PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE CAMPAIGN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: Library of Congress
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): LOC-HAK-512-7-21-2
• Release Decision: RIPLIM
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: January 11, 2017
• Document Release Date: November 26, 2012
• Sequence Number: 21
• Publication Date: June 1, 1972
• Content Type: MEMO

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THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
a
NAVY, Army, OSD
reviews completed.
INFORMATION
June 1 1972
SEC /SENSITIVE/ EYES ONLY THE PRESIDENT HAS SEEN.
MEMORANDUM FOR: THE PRESIDENT
FROM: HENRY A. KISSINGER
SUBJECT: Psychological Warfare Campaign
As you directed and as I reported on May 23, an intensive
psychological warfare campaign is underway against North
Vietnam.
-- A massive leaflet campaign is being conducted with over
46 million dropped in the last ten days and 90 million ready
for delivery. Themes stressed are high NVA casualities,
ARVN military successes, the isolation and destruction of
North Vietnam, our desire for meaningful negotiations, and
U.S.-Soviet agreements.
-m Radio broadcasting aimed at NVN has been more than doubled,
and a new transmitter will be operating by 9 June. Both
covert and overt radios are broadcasting names of NVA POWs and
KIA and are playing heavily on NVA reverses, your Moscow
meetings, ARVN victories, and our air attacks.
-.- Disinformation operations with the aim of sowing doubt and
confusion among the leaders in Hanoi are underway, and contact
has been made.
-- A program to proselytize North Vietnamese in Paris is being
conducted with the purpose of achieving defections, acquiring
new channels of inserting desired information, and increasing
confusion and mistrust in the North's leadership.
-- Five amphibious diversionary operations off the coast of
North Vietnam and the DMZ have been planned, and one has been
ordered executed as soon as ships and helicopters are available.
These operations are designed to increase enemy uncertainty and
spread the feeling that our forces may strike anywhere.
-- We continue to benefit from Al Haig's backgrounder as more
articles reflecting North Vietnamese difficulties appear daily.
NSS, State Dept. reviews
completed
P
SECT/SENSITIVE
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-- Defense and State spokesmen are getting some of these stories
out daily in their regular press briefings. In addition we are
stimulating specific articles by friendly journalists and author-
ities on Southeast Asia.
A more detailed coverage of progress in each major segment of our
campaign follows.
Leaflets
-- Before your trip over 2.4 million leaflets had been dropped
over Hanoi and Haiphong.
--- Since then, over 46 million more have been dropped in the
North Vietnamese panhandle. The leaflets cite the effectiveness
.of our mining-interdiction operations, stress the monumental
NVA losses, attribute responsibility for continued North Viet-
namese losses and destruction to the power-hungry Party leader-
ship, cite the benefits of peace, and urge the North Vietnamese
people to demand that their government accept the U.S. proposal
to end the war.
-- CINCPAC is prepared for B-52 saturation leaflet dissemination
in North Vietnam's Red River Delta area including Hanoi and
Haiphong as soon as authorization is given.
-- Regular strike missions have been ordered to deliver leaflets
when attacking targets near urban areas (other than Hanoi and
Haiphong).
d.. Ten new leaflets will bring home to the North Vietnamese popu-
lation the high NVA casualties, will announce ARVN victories,
cite U.S. determination and power, document the unwillingness of
South Vietnamese to be "liberated" by invading Communist troops,
emphasize the disastrous policy of the Party leadership, show the
war is a lost cause, stress that peace is necessary for recon-
struction, and underline our offer--that it is time for a poli-
tical solution. An example is at Tab A.
TOP
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SECRET/SENSITIV]r - 13 -
Radio Broadcasts
-- The GVN Voice of Freedom (VOF) and the VOA are repeating
several times each day lists of recently captured North Viet-
namese POWs. In addition, the radios are broadcasting names of
prisoners held for longer periods, building to 100 names per day.
VOA is announcing that it will continue to supply such information
as a public service. VOA has also broadcast a story on 154 ralliers.
-- VOA has increased its broadcast time to NVN from 5 to 13 hours
a day.
-- Your Moscow trip and the military situation in Vietnam have
been accounting for 65 to 90 percent of VOA broadcast time to
NVN. Recent highlights have been:
--- the SALT agreement;
--- the U.S.-Soviet space agreement;
-- the U.S.-Soviet statement of principles;.
-- the first withdrawals of NVN troops from SVN (at An Loc);
-- our continuing desire to settle the Vietnamese problem
through negotiations;
-- Sino-Soviet friction over unloading Soviet war supplies
at Chinese ports;
-- reports on the New York Times article on NVN officials
in SVN advising Hanoi to seek a political settlement;
-- the effectiveness of the mining and its impact on NVN
morale;
-- ARVN military successes and lighter casualties than the
NVA;
-- U.S. air activity in the north, including the destruction
of six bridges and a transformer station near Hanoi.
-- Four black radios are in operation. All are describing in de-
tail NVA losses in the South and the great damage being suffered
in NVN. They are also emphasizing the U.S. determination and
massive response. Though beamed specifically at troops in the
field, these radios reach throughout NVN.
-- Two of the four radios mimic NVN broadcasts and stress the need
for the populace and troops to prepare for much greater suffering
TOP
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to achieve victory, thus driving home the idea that the leader-
ship cares only for its ambitions, not for the people.
-- The other two radios pretend to speak for anti-regime groups
and play up the theme that the leadership is mad to continue a
war they cannot win.
-- The new grey radio targetted against North Vietnam is on the
air on a frequency designed to take advantage of the audiences
already built up by the BBC. It stresses that the fault for the
war and suffering lies with the selfish, ambitious Party leader-
ship which has set brother against brother. It also comes down
hard on NVA losses, broadcasts names of KIA and POWs, records
the suffering of NVA troops in the south, and intersperses this
with international and Vietnamese news and sentimental music.
-- Word-of-mouth will disseminate our themes far beyond our
direct listeners which we are taking steps to increase through
leaflets providing broadcast times and frequencies, broadcasts
of POW information, and provision of transistor radios. to the
NVN population.
Special Operations
-- A bogus secret Ho Chi Minh letter criticizing Le Duan (similar
to Lenin's actual letter about Stalin) has been drafted. It will
be rumored and then inserted into international mail to several
Northern officials outside NVN. Once surfaced it will be picked
up in our radio, leaflet, and press operations to sow further 25X1
confusion among the people and lower level cadre in the North.
-- A black radio is sending one-way broadcasts into NVN to give
the impression that agents have been inserted. This impression
will be reinforced by dummy parachute drops and rafts on beaches.
-- Recordings of selected parts of Ho's speeches are being located
so that we can doctor them to produce a speech by Ho criticizing
current DRV leadership policies.
-- The operation plan for knocking out and replacing Radio Hanoi
will feature a special announcement that the Party has shifted
to a peace policy and will project the resulting benefits to the
population--more food, more clothes, return of their men.
TOP
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-- A rumor campaign directed against Communist targets inside SVN
(by planting rumors through ARVN tactical radio operator chatter,.
which we know the NVA monitors) are being developed. Themes are
designed to confuse the enemy about our military intentions, to
increase doubts concerning Soviet and PRC support, and to add to
internal NVA mistrust.
-- Rumors are also being circulated within overseas Vietnamese
communities in Paris, Vientiane, and Thailand (and selectively
in Hanoi itself) of dissidence in Hanoi, leadership splits,
privation in NVN, etc.
-- Three NVA pilots have been identified as targets of a cam-
paign to compromise them through placed mailings of financial
inducements.
-- Contacts have been made to proselytize the DRV and PRG dele-
gations in Paris and the Vietnamese population in Paris to
secure defections, statements against the Hanoi leadership,
and support for Saigon.
.-- We are getting actual ration cards and other documents to
be used in forging bogus copies for insertion into NVN.
-- CINCPAC is purchasing transistor radios for aerial and float
delivery into NVN.
-- CINCPAC has completed five plans for amphibious deception
operations off the coast of North Vietnam and the DMZ. One is
ready to go and will be undertaken as soon as ships and helicopters
are free.
-- In all our activities--leaflets, radios, rumors, and other
special operations--we are giving the impression of iron U.S.
determination and power.
-- We have already told them that our air and sea power has
been greatly increased and new augmentations have been
announced.
-- We also hint at powerful, new weapons.
-- And we are playing on North Vietnamese superstitions by
claiming that the wandering souls of their unburied dead
in the South are guiding our bombs.
Special Press Activities
-- General Haig on May 22 briefed reporters from UPI, AP, U.S.
News and World Report, the New York Daily News, the Evening
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Star, and NBC on morale, political, economic, military and other
problems in North Vietnam caused by our actions. AP and UPI
carried stories on the briefing attributed to an unnamed "White
House official, "but the' New York Times named Al Haig as the
briefer.
-- That briefing has produced much greater interest about
North Vietnam's situation and a.constant flow of articles
in the press.
-- For example, Victor Zorza in the'Washingt'on Post for 31 May,
said the Haig briefing was self-serving but correct.
--- On the same day Henry Bradsher writing in the Star dwelt on
Hanoi's fear that it cannot count on effective support from
the Soviet Union or the PRC.
-- Orr Kelly reported in the Evening Star that Operation
Linebacker is much more effective than previous bombing
campaigns against NVN. He also notes that the new guided
bombs have knocked out hundreds of bridges,.Haiphong is
closed, and remaining targets'are being rapidly destroyed.
-- The Washington Post quotes "high American intelligence sources
in Saigon" as saying there is no evidence that China or the Soviet
Union is trying to' offset the mining by ground or air supply to
NVN.
-- We stimulated an article by Sir Robert Thompson, which appeared
in the Baltimore Sun. He traced the enemy build-up prior to the
current offensive, points out the ARVN advantage in defending
against large-scale attacks, and refers to An Loc as a "meat-
grinder" for the NVA.
-- The State Department press spokesman has discussed with the
press the North Vietnamese concept of a coalition government in
an attempt to discredit it. He has also covered the substantial
effect of bombing on the flow of Soviet and Chicom supplies into
and through North Vietnam.
-- As a result, the Washington Post carried a page-one article
on this subject on 26 May, and the New York Times mentioned
the briefing in an article concerning China's refusal to
allow Soviet ships to unload supplies for North Vietnam.
-- The material disseminated in our press activities is picked
up and broadcast by the VOA and our black and grey radios.
TOP
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Organizational
--- The Saigon Mission Special Psyops Committee is meeting daily.
The Mission has also established an interagency research group
which selects and provides to VOF and VOA information from both
classified and overt sources. This insures that good, hard, infor-
mation from intelligence sources can be declassified promptly
and can be given maximum coverage in broadcasts and leaflets to
North Vietnam and in the press.
-- On items the field lacks authority to declassify, we back
them up here in Washington.
-- Both PACOM and MACV have established unconventional warfare
task forces.
-- In Washington the Psychological Pressure Operations Group
meets daily to ramrod the field into more effective and speedier
action.
-- USIA's foremost expert on psychological warfare in Vietnam,
Douglas Pike, arrived in Saigon on 28 May to take charge of the
"Hanoi Watchers" group.
-- Three other USIA officers have arrived in Saigon to'recruit
20 Vietnamese to strengthen VOA's broadcasts to North Vietnam,
and still another USIA officer has arrived and has begun special
VOA Vietnamese reporting.
TOP ,
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w.? .
CONFIDENTIAL
Text of Leaflet 4498
Side I
Through constant tear, are the people full or hungry?
In each of the Past 16 years of the war the Party has demanded
that each farmer endeavor to cultivate a hectare of land, produce
five tons of rice and raise two pigs, and that workers double and
triple their efforts.
Hunger and want are familiar in North Vietnam, but the more the
people suffer, the more stubbornly the Party prolongs the war. Is the
Party concerned for the people's welfare or only in making people
suffer? The people suffer hunger and hardships, but the Party carries
on its war. Is the Party for you or against you?
the South.
But, with most of the men and boys away in the army, have the
women who replaced them been able to fulfill the Party's and State's
production plans? When there is so much poverty and food shortage
around what is the use of the "three responsibilities" and the "three
readinesses" rules? They could as well be the "ten responsibilities"
and the "ten readinesses" topped with the "hundred postponements"
and still the Party would be unable to fulfill the needs of the. North
. Vietnames.e people so long as it continues to wage useless war against
Side TI
North Vietnamese Compatriots
How many kilos of rice are each of you allowed to buy each month;
how many meters of cloth each year? How many of you have to wear
rags or turn to the black market for clothing?
The Party tells you to work harder. But when you work harder, do
you have more food and warmer clothing? What has happened to your
sons, husbands, and brothers that you must work harder and harder
only to enjoy less and less?
CON FIDI.NTIA.I.
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CONFIDENTIAL
The Government of the Republic of Vietnam many times has
proposed an end to this war by peaceful means, but each time the.
party has rejected its proposals flatly. The longer the Party con-
tinues this war, the more the people.-will have to endure. hunger
and hardships. Yet the Party stubbornly prolongs the war. You
can see clearly the prospects for your future.
You have suffered enough over.'the past 16 years, having known
hunger and hardships and seen the deaths of your loved ones. Why
not peace now?
CON FI Dl INTTIA.L
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