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icance. This is not a useful approach for understanding
the setting before Tet.
(D) To comprehend what happened, we need
to see how both sides had arrived at the situation
that existed in South Vietnam by the end of 1967.
We can begin by reviewing the course of the war
and the role that SIGINT played.
(S//SI) The Ground War and the
Development ofSIGINT Indicators,
1965-1967
(U) The North Vietnamese leadership had
been surprised by the American intervention in
the South beginning in March 1965. Also, Hanoi
had not counted on the size and rate of the
buildup of U.S. ground forces. Le Duan, secretary
general of the Lao Dong Party, admitted later in
1965 that the "situation had developed more rapidly
than we had anticipated." 13 Hanoi's leaders
had been surprised, but they had already instigated
a reinforcement of the southern insurgency's
forces with regular PAVN formations. In
September 1964, the 808th Battalion was on its
way south. By the beginning of 1965, two regiments
of the PAVN's 325C Division were already
moving into camps along the Laotian-South
Vietnamese border.
(D) The strategic problem for Hanoi's leaders
was how to deal with the new military situation
created by Washington's intervention. The decision
the communist leadership finally made was
an extension of an earlier choice to strike a decisive
blow at the South. Prior to the American
arrival, the NLF military units, the People's
Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF), although having
mauled ARVN units in several battles, had
failed to destroy Saigon's military. To beat the
ARVN and the newly arriving American forces
required the formation of main force units in the
south and the use of regular PAVN units from the
north. Keyto this strategy was the appointment of
Nguyen Chi Thanh as the military commander in
the south. Thanh was a southern returnee and
known as a charismatic leader. He was a generalof-the-army
in the PAVN; the only other holding
this rank was Vo Nguyen Giap. Thanh was an
ardent believer in Vietnamese unification, but
unlike Giap, opposed any negotiations with
Saigon or Washington, preferring a militant policy."
He had pressed for an aggressive campaign
of conventional, large formation attacks against
the ARVN. Beginning in early January 1965,
PLAF units had scored a series of impressive victories
against large ARVN forces near Ben Gia,
Song Be, and in Quang Ngai Province. By summer,
Saigon's military was on the ropes.
(8//81) As for the newly arrived Americans,
Thanh ordered his units to stand and fight with
the Americans, despite the latter's overwhelming
advantage in firepower and mobility. The first
opportunity to take on the Americans was not
long in coming. In early August 1965, ASA elements
at Ben Hoa, using ARDF techniques, had
located the First VC Regiment on the Van Tuong
Peninsula (known also as the Batangan
(V) PAVN Senior General Nguyen Chi1hqnh
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