Have we learned the lessons of Tet even 50 years later?

The ringing phone was like an explosion in the windowless “Tank,” as the Saigon intelligence headquarters was called.

“The Embassy is under attack,” announced the sergeant at the desk that January morning in 1968. The Viet Cong Tet Offensive had begun, nearly simultaneously across at least a hundred cities, villages and military bases throughout the Republic of Vietnam.

This was a massive attack that some generals had insisted could never happen. They were wrong. Many observers had seen it coming, some – the Aussies in particular – as early as August, 1967.

My own team had submitted a summary of attacks we thought would occur. Our work had been ignored, but we had predicted some three-fourths of the attacks.

By all logic, I should have died on Jan. 31, 1968. Events leading me to night duty at Westmoreland’s headquarters had begun a couple weeks after I arrived in the summer of 1967.

Vietnam was my first tour as an intelligence officer, coming from combat training at Ft. Benning, Ga., and an intelligence course at Ft. Holabird, Md. I was assigned to a windowless building that was part of the top-level intelligence empire of Gen. William C. Westmoreland. Over my one-year tour, I would be an intermittent officer-in-charge for “order of battle” in the northern sector of the war zone. Using at least three translations of captured documents and prisoner interrogations, our mission was to report the enemy’s strength, capability and intentions.

Very early, I saw morale in the Center was dismal. My first clue was a “hail and farewell” cocktail party to welcome new analysts and salute those heading home. As the son of a career Lt. Colonel, I was comfortable enough around rank to offer a toast from the newcomers to those departing. To my shock, these officers disappeared as if a grenade had dropped at their feet.

I soon learned our predecessors had been criticized for offering estimates of enemy strength that were “too high.”

That critique came from the top. Westmoreland was convinced there was “light at the end of the tunnel;” that his strategy of search-and-destroy operations (often followed by questionable body counts) was working. In November, 1967 he had gone to Washington to report enemy forces were being reduced and the end was near. Neither was true.

The Memo

A single sheet of paper revealed the politics of this war. It was a memo to two colonels (copied secretly; I didn’t ask) that ordered the reduction of enemy strength estimates. Dated 15 August 1967, it had the signature block of Brigadier General Phillip Davidson, head of Vietnam intelligence.

The memo ordered staff to “attrite main forces, local forces and particularly guerrillas.” The rationale: “We must cease immediately using the assumption that these units replace themselves.” It closed with “combat strength … must take a steady and significant downward trend as I am convinced this reflects true enemy status.”

Not long after the memo surfaced, my team developed a hugely important finding from captured unit rosters revealing as much as 25 percent of VC units were North Vietnamese replacements. Soldiers were pouring down the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

I was assigned to brief the powerful head of “special intelligence,” Col. Daniel Graham. My bosses knew Graham devalued our work, so they arbitrarily dropped the significant 25 percent replacement figure to 10 percent. I slipped the higher number into my presentation, stating hurriedly how it indicated the VC were fully manned.

But Graham was not interested in either estimate or discussing the risks of an attack, though my Vietnamese counterparts told me clearly that attacks were coming – “especially in Saigon.”

The Feint

In late January, 1968, I was assigned headquarters night duty on a team targeting B-52 bombing runs around Khe Sanh, a U.S. Marine combat base of 6,000 men on a distant mountaintop. Westmoreland was convinced this would be the decisive battle of the war – just as Hanoi wanted him to believe. Even on the morning after the nationwide attacks, he declared Tet was a decoy to take our attention away from the Marine base. He had it backwards.

Days earlier I was given photo intelligence showing a large portion of forces around Khe Sanh was moving east toward the ancient city of Hue for a battle that would rage for a month. Later, my team reported Hue had been the real target all along.

The Night That Was

On the eve of Tet, the silent tension in the Tank was overwhelming. I saw Col. Graham, and approached him (despite his intimidating reputation). “Sir, we are going to be attacked tonight and nobody has prepared!”

The colonel’s reply was something like this: The VC do not have the capability to launch a nationwide offensive; we’ve killed too many of them.

Without thinking, I said, “Yeah, we’ve heard that one before.”

I realized what I had just said and quickly retreated. A few hours later, the attacks began and the Tank became a madhouse.

It was a large room with desks and symbol-laden maps everywhere, staffed round-the-clock by analysts who reported on the four combat zones and adjacent nations. At the Saigon desk there were reports of firefights all over the city; I knew I didn’t want to be inside this large building, protected only by cyclone fencing and two or three sentry towers. I borrowed a friend’s pistol, promising to return it after I checked the security outside.

That’s when things got complicated. I approached the MP tower closest to the Tan Son Nhut airfield where the sound of fighting was the loudest. The guard was frantic. An MP jeep pulled up and a small group came out of the building with weapons ranging from AK-47s to a light machine gun. The officer of the day for headquarters operations found me outside, asked about my training and announced that this volunteer squad was the only support we could expect. Then he declared me in charge.

This was the defense force for the entire headquarters of the Vietnam war, the workplace for legions of colonels and generals.

The eight of us put ourselves at a corner of the large two-story building to await any Viet Cong who might survive the fighting next door. A major Viet Cong force was moving through the airbase, destroying jets and heading for targets downtown. A makeshift coalition of American and Viet forces – probably including an elite South Vietnamese ranger unit – rallied and contained the VC. We at the HQ were lucky.

The Aftermath

In Hanoi’s view, the VC who attacked on Tet were expendable.

The May Offensive and the Siege of Saigon continued for months. After a rocket flew low over my barracks, the issue of who had “won” and who had “lost” was settled for me.

Gen. Westmoreland had been told what he wanted to hear and was further misled by ambition, including his own.

Tet was not a “failure of intelligence.” It was a failure by the senior command to use the intelligence they were provided. It was true 50 years ago just as it is today: Ignoring the truth leads only to disaster.

We need truth-telling to leaders who can handle it and will deal with it. Instead, a disturbing era of governmental falsification and misrepresentation is achieving normalcy.

In the HBO series “Game of Thrones,” Jon Snow blames “false promises” that give “no more answers, only better and better lies.”

The lies might have improved, but fake truth is a losing campaign.

This story was originally published January 27, 2018 at 10:43 AM with the headline "Have we learned the lessons of Tet even 50 years later?."