U. S. PARTICIPATION IN THE "FISHHOOK" OPERATION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: Library of Congress
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): LOC-HAK-456-5-1-9
• Release Decision: RIPLIM
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 35
• Document Creation Date: January 11, 2017
• Document Release Date: April 11, 2011
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: August 20, 1975
• Content Type: MEMO

MEMORANDUM
UNCLASSIFIED
TOP SECRET
ATTACHMENT
2838
INFORMATION
August 20, 1975 '1-eD
MEMORANDUM FOR: BUD M A ZIJI~LANE
FROM: WILLIAM L. STEARMAN
SUBJECT:
U. S. Participation in the "Fishhook"
Operation
The 1970 "Fishhook" operation in Cambodia was officially acknowledged
as a combined U. S. -RVNAF operation.
President Nixon's April 30, 1970 announcement stated that U. S. and
RVNAF units will attack Communist headquarters, (COSVN) in Cambodia.
Those headquarters were later identified as being the "Fishhook. "
A DOD Information fact sheet of May ~2l, 1970 described Allied (U. S. -
RVNAF) operations in the "Fishhook" as did the State Department's
GIST No. 27 of May 1970 which was prepared for public use.
NSC and JCS
reviews
completed
UNCLASSIFIED
TOP SECRET
ATTACHMENT
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NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL
 0
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-TOP SECRET THE WHITE HOUSE
ATTACHMENTS wASBINOTON
11 August 197.5
MEMO FOR BILL STEARMAN
'FROM: BUD McFABLANE
The General still wonders whether we,
that is, the White House Press Office,
Defense or any public official (as
opposed to press speculation) actually
acknowledged the Fishhook" operation
as an American operation.
Thanks.
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 NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL
TOP SECRET July 30, 1975
ATTACHMENTS
MEMORANDUM FOR: GENERAL SCOWCROFT
FROM: WILLIAM L. STEARMAN
SUBJECT: Declassification Request
You asked if we ever acknowledged the "Fishhook"
operation as an American operation. (See document
at Tab A.)
We have checked this thoroughly and have discovered
no "Fishhook" operation other than our well publicized
1970 incursion into Cambodia, which was apparently
labled by some as the "Fishhook" operation.
pith regard to your comment concerning the
description of the documents in the Adams article,
the natittre of the study and the documents on which
it was based, of which John Court wrote the precis,
are described in the marked paragraphs beginning at
the paper clip.
jection to Declassification in Part 2011/04/11: LOC-HAK-456-5-1-9
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THE WHITE HOUSE
WA * NIN4 TON
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a73V
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MEMORANDUM
IF -
NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL
CONFIDEN'T'IAL/TOP SECRET
ATTACHMENT
June 23, 1975
MEMORANDUM FOR: SECRETARY KISSINGER
THROUGH: GENERAL SCOWCROFT
FROM: Jeanne W. Davi
SUBJECT: Request for Declassification of 1970
Memo on VC Military Proselyti,ng
CIA has asked us to review for purposes of declassification the May 11,
1970 memorandum from Larry Lynn to you, (at Tab A), enclosing memo-
randa to the President and to DCI Helms, on the subject of VC military
proselying and penetration within the GVN and RVNAF. (The memos
to the Presides and Helms were subsequently signed and forwarded
without change.)
The memoranda were included in a package of material supplied to CIA
for declassification review by Congressman Pete McCloskey. All of
the other materiel came from the files of Sam Adams, a former CIA
employee, who had apparently made it available to the Congressman. In
a recent Harper's article by Adams (Tab B), he refers to the NSC memo
on page 11.
The Lynn package has been reviewed by Dick Smyser, Clint Granger
and Richard Ober, all of whom agree that the material is no longer
sensitive and that .the memos should be declassified.
There is the broader question, of course, as to whether, as a matter of
principle, we should ever agree formally to release an internal document
containing advice to the President from his staff. In this instance,
howover, the issue is mooted by the fact that the documents are partially
disclosed by, the Adams article and may be totally disclosed by McCloskey
who has the documents and may publish them, declassified or not.
On this point Bill Casselman in the Office of White House Counsel/~Ct b C)
CONFIDE
ATTACHM T
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 i
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2
CONFIDENTIATtin
A key but rarely discussed aspect of the enemy's activities in
Vietnam is llis m l:itary:proselyting'effo.rt. Enemy proselyting
activities are designed to:
.. obtain intelligence,
degrade GVN,and ARVN performance,
prepare for political competition with the GVN in the event
of a ceasefire or through GVN elections.
ting organizations have an estimated 20, 000
osel
l
y
itary pz
VC mi
members, including about 10, 000 regular party members. They
Viet Cong
f th
h
e
o
account for about 25 percent of the strengt
infrastructure.
formal bureaucracy, the Viet Con; proselyters
i
t
t
s
o
In addition
t- nnn subversives within
h
r .,bo
o
u
tn
Cs
h
._.
e 1e
- __. -_
the CrVN. Another -15, 000 '17 Ca agents are an
forcc.,;, a third of whom axe officers or NO's.
sources noted a maJor xncrea,e in VC pxoselytins; co:d
c
lli
n
e
gen
te
In I969 i
penetration activities. This shift could be read as the prelude to politic-it!
ther tactic to counter
struggle, i. c. creasefire, or merely as ano
Victnamization.
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In either case it is of the utmost importance that the GVN take
measures to cope with this threat.
We obtained information from a false rallies that on about
who, in mid-April ral3.i.ed and infi.ltr:ltact GVN border units to obtain
April 1, 1970 the VC conducted a two.week training course for agents
info rrmnation on possible ARVN operations in Cambodia. These
activities in addition to long-standing penetrations may explain why
the enemy had two, days warning of ARVN's Parrot Beak operation.
The enemy also had advance warning of the U. S. /ARVN Fishhoolc
operation.
-.. It is an accepted fact that ARVN rarely mounts a major
operation without the enemy knowing the full. details beforehand. Not
so widely z ecognized is the role played by VC prosely-tors in degrading
ARVN performance by encouraging desertions and sympathetic
performance by ?GVNT/.ARVN personnel. Thus these enemy activities
area real threat to Vietnamization.
The GVN Res 2onse
GVN awareness of the problem of proselyting and penetrations within
RVNAF has grown and its effectiveness at dealing with the problem
has also increased:
-- The number of low level "VC cadres," includinj proselytors,
detained by the GVN has risen considerably. In, the Saigon area, about
half of the enemy's agents.have been rounded up.
The roll up of six high -level VC intelligence networks over
the last year represents a sul~stwi_Li11 increase in GATN effectiveness.
There has been no. comparable roll ups since the fall of Diem.
However, much remains to be done and the GVN is still faced with
several intractable problems that hamper its efforts:
-- The rnambers of RVNAF do not repaorf. enc-i-ny roscl tin or
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known penetrations Lo their snpcrior ARVN records show only 348
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RVNAI' personnel as having reported ~ pnroaches b - Communist
-- The widesnx?ead VC enetration.s of the GVN's security
identification, VC can join RVNAF by defecting through the Chieu Hoi
~,*~~++~?? ??? c.,~ ti=4E:)6V4n 171[)111.11 1~C7'1od ending in June 1967.
a; p rates make ii caixficult for it to fcinc:i.ion effcrtivcl r For
example, one VC agent served .as Assistant Chief of the ARVN's
C,vun,i-.ez -I.ncclUgcnace bureau for six years.
The VC arc able to "le#;a1ire" their agents without great
difficulty. Ix they have proper identification, VC agents can join
the RVNAF by either enlisting or being drafted. Suitable GVN
Identification can he readily obtained by the VC. Even without GVN
program.
captured. A report., by MACV in August 1969 indicated that "from
75-?90 percent of all Viet Cong intelligence or security agents captured
-- The GVN is largely unable: to holed VC agents once they are
w0474 released within six months to a. year of arrest. "
In sum, while the GVN is making some progress in improving the
effectiveness of its security forces, there is no reason to believe
that they have made significant inroads into the existing networks
of agents, excei3t in Saigon, or that these networks cannot be
i
ncreased in size and ualit
Conclusion
nervy l3roselytin activities and the absence of a determined GVN
effort to counter them represents a serious if not crippling drag on
I have sent a memorandum to CIA Director Helms askin
him to
g
investigate the seriousness of this problem and the sufficiency of
present GVN actions to counter it. I have also sought his views on
any actions we might take to help improve the GVN's countermeasures.
His response is c: pccted by June. 1, 1970 at which time I will forward`
recommendations to you on possible U. S. course of action to improve
th
0 situation.
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Ins vvttIIL Ui0USC
WASIiINGTQN
T DIRECTOR 'OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
SUBJECT: Viet Cong Military Proselyting and Penetration Activities
c
in South Vietnam. I undersi-nd t1 y : ` n enetration effort
Through the work of the Central Intelligence Agency, I have become
aware of the Viet Cong tililitary Prose] tin
d P
'their DrOSCal\+{iT'11r rff'^ r4? ie Viet Lang nave recently increa
-,....7 a.1~_a_ ~.~_?
+.w,.r~datjo or on any political settlement.
xn oa xn zzi-n. further on such matters as:
.I have informed the President of .the scope and nature of these enemy
activities. I Would 1il.e to -r -
i
program, of these activities,
your -- your assessment of the extent and significance, particularly.
for the Vietnamizatio
x
-- the nature and effectiveness of current GVNrr
-- alIernative.courses of action we might take to improve the
GVN's capability to counter enemy proselyting and penetration
a-ctivitic s.
Your analysis of the fore going considerations is necessary for a
complete assessment of the situation. Please forward your results
to me by June 1, '1970,
Henry A. Ris singex
TOP SERET'
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 "C' ~-CA_CLAzu
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,T~
MAY 1975
A CIA conspiracy against its own intelligence
N LATE 1965, WELL At'TEtt the United States
had committed ground troops to Vietnam, the
CIA assigned me to study the Vietcong. Despite
the almost 200,000 tnmerican troops and the
advanced state of warfare in South Vietnam, I
was the first intelligence analyst in Washington
to be given the full-time job of researching our
South Vietnamese enemies. Incredible as it now
seems, I remained the only analyst with this as-
signment until just before the Tet offensive of
1968.
At CIA headquarters in 1965 nobody was
studying the enemy systematically, the principal
effort being geared to a daily publication called
the "Sitrep" (Vietnam Situation Report), which
concerned itself with news 'about the activities of
South Vietnamese politicians and the location
of Vietcong units. The Sitrep analysts used the
latest cables from Saigon, and tended to neglect
information that didn't fit their objectives. The
Johnson Administration was already wondering
how long the Vietcong could stick it out, and
since this seemed too complicated a. question for
the Sitrep to answer, the CIA's research depart-
ment' assigned it to inc. I was told to find out
the state of enemy morale.
of my superiors, and the Vietcong study was
given to me by way of reward, encouraging me
in my ambition to make a career within the
CIA.
Without guidance and not knowing what else
to do, I began to tinker with the VC defector
statistics, trying to figure out such things as
where the defectors came from, what jobs they
had, and why they had wanted to quit. In short
order I read through the collection of weekly
reports, and so I asked for a ticket to Vietnam
to see what other evidence was available over
there. In mid-January 1966, I arrived in Saigon
to take up a desk in the U.S. Embassy. After a
couple of weeks, the CIA station chief (every.
one called him "Jorgy") heard I was in the
building adding and subtracting the number of
defectors. He called me into his office. "Those
statistics aren't worth a damn," he said. "No
numbers in Vietnam are, and, besides, you'll
never learn anything sitting around Saigon."
He told me I ought to go to the field and start
reading captured documents. I followed Jorgy's
advice.
The captured documents suggested a phenom-
enon that seemed incredible to ine. Not only
were the VC taking extremely heavy casualties,
. I got
e numbers of them were desertin
but lar
g
g
Good news and bad news together two sets of captured papers concerning
LOOKED UPON THE NEw s.oB as something of a
promotion. Although I had graduated from
Harvard in 1955, T didn't join the Agency until
1963, and I had been fortunate in my first as-
si gnment as an analyst of the Canto rebellion.
My daily and weekly reports earned the praise
11, ~_r7li
desertion. The first set consisted of enemy unit
rosters, which would say, for example, that in .a
certain seventy-seven-mare outfit, only sixty men
were "present for duty." Of the seventeen ab-
sent, two were down with malaria, two were at
training school, and thirteen had deserted. The
other documents were directives from various
Sam Adams is a fourth
cousin, seven times re-
moved. Of President
John Adams. His great.
great-great-great-grand-
father, also named Jol:n.
lost an car at the Bat-
tle of Bunker Hill. Mr.
Adams raises cattle in
Leesburg, Virginia, and
is writing a book about
his notv.aborted CIA
Career.
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 .'4L " No Objection to Declassification in Part 2011/04/11 : LOC-HAK-456-5-1-9 1
V. headquarters telling subordinatWto do the psychiatrists of the Vieth"s residence.
somrnething about the growing desertion rate. The South Vietnamese government was in one
"Christ Almighty,"they all seemed to say."These of its periodic states of collapse, and somehow it
AWOLs are getting out of hand. Far too many seemed unlikely that the Vietcong would be
of our boys are going over the'hill." ? falling apart at the same time. I began to sus-
I soon collected a respectable stack of rosters, pect that something was wrong with my predic-
some of them from large units, and I began to tion that the VC were headed for inuninent
extrapolate. I set up an equation which went trouble. On reexamining the logic that had led
like this: if A, B, and C units (the ones for me to the prediction, I saw that it was based on
which I had documents) had so many deserters three main premises. Premise number one was
ver beau cas.
ff
in such and such a period of time, then the that the Vietcong were su enng y y
number of deserters per year for the whole VC ? ualties. Although I'd heard all the stories about
ded not to believe
I t
i
Army was X. No matter how I arranged the
equation, X always turned out to be a very big
number. I could never get it below 50,000.Once' I even got it up to 100,000.
The significance of this finding in 1966 was
immense. At that time our official estimate of
the strength of the enemy was 270,000. We
were killing, capturing, and wounding VC at a
rate of almost 150,000 a year. If "to these casu-
alties you added 50,000 to, I00,000 deserters
well, it was bard to see how a 270,000-man
army could last more than a:year or two longer.
I returned in May to tell everyone the good
hews. No one at CIA headquarters had paid
much attention to VC deserters because cap-
tured documents were almost entirely neglected.
The finding created a big stir. Adm. William F.
Rabora, Jr.,.then director of the CIA, called
me in to brief him and his deputies about the
Vietcong's AWOL problem. Right after the
briefing, I was told that the Agency's chief of
research, R. Jack Smith, had called me "the out-
standing analyst" in the research directorate.
But there were also skeptics, particularly
among the CIA's old Vietnam hands, who had
long since learned that good news was often
illusory. To be on the safe side, the Agency
formed what was called a "Vietcong morale
team" and sent it to Saigon to see if the news
was really true. The team consisted of myself,
acting as a "consultant," and four Agency psy-
cbiatrists, who presumably understood things
Itke morale.
HZ. PSYCHIATRISTS had ,no better idea than
I'd had, when I started out, how to plumb the
Vietcong mind. One of the psychiatrists said,
"We7I never get Ho Chi Minh to lie still on a
leather couch, so we better think up something
else quick." They decided to ask the CIA men
in the provinces what they thought about enemy
morale. After a month or so of doing this, the
psychiatrists went back to Washington con-
vinced that, by and large, Vietcong spirits
were in good shape. I went back with suitcases
fall of captured documents that supported my
ttlesis about the Vietcong desertion rate.
But I was getting uneasy. I trusted the optn-
of the CIS No Objection to Declassification
en
ng,
exaggerated report
them, because the heavy losses were also reflect-
ed in the-doc>w cr^^.?=?~==: two was my find-
ing that the enemy army had a high desertion
rate. Again, I believed the documents. Premise
three was that both the casualties and the de-
serters came out of an enemy force of 270,000.
An old Vietnam hand, George Allen, had al-
ready told me that this number was suspect.
In July, I went to my supervisor and told
him I thought there might be something radi-
cally wrong with our estimate of enemy
strength, or, in military jargon, the order of
battle. "Maybe the 270,000 number is too low,"
I said. "Can I take a closer look at it?" He said
it.was okay with him just so long as I handed
in an occasional item for the Sitrep. This
seemed fair enough, and so I began to put to-
gether a file of captured documents.
The documents in those days were arranged
in "bulletins," and by mid.August I had collect-
ed more than 600 of them. Each bulletin con-
tained several sheets of paper with summaries
in English of the information in the papers
taken by American military units. On the after
noon of August 19, 1966, a Friday, Bulletin
689 reached my desk on the CIA's fifth floor. It
contained a report put out by the Vietcong
headquarters in Binh Dinh province, to the ef-
fect that the guerrilla-militia in the province
numbered just over 50,000. I looked for our
own intelligence figures for Binh Dinh in the
order of battle and found the number 4,500.
"My God," I thought, "that's not even a
tenth of what the VC say."
In a state of nervous excitement, I began
searching through my file of bulletins for other
discrepancies. Almost- the next document I
looked at, the one for- Phu Yen province,
showed 11,000 guerrilla-militia. In the official
order of battle we had listed 1,400, an eighth of
the Vietcong estimate. I almost shouted from
my desk, "There goes the whole damn order of
battle!"
Unable to contain my excitement, I began
walking around the office, telling anybody who
would listen about the enormity of the over-
sight and the implications of it for our conduct
of the war. That weekend I returned to the of-
 , `u -uiruila~, Lac ~.,..q ww,i?.w+-w.. w- ?~v~a,au aau~kr?.. ... t... ,..~ n
EE,3li~1 builetuls and f-,,nrl turthe''r rirnnf of ax gross 1 t,n,Itl nn WP[1necflav I still thought there must,
fun~'erestirhnta of No Objection to Declassification in Part 2011/04/11 : LOC-HAK-456-5-1-9
`ia:1,1"1)e n:,fig htino for almost two year hen I I. I thought the news might have Wn so impar-
1.lrxive,I in the office on Monday a colleague of tant that people were still trying to decide what
amine brought me a document of a year earlier to do with it. Instead, on Friday, the memoran-
; dtich he thought might i?ntereatxne. It was from' dum dropped back in my in-box. There was no
Vietcong headquarters in South Vietnam, and it comment on it at all-no request for ampli5ca-
:.bowed that in early 1965 the VC had about tion, no question about my numbers, nothing,
200,000 guerrilla-militia in the south, and that. just a routine slip attached showing that the
they were planning to build p to 300,000 by entire CIA hierarchy had read it.
the end of the year. Once again; I checked the I was aghast. Here I had come up with
official order of battle. It listed a figure of ex-1200,000 additional enemy troops, and the CIA
actly 103,573 guerrilla-militia-in other words, 1 hadn't even bothered to ask me about it, let
half as many as the Vietcong said they bad in alone tell anybody else. I got rather angry and
early 1965, and a third as many as they planned wrote a second memorandum, attaching even
to have by 1966.'" more references to other documents. Among
MALT AFTER 0OY August 22, I wrote a men- these was a report from the'Vietcona high com
" mand showing that the VC controlled not 3 mil-
~`orandum suggesting that the overall order of
battle estimate of 270,000 might be 200,000 lion people as in our official estimate) but d:
men too low. Supporting it with references to! mil ion (their estimate). I thought that this
numerous bulletins, I sent it. up to the seventh helped to explain the origins of the extra
floor,. and then waited anxiously for the re- 200,000 guerrilla-militia, and also that it was
sponse. I imagined all kinds of sudden. and dra- an extraordinary piece of news in its own
matic telephone calls. "Mr. Adams, come brief ! right. A memorandum from my officethe of-
the director." "The President's got to be told 1 fice of Current Intelligence--ordinarily would
about this, and you'd better be able to defend ' be read, edited, and distributed within a few
those numbers." I wasn't sure what would hap- days to the White House, the Pentagon, and the
men, but I was sure it would be significant, be-'State Department. It's a routine procedure, but
cause -I knew this was the biggest intelligence, once again I found myself sitting around wait-
find of the war-by far. It was important be- 'ing for a response, getting angrier and angrier.
cause the planners running the war in those After about a week I went up to the seventh
days used statistics -as a basis for everything floor to find out what had happened to my
they did, and the most important figure of all memo.. I found it in a safe, in a manila folder
was, the size of the. enemy army :that order of marked "Indefinite Hold."
Battle number, 270,000. All our other intelli I went back down to the fifth floor, and wrote
gence estimates were tied to'the order of battle: still another memo, referencing even more docu- i
how much rice the VC ate, how much ammuni ments. This time I didn't send it up, as I had
Lion they shot off, and so forth. If the Vietcong the others, through regular channels. Instead, I .
Army suddenly doubled in size, our whole atatis-; carried mcb upstairs
who wwith the intention of ould comment on it. When
tical system would collapse. We'd be fighting a y
war twice as big as the one we thought we I reached the office of the Asia-Africa area
were fighting.'We already had about 350,000! chief, Waldo Duberstein, he looked at me and
soldiers in Vietnam, and everyone was talking said: "It's that Goddamn memo again. Adams,
about "force ratios." Some experts maintained- stop being such a prima donna." In the next
that in a guerrilla war our side had to outnum-:' office, official
Westaid that the concern, oand the , was uer the enemy by a ratio of 10 to 1; others General o This made m even
said 5 to 1; the most optimistic said 3 to 1. had no business intruding.
But even, if we used the 3 to 1 ratio, the addi-: angrier. "We're all in the same government,"
tion of 200,000 men, to the enemy order of bat-i I said. "If there's a discrepancy this big, it
de meant that somebody had to find an extra" doesn't matter who points it out. This is no joke.
600,000 troops for our side. This would put We're in a war with these guys." My remarks
President Johnson in a very ti ght fix--.either were dismissed as rhetorical, bombastic, and
quit the war or send more soldiers. Once be irrelevant.
was informed of the actual enemy strength, it On the ninth of September, eighteen days af-
seemed inconceivable that he could continue' ter I'd written the first memo, the CIA agreed
with the existing force levels. I envisioned the $a let a version of it, out of the building, but
President calling the director on the carpet, with very strange, restrictions.~r It was to be.
asking him why this information hadn't been called a "draft working. paper, meaning that
found out before. it locked official status; it was issued in only 25
*X document was later captured which showed copies, instead of the usual run of over 200; it
flier Vietcong not only reached but exceeded their Could go to workin ;-level types" only---ana-
eiuota. Dated April 1966, it put. the number of guer- lysts and staff people but not to anyone in a
Cilia-militia at 330,000. policy-making position-to no one, for example,
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 6 atlOna Qcun ty. i '' tJ;te COPY Uet'71 y a>,.7J.r u?t+i? ..,h.,tr nettCatt"!orl' of
x501?
40 w, ,t to 5s gon; c No Objection to Declassification in Part 2011/04/11 : LOC-HAK-456-5-1-9
rner:' tiluovaR .+a .--r?---- .r -?-
of 3-1d 0! Section, carri ~.r
'Warlw ixt the Pentagon for the I efens nteiii? the I order drew a lbIank'at the Pentagon regard'
r ice Agency. 1 d so I started asking CIA
res
r,-)Y THIS TIME I Was so angry and exhausted
that I decided to take twow,eeks off to sim-
mer down. This was useless, I spent the whole
vacation thinking about the order of battle.
When I returned to the Ager-cy,'I found that it
came out monthly and was divided into. four
parts, as follows:
Communist regulars
Guerrilla-militia
Service troops
Political cadres
About 110,000
(it varied by month)
Exactly 103,573
Exactly 18,553
Exactly 39,175
That is, 271,301,
or about 270,000
The only ' category that ever changed was
"Communist regulars" (uniformed soldiers in
the Vietcong Army). In the last two years, this
fo
b
.
a
r
ers
nto p
war fal
figure had more than doubled. The num
! how the Vietcong pinny could have so many de-
d
pre-
had remaine
the other three categoriescisely the same, even to the last digit. There I serters and casualties and still remain effective.'
was only one conclusion.: no one had even - .
looked at them! I decided to do so right away,
and to find out where the numbers came from
and whom they were. describing.
I began by collecting" more documents on
the guerrilla-militia. These were "the soldiers in!
-black pajamas" the press' kept talking about;1
lightly Armed in some areas, armed to the teeth
in others, they planted most of the VC's mines
and booby traps. This was important, I discov-
ered, because in the Da Nang area, for example,)
mines and booby trans caused about two-thirds;
of all the casualties suffered by U.S. Marines.!
I also found where the number 103,573 came:'
from. The ?South Vietnamese had thought it up!
in 1964; American intelligence had accepted!
it without question, and hadn't checked it since.!
"Can you believe it?" I said to a fellow analyst-;
"Here we are in the middle of a guerrilla war,'
I
and we haven't even bothered to count the nom-
her of guerrillas."
I The service troops were harder to locate. The
order of battle made it clear that these VC 501-
diers were comparable, to specialists in the
American Army---ordnance sergeants, quarter
masters, medics, engine~srs, and so forth. But.
despite repeated phone calls to the Pentagon,
to U.S. Army headquarters, and to the office of
'
t find nyone.
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I couldn
who knew where or when we'd hit u on the,
VC
t n
ll
g
ec
1
number 18,553. Again 1 began co
documents, and within a week or so had come: hopes of Carver because, partly as a result of his
to the astonishing conclusion that our official efforts, broken duwnoa~1lo1totvs1i Camrnun~isa
estimate for ser';"? OfA WAM at. least two years r ^ , I rok nnn. ^^