spartans_in_darkness

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E01. 4. (c)
externals, message volume, and traffic routing,
produces intelligence which is, for the most part,
inferential or derivational - secondhand information.
Knowing that an enemy unit has moved,
or changed subordination, can mean many
things. The problem is that the observed intelligence
event does not produce a direct intelligence
explanation; the meaning of the intelligence must
be inferred by the analyst.
CU) Ultimately, whether or not such intelligence
derived from reading Hanoi'sl
messages would have affected America's prosecution
of the war is unknowable. On one hand, the
various administrations that prosecuted/the war
were firm believers in the efficacy of information
derived from SIGINT. However, these same
administrations were notorious for ignoring
intelligence which was contrarv to Dolicv objectives
andmeanS."61\
(U) Phu Bai:
The First American-only Base
(TEll/8I) Almost from the beginning of the
American cryptologic presence in South Vietnam,
there had been a technical exchange program
with the South Vietnamese. This cooperation was
done under the auspices of the Whitebirch DIF
program and was limited to the release of information
suitable mostly for steering such operations.
Furthermore, this information was limited
to VC communications in the southern part of
South Vietnam, known as the Nam Bo region. 13 7
(T8l/Sf) At Tan Son Nhut, the Americans had
managed to segregate the more sensitive analytic
operations from the ARVN personnel involved in
the Whitebirch mission. Still, there were joint
operations between the American and ARVN
cryptologists at the station. It was never clear if
joint operations were really intended as part of
the original OPLAN; they just seemed to happen.
Whatever the original intent of Whitebirch, by
late 1961 more attention was being focused on
establishing a U.S.-only field site. 13 S
./
EO 1.4. (c)
(S//SI) Even when this information is coupled
with the results of low-level cryptanalysis,
there is not always a clear intelligence answer to
the question of what does the enemy intend to do.
As we shall see in the chapter on the 1968 Tet
offensive, a virtual blizzard of information
derived from TIA, direction finding, and lowlevel
cryptanalysis produced intelligence that was
interpretedin ways not always related to the actual
intentions of the Vietnamese communist planners
and, in some important instances, actually
had the potential for misleading American military
planners.
(S//81) Furthermore, minimizing the effort
against North Vietnam's high-level codes and
ciphers and confinin2" itself to a mostlv militarv
tactical role,'
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