ENEMY REACTIONS TO PSYWAR PROGRAMS

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 05082501
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: July 1, 2024
• Document Release Date: May 22, 2024
• Case Number: F-2022-01481
• Publication Date: July 18, 1972

Approved for Release: 2024/05/08 C05082501
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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
WASHINGTON. D.C. 20505
OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR
18 July 1972
MEMORANDUM FOR: The Honorable Henry A. Kissinger
Assistant to the President for
National Security Affairs
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SUBJECT: Enemy Reactions to Psywar Programs
1. A sensitive source in Europe has provided us with an
authoritative and unsolicited enemy reaction to our black radio broad-
casting to North Vietnam. This information, coupled with statements
made over Radio Hanoi in early July, indicates that these broadcasts
have become a clear source of discomfort to the enemy.
2. CIA black radio messages have been beamed continuously to
North Vietnam since 1961., when Radio Red Flag, ostensibly repre-
senting a pro-Soviet, anti-Chinese splinter group within the Lao Don.g
Party, went on the air. This programming was supplemented, in 1965,
with the Voice of the Sacred Sword Patriots League, which purported
to emanate from an anti-Party resistance group inside North Vietnam.
Our most recent black radio effort, begun in December 1971, has been
targeted against North Vietnam as a daily half-hour mimic of Radio
Hanoi. Still another broadcast, beamed at the Vietnamese Communists
IA the South, and started some years earlier, is a daily half-hour mimic
of Radio Liberation.
3. According to the sensitive source, Le Chan, Director of the
North Vietnamese Information Agency in Paris, told a small group of
Vietnamese Communist sympathizers in Paris on 21 June that there are
now some "very strange" broadcasts on the air, which have such names
as "Red Flag," "Sacred Patriotic Sword" and even one identifying
itself as "Liberation Radio." Le Chan said that the sponsors of the
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broadcasts claim to be groups of revolutionaries, but actually they are
CIA people who do the broadcasts as "part of their psychological
warfare." He said that he knew this because he had heard a lot about
it when he was in North Vietnam. Le Chan went on to say that "They
sound like real patriots, supporting this or that policy of the Front, but
occasionally inserting one or two sentences which you know right away
are 'false merchandise.' Those who are a little bit intelligent know
right away that it is false. But, if you are not sharp, or have no
knowledge of politics, or if you are not familiar with this kind of thing
and you listen to it only occasionally � then you can be taken in easily.
You can even get confused because this radio says this and that radio
says that, and you don't know what to believe."
4. Le Chan did not mention our Radio Hanoi Mimic, the one begun
in December 1971, but this may be because he has not been back in
North Vietnam since that station went on the air. In a series of three
broadcasts on 3, 4 and 5 July, however, Radio Hanoi itself spoke out
against the mimic, claiming that "the birth of this forged monster" goes
to prove the "weakness of the U.S. puppets and increases the confidence
of the South Vietnamese urban people toward the voice of the just cause."
(Our mimic has subsequently taken up similarly outraged diatribes
against the "phony program of the Thieu clique," warning that Thieu
will "sooner or later be boycotted by his own South Vietnamese people
if they ever discover the truth.")
5. The above reactions would appear to justify the continued
operation of Radio Sacred Sword, Radio Liberation (mimic) and Radio
Hanoi (mimic). Radio Red Flag was recently terminated in order to
supply facilities and personnel to Mother Vietnam, our new Tokyo Rose-
type gray broadcast to the North. We have still to receive our first
enemy evaluation of this latter effort.
WA
SENSITIVE IN I E
AND
Richard Helms
Director
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Approved for Release: 2024/05/08 C05082501