Secrets and Lies in Vietnam

Spies, Intelligence and Covert Operations in the Vietnam Wars

Panagiotis Dimitrakis

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780857729620
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Communism, Post-Communism & Socialism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Vietnam War lasted twenty years, and was the USA's greatest military failure. An attempt to stem the spread of Soviet and Chinese influence, the conflict in practice created a chaotic state torn apart by espionage, terrorism and guerilla warfare. American troops quickly became embroiled in jungle warfare and knowledge of the other side's troop movements, communication lines, fighting techniques and strategy became crucial. Panagiotis Dimitrakis uncovers this battle for intelligence and tells the story of the Vietnam War through the newly available British, American and French sources - including declassified material. In doing so he dissects the limitations of the CIA, the NSA, the MI6 and the French intelligence- the SDECE- in gathering actionable intelligence. Dimitrakis also shows how the Vietminh under Ho Chi Minh established their own secret services; how their high grade moles infiltrated the US and French military echelons and the government of South Vietnam, and how Hanoi's intelligence apparatus eventually suffered seriously from 'spies amongst us' paranoia. In doing so he enhances our understanding of the war that came to define its era.

CHAPTER 1

OUR MAN IN HANOI

As the war between the DRV and the French escalated, Major General Gracey needed someone in Hanoi to inform him of Ho Chi Minh's intentions. MI6 headquarters dispatched their ‘man’, Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Geoffrey Trevor-Wilson. A former banker who was fluent in French, Trevor-Wilson was called up in 1939 as a driver in the Territorial Army; soon he was commissioned and dispatched as a liaison officer in France. On his return to England after Dunkirk, he joined the SOE and received training from, among others, Kim Philby, who soon left for SIS. A few months later, Trevor-Wilson applied to SIS and joined Section V.¹ Later, he recalled: ‘My boss was Kim Philby. I found that he worked harder than anybody else. In spite of his stutter, he was a great leader, and in those days in SIS, leaders were at a loss. I found nothing wrong with him.’² The banker-turned-spy flew to Algiers and contacted the US diplomats who had remained at their posts after the entry of the United States in the war. Incidentally, in his hotel in Tangiers he met the Oxford-educated von Auer of the German Armistice Commission. ‘Fortunately I had a Swiss passport on this occasion and I had to modify my voice so as to become French-Swiss man’, Trevor-Wilson recalled. He soon returned to London where he was assigned to counterintelligence duties as a commanding officer of four teams to be attached to US forces heading to Algiers. He was introduced to the top-secret source: the Bletchley Park decipherers.

The Italian Armistice Commission was about to depart on a plane stationed at an airfield south of Algiers. The French authorities delayed the Italians' departure. Trevor-Wilson arrived on time to inspect the cargo. The ‘drums’ (required by the Government Code and Cypher School) he discovered ‘led to final re-arrangement of the terms to our army in Algiers, which caused them to go ahead towards Tunis and General Montgomery's fight with Rommel. The latter's troops were far below what our leaders thought.’³ Trevor-Wilson broke a code for German military messages in the final phase of the North African campaign.⁴

The next assignment for Trevor-Wilson was Paris. Together with Lord Rothschild, Kenneth Younger and 40 troops that were part of the US Task Force, he was deployed to Gare Montparnasse to await the arrival of General Leclerc's armoured division.⁵ He returned to London to receive more training in intelligence gathering methods and processing reports from Bletchley Park: ‘It then happened that my employers decided to send me to General Douglas Gracey in Saigon’, Trevor-Wilson wrote.⁶

While staying in Burma for a couple of days, he met with General Salan, the future commander of French forces in Indochina, who informed him of his forces' deployments and strategy.⁷ Salan had been a risk-taking military intelligence officer in Indochina since the 1920s; he had also served in the Ministry of the Colonies in 1937. In 1938–40, posing as a correspondent of Le Temps, he had lured Spanish Republicans from refugee camps in France to Ethiopia to spy on the Italian forces and organise a revolt. The aim was to divert Mussolini's attention from the French occupied Djibouti. (Salan would seek to topple de Gaulle in 1961–2, leading the Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS) – a terrorist organisation.)⁸

On reaching Saigon, Trevor-Wilson was ordered to go to Phnom Penh to report on the attitude of the population in advance of the arrival of General Leclerc's force. He concluded that no trouble would arise, and that the Vietnamese were friendly towards the French.⁹

After several months in Saigon, Trevor-Wilson was sent to Hanoi as the head of the British military mission to General Lu Han. He had to facilitate the demarcation of the 16th parallel, dividing the British and the Chinese occupation zones. ‘It was of course difficult to obtain Chinese agreement on any single matter’, he remarked later. After repeated talks with Chinese officers who barely spoke English, Trevor-Wilson achieved an agreement on the borders between the Chinese and the British sectors.¹⁰

In parallel, the MI6 officer met with Ho Chi Minh on a weekly basis. He understood that the DRV had total control of the north. Despite his investigation, he had not found evidence linking the Vietminh to Moscow. Trevor-Wilson persuaded Ho Chi Minh to release a pro-French Cambodian member of the royal family about to be executed as a Japanese collaborator. In his discussions with Ho Chi Minh, Trevor-Wilson claimed that there was a secret ‘Trade Union of Kings’, with King George VI as ‘secretary-general’, who would be very angry if the Cambodian was executed.¹¹

Together with Lieutenant Commander Simpson-Jones of the Royal Navy, Trevor-Wilson also searched for French troops imprisoned by the Vietminh. ‘[T]his took Lt. Commander Simpson-Jones and me several weeks, using a large number of very experienced Chinese people to visit the gaols.’ After gathering all the intelligence, he paid a visit to Ho Chi Minh, eventually convincing him to sign a release document he could present to prison guards. He visited a prison on an island between Hanoi and Haiphong, presenting the document signed by the Vietnamese leader. Initially, the commanding officer doubted the authenticity of Ho Chi Minh's signature; but eventually he was persuaded and he freed 14 French officers and men.¹²

In addition, Trevor-Wilson arranged for the arrest of Major-General A.C. Chatterjee of the provisional government of India. ‘I had to do [it] all alone’, he later wrote. He persuaded Ho Chi Minh that the general who was staying in Hanoi, planning to go to Manchuria or Russia, had to return to India: ‘I told him that I had received a message from India (which was, of course, wrong) saying that the Indian Government would welcome the return of these people who would do better in India than in Hanoi.’¹³

The MI6 officer visited the house where Chatterjee was staying. ‘Ho Chi Minh told me that he would place a cordon of his policemen around the 123 rue Laloe if I went there. He gave me a whistle for me to blow if I had any disturbance, and then his policemen would come to my aid. In the airfield, I had a Dakota [transport] with several Royal Air Force men aboard.’ He met the major general unarmed; the Indian was carrying a holstered pistol. After a long discussion, the Indian and his accompanying officials agreed to fly with Trevor-Wilson to Saigon the next morning, and then to Singapore, where eventually they were put under arrest.¹⁴

By November 1945, the French had deployed 10,000 troops in South Indochina. Two months later, the principal cities of Cochinchina, South Annam and Cambodia were reoccupied. The Vietminh took off for the mountains and rural areas to continue their fight.¹⁵ Gaullist Admiral George Thierry d'Argenlieu took over as high commissioner for South Indochina. One of d'Argenlieu's aides sarcastically called him ‘the most brilliant mind of the twelfth century’.¹⁶ The French troops took control of the majority of the areas, and the 20th Indian Division was preparing for withdrawal. Gracey called the Japanese cooperation ‘amazing’.¹⁷

Gracey described French operations in the Mekong Delta as having ‘much unnecessary brutality.… The French troops are leaving a pretty good trail of destruction behind them, which will result in such resentment that it will become progressively more difficult for them to implement their new policy, and, I am convinced, will result in guerrilla warfare, increased sabotage and arson as soon as we leave the country.’¹⁸

Jean Sainteny, now commissioner for Tonkin and Northern Annam, and Ho Chi Minh had commenced discussions by mid-October in Hanoi. France insisted on the strategy of divide and rule: Cochinchina, Annam and Tonkin had to be considered separate state entities. Also, they wanted French troops to remain in Annam to safeguard its French population (of around 20,000). Their military would exert pressure on the Chinese to withdraw from Vietnam. Some French officials came to the straightforward conclusion that the Vietnamese simply hated the Chinese because of a long memory of Chinese invasions. The election, which took place on 6 January 1946, gave Ho Chi Minh a clear victory. Gradually, French forces started moving north. Ho Chi Minh argued – in vain – for independence to be included as a term in the final agreement.

French domestic politics influenced Ho Chi Minh's interpretation of the events. On 20 January 1946 President Charles de Gaulle, who had insisted that France maintain control of Indochina, resigned. General Leclerc was pressing north with his expeditionary force. He was no moderate; however he believed that he had inadequate troops to fight for total victory. Thus he had no option but to consider an agreement with Ho Chi Minh. The expeditionary force was not fighting many serious battles with the Vietminh, nor with their nationalist rivals (among them Hoa Hao and Cao Dai religious sects with followings in the countryside, and Trotskyites in the cities). They all disappeared to fight another day. Leclerc agreed to independence for the DRV. Sainteny's new instructions, drafted by d'Argenlieu, spoke of self-government within the Indochinese Federation, which would be part of the French Union. Also, French military presence in Tonkin would be required. Three plebiscites would be organised for the people to decide if they wanted to join the Democratic Republic of Vietnam or the French Union.¹⁹

The British withdrawal commenced in mid-December; most of the 20th Division had left by 7 February 1946. On 28 February the French agreed with Chinese General Lu Han that the Chinese would withdraw from North Indochina in return for the revocation of French extraterritorial privileges in China; other key terms were the abolition of tax on Chinese exports coming through Tonkin and the protection of Chinese subjects in Hanoi.²⁰ In the meantime, General Leclerc was preparing an audacious plan to take over Hanoi. ‘Operation Centre’ called for a landing in Haiphong and an air-landing in Hanoi. On 1 March, 35 warships and landing craft sailed from Saigon to Haiphong.²¹

But Lu Han suddenly changed his mind. As the French ships arrived in Haiphong, Chinese artillery opened fire. The French responded. Trevor-Wilson and Lieutenant Commander Simpson-Jones intervened decisively, with the latter sailing with a small boat to the French ships. Eventually a ceasefire was agreed.²² The engagement – which killed 20 French sailors, wounded 40 and led to an unknown number of Chinese casualties – lasted until 11 a.m. Vietnamese sources claimed that Vietminh spies who witnessed the bombardment were unable to reach a functioning phone line to inform the DRV general staff and General Giap of the developing situation.²³

The Chinese compelled the French and the Vietminh to sign a ‘preliminary convention’. The Ho-Sainteny agreement was a compromise: the French recognised the etat libre (‘free state’) of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam; the Vietnamese acceded to the dispatch of the 15,000 French troops to replace the departing Chinese occupation force in Tonkin. The military presence would last five years and the French accepted that they would respect the results of a referendum for the unification of the three provinces, which would be held in due course.²⁴

In July 1946, Trevor-Wilson flew to Hanoi where he opened the first British consulate general. He met again with Ho Chi Minh (‘he neither drank nor ate too much, nor had women friends but he smoked large numbers of cigarettes’); Pham Van Dong, the DRV minister of finance; and Giap.²⁵ At that time, Ho Chi Minh was also preoccupied with another matter. A top Vietminh financial officer stole 10m piasters and escaped to Hong Kong. The crisis was kept secret. (Later, in the 1960s and 1970s, the son of the financial officer, Tran Van Minh or ‘Albert’, worked for the CIA as an interpreter/interrogator.)²⁶

***

A wave of assassinations hit Saigon. On 29 March, ‘known Vietminh extremists’ murdered Dr Phat, a member of the Council of Cochinchina, who was against the province's union with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.²⁷ Thach, a member of the same council, was assassinated on 3 May. He had voted in favour of the province joining Ho Chi Minh's state, but was killed ‘evidently because friendly with French’. The French ‘have retaliated with wholesale arrests and burning houses, villages where terrorists may have shelter’, reported Charles Reed, the US consul in Saigon.²⁸

A Vietnamese delegation with Ho Chi Minh, accompanied by General Salan and Lieutenant Colonel Emile Tutenges, left Gia Lam with two C47 Dakotas early on the morning of 31 May. Trevor-Wilson accompanied him to Paris, probably at the insistence of the Vietnamese leader.²⁹

However, High Commissioner D'Argenlieu insisted that Cochinchina was a separate state, and surprised Ho and Sainteny. On 1 June, when Ho had reached Cairo, the French official declared the autonomous Republic of Cochinchina in the name of France. Thus, Ho had to work around this fait accompli in his talks with the French government. When interviewed by journalists, Ho Chi Minh played down his communism, claiming that his country was not yet ready: ‘perhaps in 50 years’ he remarked, adding that the DRV constitution was similar to the American one. The negotiations dragged on. The French government did not want to lose Indochina. Once again, D'Argenlieu aroused the anger of the Vietminh, shaking their confidence in French good will. He announced that a conference on Indochina was scheduled for 1 August in Dalat, where the establishment of the ‘Indochinese Federation’ would be discussed. The federation would encompass: Cochinchina, Laos, Cambodia, Southern Annam and the Central Highlands.

Pham Von Dong, one of the chief negotiators for Ho Chi Minh, con...