Undercover Armies - CIA FOIA - Central Intelligence Agency

C05303949
IN THE SHADOW OF VIETNAMD
MACV, less attuned to the politics ofthe matter, persisted in trying to find a
role for its Special Operations Group (SOG), staffed by the US Special Forces
and still supporting the tribal irregulars taken over from CIA in 1963. In April
1965, it proposed a foray into the southern Panhandle that struck Sullivan as
an "old [Special Forces] ghost pulling my leg," an allusion to the US Special
Forces' unsuccessful arming of tribesmen in that area in I962. Sullivan considered
it "far-fetched to think of storming the Ho Chi Minh Trial with a bare
bottomed bunch of these boys." But the military persisted in trying to carve
out a proprietary slice of the Laotian pie. In September, CINCPAC outraged
Doug Blaufarb with a proposed operation into "the Laos Panhandle south of
the area under [CIA] influence," that is, into the Kha area of operations.D
o thought Honolulu needed to be disabused of the notion that the area
below the]
Isector was "some kind of a void," and he suggested a
briefing for the commander and his staff. D
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Sullivan's casually contemptuous description of MACV's tribal irregulars
concealed a lively sense of responsibility for the survival of primitive peoples
drawn into the war as American surrogates. And it was not only the US military
that Sullivan thought too ready to lead such allies into danger. On 18 May,
he wrote to Bill Bundy explaining his opposition to CIA's proposed recruiting
of Hmong irregulars in the DRV. It was, in part, a matter of policy: To create
"the seeds of an internal resistance" on North Vietnamese soil conflicted with
Sullivan's understanding that Washington wanted to assure Hanoi that its own
territorial integrity would be guaranteed under a peace agreement. But the fate
of the Hrnonghad also to be considered, for"it would be immensely cruel and
counterproductive to develop such a movement and then bargain it away as
part of a political counter."!'D
Sullivan had that very day approved expanding the irregular forces "up to
and across [the] DRV border," as the station understood him, north of Sam
Neua and southwest of Dien Bien Phu, Headquarters interpreted this as leav-
14 Vientiane Embassy Telegram 1726,23 April 1965, FRUS /964-1968, 360-61. Sul1ivan also
noted, as] ~ad periodically done. that interdiction of theHo Chi Minh Trail was not a
taskfor tribal irregulars andthat even modestharassment operations risked the"end[of] ourIntel­
Iigence coverage." Sullivan went on to state his modest expectations of such operations from
South Vietnam into Laos: "A little intelligence scouting, with luck a little sabotage, and maybe
even a little interception" of traffic on the trail. Three years later, he was still resisting MACV
proposals for ground operations into the Corridor. (Vientiane Embassy Telegram 11150, 31
December 1968. FRUS 1964-1968, 788.)n
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