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where to get the troops so that their removal
would neither cause internal political turmoil nor
upset America's strategic worldwide posture."
Tet would put off the invasion plans for good,
but the decision about reinforcements for
Westmoreland would return and add to the
Johnson administration's post-Tet woes.
CU) Hanoi intended phase II of the campaign
to run from .Ianuary to March 1968. This was the
central part of the TCK/TCN - the "classic" portion
of Tet, whose dimensions would surprise the
commands in Saigon and Washington. It called
for coordinated guerrilla and commando assaults
within the South Vietnamese cities and the ARVN
military installations that would be combined
with second echelon attacks by PAVN regular
units from outside urban centers where they had
been massing. During the attacks a nationwide
regime ... arouse the masses in the cities and
rural areas....45
of the Americans was a misreading of the popular
climate in South Vietnam. Although the
Vietnamese population could hardly be counted
as adherents to the Saigon regime, neither were
they ripe for a popular uprising against it. Hanoi's
beliefin the certainty of an uprising reeked of ideological
fantasy more than the cold calculation of
the popular pulse.
(S//SI) The second flaw was in the plan itself.
The necessary ingredients for a successful second
phase were secrecy and coordination. Unfortunately
for Giap, but not for Westmoreland,
these conditions conflicted. The deepest secrecy
necessary to safeguard surprise jeopardize the
coordination needed to ull the attacks off.
. T IS move, more t an anyt mg,
appeal would go out for the southern Vietnamese "---'d-o-om-e-,-"':"'t....e.....,.T"et attacks to military failure. It
to join in a general uprising. As a Vietnamese doc- remains unclear whether the attacks on the 30th
ument spelled out this phase:
were premature or if the attack had been delayed
by Hanoi and those VCunits missed the message.
Dcstrov and disintegrate the main body of the
puppet armv to such an extent that it ceases to
he a force on which the C.8. imperialists can
reh .... v\'reck ... the puppet army to the point
There is a suggestion that possibly the date of the
main attack, or the premature attack itself, had
been pushed up from a previous date.l" However,
as we shall see, there is some SIGINT that may
it can no longer maintain the reactionary point to a solution to this debate.
CU) In Phase III, after the general uprising
had begun, PAVNunits would cross the DMZ and
assault or besiege American units now suddenly
lost in a wave of popular revolts by the southern
Vietnamese masses. These attacks would isolate
the Americans and, at the same time, create the
conditions for the "decisive victory" in which
Hanoi would hold all trump and negotiate the
Americans out of Vietnam.
CU) Ambitious as this campaign was, and as
carefully crafted as any of Giap's previous efforts,
it was flawed in two important respects. First of
all, the strategic assumption of a popular or general
uprising in reaction to the envisioned defeat
~Throughout the summer and fall of 1967,
a number of articles discussing a change in strategy
by senior North Vietnamese leaders appeared
in various party and military publications." In
July, an article appeared in the army daily newspaper
castigating those who preferred to negotiate
a settlement to the war. In September, the
most famous of these was Giap's "Big Victory,
Difficult Task," which warned its readers against
expectations of an easy victory. However, Giap
reminded his readers of the virtues of protracted
revolutionary war. 4 8 This article was also broadcast
over Radio Hanoi's domestic service. In
November, Le Duan wrote of the necessity of
building up forces in towns to force the struggle
there, as well as in the countryside. Finally, in
December, high party and government officials,
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