Week of January 25

Week of January 25

An issue of Time magazine published on 26 January 1968 contained a quote from General William Westmoreland that summed up MACV’s optimism resulting from recent allied successes at the close of 1967: “The Communists seem to have run temporarily out of steam.”¹ As the article articulated, heavy fighting in South Vietnam appeared to have quelled Communist operations, but a suspicious concentration of North Vietnamese forces near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and in Laos gave journalists cause for concern. Westmoreland, as the article contended, predicted the enemy would launch a major assault at Khe Sanh either shortly before or after the seven-day Tet holiday, which started on 30 January. MACV’s commander, however, guessed wrongly in this case: The Tet Offensive, perhaps the most renowned campaign of the Vietnam War, commenced in the early morning hours of 31 January 1968.

Scholars and generals have long debated why the United States and South Vietnamese intelligence communities failed to predict the Tet Offensive, a breakdown some have characterized as being on par with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. William Westmoreland, writing long after the war, insisted that MACV knew a Communist offensive assault was imminent, but the target was always the northern provinces of South Vietnam. The only surprises were the date and ferocity of the diversionary attacks. “At that stage the most logical course for the enemy, it seemed to me, was to make another and stronger effort to overrun the two northern provinces, coupled with lesser attacks throughout the rest of the country to try to tie down American forces that might be moved to reinforce the north,” Westmoreland recalled in his memoir.² Therefore, a North Vietnamese victory at Khe Sanh would open invasion routes from Laos for Communist advances on Hue and Da Nang. Westmoreland reacted to these Communist initiatives by reinforcing Khe Sanh and the northern provinces with additional troops and increasing airstrikes on enemy forces in the area. “The war was going well; the South Vietnamese were improving to the point they could assume responsibilities,” the general insisted. Additionally, MACV intelligence, Westmoreland claimed, intercepted a number of Communist documents proving guerrilla attacks were planned for the cities and towns throughout South Vietnam, but these operations were intended to distract attention away from the war in the north. The question that vexed intelligence officers at this point was the date of the offensive. Westmoreland found it unlikely the attacks would occur during the Tet holidays: “So harsh and disaffecting would be the psychological impact on the very people the enemy was trying to rally to his side.”³ When the Communists launched an extensive series of attacks on 31 January, allied forces defeated them everywhere. By some accounts, the Viet Cong never recovered from its catastrophic losses during the Tet Offensive. Westmoreland appraised his performance during the Tet Offensive positively; it was the journalists and politicians who transformed the victory into a defeat, all acting according to a predetermined script dreamed up by Communist Party leaders in Hanoi.

Historians are far more critical of MACV’s intelligence performance on the eve of the Tet Offensive. They insist the pieces of intelligence were readily at hand for MACV commanders to anticipate the widespread attacks across South Vietnam that occurred on 31 January and prepare allied forces, civilian populations, and policymakers for this onslaught. The synthesis of three types of intelligence should have convinced MACV that the Communists had adopted a new type of strategy in 1968: observable intelligence, in the form of intercepted communications and human contacts; combat intelligence, in the form of enemy troop movements and behavior; and public declarations by the Communists of their intentions.

In late October 1968, in Tay Ninh province, U.S. forces intercepted a document that referred to a new Communist strategy called “general offensive, general uprising.” This strategy called for escalated actions by all types of Communist forces with the end goal being the overthrow of the South Vietnamese state, but the details on how the Communists might accomplish this objective remained murky. During the battle of Dak To, in November 1967, U.S. forces captured a directive issued by COSVN (Command Office for South Vietnam, the Communists’ headquarters for all military activities south of the DMZ) that called for many large-scale, coordinated combat operations. This order seemed to contradict the Communists’ previous strategy of fighting a protracted war of attrition designed to dishearten the United States to the point that Washington abandoned South Vietnam. Westmoreland recognized the importance of this document—although he missed its strategic implications—because he cited it during a 22 November press conference as a reason why Congress needed to send more troops to Vietnam. Another document, discovered on 19 November in South Vietnam, titled “Ho Chi Minh’s Order for Implementation of the General Counteroffensive and General Uprising during 1967 Winter and Spring and Summer,” referred to designs for a combined offensive and revolution. The Combined Documents Exploitation Center (CDEC), a joint intelligence venture by American and South Vietnamese translators and analysts, understood the gravity of this directive’s contents because they circulated a translated version in a monthly bulletin. Other documents revealed that the Viet Cong planned to move agents and arms into urban areas during the holiday cease-fire and initiate attacks. Furthermore, several North Vietnamese or Viet Cong officers who were captured or “walked in” during these months disclosed that the Communists had shifted tactics to the “general offensive, general uprising.” These pieces of intelligence led agents at the CIA’s Saigon station to issue a report warning of an imminent “all-out attack” in cities and towns on 8 December. Two days later, a second CIA report made a similar argument, but this communique relieved MACV officials by predicting horrific losses for the Viet Cong and a quick collapse of the planned Communist government in South Vietnam. These individual pieces of intelligence failed to dissuade Westmoreland and other MACV generals’ preconceived notion that, while the threat to South Vietnam’s cities was concerning, the decisive combat occurred in the north at Khe Sanh.

Combat intelligence as well should have informed MACV that the Viet Cong had acquired new capabilities and intended to shift tactics with the Tet Offensive. Although movements of North Vietnamese troops along the Ho Chi Minh Trail seemed consistent during the months leading up to Tet, the Communists’ volume of truck travel along the trail increased substantially from previous years’ numbers. Attacks on the towns of Con Thien, Loc Ninh, Song Be, and Dak To in the autumn of 1967 all were repulsed, but these operations should have indicated that the enemy had the proficiency to coordinate large-scale assaults on urban areas in different regions of South Vietnam. These brazen strikes also demonstrated a new tenacity by the Viet Cong to undertake offensive operations against superior allied forces. Furthermore, the North Vietnamese openly hinted that they had a new offensive in the works. General Vo Nguyen Giap, who personally opposed the “general offensive, general uprising,” authored a series of announcements read on Hanoi Radio titled “Big Victory, Great Task.” These propaganda messages, which implored Vietnamese Communists to be prepared to make greater sacrifices in the coming months, should have warned MACV officials that Hanoi was preparing a decisive campaign.

On the evening of 29-30 January, twenty-four hours before the Tet Offensive was supposed to commence, Viet Cong forces erroneously launched assaults against six towns in II Corps. All of these attacks were repulsed, but these actions surprisingly did not prompt a concerned response from MACV. MACV chief of staff, General Walter Kewin, ended the cease-fire, cancelled leave, and placed U.S. forces at maximum level of readiness, yet American forces merely waited in anticipation for further attacks and the senior MACV generals spent the night of the Tet Offensive in their living quarters. These officers woke to unwelcome surprises. At 1:30 a.m., Viet Cong insurgents attacked the presidential palace in Saigon; by the end of the day, 5 of 6 autonomous cities, 36 of 44 provincial capitals, and 64 of 245 district capitals had come under attack. To many soldiers, civilians, journalists, and politicians, this startling ordeal portended an unnerving departure in the Vietnam War.⁴

¹“Spillover into Laos,” Time 91, no. 4 (26 January 1968): 42.

²William Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (New York: Dell, 1980), 411.

³Ibid., 418.

⁴Westmoreland, 407-25; John Prados, “The Warning that Left Something to Chance: Intelligence at Tet,” in The Tet Offensive, eds. Mark Jason Gilbert and William Head (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996), 143-65; Ronnie E. Ford, Tet 1968: Understanding the Surprise (London: Frank Cass, 1995), 170-94; Spencer C. Tucker, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History, 2nd ed. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 1102-1105.