Intelligence Failures Tet 1968

1. Intelligence FailuresTet 1968 James H. Willbanks Director, Department of Military History U.S. Army Command and General Staff College

2. THE FIGHTINGESCALATES -- 1967 • Apr - May 67: Khe Sanh Hill Battles (Hill 881) • Sep 67: Siege of Con Thien • Oct 67: Battles of Loc Ninh and Song Be • Nov 67: Battle of Dak To

3. Intelligence Indicators1967 • Con Thien, Loc Ninh, Song Be, Dak To, Dinh Tuong, and Khe Sanh Hill Fights • >200% increase in traffic along HCM Trail • Operations Order No. 1 captured by 4th ID • COSVN B-3 Front directive captured • Similar order captured by ARVN in Mekong Delta • Build-up around Khe Sanh • Plan captured by 101st Abn in I Corps • Training manual for “general uprising” captured in Tay Ninh • VC cadres captured with audio tapes • Jan 21, 1968 – PAVN besiege Khe Sanh • Late Jan 1968 – Hanoi announces that Tet would be celebrated on 29 Jan

4. The Offensive30-31 Jan • General Offensive/General Uprising • Forces and Deployment • 80,000 NVA and VC troops • Objectives • 5 of 6 autonomous cities • Saigon • Hue • 36 of 44 province capitals • 23 airfields/bases

5. “…the worst intelligence failure of the war.” --William Jorden NSC Staff

6. Why surprise at Tet? • Enemy estimates not believed (“reports were ‘so much wishful thinking’ on part of VC”) • Reports were in contradiction of previous reports and perceptions of enemy strength/capabilities • Difficulties in “fusion” of various reports • Change in OB rules • Bureaucratic in-fighting among intelligence agencies • Focus on Khe Sanh

7. Tet Offensive in Hue

8. Communist Objectivesfor TCK-TKN • Annihilate and cause the total disintegration of the bulk of the puppet [South Vietnamese] army, overthrow the puppet regime at all administrative levels, and place all governmental power in the hands of the people. • Annihilate a significant portion of the American military’s troops strength and destroy a significant portion of his war equipment in order to prevent American forces from being able to carry out their political and military missions. • On this basis, crush the American will to commit aggression and force the United States to accept defeat in South Vietnam and end all hostile actions against North Vietnam. In addition, using this as our basis, we would achieve the immediate goals of the revolution, which were independence, democracy, peace, and neutrality in South Vietnam, and then move toward achieving peace and national unification. • Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, pp. 218-219

9. khoi nghia • “It [the general uprising] is pictured both as spontaneous by people no longer able to contain their spirit of revolution, and is considered to be a deliberate strategy, the culmination of systematic, intensive organizational and motivational work. In khoi nghia the revolutionary consciousness of the people has been gradually raised through the use of the dau tranh strategy [the two pronged Vietnamese concept of simultaneous military and political struggle] to the point where it explodes in a great spontaneous combustion, which, like a forest fire, consumes all before it.”

10. khoi nghia • Driven by revolutionary zeal fostered by the political cadres in the South • Would help offset American advantages in firepower and numbers once offensive is launched • Would reinforce general offensive and insure its success

11. Three Possible Outcomes • First: We would win great victories on the important battlefields, our attacks and uprisings would succeed in the large cities, and the American will to commit aggression would be crushed, forcing them to agree to negotiations to end the war in accordance with our goals and conditions. • Second: Even though we won important victories in many locations, the enemy would have forces left. Relying on his large bases and with additional reinforcements brought in from the outside, the enemy would launch counterattacks to retake the important positions and the large cities, especially Saigon, in order to continue the fight against us. • Third: The United States would send in reinforcements, expand the war into North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and force us to react in order to transform the nature of the war and to break out of their current posture of defeat. > “History of the Resistance War Against the Americans to Save the Nation, 1954-1975, Volume V: The 1968 General Offensive and Uprising”

12. In Reality • “…[we] planned for one possibility – that the general offensive-general uprising would certainly secure victory, meaning we did not plan for possible changes or developments in the situation; we never discussed possibilities 2 and 3 laid out in the orders and instructions we received.” • “…the three outcomes actually were in essence only one possible outcome.”

13. Planning for the Offensive • Overestimation of own capabilities and underestimation of enemy’s • Flawed assumptions • The people will rise up • ARVN will collapse • Demoralized American forces would not be able to respond quickly in enough force to offset attacks • “Untruthful” reporting from the field • Pressure to conform to party line/conventional wisdom – those who dissented were accused of “negativism”

14. “Assessments were flawed because…” • “We were subjective in our assessment of the situation, especially in assessing the strength of the mass political forces in the urban areas. We had somewhat underestimated the capabilities and reactions of the enemy and set our goals too high…” • The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam • “…the reason the first wave of the Tet offensive had not achieved the highest level of victory as laid out by the Politburo…was… that our primary weakness was the weakness of subjectivism. The primary error was our subjective assessment of the balance of forces, from which we set goals that were too high…” • The Resistance War in Eastern Cochin China • “…the planners were wrong in their assessment of enemy capabilities due to the fact that higher authorities were subjective in their analysis of both the enemy’s situation and our own situation, and in determining the that the specific conditions necessary for a general offensive, and especially for a general uprising, were present.” • The Offensive in the Saigon-Gia Dinh Sector

15. “Subjectivism” “of, relating to, or arising within one’s self or mind in contrast to what is outside. • Webster’s Dictionary chu quan vice khach quan

16. “Subjectivism” “Things do not always develop exactly according to our subjective desires, especially in struggle or in war, when there are enemies, when there are subjective conditions and objective conditions, when there is a conflict between two living forces that are always moving and always developing and changing.” • Military History Magazine, Special Edition: 20 Years After Tet -or- The other side always gets a vote.

17. Expectations? “…everyone, from the highest-ranking cadre to the lowliest front-line soldier, concentrated on one thing: finishing them off. That was why at the time we burned the huts in our headquarters, because we thought we were leaving and we weren’t coming back. …in actual fact everyone concentrated on one outcome and one outcome only.” > Military History Magazine, Special Edition: 20 Years After Tet

18. Outcomes • “…we had 3,600 wounded soldiers alone, not counting guerrillas and village-level cadres, our organizations were in disarray, we were short of food and ammunition, our combat power had declined, and our agents and organizations in the villages and the city had either been driven up into the mountains or had lost contact with our headquarters. • Tri-Thien Hue Theater history • “…eight times as many wounded were sent back to the reat area [in 1968] as during 1967.” • Official History, Group 559 • “…As for our forces, our main force units were suffering a severe shortage of personnel. Where province units had each possessed two or three battalions before the Tet Offensive, now each province had only one battalion, and each battalion had a strength of only around 100 men. Districts had previously each had a full company, and some districts had 2 or 3 companies, but now each district had only one company made up of a few dozen cadre and soldiers, and some districts had only a platoon left.” • Official History, Military Region 9 • “…we suffered heavy casualties and were not capable of fighting a protracted battle to finish off the enemy….Our civilian mass movement continued to decline and weaken in each passing day. Our military command cadres at all levels were confused and disorganized in their efforts.” • Official History, Military Region 8 • “…in the B2 theater alone our casualties for the year 1968 were higher than the total for all the years from 1961 until 1967, and our casualties during the three years from 1968 through 1970 were twice as high as those for the entire seven year period 1961-1967.” • Military History Magazine, Special Edition: 20 Years After Tet

19. Bottomline “If at that time we had been more intelligent, if we had evaluated the situation in a more concrete manner, in a more practical manner, or what our comrades commonly call a more truthful manner, the goals we set for ourselves would have been more realistic. We would have prepared forces, prepared our battlefield posture, and prepared our thoughts and our ideology to continue to contend with the enemy later, after the attack. If we had done that, perhaps our losses during the years 1969-1970 would not have been as enormous.” “A Few Strategic Issues in the Spring 1968 Tet Offensive and Uprising” by Hoang Van Thai, in “Military History Magazine, Issue 2 (26), 1988; “Special Edition: 20 Years After Tet 1968”, p. 52.

20. Lesson Learned (and Not Learned?) When it comes to intelligence, beware of “Drinking your own bathwater.”

21. CommunistPlans • General Offensive • General Uprising • Forces and Deployment • 80,000 NVA and VC troops