MEMO TO MR. COLBY FROM GEORGE A. CARVER, JR.

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 03175931
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: March 9, 2023
• Document Release Date: December 14, 2021
• Case Number: F-2019-00574
• Publication Date: September 15, 1972

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15 September 1972
MEMORANDUM FOR: Mr. Colby
1. Attached is a memo written (at my request) by Jack Horgan
to meet your request for a summary look at current U.S. Government
psywar efforts against North Vietnam. (It does not address certain
cognate Agency activities with which I think you are familiar, e.g.,
) Jack, as you know, organized and is chairman of PPOG. (b)(1)
When the first "blue ribbon" panel was convened under Sullivan's aegis (b)(3)
at 1000 on the morning of 20 May, I quickly grabbed for the Agency
bureaucratic control of the Washington effort and nominated my deputy
as its day-to-day director. This move was made before anybody else
could come up with alternatives and, in the rush of trying to be seen
to be responsive to the President's "get cracking" order, nobody made
any serious objections.
2. As you probably also know, Jack has done the job very well
partly because of his general abilities and partly because he happened
to have an optimum background for it. He was a ROIC and Assistant
DepCords (I Corps) in South Vietnam which gave him experience in inter-
agency management. He has considerable covert political action experience,
most notably
Attachment
,Ge rge A. Carver, Jr.
Special Assistant for Vietnamese Affairs
(b)(1)
(b)(3)
(b)(3)
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bLukizd.-/ bEIN6ITIVE
J1?-7'v
15 September 197Z
MEMORANDUM FOR: Mr. William E. Colby
Executive Director-Comptroller
SUBJECT : The Status of the Psychological Pressure
Operations Group (PPOG)
1. In response to your request for a sampling of current progress
reports in the psyops campaign, we find that the most recent reports
are fragmentary in nature and do not give an adequate grasp of the
totality of our efforts. Therefore we have prepared this separate report
to give you an overview of the tangible and the intangible progress we
have made.
2. Most psyops campaigns begin with the hope that through
psychological operations the enemy will be persuaded to adopt a
particular line of action. This is the conventional wisdom. Our new
psyops campaign rejected this approach and instead opted to create every
feasible kind of psychological pressure on Hanoi's administrative
apparatus. We believe that the basic pressure to be applied is military,
and that psyops should try to magnify and capitalize on the morale situation
created by this basic military pressure. The difference may appear
semantic, but in practice different consequences flow from the different
approaches. The conventional approach leads to a step up in conventional
operations. The pressure approach leads to a spirit of getting the job
done without over concern for conventional jurisdictions. The result
is reflected in the title of the interagency organization -- the Psychological
Pressure Operations Group (PPOG).
3. One of the primary internal accomplishments of PPOG in the
40-odd meetings held since its establishment on 20 May has been to
organize the various components of the U.S. Government (CIA, State,
DOD, USIA and NSC) into a responsive, action-oriented, integrated group.
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According to the testimony of the participants, PPOG is proving to be
far superior to any predecessor interagency psyops committees. It
has good morale and the members have a sense of achievement. PPOG
has also developed a relatively good working relationship with the Saigon
Mission's Psyops Task Force. Illustrative of this relationship is the
establishment of a regular reporting mechanism between Saigon, with
its psyop sitrep cables twice a week, and Washington with our own
"PPOG messages." The Saigon Station has also been responsive to
PPOG suggestions and ideas.
4. Other State posts and Agency Stations (in Indochina (b)(1)
have been brought on board by PPOG and Headquarters. In the effort to (b)(3)
solicit fresh ideas, Ambassador Porter at the Paris talks has been asked
to suggest psych ideas and themes for exploitation, and PPOG has
furnished him with materials for his use. (Porter used a PPOG cable
in his presentation at the 31 August Paris meeting.)
5. Organizationally, PPOG works effectively but just as important,
it has functioned as a hopper for psych ideas. The interagency cross-
fertilization of ideas has brought new dimensions to the overall U.S.
Government psychological attack against North Vietnam. CIA's own
effort has been enhanced through PPOG. For example, many of the
features of the new gray radio, Radio Mother Vietnam, owe their genesis
to PPOG and non-Agency contributors. The so-called ARCHIE BUNKER
project -- the still languishing proposal to knock out Hanoi Radio and
substitute our own broadcast of the official Radio's medium wave home
service -- was originally discussed and proposed at an early PPOG
session. (Our substitute broadcast is potentially one of the most dramatic
and unsettling psychological events of the war, one that we believe
Hanoi will be ill prepared to counter simply because they have no
precedent to go on. In brief, we propose to broadcast our own special
resolution of the "21st Plenum" which has not yet been held which
declares the end of the armed struggle and the return of essentially
peaceful political competition. We propose to let the North Vietnamese
get the genie back in the bottle once it is out.) Another PPOG proposal,
which our Headquarters has sent out for GVN implementation, involves
the dispatching of a team of GVN pro selyters to Paris targeted against
DRV/PRG officials. Another PPOG idea which is being implemented is
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a bogus "Ho Chi Minh letter" -- a document Ho is supposed to have left
with a trusted confidant questioning the leadership ability of Le Duan,
and pointing out Le Duan's inflexibility in situations where there is no
historical precedent to go on. There are numerous other examples that
can be noted here, the point being that PPOG is the primary USG focal
point for psyop concepts, ideas and suggestions. The energy and
imagination of specialists throughout the U.S. Government has been
uncorked in PPOG, which despite its problems (some inherent in any
interdepartmental committee) has orchestrated and directed a world-
wide overt and covert campaign.
SPECIFIC PPOG ACCOMPLISHMENTS
6. Some specific achievements include the resumption of leafleting
operations against North Vietnam, using drones, C- 130's and B-52's.
The leaflets themselves are periodically reviewed as to the suitability of
their contents. New and potentially even more effective leaflets have been
developed. One leaflet that has been inserted within the past few days
is a so-called inflation leaflet on which a facsimile of North Vietnamese
currency is printed. Judging from past results in the 1966-67 period when
a similar currency-style leaflet was dropped, this leaflet will probably
cause an element of disruption in North Vietnam. It is possible that
North Vietnamese recipients of the leaflet will cut off the facsimile
currency representation and try to pass it. Two other leaflets, which
have not yet been approved by the White House, deal with the Nixon
visits to Peking and Moscow and prominently show photographs of the
President with Brezhnev and Chairman Mao. If authorized by the White
House (which is hypersensitive on anything touching China), the latter
two leaflets should prove most effective in North Vietnam.
7. In order to provide responsive managerial control over the
leafleting operation, PPOG has reorganized this activity by returning the
authority to develop leaflets to the Saigon Mission. This step was intended
to provide one centralized authority with the task of developing effective,
intelligible and thoroughly pre-tested leaflets. Saigon's Leaflet Devel-
opment Unit is now beginning to function along the lines that PPOG devised.
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8. In the field of radio broadcasting PPOG has developed an all-
embracing master theme list for world-wide use. We have greatly
stepped up and improved the primary media facilities such as VOA.
We have also developed the Agency's entirely new "Radio Mother Vietnam"
which is now broadcasting 55 hours per day over medium and short
wave frequencies. The radio themes have improved across the board
and are believed to be more hard-hitting and effective than in the past.
A screening mechanism of all relevant and exploitable intelligence
materials has been instituted in Saigon to support the radio media
facilities with usable declassified data.
9. The broadcasting of NVA POW names over VOA and the GVN's
Voice of Freedom (VOF); the step-up in the broadcasting of "Yellow
Music" (a form of popular South Vietnamese sentimental music) by
VOA, VOF and Radio Mother Vietnam; and Radio Mother Vietnam's
parodying of martial-sounding North Vietnamese songs were all ideas
either generated or given new impetus by PPOG. These three radio
broadcasting features have provoked recent criticisms from Hanoi or
North Vietnamese officials.
10. PPOG began planning contingencies on the dike question
before it was an issue and has contributed its share in the successful
countering of Hanoi's charges of deliberate U.S. bombing of the dikes.
PPOG has also managed a world-wide psych effort to signal Hanoi that
its invasion across the DMZ and from Laos and Cambodia has stripped
away all pretense of the so-called southern people S' rebellion against the
government and at the cost of Hanoi's international support. In another
area, PPOG has been pushing the "blood bath" line and is continuing to
highlight North Vietnamese atrocities in the South and thereby expose in
the international arena this harbinger of things to come if the Commu-
nists take over South Vietnam. As Hanoi's offensive in the South wanes,
we are prepared to hit hard on the theme that Vietnamization is a success
and Ho's successors are pygmies compared to him, that they have led
the country to destruction.
11. As noted previously, it appears that some elements of our
total mix of intensified activities are hitting tender nerves in Hanoi.
Perhaps the clearest indication of reaction to date has been the recent
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issuance by the North Vietnamese Premier's Office of a directive on the
"reorientation of the information tasks. " One of the directive's aims
is the thwarting of our psychological warfare efforts, and the directive
has a provision calling for the re-establishment of mobile information
teams at the village, district, province and city echelons in North Vietnam.
Still another Hanoi reaction admonished Party officials and secretaries
for listening to Allied radio broadcasts. And in a virtually unprecedented
event, a recent issue of the People's Army daily newspaper devoted one
entire full page of its regular normal four-page format to a series of
articles on the need to counter the Allied psychological effort. Almost
weekly reports are being received from prisoners and ralliers that attest
to the effectiveness of some phase of our efforts. The most dramatic is
rallier Le Xuan Thy, a soldier of the 324th Division, who turned himself
in as a result of listening to Mother Vietnam and who says that our
broadcasts have prompted other members of his unit to desert and
return to their families.
12. In sum, while much remains and always will remain to be
achieved, the U.S. Government does now have a psychological warfare
effort against North Vietnam that merits such a name and this collective
effort of various agencies and departments reflects a quantum improve-
ment over the various government components separate efforts that
existed in one form or another (and, sometimes, largely on paper) prior
to the President's 17 April directive.
JOHN P. HORGAN
Deputy Special Assistant for Vietnamese Affairs
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