THE BLOOD-RED HANDS OF HO CHI MINH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78-03061A000400030004-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 14, 2000
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: November 1, 1968
• Content Type: OPEN

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pppproved For Release 200. IPj RDP78-03061A000400030004-2
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E
R
ADS DIGES
November 1968
BY JOHN G. HUBBELL
The Blood-Red Lands
of Flo Chi Minh
tlE VILLAGE chief ar.+'? his wife
were distraught. One of .'.iei.?
children, a seven-year-old
boy, had been missing for four days.
They were terrified, they explained
to Marine Lt. Gen. Lewis W. Walt,
because they believed he had been
captured by the Vietcong.
Suddenly, the boy came out of
the jungle and ran across the rice
paddies toward the village. He was
crying. His mother ran to him and
swept him up in her arms. Both of
his hands had been cut off, ind
there was a sign around his heck,
message to his father: if ht -.r :inv?
one else in the village dared g'?
the polls during the upcoming elec-
tions, something worse would hap-
pen to the rest of his children.
The V.C. delivered a similar
warning to the residents of a hamlet
not far from Dan ang. A11 were herd-
ed before the home of their chief.
While they and the chief's pregnant
wife ano four children were forced
to look on, the chief's tongue was
cut out. Then his genital organs
were sliced off and sewn inside his
bloody mouth. As he died, the V.C.
went to work on his wife, slashing
open her womb. Then, the nine-
ycar-old son: a bamboo lance was
rammed through one ear and out
the other. Two more of the chief's
children were murdered the same
way. The V.C. did not harm the five-
year-old daughter-not physically:
they simply left her crying, holding
her dead mother's hand.
General VValt tells of his arrival at
a district headquarters the day after
it had been overrun by V.C. and
North Vietnamese army troops.
Those South Vietnamese soldiers
not killed in the battle had been tied
up and shot through their mouths or
the backs of their heads. Then their
wives and children, including a
number of two- and tree- car-olds,
His goal:
total subjugation of the
Vietnamese people,
South and North.
His means:
a coldly calculated
campaign of terror,
torture and murder
had been brought into the street
disrobed, tortured and finally exe
cuted: their throats were cut; the
were shot, beheaded, disemboweled
The mutilated bodies were draped
on fences and hung with signs
telling the rest of the community
that if they continued to support
the Saigon government and allied
forces, they could look forward "t
the same fate.
These atrocities are not isolated
cases; they are typical. For this is
the enemy's way of warfare, clearly
expressed in his combat policy i
Vietnam. While the naive and anti-
American throughout the world
cued by communist propaganda
have trumpeted against America
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mora i y in the Vietnam war-
aerial bombing, the use of napalm
the inevitable (but relatively few
civilian casualties caused by Ameri
can combat action-daily and night
ly for years, the communists h.4v,
systematically authored history'
grisliest catalogue of barbarism. 131
the end of 1967, they had committec
at least ioo,ooo acts of terror against
the South Vietnamese people. The
record is an endless litany of tor-
tures, mutilations and murders that
would have been instructive even to
such as Adolf Hitler.
Perhaps because until recently the
terrorism has been waged mainly
in remote places)' this aspect of the
war has received scant attention
from the'-`press. Hence the enemy
has largely succeeded in casting him-
self in the role of noble revolution-
ary. It is long past time for
Americans, who are sick and tired
of being vilified for trying to help
South Vietnam stay free, to take a
hard look at the nature of this
enemy.
Blood-Bath Discipline. The
terror had its real beginning when
Red dictator Ho Chi Minh consoli-
dated his power in the North. More
than a year before his 1954 victory
over the French, he launched a sav-
age campaign against his own peo-
ple. In virtually every North Viet-
namese village, strong-arm squads
assembled the populace to witness
the "confessions" of landowners.
As time went on, businessmen, in-
tellectuals, schoolteachers, civic lead.
ers-all who represented a potential
source of future opposition-were
also rounded up and forced to "con-
fess" to "errors of thought." There
followed public "trials," conviction
and, in many cases, execution. Peo-
ple were shot, beheaded, beaten to
death; some were tied up, thrown
into open graves and covered with
stones until they were crushed to
death.
Ho has renewed his 'terror in
North Vietnam periodically. Be-
ween 50,000 and 100,000 arc
elieved to have died in these blood-
aths-in a coldly calculated effort to
iscipline the party and the masses.
o be sure, few who escape Ho's
error now seem likely to tempt his
rath. During the 195os, however,
1bMo%WQ,ll2somc sizable up-
 Approved For Release 2005/08/17 : CIA-RDP78-03061A000400030004-2
risings in North Vietnam-most beheaded. As a warning to other legs were dangling by ribbons of
L d Her
t
e .
notably one that occurred in early villagers, her head was placed on a flesh and had to a amputa
November 1956, in Nghe An prov- pole in front of her home. Her mur- husband, a hamlet chief, had just
ince; which included Ho's birthplace derers were her brother and two of been strangled &efore her eyes, and
village of Nam Dan. So heavily had his V.C. comrades. In the other case, she also had. seen her three-year-
he taxed the region that the inhabit- when a V.C. learned that his wife old child machine-gunned to death.
ants finally banded together and re- and two young children had co- . Four hours after her legs were am-
fused to meet his price. Ho sent operated with Marines who had be- putated, she aborted the child she
h
h
troops to collect, and then sent in an
army division, shooting. About 6oao
unarmed villagers were killed. The
survivors scattered, some escaping to
the South. The slaughter went large-
ly unnoticed by a world then pre-
occupied with the Soviet Union's
rape of Hungary.
With North Vietnam tightly in
hand, the central committee of the
North Vietnamese communist party
met in Hanoi on March 13, 1959,
and decided it was time to move
against South Vietnam. Soon, large
numbers of Ho's guerrillas were in-
filtrating to join cadres that had re-
mained there after the French defeat
in 1954. Their mission: to eliminate
South Vietnam's leadership, includ-
ing elected officials, "natural" lead-
ers, anyone and everyone to whom
people might turn for advice. Also
to be liquidated were any South
Vietnamese who had relatives in
their country's armed forces, civil
services or police; any who failed to
pay communist taxes promptly; any
with five or more years of education.
A captured V.C. guerrilla ex-
plained bow his eight-man team
moved against a particular target
village: "The first time we entered
the village, we arrested and executed
on the spot four men who had been
pointed out to us by the party's dis-
trict headquarters as our most dan-
gerous opponents. One, who had
fought in the war against the
French, was now a known supporter
of the South Vietnamese govern-
ment. Another had been seen frat-
ernizing with government troops.-
These two were shot. The others,
the village's principal landowners,
were beheaded."
General Walt tells of the "revo-
lutionary purity" of Vietcong who
came home to two other villages. In
one case, a 15-year-old girl who had
given Walt's Marines information
on V.C. activities was taken into the
jungle and tortured for hours, then
e worst
aps t
he himself cut out was carrying. But per
friended them
,
their tongues. thing that happened to her that diky
Genocide. In such fashion did the was that she survived.
storm of terror break over South ? A village policeman was held
Vietnam. In 1960, some 1500 South in place while a V.C. gunman shot
Vietnamese civilians were killed and off his nose and fired bullets through
700 abducted. By early 1965, the his cheekbones so close to his eyes
communists' Radio Hanoi and Ra- that they were reduced to bloody
dio Liberation were able to boast shreds. He later died from uncon-
that the V.C. had destroyed 7559 trollable hemorrhages.
South Vietnamese hamlets. By the ? A 2o-year-old schoolteacher had
end of last year, 15,138 South Viet- knelt in a corner trying to protect
namcsc civilians had been killed, herself with her arms while a V.C.
45,929 kidnaped. Few of the kid- flailed at her with a machete. She
naped are ever seen again. had been unsuccessful; the back of
Ho's assault on South Vietnam's her head was cut so deeply that the
leadership class has, in fact, been a brain was exposed. She died from
form of genocide-and all too effi- brain damage and loss of blood.
cient. Thus, if South Vietnam sur- Flamethrowers at Work. Last De-
vives in freedom, it will take the cember 5, communists perpetrated
country a generation to fully replace
this vital element of its society. But
the grand design of terror involves
other objectives, too. It hopes to
force the attacked government into of some 2000 Montag-
excessively repressive anti-terrorist nards-a tribe of gentle
actions, which tend to earn the gov- but fiercely independent
ernment the contempt and hatred' mountain people. They
of the people. It also seeks valuable had moved away from
propaganda in the form of well- their old village in V.C:
publicized counter-atrocities certain controlled territory, ig-
to occur at the individual level-for nored several V.C. orders
South Vietnamese soldiers whose to return and refused to
families have suffered at commu- furnish male recruits to
nists' hands are not likely to deal the V.C.
gently with captured V.C. and Two V.C. battalions
North Vietnamese troops. struck in the earliest
Dr. A. W. Wylie, an Australian hours, when the village
physician serving in a Mekong Del- was asleep. Quickly kill-
ta hospital, points out that a hamlet ing the sentries, the communists
- or village need not cooperate with _ swarmed among the rows of tidy,
the Saigon government or allied thatch-roofed homes, putting the
forces to mark itself for butchery; it torch to them. The first knowledge
need only be neutral, a political con- that many of the villagers had of the
dition not acceptable to the commu- attack was when V.C. troops turned
.nists. After a place has been worked flamethrowers on them in their beds.
over, its people of responsibility are Some families awoke in time to es-
always identifiable by the particular- cape into nearby jungle. Some men
ly hideous nature of their wounds. stood and fought, giving their wives
He cites some cases he has seen: and children time to crawl into
? When the V.C. finished with trenches dug beneath their homes
one pregnant woman, both of her as protection against mortar and
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what must rank among
history's most monstrous
blasphemies at Dak Son, a
central highlands village
 Ap
b r H v ~ t l a F t Q r c F ~ i e d 6 l a t 2 1 a $ / c 1 ~ticfn~-DsO~?$1r]R~tJQk6Ab1008-@@@t
ture of the enemy in South Vietnam. 1 saw niLt scheme. Hence, thr country's
seen heads impaled on stakes, and disem- targets. So efficiently rlirl he move
boweled bodies. against it that the W?tltl Confed-
I learned early in my two years of duty eration of Organizations of the
i
S
h Vi
fi
h
i
n
out
etnam
g
t
ng and working Thi Pf
,eacngroession sur,tt sent a
alon
side the South Vi
t
f
h
g
e
namese
orces t
atiihid b
, commsson, carey the communist terrorism described in this India s Shri
- a Pat.-
gram of systematic butchery. This dr libc to Typical of the comnt
and brutal assault against the grassroots Ings is what happened In the jungle
citizenry is one reason why we who have province of An Xuyen, During the
save this nation are worthwhile, necessary by the end of the 196o-6 t ar 1001 year,
and im
ortant
-
p
.
27953tdi8
, were atenng 19 schools.
-Lt
Gcn
Lewis W W
It US At
i
C
.
.
a
ar
oe
orps Th thi
...ene communsts
(Commander, I Corps Area, South Vietnam sy66.io6, moved in.
'rifle
fire. But when every building
w
as ablaze, the communists took
t
heir flamethrowers to the mouth of
each
ch trench and poured in a long,
se
acing hell of fire-and, for good
m
Methodical and thorough,. they
stayed
at it until daybreak, then left
in
the direction of the Cambodian
measure, tossed grenades into many. b believable horror. The village now
order.
Morning revealed a scene of un-
b
was only
a smoldering, corpse-lit-
tered patch on the lush green coun-
tryside. The bodies of 252 people,
mostly mothers and children, lay
blistered, charred, burned to the
bone. Survivors, many of them hor-
ribly burned, wandered aimlessly
about or stayed close to the inciner-
ated bodies of loved ones, crying.
Some 500 were missing; scores were
later found in the jungle, dead of
burns and other wounds; many
have not been found.
The massacre at Dak Son was a
warning to other Montagnard set-
tlements to cooperate. But many of
the tribesmen now fight with the
allies.
Mutilation on the School Bus.
If the communists' "persuasion"
techniques spawn deep and endur-
ing hatred, Ho could itot care less;
the first necessity is thr titter sub-
jugation of the people, I to was dis-
turbed by the rapid expansion of
South Vietnam's educational sys-
tem: between 1954 and 1959, the
number of schools haul tripled and
the number of student., had quad-
rupled. An educated populace, espe-
cially one educated to democratic
week, the communists stopped the
bus again, selected a six-year-old
passenger and cut off her fingers.
The other children were told, "This
is what will happen to you if you
continue to go to that school." The
school closed.
In one year, in An Xuyen prov-
ince alone, Ho's agents closed 150
schools, killed or kidnaped more
than five dozen teachers, and cut
school enrollment by nearly 20,000.
By the end of the 1961-62 school
year, 636 South Vietnamese schools
were closed, and enrollment had de-
creased by nearly 80,ooo.
But, in the face of this attack,
South Vietnam's education system
has staged ?,a strong comeback.
Schools destroyed by the commu-
nists have been rebuilt, destroyed,
and rebuilt again. Many teachers
have given up their own homes and
move each night into a different
student's home so the communists
can't find them, or commute from
nearby cities, where they leave their
families. .
Against such determination, the
size of Ho's failure can be measured:
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Parents were advised nut to send
their children to school, Teachers
were warned to stop providing civic
education, and to stop tr,,, hing chil-
dren to honor their country, flag
and president. Teachers who failed
to comply were shot or lirl-caded or
had their throats cut, and the rea-
sons for the execution. wric pinned
or nailed to their bodies,
The Natarajan commission re-
ported how the V.C. sto,lll)cd one
' school bus and told the children not
to attend school anynu,te. When
the children continued f,r another
 Approved For Release 2005/08/17 : CIA-RDP78-03061A000400030004-2
in 1954, there were approximately
400,000 pupils in school in North
and South Vietnam together; today
South Vietnam alone has some two
million in school. About 35,000-
four times as many as'in 1962-now
attend five South Vietnamese uni-
versities, while 42,000 more attend
night college.
A South Vietnamese government
official explains: "A war shatters
many traditional values. But the
idea of education has an absolute
hold on our people's imagination."
Bar of justice. The pitch of com-
munist terrorism keeps rising. After
the Tet carnage at Hue early this
year, 19 mass graves yielded more
than woo bodies, mostly civilians-
old men and women, young girls,
schoolboys, priests, nuns, doctors (in-
cluding three Germans who had
been medical-school faculty mem-
bers at Hue University). About half
had been buried alive, and many
were found bound together with
barbed wire, with dirt or cloth
stuffed into their mouths and
throats, and their eyes wide open.
The communists came to Hue with
a long list of names for liquidation -
people who worked for the South
Vietnamese or for the U.S. govern.
ment, or who had relatives who did.
But as their military situation grew
increasingly desperate, they began
grabbing people at random, out of
their homes and off the streets, con-
demned them at drumhead courts
as "reactionaries" or for "opposing
the revolution" and killed them.
"The Tet offensive represented a
drastic change in tactics," says Gen-
eral Walt. "This is a war to take over
the South Vietnamese people. Ho
launched the Tet offensive because
he knew he was losing the people.
But his troops didn't know it; they
were told that they didn't need any
withdrawal .plans because the people
would rise and fight with them to
drive out the Americans. What hap-
pened was just the opposite. Many
fought against them like tigers."
Some of the Tet offensive's explosion
of atrocities probably can be attrib-
uted to sheer vengeful frustration
on the part of Ho's terror squads-
which Ho may well have foreseen,
and counted on.
The full record of communist bar-
barism in Vietnam would fill vol-
umes. If South Vietnam falls to the
communists, millions more are cer-
tain to die, large numbers of them at
the hands of Ho's imaginative tor-
turers. That is a primary reason
why, at election times, more than
8o percent of eligible South Vietna-
mese defy every communist threat
and go to the polls, and why, after
mortar attacks, voting lines always
form anew. It is why the South Viet-
namese pray that their allies will
stick the fight through with them.
It is why the vast majority of
American troops in Vietnam are
convinced that the war is worth
fighting. It is why those who prance
about-even in our own country-
waving Vietcong flags and decrying
our "unjust" and "immoral" war
should be paid the contempt they
deserve.
Finally, it is why the communists
should be driven once and for all
from South Vietnam-and why, if
possible, the monsters who present-
ly rule North Vietnam should be
brought before the bar of justice.
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