VIETNAM ANGUISH: BEING ORDERED TO LIE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000302430020-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 21, 2010
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: November 14, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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ON PAG2 -.1...
THE WASHINGTON POST
14 N(VEMBER 1982
STAT
T_ F4
0 ii 7-
_
Anguish: Being Ordered to Lie
A Mississippi colonel explains how it feels to cover up
Gains Hawkins is the administrator
of the Dugan Memorial Nursing Home
in West Point, Miss., and cha:>nan of
the Clay County Republican Party.
By Gains B. Hawkins
A FANIOL'S LADY columnist who writes
for The Washington Post called the
other day and asked if I had any regrets
about participating in the making of CBS'
controversial documentary on the mis- or
uncounting of the enemy in Vietnam - the
documentary that has led Gen. William C.
Westmoreland to file a $120-million libel suit
against CBS. In a state of mild shock at being
called by a famous lady newspaper columnist,
I could only mumble something about "Yes"
and "No."
With all my wits intact I could have an-
swered a bit more eloquently, "Yes, there is
some anxiety - a concern that I will appear
to be a fink or a rascal, or a sensation monger
or worse: and some private annoyance that
life in relatively quiet retirement in this little
community of West Point on the black prai-
rie of northeast Mississippi will never be the
same again.
But, no, too, Miss Mary (I should have
said), there is a compulsion here, a tardy
realization that the tale must come out no
matter what the personal pain or annoyance.
In truth, the retelling is somewhat like the
war itself, Miss Mary. It hurts, and it is larger
than all of.us.
When the deception began is not clear in
my memory. Years have passed and memory
can be like the smoked glass through which
one is warned to look at' an eclipse. Even
when the deception was going on there was a
.wish not to remember, as if the not remem-
bering would somehow belie the happening
itself. But it began to happen sometime dur-
ing the last three or four months of my 18-
month tour of duty that ended in the early
part of September 1967.
The tour began in February 1966 as a reun__
ion and a challenge. The reunion was with
then-Brig. Gen. Joseph A. McChristian, the
chief intelligence officer of the U.S. Military
Assistance Command, Vietnam. I had served
under the general before when he held a simi-
lar post at the Army's Pacific headquarters in
Hawaii. There, under the tutelage of Gen.
McChristian, this career Army intelligence
officer had first discovered the intellectual
challenge of an area of military intelligence
work called "order of battle."
Order of battle intelligence, broadly speak-
ing, is everything one must.,know about an
ennemy's military force. 'Yhis knowledge
comes from studying the units of that force;
where exactly they are located; how many
people are in them; what types and how
much equipment and weaponry they possess;
their organization or command structure;
their supply system; their tactics; their state
of training; their state of morale, or will to
fight; their actual effectiveness in combat,
and probably most important, the quality of
their leadership, from commander-in-chief
down to squad leaders. This is a slow, deliber-
ate way to study a military force. It is also a
technique we needed to use to try to under-
stand the Vietnamese communists.
0 ^
During the quarter century I spent wearing
the Army uniform, intelligence was my prin-
cipal endeavor. Drafted in early 1942 out of a
tiny teachers college in the Mississippi Delta
to serve in The Big War, I was.later commis-
sioned a second lieutenant and did my thing
in Europe as a very junior intelligence officer
(where I served briefly with then-Col.
McChristian).
Discharged as a captain in the Army Re-
serve in 1946, I returned to Delta State
Teachers College to complete my degree,
taught high school English and somehow
managed to earn a master's degree in English
at Ole Miss just in time to be drafted again
for service in Korea.
The Army was good to me. It paid me well
and held out the promise of security in retire-
ment at a fairly youthful age. It taught me
Japanese, sent me to Asia, then launched me
permanently in the area of intelligence by
sending me to Stanford University to concen-
trate on the countries of the Far East.
I held no pretensions of finding a place on.
the Army's fast track to a general's stars. I
was happy as a duck on a pond doing the aca-
demic work of an intelligence analyst, and I
appreciated the pay, which was much better
than that of Mississippi school teachers. I had
found my home in th" Army, and I was proud
of my home.
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and to tell the truth
STAT
Vietnam was the ultimate test for
professional intelligence officers.
There field commanders could not
draw circles around hilltops or towns
and make them military objectives
simply because they were important
pieces of real estate. In Vietnam the
critical problem was not real estate,
but finding and destroying the
enemy's military force. Intelligence
officers had to find the enemy before
the enemy could be confronted and
destroyed.
And so it was that in early 1966,
bored with a job as an intelligence
personnel officer at Ft. Holabird in
Baltimore, I had sent a note to Gen.
McChristian in Saigon offering my
services. A few weeks later I was sa-
luting him at his desk inside the
MACV compound.
Considering our previous relation.
ship in Hawaii, I was not surprised
.when the. general told me I would
oversee the production of order of
battle intelligence. In his words, I was
"Mister Order of Battle." This was
the challenge.
The title was reiterated again and
again during the months I served
him. And I have always believed
there was a special motive for these
persistent reminders by the general
to his staff, to visitors and to every-
one else up and down the line.
There were almost as many vocif-
erous estimates of the enemy force in
Vietnam as there were interested
parties. But Gen. McChristian wasn't
interested in journalists' guesses or
field commanders' "gut feelings." He
demanded a plodding, painstaking
analysis of the bits and pieces. This
was to be my responsibility.
^ ^
Keeping the books on the commu-
nist force was a complicated task be-
cause the force itself was Byzantine.
There were the North Vietnamese
Army units. There was the massive
infiltration dffort which provided
additional regiments and individual
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replacements for casualties in the
regiments already in the South.
There were the original Vietcong
regiments and battalions formed in
the South. There were myriad local
platoon and company
size. There was a formidable array of
variously named and loosely organ-
ized guerrilla types who we catego-
rized as "irregulars." There were "ad-
ministrative services" that included
tortes providing all kinds of support
to communist troops.
There was also something we
called the "political order of battle,"
the civilian bureaucracy or "infra-
structure" which ran the commu-
nists' shadow government in the
South.
And then there was the populace
itself - those parts of the civilian
population which the communist
military forces controlled and which
were required to aid every facet of
the communist cause, from killing,to
spying to sharing food and shelter.
You must bear in mind, Miss
'Mary, that this thing was still being
called a "guerrilla war" in the Amer-
ican news media. Many in the news
media, in Washington and in the
upper reaches of our own military
doubted the accuracy of our MACV
estimates of enemy strength as they
grew higher and higher. The bottom
line of enemy personnel strength had
become an obsession among the
watchers as well as the participants.
..The steady growth of that figure on
-the bottom line was the sustaining
argument for expanding our own
forces in South Vietnam.
Meanwhile, Gen. McChristian had
been carefully picking and choosing
from the lists of young intelligence
officers and enlisted men arriving in
South Vietnam. He assembled a
combined intelligence center, along
with our South Vietnamese Army
counterparts, who knew their native
language and customs in a way that
school training cannot duplicate.
These men had to sift through the
bales of documents captured on the
battlefield and taken from the
enemy's military and civilian head-
quarters by U.S. and South Vietnam
ese troops.
By early spring in 1967, our team'
of analysts had constructed a graphic
representation of the enemy's force
structure. It showed the massiveness
of North Vietnamese involvement
and the extent of direct control from
the- North of military and political
operations in South Vietnam.
I can remember the afternoon
when we briefed Gen. McChristian
on our first big accomplishment - a
huge chart depicting the communist
force structure. There were solid lines
for confirmed units dotted lines for
suspected units and dashed lines for
units which were still in the planning
stages. It was the most beautiful pic-
ture I have ever seen. .
I stood there leaning against the
wall on the opposite side of the room
listening as a young Army captain
conducted the briefing, and I thought
to myself, "Goddam, they've got that
sonofabitch literally nailed to the
wall." I was glad to have been a part
of it.
This had taken care of the problem
of clarifying the enemy's conven-
tional force and command structure.
We still had to deal with the irregu-
lars and the political cadres.
Later in the spring of 1967 our
order of battle analysts at MACV
had finally reached their goal of sort-
ing out these categories and updating
the ancient strength estimates =. we
had inherited from th ^South Viet
' narnese in 'W.. Now, was to pre-
sent our findings to-the MACV com-
mander, Gen. Westmoreland. Our
new figures considerably exceeded
those in our published order of battle
summary. The published order said
the total enemy strength was just
under 300,000; as best I can recall,
our new estimate was roughly
500,00,
When -I briefed Gen. Westmore-
land on our new figures, he expressed
surprise. He voiced concern about
the major increase in the irregular
forces and political cadres that we
had found. He expressed concern
about possible public reaction to the
new figures - that they might lead
people to think we had made no pro-
gress in the war. The general did not
accept the new numbers.
I then reduced ' them, quite 'arbi-
trarily, and. returned to Gen. West-
moreland to brief him on my second,
lower count. But he rejected it as
well.
Gen. Westmoreland has since
denied that he knew the enemy was
stronger than he admitted in commu-
nications to Washington, saying the
higher figures we had produced in-
cluded political cadres that were es-
sentially "noncombatants." But the
higher figures we had produced re-
flected the extent of control that the
enemy's conventional military forces
exerted over both geography and
population. In short, they indicated
the enormity of the military problem
that existed in South Vietnam.,
If the irregular forces and political
cadres were as numerous as we then
believed them to be, we had a much
bigger problem on our hands than we
had realized: Victory against the
communists was farther from our
grasp than we had admitted, and by
refusing to acknowledge the higher
numbers, the command was refusing
to come to grips with the true nature
of the problem.
Gen. McChristian's tour of duty
came to an end. A new intelligence
staff took over. I had several more
weeks to go before my tour would
end as well. But just at this time, the
Central Intelligence Agency, prodded
by an astute and forceful analyst
named Sam Adams, was increasing
the pressure for higher strength esti-
mates for the irregulars and politicals
to be entered into an upcoming Na-
tional Intelligence Estimate.
I had known Sam Adams through-
out my tour in Vietnam. I admired.
his brilliance, and we developed a
friendship which would ebb and flow
throughout the subsequent months
as we became professional adver-
saries. Sam had been insisting since
mid-1966 on much higher estimates
of the irregular forces, and I had re-
sisted him.
Our differences were procedural.
Gen. McChristian had originated a
plan for slow and methodical study
by MACV analysts at the village level
where the irregulars operated - an
approach which promised greater va-
lidity than figures produced by ana-
lysts in Saigon and Washington. Ac-
tually, the strength figures reflected
in our first revised estimate (the first
one Westmoreland rejected) were
only a little lower than the figures
Sam had proposed earlier.
I simply cannot recall when of
under what circumstances a ceiling
on enemy strength was imposed by
the MACV command. In the hazy re-
cesses of my memory it seems that
this ceiling - a limit on our total
.enemy strength estimate - emerged
subtly in pieces that eventually took
shape as a whole.
It started, I think, with something
we called "a spread." This is the art-
ful process of juxtaposing a top figure
that cannot be ignored with a bottom
figure that is more desirable, then
shrugging one's shoulders and saying,
"It's somewhere there in between."
From then on, things tended to go
downhill.
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In the beginning - that is, when I
was first realizing that the new
strength figures would never be ac-
cepted - I simply felt resigned. I had
been down that road before. I was
n,,t a virgin fearful of being raped in
the dark cemetery alongside the road.
That's the way it is. As an intelli-
gence analyst you give your superior
the best answers you can find, and if
he doesn't like your answers, he
shows you your weaknesses, and you
go back to work to eliminate them.
But there was a new problem here
- even for a nonvirgin. The figures
had not been criticized, so far as I
knew, for weakness of analytical ef-
fort, but for the potential impact'
they would have. Somehow I was not
competent to deal with this new ex-
perience. I couldn't handle it.
During the weeks that followed my
superiors put the emphasis on reduc-
ing our estimates of the enemy's per-
sonnel strength. By a. process of ra-
tionalization I chose what seemed the
only practical course. Without any
good analytical reason, I sliced and
cut away the strength figures in those
categories where our intelligence was
the least solid. These, of course, were
the irregulars, the political cadres
and the administrative services
forces.
And as I waded deeper and deeper
into this intellectual swamp, I found
it necessary to rely more and more on
rationalization for what, was doing. I
told myself, "I am leaving here soon.
These people are taking over. It is
their war to fight. Maybe these
higher figures are wrong. Whatever
the case, it is their war and the conse-
quences are theirs. Give them what
they want, bless them and get your
ass out of here."
Finally, in my last days at, "Penta-
gon East," a final battle was fought
over the estimate of enemy strength
to be included in the new National
Intelligence Estimate. Teams of offi-
cers from the Department of De-
fense, the Defense Intelligence Agen-
cy, the CIA and probably some other
agencies gathered in Saigon to argue
over what figure would be used. It
was not intelligence at all. It was
more like a labor negotiation. I
worked smilingly to defend the
MACV position, and I cut Sam
Adams into bite-sized pieces.
If you saw the CBS documentary,
Miss Mary, you may recall that Sam
Adams said that I had told him pri-
vately that I did not believe the
MACV strength figures in those cate-
gories which were the. main issue of
dispute. And George Crile [the pro-
ducer of the documentary, who did
much of the interviewing for the pro-
gram] had asked me, "How could you
do that - tell Sam you agree with
him privately and oppose him at the
conference table?"
Intelligence analysts, Miss Mary,
seem to inhabit dichotomous worlds.
I discovered these worlds early in my
career. One is the world of published
conclusions - the command posi-
tion, if you will. The other is that
world where analysts grope with the
fragile threads of evidence upon
which they base their conclusions. It
is too difficult for an analyst to weave
these threads alone; he must share
his burden, his faith and his doubts
with fellow analysts. To achieve any
satisfactory degree of mutual assist-
ance, there must be a bond of mutual
trust among the analysts. There must
be an exchange of absolute intellec-
tual truths.'
So when external considerations
influence the published conclusions,
the integrity of the evidence itself is
maintained among the analysts by a
sharing of these intellectual truths.
This is what Sam Adams and I were
doing - sharing our private views
even as we slugged it out toe to toe in
the marketplace, or should we call it
"the real world."
Eventually, one morning a colonel
on the new intelligence staff at
MACV handed me a slip of paper
which he described as MACV's "final
offer." It reflected the command's
insistence that the new estimate not
show any increase in enemy strength.
I sallied forth to readjust our bottom
line figure and defend it again. Soon
thereafter it was announced that the
MACV position had prevailed.
^ ^
My job was done. My tour was fin-
ished. I went to my hotel room, had a
long bourbon, packed my gear and
used my new rank of colonel to
badger a Vietnamese dispatcher to
send a military taxi from the MACV
motorpool to take me to the Bien
Hoa airbase. There, I sat on my gear
apart from the others who were
waiting for the great golden bird to
take us all home.
Once home, I was to report in at
Ft. Holabird for assignment to a nice,
comfortable billet at the Army's In-
telligence School. But the final weeks
in Saigon were to haunt me. While
visiting at the Defense Intelligence
Agency for a short debriefing, a gen-
eral officer on the DIA staff offered
to have my assignment changed. He
would bring me to DIA where I could
continue work on the order of battle
problem.
This was a moment of supreme
irony. How could I sit at, a desk in the
DIA and challenge thr very figures i
had helped invent at MACV? Or,
how could I continue to defend intel.
ligence estimates which.I did not be-
lieve? Again, I was not up to it. I
thanked the nice general but de-
clined his offer.
Not longer afterward I saw Sam
Adams again. Surprisingly, neither of
us felt a residue of rancor from-the
bitterness of the debates in Saigon. I
encouraged Sam to go on challenging
the agreed - and incorrect - esti-
mates, but to keep his 1 attle within
-intelligence channels. ("It's bad busi-
ness, Sam, airing an intelligence dis-
pute outside the family.")
Retirement came and Sam visited
me in Mississippi to probe for more
information on what had gone on be-
hind the curtains in Saigon. By now
he had left the government, too, and
was working on a book. I found it dif-
ficult to remember the details. I
guess I didn't want to remember. The
thing had become a blur. Sam's per-
sistence aroused some antagonisms.
He seemed to be challenging all of
our order of battle intelligence tech-
niques. Worse still, he seemed to sus-
pect Gen. McChristian. This, to me,
was only slightly less than sacreli-
gous. I became annoyed, and Sam's
visit ended on a sour note.
Then came a bombshell. During
the days of the Ellsberg/Russo trial
in Los Angeles, I received a subpoena
to testify in Los Angeles as a witness
for the Ellsberg defense. The defense!
I was dumbfounded.
I was also mad at Sam Adams, who
seemed to be charging, in Ellsberg's
and Russo's defense, that the entire
gamut of MACV Intelligence had
been corrupt; therefore, publication
of the Pentagon Papers and the intel-
ligence reflected therein could have
caused no harm. I despised Ellsberg
and his partner and considered the
publication of the Pentagon Papers
of enormous psychological benefit to
the Vietnamese communists.
So, when two smiling agents of
Army counterintelligence showed up
on my front porch minutes after the
departure of the gentleman who had'
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delivered the subpoena, I was ripe for
overreaction.
"No," I said, "there was no hanky
panky [in the formulation of intelli-
gence estimates] at all. None at all." I
stuck by that position throughout
two trips to Los Angeles before the
trial collapsed under the weight of
that psychiatrist's filing cabinet that
President Nixon's boys had jimmied
open. Never mind that I was commit-
ting - or at the very least, flirting
with - perjury. Never mind how
questionable my judgment was at the
time. It just didn't seem fair that one
seamy episode in an otherwise solidly
successful intelligence effort should
be cited in defense of an act which
had caused irreparable harm to our
own side. God, how I wanted us to
"win" that war.
My friendship with Sam Adams
was over. I would not see him again
for several years. The war ended.
Then, early last year Sam called on
the phone. His voice was cautious, as
if he were throwing his hat through
the door before entering. A CBS pro-
ducer named George Crile was put-
ting together a documentary on the
intelligence problem in Vietnam.
Would I talk to George Crile about
the possibility of an interview?
"For God's sake, it's you again,
Sam," was my first thought. I paused
and looked around inside my mind,
and I couldn't find any of the old in-
hibitions that had been there before.
Surprisingly, the antagonism toward
Sam Adams that I had nourished
thoughout the past several years had
vanished. An after-action survey of
the thing was long past due.
And perhaps, I'd retained a frag-
ment of that old nag of intellectual.
morality which seemed to sneer:
"You've used up your allotment of
denials. Are you going to sit there
and let that poor damned rooster
crow himself to death before you de-
cide to stand up and be counted?"
So I said, wearily, "Yes, Sam, I'll
talk to George Crile." (And I thought
to myself but did not say it aloud to
Sam, "You persistent bastard. You
never gave up, did you?")
^ ^
You asked, Miss Mary, about reac-
tions to my participation in the mak-
ing of the documentary. First, there
was the call from Gen. Westmoreland
on the day after the documentary
was shown. The general obviously
was upset over what he termed the
damage to the integrity of the officer
corps. I said little more than that I
had not been quoted out of context.
Later, when the brief conversation
was'ended, I thought, starkly and bit-
terly, "Officer corps, my ass. What
about the integrity of my profession?
Military intelligence was the only
t^?ae profession I have ever had, and
when the crunch came, I had turned
tail and run."
I have been asked questions about
the existence of a "conspiracy" and
about the impact of the mis or un-
counting of the enemy's personnel
strength on the outcome of the war. I
do have opinions in each instance,
but my opinions are no better than
anyone else's, because my knowledge
is no better than anyone else's.
However, I do know better than
most that during the first 14 or so
months of my tour of duty in Viet-
nam, order of battle intelligence esti-
mates evolved after a study of the
available intelligence; during the final
four months, the conclusions came
first. I know this better than most be-
cause I held the pencil in my hand
and wrote the conclusions.
It has not been easy for me to vio-,
late the code of military disciplines
which are so very vital to the success-
ful conduct of military endeavor or to
cry in the street about intelligence af-
fairs. But somewhere along the line
accommodation with the military
disciplines and the code of silence
about intelligence affairs ran head-on
into the demand of intellectual integ-
rity. That, purely and simply, is the
"so what" of this tale.
You also asked about reaction to
the documentary among the local
populace. Truly, I had been a little
apprehensive. This is not my birthing
ground. I came here to retire 12 years
ago, a total stranger, The people here
accepted me as I came and asked few
questions about my past. I had to
wonder if they would put me down.
And reactions did come in the weeks
following the broadcast. Some said it
might have been best to let the thing
lie there under the log. Others have
said, in effect, "I don't fault you; I'm
glad you told us what you did; we had
a large investment in Vietnam; we
had a right to know."
The only truly unique -statement
was made to me at a West Point Ro-
tary Club luncheon by a young ac-
countant who purposefully shared a
.table with me several days after the
broadcast. I say purposefully because
it was obvious from the moment he
bore down on me that he was bring-
ing a message. The message turned
out to be flavored with the brash pre-
sumptuousness that so often charac-
terizes today's young people. He said
to me, "Colonel, I saw the TV show,
and I want you to know that I like
you a lot better now."
Well, so do I, Miss Mary, so do I.
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