spartans_in_darkness

TOI' SECRETfJCOMINT))'X I
1. 4. (d)
ed in the northern areas
of South' Vietnam. This
series bore a superficial
resemblance to the NSA
report series titled,
"Current Status of
Strategic NYA Ground
Forces," which was based
largely on DGTS intercept.
The NSA-supplied
summaries continued to
be transmitted to the
DGTS until the fall of
Saigon in April of 1975.
1. 4. (e)
(V) in 1973 meeting witf rormer
NSA Representative in Saiqon (ilt left), and Jilek Hiltney, the cornmandant
ofthe National Cryptoloqic School (ilt right)
(8//81) This summary report series, which
began in the first week of June 1974, was titled
"Secret Communications Intelligence" (Mat
Tinh-Bao Truyen-Tin). It contained information
on North Vietnamese military unit training and
command and control communications in the
DRV's Military Region IV, which was north of the
DMZ. There was information on the infiltration
along the sections of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in
Laos and movement between the binli trams in
North Vietnam. The summary also carried items
on the maritime situation, reporting North
Vietnamese tracking of South Vietnamese fishing
vessels along its coast. Finally, it contained items
on the North Vietnamese air defense forces locat-
P.L. 86-36
(8//81) r-lraised
another iss~meetings
in Washington, one
which, by itself,symbolized
the gap in perception
between the Americans
and Nhon over what the DGTS could and could
not do - that was the idea of developingan inhouse
computer capability for the DGTS.I
specifically wanted both an enhanced proce~s~sl~n~g~
of intercept and a database management system.
In September 1973, a team of NSA personnel
from the Southeast Asia target division, the computer
processing group staff, and the security
office, flew to Saigon and investigated the pro-
L...- ...I posed DGTS computerization plan. There they
were briefed I Ithat the directorate was
planning to use two IBM mainframes (IBM 360­
50) which belonged to the ARVN Combined
Logistics Command (eLC). Furthermore, 0
had wanted to use OLC personnel to run the
DGTS program and manage its databases. The
NSA team concluded rather easily that this
arrangement was totally unsatisfactory from several
aspects, but mostly becauseof security. The
Vietnamese had no plans to control access to the
computers, and the. logistics personnel would
remain uncleared for signals intelligence. There
was also a concern at FortMeade that the development
of this ADP/capability would take
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