spartans_in_darkness

TOil 3Ee~ETlleOMIIH"")(1
Summaries through to the beginning of the Tet
attacks.l'"
(8//81) It was this reporting from the III CTZ
around Saigon by Bien Hoa which was featured in
initial report of NSA's series on Tet in the section
titled "Possibly Related Activity in the Nam Bo."
However, something happened to Bien Hoa's
subsequent reporting. Although the ASA station
continued to publish translations and reports on
the activities of the Viet Cong divisions and their
subordinate units - including the reporting by
the communist military intelligence sections on
the status and locations of American and ARVN
formations, the movement of communist headquarters,
and the higher levels of message activity
- this information was not carried in any of the
subsequent follow-up reports to the NSA series.
Why this happened is not clear. Though not all of
the product from Bien Hoa was relevant to the
approaching offensive, most of it reported the
same types of activities as were occurring in the
Central Highlands and the northern provinces.
This absence of reporting from the southern
provinces, especially the provinces adjacent to
Saigon, most likely reinforced the impression in
MACV that the communist offensive would concentrate
against the Central Highlands, Khe
Sanh, and the DMZ.
(5//£1) The NSA reports regarding the offensive
were, at heart, tentative. The title ­
"Coordinated Vietnamese Communist Offensive
Evidenced in South Vietnam" - seemed to suggest
a country-wide assault. Yet, in the very first
paragraph of the first report in the series, NSA
undermined its m"'TI theme of a general offensive
by suggesting that the major attacks were concentrated
against the northern provinces of the country.
It stated that"... the bulk of the SIGINT evidence
indicates the most critical areas to be in the
northern half of the country." It added that there
was "some additional evidence that Communist
units in the Nam Bo may also be involved." 198
The subsequent reports in the series itemized the
PAVN moves and preparations near Khe Sanh,
Hue, and the highland region, while they carried
nothing further about similar activities in the
southern part of the country. The follow-up
reports carried nothing to dissuade the reader
that the attacks were primarily in the north and
the Central Highlands; the inclusion in the series
of all reporting of Vietnamese communist activities
in the south ceased after the first report,
despite the information that Bien Hoa was supplying
from the other field sites in the region.
(T5//£I) The report series also blurred significant
conventional indicators. Instead of highlighting
the SIGINT indicators pointing towards a
general offensive, the series tended to obscure
them in a blizzard of detail concerning units
marching here and there. Such nuanced indicators
as highly unusual long-range moves by
PAVN and VC formations, new command relationships,
the extensive references to security
concerns, morale and propaganda messages, and
the concentration of combat units lost their significance
in the welter of other information contained
in the reports.
('f~//~I) Here, too, another old technical
oroblem continued to hamoer SIGINT analysts.
!traffic ana-
'-----------~-~~-_.....
lysts and linguists had to deduce Hanoi's intent
from the results of direction finding and the bits
and pieces intercepted from battalions moving
through the forests and hills of South Vietnam. It
proved too difficult to get a fundamentalgrasp on
EO 1.4. (c)
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