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Adams'documentary proof, which, despite its
paucity, was far more persuasive than the
Pentagon's empty folders. As one military intelligence
officer later admitted to Adams, \\"You
know, there's a lot more of these little bastards
out there than we thought." 61 Adams returned to
Langley convinced that the army had accepted his
figures.
CD) Sam Adams, a distant relative of the
famous presidential line of Adamses, was a CIA
analyst charged with developing communist
order of battle information in South Vietnam.
Beginning in December 1966, Adams saw that
there was little documentation to support the
then current figures used by MACV or the CIA.
Numbers agreed to in earlier years just kept being
recirculated. Others were based on unreliable
ARVN intelligence. Adams soon understood that
if MACV's casualty and desertion figures were
correct, then the communists were close to
running out of men. However, the communists
always seemed to be able to make good their
losses."
CD) Wanting a more comprehensive order of
battle, Adams cast his analytic net wider to
include all sources of communist strength. He
factored in estimates of support personnel, political
cadre, and the part-time forces from local
communist militia units, just the categories which
the Pentagon had dismissed as "low grade," "parttime,"
and "weaponless." 60 What he found led
him to conclude that the VC and PAVN forces
numbered close to 600,000 personnel - better
than twice MACV's figures. In mid-January 1967,
George Carver, the DCI's Special Assistant for
Vietnam Affairs CSAVA), dispatched Sam Adams
to an order-of-battle conference in Honolulu
which had been convened by General Wheeler,
the chairman of the JCS. The MACV intelligence
representatives provisionally agreed to a new figure,
something near 500,000, as a concession to
(V) George
Carver
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