doing at that time. A trick the communists used to hide the death count was to let the families of those prisoners close to death come to take them home where they would die out of sight denying they caused their death with their inhuman brutality.

In an interview with famous South Vietnamese General Le Minh Dao in 2005, he stated that there were more than a million South Vietnamese in concentration camps after the war where 250,000 died of starvation, forced labor, with no access to even the most basic health care. One of the real heroes of the Vietnam War and for all Vietnamese to emulate, Dao spent 17 years in one of these camps, ten of the years locked in a cage. The Hanoi oppressors knew how to collect their blood debt.

One Western journalist, Jean Lacouture, an apologist for the communists and against the American war effort in South Vietnam, changed his mind when he was allowed a visit back in Vietnam in 1976. He traveled by car from Hanoi to Saigon. “I visited a new economic zone”, he said. “It was a prefabricated hell-a place one comes to only if the alternative would be death.”

What Lacouture described was the exact replica of the Khmer Rouge slave labor camps that starved and killed two million people which the prosecutors have charged the Khmer Rouge with for their War Crimes trial. A reeducation camp was where prisoners moved huge mounds of dirt in baskets on starvation diets with no access to any type of medical care that caused the death of millions of people. That’s what the communists brought to Southeast Asia, destroying their own cultures following the doctrines of Stalin and Mao Ts Tung.

Yet the Vietnamese communists still cling to these old doctrines to control the people of Southeast Asia. If one visits their war museums, the ones near the border at Loc Ninh where their B 2 headquarters was located, and also the one next to the COSVN headquarters northeast of Tay Ninh, there are no pictures of Vietnamese nationalists there. The walls of the museums are covered with large framed photos of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Che Guevara, East German communist leaders, but no Vietnamese nationalists because they were viewed as enemies of the State purged by the international communist, Ho Chi Minh.

South Vietnamese President Thieu in 1972, speaking not far from where these two museums were to be located after 1975, issued the following statement praising the heroic soldiers of the South who had won the famous Battle of An Loc in 1972, “The Binh Long victory is not a victory of South Vietnam over Communist North Vietnam only, the BInh Long victory is also a victory of the Free World over the theory of people’s war and the revolutionary war of world Communism.”

The Khmer Rouge old men are also being charged with genocide against the Muslim Cham population where their leaders were hunted down and whole villages of people executed suspected as being enemies of the revolution. In like fashion, the Hanoi communists from the North who trained the Pathet Lao army force- marched 350,000 Laotians who were former soldiers, civilian officials, and especially the ethnic Hmong race that fought with the Americans into prison camps. The prisoners were overworked with little food or medical supplies, and the forced relocation of people into these prison camps fall within the definition of crimes against humanity as described by the Geneva Convention of 1949. The guards and prison officials at these camps were comprised of 60,000 North Vietnamese soldiers.

In Eastern Laos, the traditional homeland of the Hmong, those who couldn’t escaped to Thailand and wouldn’t come down from their mountain homes as they were ordered, had chemical weapons dropped on them by the North Vietnamese Army. These war crimes are described in Jane Hamilton -Meritt’s book, “Tragic Mountains”. Over 100,000 died in the Laos killing fields hidden from the world.

Thousands more Hmong were hunted down and killed in their jungle homes as the North Vietnam oppressors basically annexed eastern Laos for their economic exploitation. . French photographer, Yves Michel Dumont, captured during the heroic battle of An Loc where the South Vietnamese fought valiantly and eventually defeated the North Vietnamese army, went to Laos in the early 1990’s to document the killing of the innocent Hmong, but to his amazement he discovered that the World Media was not interested in atrocities committed by the Vietnamese communists. Read to the end to find out why the World turned a blind eye to the Vietnamese communist holocaust.

Estimates range between 250,000 to 500,000 Vietnamese boat people died fleeing the workers’ paradise created by the communists. The international Vietnamese community who fled to freedom in the West, have seen the work of the Hanoi oppressors up close and describe it in exact words, “The Khmer Rouge communists kill openly and display their results openly. The Vietnamese kill silently and slowly and hide their results.”

So why is there no outrage in the world about the Vietnamese holocaust the Vietnamese communists perpetrated against their own people? The first reason as has been discussed is that they were much more clever and devious about how they killed their citizens to extract revenge and maintain control.

The second reason they have escaped War Crimes recognition is that those who opposed the American war effort to back the South Vietnamese in the Vietnam War, and that includes the dominant media culture at that time and most of all academia in the world, supported a communist victory during the Vietnam War. The anti-war crowd in America has a blind spot about examining the killing fields in Vietnam and Laos. A close examination of the war reporting at the time one would discover very little attention to Communist policy in South Vietnam of terror, torture, and murder that the Viet Cong used on a daily basis to control the peasants, and an obsession by such reporters as Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam in magnifying every shortcoming of the old South Vietnamese army and government. After the fall of Saigon, it was discovered that these two famous reporters had been heavily influenced by the high- level North Vietnamese spy Pham Xuan An, who put on his Colonel’s uniform after the War.

An honest examination of the Vietnam War would depict how the Left in America and the World failed to distinguish between the authoritarian regime of old South Vietnam, and the Stalinist inspired North Vietnam that unleashed a hell on earth to the peasants and those left behind that included torture, executions, and mass murder.

The world view of the Left, which still rests comfortably in the halls of academia, is that the indifference to the spread of communism is perfectly acceptable from a moral and political point of view. The naïve leftists living the comfortable life in the tenured halls of academia, pictured themselves as the champions of the peasant by cheer leading for the anti-war movement in America. But they have forgotten to ask the Vietnamese and Cambodian peasants how they felt about their communist liberators who enslaved them and murdered their family members. This simply proves that every refugee who escaped from the Indochina countries with his/her life is smarter than the Western intellectual.

The left would just as soon the world not remember their support of the Khmer Rouge and the Ho Chi Minh communists during the Vietnam War. It is clear that the Ho Chi Minh crowd chanting “Let’s give peace a chance”, share much of the blame for the killing of all those innocent people in South East Asia. They were putting into practice the end results of communist revolutionary warfare just like the Khmer Rouge.

Another famous Vietnamese General, Ly Tong Ba, the hero of Kontum, who spent 13 years in a prison camp, tells the truth about what happened after the fall. “Who did the communists liberate when they conquered the South? They enslaved the people and operated revenge camps for years. Today their policies would be called terrorism because they murdered our teachers and killed our village chiefs. They ruled by torture to control the peasants.”

Generals Ba and Dao, are the real heroes and leaders of the Vietnamese people, but they have been written out of the history books and the cemeteries of their soldiers have been bull dozed out of existence by the Hanoi conquerors.

One is struck by the anomaly that Hanoi’s leaders following the policies of communism killed more of their own people after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 than were North Vietnamese/Viet Cong and South Vietnamese soldiers killed during the entire Vietnam War. One never hears at the Khmer Rouge trial, that it was the doctrines of communism that the Khmer Rouge were following, and that the Vietnamese communists are still following today to suppress their people.

And who was fighting against this evil and the enemies of mankind? It was the South Vietnamese and American soldiers, the real heroes in the South East Asian holocaust, forgotten for their valiant sacrifice and never once mentioned at the Khmer Rouge trial. If the Khmer Rouge were monsters, created and trained by the North Vietnamese soldiers, then wouldn’t those fighting them be viewed as the forces for good against evil?

There was more freedom in the old South Vietnam than there is in the communist controlled Vietnam today. There were independent newspapers and radio stations, and writers were given the freedom to express their thoughts openly. That’s all forgotten today where all citizens who speak their mind and advocate for human rights in Vietnam finds themselves silenced with a long prison term.

What the world needs is a War Crimes trial for the Vietnamese communists who murdered all those innocent people in Vietnam and Laos, just like their former comrades in arms, the Khmer Rouge. Those who escaped with their lives from the Vietnamese holocaust know the real horror created there which was met by complete silence by communist fellow travelers in the West, who had supported them and rooted for their victory.

The Khmer Rouge trial is a show trial for the world, and to be effective, it has to be taken out of the hands of the communist masters who control it by establishing an outside location. But why no mention of a trial for their partners in crimes against humanity, the Hanoi communists, who still enslave their own Vietnamese people and get a free pass on the crime of genocide?

The Co Van,

Rich Webster
MACV/CORDS
Advisor with the Regional Forces/Popular Forces, 1968/1969 April, 2015

Here We Go Again

Paul Schmehl, Independent Researcher

Whenever Vietnam is mentioned in an opinion article, we always sit up and take notice. It is not at all uncommon for the history of Vietnam and the lessons of Vietnam to be invoked in reference to other conflicts. In fact Vietnam is the fulcrum from which all false arguments about war are launched. We are told we should not forget the lessons of Vietnam, but the lessons are often based upon falsehoods and misrepresentations that make the lesson unhelpful.

Such is the case with a recent article published by CNN.  Writing about the recent Paris attacks, the author invokes the specter of Vietnam to “prove” how badly America has handled foreign policy.

It helps to look at history — not to find equivalencies but understanding, taking the long view that recognizes appropriate contexts. We make bad decisions about foreign policy — and war — when we fail to take into account the historical setting, which is, well, almost everything.

For example, we lost 50,000 American soldiers in Vietnam because our policy-makers failed to look at the wider historical context, ignoring the traditional animosity between China and Vietnam — a conflict in which it was highly unlikely that the “domino effect” would ever be relevant. It wasn’t, and we created mayhem in the region.

Pushed to the limit, we simply withdrew in 1975, with our tail between our legs. And where is Vietnam today? The U.S. is currently the largest single importer of Vietnamese goods and Vietnamese are the eighth-largest student group studying in the States. Of course, it took almost four decades for that kind of healing to occur.

So much untruth packed into such a short space!

First, we certainly wouldn’t argue that it doesn’t help to look at history.  The problem is, it actually needs to be history to be helpful.  We lost more than 58,000 men and women in Vietnam because we faced a determined enemy who was willing to sacrifice over 1.4 million of its own citizens to conquer an independent nation.

Citing the animosity between China and Vietnam, which exists to this day, as proof that  US policy makers failed to understand history is so profoundly ignorant that it takes one’s breath away.  China provided billions of dollars in materiel and support to North Vietnam and tens of thousands of military advisors.  Whatever differences there were between China and Vietnam, they were set aside during the 2nd Indochina War to pursue a common goal – the defeat of South Vietnam and the spread of communism.

What US policy makers failed to understand was that their enemy was not a rational actor that would respond to stimuli the way Americans would respond.McNamara’s graduated escalation policy had little effect on the North Vietnamese and the bombing pauses were used by the North Vietnamese to regroup, resupply and reinforce their defenses. We are making the exact same mistake today in the war with ISIS.

The idea that the Domino Theory was fraudulent has been a central point of the communist propaganda campaign from the beginning.  Many Americans have fallen for it.  But we have addressed it in detail here and shown that not only was it legitimate but the dominos did not fall precisely because the US intervened in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Furthermore, the claim that the US “created mayhem” in the region ignores several things.  First, the North Vietnamese began the first steps of their conquest of South Vietnam in 1945, left troops behind in 1954 in violation of the Geneva Accords and began escalating the war in 1959, long before the US inserted combat troops.  They had been creating mayhem for quite some time.

By the time the US got involved militarily, North Vietnam had been actively committing atrocities and terrorist activities in South Vietnam for almost 20 years.  By 1959 they had also invaded both Laos and Cambodia and began establishing bases in both countries.  After the US left, hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese, tens of thousands of Laotians and 1.7 million Cambodians were killed.  The mayhem created in Indochina was a direct result of North Vietnamese communist party policies, not US policy, and continued long after the US left Vietnam.

Finally, claiming that the US was “pushed to the limit” and “withdrew in 1975” again displays profound ignorance of the 2nd Indochina War.  The US began removing combat troops from Vietnam in 1969 and by the time the peace treaty was signed in 1973 we did not any combat troops in Vietnam.  North Vietnam, consistent with all their previous deceits, violated the treaty before the ink was signed, but they were so weakened by US and South Vietnamese forces that it took another two years before they could again invade in force.

There are certainly lessons that need to be learned from Vietnam, but we will never learn them until we finally acknowledge the truth about Vietnam.  That will not happen until communist propaganda is no longer used to justify arguments about Vietnam that have no relation to the history of the conflict.

Antiwar Activists and Historians: Selected Quotes

Adopted from Roger Canfield’s Comrades in Arms: How the Americong Won the War in Vietnam Against the Common Enemy—America.

SAM ANSON

24-year-old Robert Sam Anson, a Time Magazine reporter who arrived in Vietnam in early 1970 was an experienced war protester who already believed the war was colonial, immoral, illegal and unwinnable.1

Upon release by North Vietnamese Anson said, “They weren’t…my enemy. I never considered the people of Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos to be my enemy. I believed in peace…and so they treated me like a friend. …We really got to be brothers.” Press conference after a recording over Radio Hanoi.2

FRED BRANFMAN

Fred Branfman head of Project Air War, along with Howard Zinn and Tom Hayden, visited Hanoi. On November 12, 1972 he “We hope the war will end soon…if the war continues we hope you will grow up and become valiant combatants and will be able to down U.S. planes.”3 He authored “Air War the New Totalitarians.”4

Branfman later said, “I was naïve and wrong in my belief that [the Communists] would usher in a better world. Communism is obviously no better than capitalism. But I certainly have no regrets that I tried to stop the bombing.”5

RENNIE DAVIS

Rennie Davis, planner of the disruption of democratic convention6, said, “Chicago was really conceived coming out of Vietnam.” The Davis and Tom Hayden plan of March 23, 1968 described, “imperialistic role of the United States in the world.” Anti-War Union, a Rennie Davis organization,7 met the North Vietnamese in Paris where “The Vietnamese…stated they would be interested in having any information…concerning development of new weapons by the US…. Such information would be especially helpful…before such weapons were used on the battlefield.”8

RON DELLUMS

Rep. Ron Dellums (D-Berkeley) authored a joint resolution on the “terrible realities of war atrocities as an integral component of our illegal, insane and immoral adventurism in Southeast Asia.”9 On October 18, 1971, Radio Hanoi lauded Dellums and others for protests “condemning the Vietnam war as immoral.”10

BERNARDINE DOHRN

“We understood the reason the Vietnamese called the meeting was to get us moving against the war again. The Viet Cong was giving us a kick in the ass….” Bernardine Dohrn appreciated Ba’s advice, “look for the one who fights hardest against the cops.” Now the “only way we’re going to build a fighting force is if we become one ourselves.”11 Havana 1969

At Kent State on April 28, 1969, Dohrn told Kent students to arm for revolution.12

The August 23, 1969 issue of New Left Notes, Dohrn, Ayers and others wrote, their National Action is “a movement that allies with and proposed material aid to the people of Vietnam. …Its primary task the establishment of another front in the international class war –not only to defeat the imperialists in Vietnam but to BRING THE WAR HOME! 13

Travels with Bernardine. In 1967 Bernardine Dohrn14 attended a celebration in Moscow of the fiftieth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.15 In August 1968 Bernardine Dohrn attended a conference on “Anti-Imperialists and Anti-Capitalist Struggle” in communist Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, well attended by proclaimed communist members of SDS including. In 1969 in Cuba Vietnamese given her a ring of comradeship made from the debris of an American aircraft. 16 In March 1969 in Austin, Texas Dohrn and Bergman “star-chambered” Carl Oglesby for rejecting Marxist-Leninism and cavorting with the neo-imperialist camp. 17 In Budapest she talks with five NLF members. Two NLF told her they worked with American GIs in Saigon—“attempting to obtain information.” Military intelligence. Vernon Grizzard said, “North Vietnamese give no directions… but were pleased and interested in ‘our’ plans.”18 A German SDS conference Dohrn and comrades were demonstrating international solidarity not only on Vietnam, but also anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism.19

Bernardine Dohrn Notes of July 13-15, 1969 outline Viet Cong concerns about GI’s, their motivation, morale and involvement in antiwar movement and the objective of “work w/GIs” to “weaken the enemy.” (U.S. forces).20 U.S. troops were not very good: they were “not trained for close-in fighting,” and “140,000 U.S. troops (were) wiped out.”

At a Flint Michigan “War Conference” about the Charles “Manson family” who butchered the pregnant actress Sharon Tate, her unborn child and her houseguests, Dohrn said, “Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach. Wild.”21 Mark Rudd who was there says a four-finger fork salute became a Weather trademark.22 At a secret leadership meeting in Flint, “Part of armed struggle, as Dohrn and others laid it down, is terrorism. Political assassination… and… violence…were put forward as legitimate forms of armed struggle.”23

Larry Grathwohl testified before the Senate that Bill Ayers said Dohrn had to “plan, develop and carryout the bombing of the police station in San Francisco (all by herself) and he [Ayers] specifically named her as the person committing the act.” Matthew Landy Steen and Karen Latimer attended two meetings in which the bombing of the Park Station was planned. Dohrn was the ringleader. Howard Machtinger was the bomb builder. Latimer had herself cased the police station and handled the bomb,24

DANIEL ELLSBERG

“We weren’t on the wrong side. We are the wrong side.”25

RICHARD FALK
Adopting the Hanoi view Richard Falk said, “We urge…the end of combat operations by a date certain prior to June 1, 1972… [There is] no other way to secure prisoner release.”26 Ending US air and naval power and stopping all aid to Saigon.27 Later he would say the victims of 9 11 got what they deserved.

Falk defended Karleton Armstrong, who bombed the Army Mathematics Research Center, University of Wisconsin, killing a researcher and injuring four. The New York Times reported that Falk “appealed for full amnesty for all resistors, including those who use violent tactics to oppose the war in Vietnam.” Falk “cited the Nuremberg Trials as precedent …to actively oppose the war by any means.

Falk said “free fire” zones, authorized pilots and soldiers to kill whatever moved, even farm animals and most of the victims of illegal methods being on the Vietnamese side. “I remember listening in my living room… to tear-filled stories told by returning GIs about their role … involve[ing] the deliberate killing of Vietnamese peasant women and children. … [R]ecognition of the criminality of the war policies in Vietnam cannot bring the victims back to life.” Falk cited “journalistic accounts of crimes associated with US military…28

JANE FONDA—one quote out of hundreds.

We have a common enemy—U.S. imperialism. JANE FONDA, July 1972

TODD GITLEN

Todd Gitlin revised a “Freedom Song,” “And before I’ll be fenced in, I’ll vote for Ho Chi Minh, or go back to the North and be free.”29

Todd Gitlin, whose wife Nanci Gitlin was with the North Vietnamese and the WSP in Indonesia in July 1965, proposed an SDS sponsored trip to North Vietnam: “”The proposal is to send a mission … to North Vietnam to help rebuild a hospital or school destroyed by American bombing…and to serve as American hostages against further bombing in their vicinity.”30

TOM HARKIN

After a 30 minute visit Tom Harkin described S. Vietnam’s “tiger cages,”, “They were never let out, the food was minimal …little water. … forced to drink their own urine. Most…could not stand up, their legs having been paralyzed by beatings and by being shackled to a bar. …There were buckets of lime dust …above the cages… [to] throw down on the prisoners when they beg for food and water.”31

Tom Harkin, claiming falsely, to having been a combat fighter pilot in Vietnam, was elected to Congress (1974) and the US Senate (1984). 32 Senator Tom Harkin, visiting Vietnam in July 1995, claimed the communist regime was “not allowing freedoms it should, But it [is] better than the ousted South Vietnamese regime.”33

JEFF JONES

After the 1969 SDS convention Weathermen—Mark Rudd, Jeff Jones, and Bill Ayers—sent a letter to Mao’s sycophant Anna Louise Strong.34 “Our…convention… was highly honored to hear greetings from our best-loved revolutionary writer and champion of People’s China and the thought of Mao Tse Tung. …Long life to comrade Mao Tse Tung….”35

“In August 1969 (Cuban UN) mission intelligence personnel…counseled Mark Rudd and Jeff Jones of SDS concerning slogans to be used in demonstrations planned that fall.”36

Clark Kissinger

Clark Kissinger, SDS leader, now active in the Revolutionary Communist Party USA:

“I think that the largest single failing that we made during that whole period of time was not sending a contingent to North Vietnam to fight on the North Vietnamese side. For example, to man antiaircraft gun emplacements around Hanoi. …I felt it was significantly important for the movement to take on a more treasonous edge.37

Larry Levin

On June 5, 1971, Larry Levin, Tom Hayden and others attended the Soviet funded, CP-USSR and KGB, Stockholm Conference on Vietnam.38

In Washington, Larry Levin, was Hayden-Fonda’s Indochina Peace Campaign full time lobbyist, using an office of Rep. Ron Dellums (D-CA) where they lectured 60 House staff on “American Imperialism”

Visiting Hanoi Larry Levin, staff director of the U.S. Coalition to Stop Funding the War, interviewed Paris negotiator Xuan Thuy 14 days before the fall of Saigon, broadcast on April 16, 1975. Observing thousands of South Vietnamese choosing to flee their homeland, Thuy condemns “the forcible evacuation… (the U.S. Government) …refers to as rescue of ‘evacuees.’ This is a mere U.S. hoax aimed at upsetting world public opinion and providing itself with a pretext to intervene in Vietnam.”39

DON LUCE

The Viet Cong’s official South Vietnam in Struggle, published letters of Don Luce and women prisoners 40 claiming “The women were stripped naked, transported naked, and loaded on the planes naked.” It hadn’t happened, but Don Luce believed what the Viet Cong women told him and no one else.41

Led efforts to propagandize “torturous [and brutal] conditions in the Tiger cages” at Con Son, South Vietnam. He interviewed and translated the stories of Viet Cong prisoners making claims of being doused with lime and urine, beaten and shackled, denied food and water; fed rice with sand, live lizards and beetles, and suffered paralysis from cramped quarters.42 During 1972-4 Luce’s Mobile Education Project43 toured the U.S. with mock prisoners shackled in cramped mock, bamboo, tiger cages, which in fact only existed in Vietnam as VC cells for American POWs, not at Con Son.

Gareth Porter

Gareth Porter used word for word English translations44 of North Vietnamese propaganda tracts.45 He dismissed Hanoi’s slaughter of no less than 50,000 or more during their 1954 “land reforms” as a myth.46 The slaughter at Hue of perhaps 5,800 during Tet 1968 was a fabrication.47 Gareth Porter and Edward Herman wrote, “And there is no evidence in documents, graves, or from individual witnesses which suggests any large and indiscriminate slaughter of civilians by the NLF at Hue.”48 Also a myth was Pol Pot’s “killing fields” genocide in Cambodia.49 In several articles and his 1976 book Cambodia. Starvation and Revolution, Porter denied the Khmer Rouge holocaust.50

In 1975 Ambassador Dinh Ba Thi, Cora Weiss, Gareth Porter opposing the evacuation of people and evacuating orphans from South Vietnam.”51 in Vietnamese 1000 GMT 9 Apr 75, SG, IV. 10Apr 75 L 13, South Vietnam.]

Gareth Porter denounced peace activist Joan Baez’s Appeal to expose oppression after the fall. Baez aimed to “impugn the good faith” of the Vietnamese. Hard core Hanoi defenders signed a “A Time For Healing and Compassion,” in the New York Times praising “the present government of Vietnam…for its moderation and its extraordinary efforts to achieve reconciliation among its many signators were Richard A. Falk, Don Luce, Cora Weiss, Friendshipment.52 Porter “spent days campaigning against the [Baez] letter. He spent literally hours on the phone haranguing Daniel Ellsberg…” 53

Barry Romo

Barry Romo, long-time leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, VVAW said that in Vietnam prisoners were tossed out of helicopters, pregnant women kicked in the gut. “The military is constructed to…instruct individual soldiers to conduct…(abuse and torture of …prisoners).”54 Barry Romo, claimed at a “Winter Soldier” conference that the racist military dehumanized the enemy and made it easy and normal to kill civilians.55

While in Hanoi VVAW’s Barry Romo claimed the “Christmas” bombing in 1972 was never to destroy military targets, but to terrorize and demoralize the Vietnamese people. Bombs falling on nonmilitary targets were not errors. The same homes and shops were hit several times.56

Mark Rudd

Mark Rudd remembers a February 6, 1968, Cuba paid57 and Soviet KGB subsidized58 visit of some 22 SDS members to Havana, “to talk with …the National Liberation Front…” The group received “souvenir rings made of extremely lightweight titanium. The number 2017 was stamped inside to indicate that each ring had been made from debris from the 2017th American plane shot down in Vietnam. I wore mine proudly for years afterwards.”59 Rudd says, “I passionately wanted to be a revolutionary like Che, no matter what the costs. …Our goal was…ending the capitalist system that caused the war.” Mark Rudd bragged to his Havana comrade Huynh Van Ba that New Left Notes of August 29, 1969 declared “Vietnam has Won.”

During the Columbia University protest led by Mark Rudd, tThe Viet Cong flew over the Math building at Broadway and 117th Street from on April 23-30, 1968.60

In 1969 Weathermen—Mark Rudd, Jeff Jones, and Bill Ayers– sent a letter to Mao’s sycophant Anna Louise Strong.61 “Our…convention… was highly honored to hear greetings from our best-loved revolutionary writer and champion of People’s China and the thought of Mao Tse Tung. …Long life to comrade Mao Tse Tung….”62

MORLEY SAFER

About the burning of Cam Ne, a fortified and bunkered Vietcong63 village, Morley Safer wrote,

“conjured up not America, but some brutal power — Germany. …To see young G.I.s, big guys in flak jackets, lighting up thatched roofs, and women holding babies running away, wailing… . Soldiers aren’t innocent….It was so shocking…it’s not how we do things…seen to be doing it. …There was a realization…that the rules had changed,” Morley Safer.64

Robert Scheer

In 1965 Robert Scheer claimed the Viet Cong were patriotic nationalists free of Hanoi and that Catholics, spies and hawks had dragged the U.S. into a civil war65 and that Diem was a puppet of Americans rather than a genuine Vietnamese nationalist and patriot.

In a 1966 Radio Hanoi broadcast Robert Scheer said the Vietnam War was untenable, violates “all the norms and decent values of this society.”66 Duncan, [Robert] Scheer,” Hanoi in English to American Servicemen in South Vietnam 1300 GMT 26 February 1966—S.]

An August 8, 1970 article of The Black Panther has a Scheer statement,

Since the peoples of the world have a common enemy, we must begin to think of revolution as an international struggle against U.S. imperialism. …Understanding the [North] Korean people’s struggle and communicating this to the American movement is a crucial step in developing this internationalist perspective.”67

Robert Scheer made a broadcast on Radio Hanoi on September 5, 1970.68 Robert Scheer said, “The US government is a criminal government that got those pilots [to] perform the highest war crimes…”

Pham Van Dong, General Giap69 received Robert Scheer quite well: “Our delegation moved …met openly with the peoples governments and were received as comrades-in-arms. We are fellow combatant against US imperialism.”

September 16, 1970 FBI agents watched Customs inspect literature and films mostly from North Korea written by Kim IL Sung and V.I. Lenin. Robert Scheer later sang the praises of the thoughts of North Korea’s Kim IL Sung in Tom Hayden’s Red Family commune at Berkeley and at Ramparts magazine.70

NEIL SHEEHAN

Sheehan’s Bright Shining Lie accepted Ho Chi Minh’s murders of Vietnamese nationalists as a necessity, called Hanoi’s butchery of 50,000 in 1956 “an unfortunate mistake” performed by Ho’s renegade underlings, dismissed the communist massacre at as a “stupid mistake” and a public relations problem. As late as July 2002 Sheehan told CSPAN that Hanoi’s “reeducation camps” were not so bad (no less than 10% died there) and, falsely, that Hanoi “didn’t shoot anyone.”71

“In some countries a Communist government may be the best government. …“Anticommunism [is] as destructive as Stalinism.”72 March 1969, NEIL SHEEHAN at First National Convocation on the Challenge of Building Peace. Neil Sheehan said that North Vietnam was a “modern dynamic society” and South Vietnam was a “dying post-feudal order.”73

After the exposure of Pham Xuan An, Hanoi’s master spy, Neil Sheehan remained a gushing fan: “My friend, who served the cause of journalism and the cause of his country with honor and distinction—fondest regards.”74 In late 1974 Neil Sheehan would tell his audience at the Army War College “The idea of fairness and objectivity is specious.”75

Oliver Stone

Oliver Stone’s error laden film “Born on the 4th of July” in 1988 portrayed Ron Kovic attacked and thrown from his wheel chair by Republicans, which he was not. Films such as Oliver Stone’s Apocalypse Now or Platoon, showing barbarous soldiers largely formed early public opinion about the Vietnam War and all its participants.

“I will come out with my interpretation. If I’m wrong, fine. It will become part of the debris of history, part of the give and take.76

Cathy Wilkerson

In Hanoi Cathy Wilkerson, SDS Weather, remembers,” I absorbed the optimistic Vietnamese belief that most people deep down did not want to live by aggression and manipulation… They could …reject leadership based on brutality.” She believed Ho Chi Minh taught his people to resist “the corrosive powers of hatred and revenge.”77

DAGMAR WILSON

Dagmar Wilson, on a tour of North Vietnam for Women’s Strike for Peace, said, “We knew the Vietnamese were going to win.”78

Dagmar Wilson, Women Strike for Peace, was a member of “The Wilfred Burchett 60th Birthday Committee,”79 Burchett was a Soviet agent. Dagmar Wilson, said, “the Russians want to disarm.… They won’t have… vested interests profiting from the arms race.” After a flyover, Wilson said, “Vietnamese presence in Cambodia left no military or political marks in Cambodia.”80

Wilson described antiwar activity in the U.S. as a ‘Second front’ in …Vietnam’s fight against ‘American aggression.’…’The Vietnamese are resisting violence on their side and we resist in our way here. …We are a second front in the same war. We need each other’s support. 81

JON VOIGHT

“The communists were behind organizing all of these rallies and things. … We didn’t want to believe in evil so we just hid from it.82

MARILYN YOUNG

“[T]he Vietminh acted to alleviate the famine then raging in the North by opening local granaries and distributing rice.” Marilyn Young26

The Sixties…centrally about the recognition, on the part of an ever growing number of Americans, that the country in which they thought they lived – peaceful, generous, honourable, just – did not exist and never had. The emergence of a more nuanced history of the US as opposed to the patriotic meta-narrative taught in grade school…83

Marilyn B. Young, member of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars and a well-read orthodox historian of the war developed a more nuanced rationalization of the Hue massacre. “A]ll the accounts agree that NLF rather than North Vietnamese units were responsible for the executions (in Hue),” 84

The central mechanism of US policy in the 1940s, as today, the pivot around which all the rest rotates, is the conviction that the particular national interests of the United States are identical with the transcendent, universal interests of humanity. The increasingly evident falsehood of this claim produces what Che Guevara once hoped for, “two, three, many Vietnams.” Thank you. Marilyn Young.

“There was no conceivable justification for the horrors daily inflicted on and suffered in Vietnam.”85

WINNING THE BATTLES AND LOSING THE WAR

James D. McLeroy

After the 1954 partition of Vietnam into a Communist north and an anti-Communist south, approximately 100,000 South Vietnamese Communists moved north to the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam (DRV). About 80,000 of them were Viet Minh veterans of the First Indochina War against the French, and an estimated 10,000 of those were Montagnards. Between 5,000 and 10,000 other Communist Viet Minh combat veterans were ordered to remain in remote areas of the Republic of Viet Nam (South Vietnam), carefully bury their weapons and radios, and wait quietly for future orders from the DRV.

Many of the South Vietnamese “regroupees” in the DRV became regular soldiers in the 338th NVA Division stationed at Xuan Mai near Hanoi. Some 4,500 other regroupees were trained to infiltrate South Vietnam as covert military and political cadre. Their mission was to organize Communist Viet Minh veterans in guerrilla platoons and companies. Other regroupees were trained as agitation-propaganda (agitprop) teams. Their mission was to recruit disaffected South Vietnamese civilians, indoctrinate them in Leninist ideology, and organize them in covert intelligence and logistical networks to support the guerrilla forces.

In 1957, the Communist Viet Minh veterans who remained in South Vietnam were ordered to initiate a terror campaign in rural areas to destabilize the local governments and organize shadow Communist governments. They did so by intimidating, kidnapping, torturing, and assassinating thousands of village leaders, influential individuals, and their families. The South Vietnamese government called the South Vietnamese Communists Viet Cong (VC).

When NVA Transportation Group 559 began work on the Ho Chi Minh Trail network in May, 1957, 12,000 NVA troops were already in Laos to shield and protect them. The first stage of the Trail was completed in October, 1959, and by the end of 1960, some 3,500 NVA regroupee troops had infiltrated South Vietnam. In May, 1961 500 senior and mid-level NVA regroupee officers left for South Vietnam on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The next month, 400 NVA regroupee officers and sergeants followed them.

After all the regroupees had been sent to South Vietnam, regular NVA troops began to infiltrate in increasingly large increments. Continued infiltration of regular NVA troops enabled the Viet Cong forces to transition from the first stage of their three-stage Maoist strategy, terrorism and guerrilla warfare, to the second stage, mobile, semi-conventional warfare.

In early 1961, the Politburo planned its military strategy in South Vietnam for the next five years. Company-size VC forces were to be organized at the district level, battalion-size VC forces at the province level, and regimental-size VC forces at the regional level. The new VC regiments were eventually to evolve into between three and five full-time VC divisions.

By October of 1961, the covert NVA cadre had organized two new VC battalions. By the end of 1963, more than 40,000 NVA troops, including 2,000 senior and mid-level officers and technical personnel, had infiltrated South Vietnam on the Ho Chi Minh Trail network. Their mission was to augment the VC platoons and companies, train them, and develop them into new battalions and regiments. An additional 30,000 troops were recruited, trained, and organized in five new VC regiments. By the end of 1964, half of the 70,000 troops in the main-force VC units were regular NVA soldiers, and eighty percent of their leaders were NVA officers and technicians.

In September, 1965 the 9th VC Division was formed. Later that year two more VC regiments were organized, and in 1966 a third VC regiment joined them to form the 5th VC Division. In 1966, two regular NVA regiments arrived from the DRV, and a third regular NVA regiment arrived in 1967 to form the 7th VC Division. Those soldiers were not VC guerrillas; they were regular NVA troops from North Vietnam, who were VC in name only.

In early 1967, the five men in the Politburo’s Subcommittee for Military Affairs (SMA) faced two critical situations. First, the semi-conventional VC forces that had been fighting the U.S. forces since late 1965 were losing the war of attrition. Westmoreland’s big-unit, “search and destroy” campaigns, although clumsy and inefficient, were relentlessly attacking the main VC combat forces and pursuing them into their formerly safe base areas in the RVN. His aggressive tactics combined with superior firepower, manpower, and mobility were depleting the VC forces and exhausting the survivors, who were constantly forced to evade the conventional U.S. forces.

From January to June, 1967, VC-NVA losses from all causes exceeded 15,000 men per month. NVA infiltration was about 7,000 men per month, and VC recruitment was about 3,500 men per month. More VC combat forces were being lost than could be replaced by NVA infiltrators or VC recruits. The depleted VC ranks were being replaced with inexperienced and increasingly younger NVA troops from the DRV. As the age of the troops decreased, their combat quality also decreased. By 1967, the attrition “crossover point” had been reached: more NVA troops were being killed in the RVN than male children were being born in the DRV.

Second, the U.S. bombing campaign in North Vietnam, although arbitrarily limited and often interrupted, was severely degrading the DRV’s basic economic infrastructure and threatening to destroy what was left of it. The DRV economy had been reduced to little more than a conduit for Soviet and Chinese war supplies. Farm workers had to be used to repair the constant bomb damage, which led to widespread food shortages, rationing, and malnutrition.

The key men of the SMA led by Le Duan, the First Secretary of the ruling Lao Dong [workers] Party, knew that an unrestricted escalation of the U.S. air campaign would be disastrous both for the DRV’s remaining economic infrastructure and for the ability to support their forces in the RVN. They also knew that a major invasion of Laos to permanently interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail network and destroy the VC and NVA sanctuary bases there would be equally catastrophic for their VC and NVA forces in South Vietnam. They feared that unless they could reverse those two trends, they might lose the war in the south and the north.

Dissension arose in the Politburo between two factions over their future grand strategy for winning the war. From 1959 to 1964, it had been Mao Tse-tung’s three-stage, protracted attrition model. In 1964, Le Duan attempted a rapid transition from the second, mobile stage of the model to the third, positional stage. The second stage was short attacks on vulnerable targets and rapid withdrawals by semi-conventional VC battalions. The third and final stage was sustained attacks on the main enemy forces by conventional VC/NVA regiments and divisions to seize and hold key terrain.

Le Duan’s 1964 strategy was to rapidly conquer the RVN before the inevitable arrival of large U.S. conventional forces. He began by invading the Central Highlands in 1965 with three elite NVA regiments. They were to advance to the coast and be followed by several NVA divisions. The combined force would then move south and capture Saigon, the RVN capital. In the Ia Drang Valley battle in November, 1965 Le Duan learned that his attempted transition to positional warfare was premature. Two of the three NVA regiments were defeated by a reinforced battalion of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) with the aid of artillery and close air support. In 1966, the NVA were forced to revert to the mobile warfare stage.

In 1967, Le Duan attempted again to transition from mobile to positional warfare by replacing the Maoist attrition model with an adaptation of the Leninist coup de main model. The latter required a nationwide, civilian insurrection combined with the rapid seizure of strategic urban targets. Le Duan thought that with his new strategy he could conquer the RVN quickly without having to wait for U.S. forces to be withdrawn and without having to defeat the RVN Army.

He believed that by coordinating all the VC forces in the RVN in one General Offensive he could incite a spontaneous, nationwide General Insurrection of rural and urban civilians. According to his Leninist ideology, the “revolutionary masses” would then join the victorious VC forces to overthrow the “imperialist puppet” RVN government. He called it the August, 1945 Strategy, assuming that it would be as successful as Ho Chi Minh’s rapid and virtually unopposed seizure of power in Hanoi in August, 1945.

Le Duan evidently did not compare the military context of Ho Chi Minh’s 1945 success with the military context of his new strategy. If he had, he would have seen that no significant points of comparison existed. Giap and his Politburo supporters, including Ho Chi Minh, recognized the fallacy in the new strategy and opposed it as militarily unrealistic and potentially disastrous.  Giap agreed that they needed a decisive victory in a large battle soon, but he disagreed that widely dispersed VC forces could defeat the combined firepower of the U.S. and ARVN forces in simultaneous assaults against the most heavily defended urban targets. He advocated delaying the transition to the positional warfare stage, until U.S. political will to continue the war was clearly exhausted. Despite increasing VC losses, he wanted to continue in the mobile warfare stage by conservatively attacking only vulnerable enemy units and avoiding large battles that risked more major losses.

Le Duan, ignoring Giap’s advice as Defense Minister, marginalized him in the Politburo and gave the command of the 1968 General Offensive/General Insurrection campaign to Van Tien Dung. Giap then temporarily exiled himself in Hungary for unspecified “health reasons”, and Ho Chi Minh, also marginalized in the Politburo for his support of Giap’s opposition to Le Duan’s new strategy, temporarily exiled himself in China for medical treatment.

The culmination of Le Duan’s 1964 strategy was intended to be a decisive victory over large U.S. forces in a set-piece battle comparable to the decisive 1954 battle of Dien Bien Phu. That iconic battle was officially portrayed as the glorious triumph of the heroic revolutionary masses, but Giap’s name was prominently associated with it. Le Duan was jealous of Giap’s popularity and wanted to win a strategically decisive battle against U.S. forces with no connection to Giap.

He apparently chose the U.S. Marine base at Khe Sanh as the target. Lacking technical military knowledge, he did not understand that he could never match Giap’s victory over the French forces at Dien Bien Phu with a comparable victory over the U.S. forces at Khe Sanh for technical reasons beyond his control.

Westmoreland confidently welcomed a multi-divisional NVA attack in a remote area with no possibility of collateral damage to civilians from U.S. firepower. He knew that Khe Sanh’s all-weather, twenty-four hour, radar-controlled air defense system; its secure, external artillery support; and its acoustic, seismic, and infrared sensor system could detect and destroy any size and number of NVA ground attacks under any conditions.

The NVA isolated Khe Sanh by land, bombarded it with long-range artillery, dug deep trenches near its perimeter, and repeatedly attacked the surrounding high ground. As Westmoreland predicted, the same WW I tactics that were successful against the French at Dien Phu in 1954 failed against the U.S. forces at Khe Sanh in 1968. In more than two months of futile attempts to capture the base, the NVA lost an estimated ten thousand or more of their best troops in repeated avalanches of U.S. bombs and artillery shells.

Despite those losses, at the end of January, 1968 Le Duan launched his nationwide General Offensive/General Insurrection campaign. Some 84,000 VC troops simultaneously attacked five of the six major RVN cities, thirty-six of the forty-four provincial capitals, and sixty-four of the 245 district capitals. In doing so, they lost an estimated 58,000 VC troops and failed to achieve any of their main objectives. Some VC troops held out for over three weeks in Hue and parts of Saigon and Cholon, but most of them were eventually killed.

Not surprisingly, there was no General Insurrection of South Vietnamese civilians. The mass atrocities of the defeated VC forces in Hue and other towns alienated even most formerly passive VC sympathizers.   For the first time in the war, feelings of national patriotism and urban hostility toward the VC began to develop.

Le Duan’s shock at the disastrous failure of his new strategy in Tet 1968 was likely equaled by his astonishment at its portrayal by the U.S. media as the failure of Westmoreland’s attrition strategy and by implication the failure of President Johnson’s war in Vietnam. The five men in the SMA must have known that the Khe Sanh and Tet battles actually validated Westmoreland’s mass attrition strategy beyond his own most optimistic expectations.

The U.S. media’s radically misleading reporting of those battles, their failure to report the huge tactical losses of the VC-NVA forces, and their discrediting or ignoring all the tactical successes of the U.S. and ARVN forces was a serendipitous gift to Le Duan. That strategic propaganda victory in America far outweighed all his 1968 tactical losses in South Vietnam.

Most of the U.S. media seemed to believe the simplistic cliché that if the “counterinsurgency” forces are not consistently and visibly winning a “guerrilla war”, they must be either losing it or hopelessly stalemated. That widespread fallacy was based on the misinformed impressions of a few militarily ignorant and politically hostile U.S. reporters in Saigon, whose pseudo-knowledge of the U.S. military’s performance in the war was partly based on the constant gossip and rumors of the other militarily ignorant and politically hostile reporters in Saigon.

Their pseudo-knowledge of the war was pseudo-validated by a deep-cover disinformation agent in the Saigon bureau of Time magazine. He enjoyed unquestioned credibility with all the U.S. reporters, but was later revealed as a North Vietnamese spy and general in the intelligence service of the DRV. The reporters’ superficial impressions were further pseudo-validated by their occasional glimpses of combat in their brief visits to deployed U.S. troop units to film background scenes to legitimize their staged war reporting.

Most of their Liberal U.S. editors were prejudiced against the RVN’s authoritarian regime. They resisted acknowledging the facts that the DRV and the RVN were two independent nations, not one nation with two names, and the RVN was diplomatically recognized as such by more than sixty nations. They also resisted acknowledging the obvious facts that a war between two sovereign nations is not a civil war, and an invasion of one sovereign nation by another sovereign nation is not an insurgency.

Their Liberal news editors were not pro-Communist, but they tended to be viscerally anti-anti-Communist. Most of them ignored the fact, reported by a few objective journalists in Vietnam, that in the 1968 Tet battles the VC used semi-conventional tactics, not guerrilla tactics. Most of them also ignored the fact that U.S. and ARVN forces won all those battles with conventional tactics, not counterinsurgency tactics. Most of them refused to believe that the U.S. and ARVN forces had annihilated most of the main VC combat forces, and that the relatively few surviving VC combat forces were no longer an existential threat to the Republic of Vietnam.

In 1968, most Americans got their news in capsule form from television. There were only three national television networks, and most TV news editors were more entertainment managers than journalists. Their minimized or ignored the critical fact that the defeated VC forces were constantly being replaced by regular NVA units in an increasingly overt invasion from the DRV.

Their consistently negative visual messages about the war in 1968 produced the popular belief in America that as long as the “VC guerrillas” could still fight big battles, the U.S. forces must be losing the “counterinsurgency” war in Vietnam.

The tragic irony of the failure of the NVA’s Dien Bien Phu strategy at Khe Sanh and the failure of the VC’s General Offensive/General Insurrection strategy everywhere else in the RVN is that both of those moribund strategies were inadvertently resuscitated by the U.S. media. That unexpected result evidently convinced Le Duan that a second series of such battles in May would again be reported by the media as U.S. strategic defeats, regardless of all the NVA’s tactical losses, merely because they were fought.

The second series of nationwide battles in 1968 was called “Mini-Tet.” The results were again the same in South Vietnam and America: tactical victories but strategic defeat for the US forces; tactical defeat but strategic victory for the NVA forces. Despite the military defeat of both the VC and the NVA forces in the Republic of Viet Nam, that is how the American Phase of the Second Indochina War finally ended five years later.

 

The Ho Chi Minh Trail

By James D. McLeroy

The first step in the North Vietnamese Politburo’s grand strategy for the conquest of South Vietnam was its May, 1959 order to the Ministry of Defense to begin construction of the Truong Son Strategic Supply Route, later known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Ministry of Defense gave the task to its Rear Services Directorate, which assigned it to the 559th Transportation Group. The Group was designated 559 for the date of its creation in the fifth month of 1959.

The complex transportation network built with enormous difficulty through the jungles and mountains of eastern Laos and Cambodia was one of the greatest feats of military engineering of the 20th Century. Aided by Russian and Chinese advisors, NVA engineers began to improve, expand, and lengthen animal trails, Montagnard paths, and stream beds through the Truong Son range.

River fords were hidden by underwater bridges. Roads and paths were wound around trees to enhance their concealment from the air. Open areas in the jungle canopy were camouflaged by interlacing tree tops or connecting them with trellises interwoven with living plants and vines.  The result was an interconnected, 12,000-mile network of roads, paths, bridges, bypasses, tunnels, caves, and pipelines.

Its widest east-west axis was about thirty miles, and its north-south axis from North Vietnam to the South Vietnamese delta was approximately 3,500 miles. It was vital for the supply of war material and replacement troops to the Communist Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) forces in South Vietnam. Because of its strategic importance the NVA eventually made eastern Laos and Cambodia virtual extensions of North Vietnam.

After traversing three mountain passes from North Vietnam into Laos, the Trail was divided into eleven regions, five large base areas, five main roads, twenty-nine branch roads, and numerous, frequently changed shortcuts and bypasses. In addition to sanctuary bases for VC and NVA troop units recovering from or preparing for combat in South Vietnam, fifteen large logistics headquarters called binh trams were spaced along the Trail.

They were commanded by NVA colonels with up to 2,000 troops in transportation, antiaircraft, engineer, logistics, and infantry battalions. Both men and women served as route guides, cooks, nurses, porters, mechanics, maintenance, and construction workers. Antiaircraft and infantry battalions guarded their sector of the trail and the roads from it into South Vietnam.

Crude bivouac facilities called “communication liaison stations” were spaced about one day’s march between the binh trams to provide basic food, shelter, medical aid, and route guides for transient NVA troops. The route guides only knew the sections of the Trail half way to the next bivouac stations north and south of their own.

They met the route guide escorting NVA troops from the station north of theirs at a point half way to that station and took them to their own station for the night. The next day they took the transient troops halfway to the next station south of theirs, where they were met by a route guide from that station. U.S. intelligence analysts identified base areas as places where large numbers of NVA troops could always be found. The first headquarters of the 559th Transportation Division was in Vinh, North Vietnam, and its main logistics center was at Base Area (BA) 604 near Tchepone, Laos.

Troops and supplies from North Vietnam were unloaded at BA 604 and divided for distribution to base areas farther south. BA 604 sent most of its troops and supplies to BA 611, where they were further distributed among the base stations south of it. BA 614 east of Chevane, Laos sent its allocations into South Vietnam on an extension of Road 165 from Chevane to QL 14.

In October, 1968, a second Trail headquarters was established in southern Laos near the junction of Roads 92 and 922 (see map). It controlled an entire infantry division, three antiaircraft regiments, two engineering regiments, twenty-three antiaircraft battalions, thirty-five engineering battalions, eighteen transportation battalions, and two pipeline battalions.

Some 50,000 NVA troops guarded, maintained, and extended the Trail network. An estimated 10,000 NVA antiaircraft guns were hidden along the Trail, most of them around BA 604 near the junction of roads 9 and 92 east of Tchepone and BA 611 near the second Trail headquarters. The U.S. Air Force lost more planes at those two places than anywhere else in Laos.

An estimated 8,000 trucks traveled the Trail in relays from one truck to another. On heavily overcast and rainy days and nights, when there was less chance of air attacks, up to 100 trucks traveled in convoys with their lights on. Each truck traveled at an average speed of five to eight miles an hour, depending on road conditions.

First priority was given to trucks carrying artillery, tanks, and anti-aircraft missiles. Second priority was given to trucks carrying fuel, ammunition, and food. Third priority was given to trucks carrying troops urgently needed in South Vietnam. The drivers only traveled fifteen to twenty miles back and forth on one stretch of road. Like the trail guides, they only knew the routes half-way to the next way stations north and south of their own.

Driving back and forth on the same length of road every night and most overcast days, they learned every detail of that section of road and the terrain on each side of it. Eventually, they could drive some sections of the Trail fairly quickly even in the dark. Many trucks had radios to warn them of incoming air attacks and current road conditions.

Fuel and lubricants for up to twenty-five trucks were stored in camouflaged truck parks hidden about three miles off the main roads. At each station the cargo of each truck was unloaded and transferred to another truck. Damaged or destroyed trucks were quickly replaced by others from the nearest station to the north. That station replaced those trucks with trucks from the next station to its north, and so all the way to Haiphong harbor in North Vietnam, where new trucks and new repair parts constantly arrived from the USSR.

NVA monitoring stations at intervals along the roads collected current data on road conditions in their area and the number of trucks passing through in each time period. The data was sent to traffic controllers on each section of the Trail, so that emergency route changes and repairs could be made as quickly as possible.

Most road repair work was done at night, and each binh tram had two or three bulldozers for that purpose. From 1959 to 1975, an estimated 300,000 Laotian men, women, and children were used as forced laborers to repair sections of the Trail and augment NVA food supplies with their small farms.

During daylight hours most transient NVA troops walked from one way station to another on trails at safe distances from the roads. The average infiltrating unit was a battalion moving at between one and three miles per hour, depending on the terrain. Preceded by route guides, they walked in platoon or company groups spaced about 100 yards apart. They did not fire at passing aircraft, but quickly moved off the trail and stood still or lay down. Several times a day they changed the foliage on their camouflage to match the foliage they were passing through.

In 1964, the first regular NVA regiment entered South Vietnam via the Trail, and in 1966 the first regular NVA division arrived the same way. The CIA estimated that between 1966 and 1971 the NVA sent more than 630,000 troops, 400,000 weapons, 50,000 tons of ammunition, and 100,000 tons of food into South Vietnam on the Trail. In 1968 the NVA needed to send 8,000 troops and 100 tons of ammunition and weapons to South Vietnam every month to replace their huge losses in the nationwide battles that year.

Every year more and younger draftees from North Vietnam and more and newer military supplies from the USSR and China were sent down the Trail to South Vietnam. Regardless of how often and heavily the Trail was bombed, and regardless of the human cost of constantly repairing it, the NVA continued relentlessly to do so year after year.

An estimated twenty percent of the infiltrating NVA troops died on the Trail, but only about two percent of those deaths were caused by U.S. air attacks. Ninety-eight percent of NVA deaths on the Trail were from illness, accidents, malnutrition, exhaustion, or exposure.

Seventy-nine large military cemeteries, including one covering forty acres with more than 10,000 sets of remains, were located along the Trail. They are grim evidence of the enormous human cost to the NVA of building, maintaining, extending, and defending the Trail network from its beginning in 1959 to the NVA’s conquest of the Republic of Vietnam in 1975.