The station chief’s voice harbored a decided undertone.
“You don’t trust him?” I amended from like. Colby didn’t trust him either.
Jocko rose and walked to the plaited fence that enclosed the roof patio. “We’ll have dinner on the open patio below,” he said, with his head turned away and his neck stiffening.
I was discovering that in this business no one trusted anyone else.
We three had dinner together below on the open sidewalk terrace where pretty Vietnamese women in colorful ao dais and men in cone hats and loose black trousers mingled with Saigon merchants and armed ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) soldiers. Pedestrians, rickshaws, pedicabs, and Honda-kazis emitted a mixed cacophony of conversation, laughter, screaking wheels, and roaring Honda engines.
During their colonial stay of less than a century, the French left behind a rich architectural heritage. Colonial buildings possessed a seedy and languid charm, blending Western and Asian elements along tree-lined boulevards and dense, walkable side streets. But architecture wasn’t the only thing they left. Many of the women displayed the influence of the French occupation in their features. Eurasian women had to be among the most beautiful in the world.
Jocko demanded a table on the terrace apart from other diners in anticipation of more serious talk.
“I haven’t given up on saving Vietnam,” he said. “I know Averell disagrees with me, but I think we need to keep working with President Diem and his brother if we’re going to realize any progress.”
Harriman cut him off with his old man’s garrulousness. “What this country needs is new leadership in the palace. That pair of Diems is screwing up the works. While you’re up in Da Nang, Hamilton, look and listen and you’ll see what I mean.”
“Progress will come,” Richardson said, digging in. “Look at what the Army is accomplishing with their Green Berets and the Civilian Irregular Defense Groups in Darlac Province. That’s success. SEALs will do likewise when they’re fully operational. Special forces are the key to countering the Viet Cong guerrillas.”
“Yes,” Harriman agreed, after which he issued an ominous prediction that I was to recall a few months later. “But it’s the Saigon leadership that will screw the pooch. In my opinion, that fat asshole Diem should be shot right through the head before he screws up the entire country.”
He leaned across the table toward us. “And it will happen, gentlemen. It’s coming.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
WHEN I FIRST CAME over to the CIA, a movement was under way at the Pentagon, the State Department, and even the CIA itself to withdraw the Agency from the covert business due to its perceived failure in properly managing the Bay of Pigs. However, with DCI John McCone at the helm replacing Allen Dulles, the CIA returned to the point of view that a paramilitary wing was essential as the nation’s active focus shifted toward Vietnam.
President Kennedy might have screwed the pooch at the Bay of Pigs, but he had been making up for it ever since. “When I was in Norfolk …” he wrote in a letter addressed to the secretary of Navy and the chief of naval operations, “I noted particularly the members of the SEAL teams. I was impressed by them as individuals and with the capability they possess as a group. As missiles assume more and more of the deterrent role and as our limited-war mission grows, the need for special forces in the Navy and Marine Corps will increase.”
The CIA attempted to fill a special forces role in Vietnam after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. It was mostly a low-level, low-budget covert effort that concentrated on stay-behind programs like the ones set up in Europe to seed resistance should the communists prevail. It was largely ineffective.
Lieutenant Commander Philip Bucklew showed up in Vietnam around 1961. I knew Bucklew from his UDT work from World War II and Korea. He was a competent, farsighted UW warrior who succeeded in persuading Department of Navy to reactivate WWII navy tactical cover-and-deception units known as Beach Jumpers. Beach Jumpers had trained alongside UDTs in support of amphib landings in the South Pacific.
With Bucklew in command, Jumpers began operating out of Da Nang using revolutionary new methods in psychological and electronic warfare, monitoring Soviet signal intelligence (SIGINT), and jamming hostile radio signals. A U.S. Air Force detachment set up at Monkey Mountain to work with the Jumpers in intercepting North Vietnamese HF and VHF communications.
Bucklew subsequently authored a report predicting the communist Viet Cong, the VC, would make far more use of intercoastal waterways, rivers, and Vietnam’s 1,200-mile coastline to smuggle arms, supplies, and personnel into South Vietnam than they would of the Ho Chi Minh Trail network. To stem this tide and control coastal shipping, the CIA encouraged the South Vietnamese government to build a three-hundred-vessel coastal patrol consisting of both a regular naval contingent and a paramilitary junk force. They faced a formidable task since on any particular day as many as fifty thousand sampans, junks, and trawlers traveled Vietnam’s coastline.
At the same time, in the program known as OP-34, the Agency transformed low-level espionage operations into paramilitary units that could be cast behind enemy lines in North Vietnam to stir up resistance and create such chaos that Ho Chi Minh would call off his conspiracy with China and Russia to take over South Vietnam. Our infiltrators into Ho Chi Minh land were essentially terrorists. But they were our terrorists.
Things worked well at first. Operatives disguised as North Vietnamese fishermen dropped agents and supplies off north of the DMZ, then picked them up later for debriefing at Da Nang’s China Beach. It wasn’t long, however, before Uncle Ho wised up and his increasingly-sophisticated intelligence apparatus grew more aggressive. Coast watcher spies and double agents prowling Da Nang and China Beach kept the North informed of movements. Roughly 250 operatives dispatched north by the CIA in long-range teams failed to return. They were believed to have been captured or killed.
By this time I was head of the CIA’s Maritime Division. I recommended SEALs be placed in charge of OP-34 Maritime and that they be supplied with heavily armed watercraft.
The Joint Chiefs took their time buying off on my plan. Even William Colby, who was in overall charge of OP-34 covert ops due to his position as bureau chief, Far Eastern division, openly expressed reservations.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that the operation should be called off,” he said. “They’re not contributing what we hoped to, and they are suffering losses. There’s no further point in it.”
I went to my boss, DCI McCone. “Sir, Colby has a point, I won’t deny that. But it’s because we’re piecemealing the war, playing patty-cake with Ho Chi Minh while giving him time to build up his strength in the South. We can keep at it the way we’re going or we can use Special Ops to make Hanoi pay a price for its aggression. Either way, we are going to end up in a real shooting war. Let’s make it to our advantage when it happens.”
McCone leaned across his desk, hands tented and wearing his professional look. “Bone, what with the commies in China and Moscow backing Hanoi, a wrong move on our part could end in another nuclear confrontation. This time Khrushchev might not chicken out. How do you foresee it playing out?”
“It’s going to be a guerrilla war, sir. At least at the beginning. That’s the only way it can play out. The battleground is the South. We try to go North, the Chinese and Russians will send in support and troops and we’re fighting Korea all over again. What this means is we have to fight unconventional—Army Green Berets, Rangers, SEALs.”
McCone nodded. Shortly thereafter, Del Guidice’s SEAL detachment arrived on China Beach.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHINA BEACH WAS A twenty-mile stretch of white sand northeast of Da Nang extending into the blue waters of the South China Sea, only ninety miles from the DMZ. It was an idyllic setting out of a scene from James Michener’s Hawaii, certainly from appearances not the site of a secret CIA operation and base for deadly sabotage and espionage overtures against communism. Located at the foot of the
dark and bare Monkey Mountain, OP-34’s cover name was innocent sounding—Naval Advisory Detachment.
At this point in 1963, Americans were strictly forbidden north of the 17th Parallel. The detachment from Commander Dave Del Guidice’s SEAL Team One limited itself to training Viet guerrilla fighters hidden away in secret little camps along a ten-mile stretch of beach between the two commanding promontories of Monkey Mountain on the north and Marble Mountain to the south. Each camp housed forty or fifty men, volunteers from the South Vietnamese Navy. Some were being trained as swimmers and behind-the-lines operators, others as shooters. Their boats, disguised as fishermen junks and trawlers, were harbored at finger piers and floating dry docks at the base of Monkey Mountain.
I was surprised to find the SEAL uniform of the day consisted of shorts, tennis shoes, and suntans. Hair was of varying unkempt length. Some men grew beards. They resembled beach bums from southern California.
“They blend in,” Del Guidice said. He was here on a short visit to check on his men. “As far as the local Viet Cong know, we’re ragtag ‘advisors’ to the South Vietnam Navy and have no connection to spooks or special operators.”
SEALs had the beach all to themselves and were living the life of Riley. They didn’t bother the local VC, the VC didn’t bother them. They seldom found it necessary to go armed when they jogged the beach, swam, or gathered at little beach bars near Da Nang to talk, drink, and watch moonlight sparkling off breakers rolling in from the sea.
“The VC aren’t interested in harassing us,” Del Guidice further explained. “That way they know where we are and what we’re doing. We suspect the boats and men we’re losing originate at an NVA naval base at Quang Khe, about thirty miles north of the DMZ. It’s a staging base for small boats smuggling arms and infiltrators south. The real danger is that it is also a base for Swatow gunboats.”
The Swatow was China-built, based on the Soviet P-6 class torpedo boat. It was steel-hulled and bristling with guns as its main armament rather than torpedoes. Slow, with a maximum speed of about ten knots, it was still faster than the junks and trawlers used by OP-34.
Christ! We were sending out matchboxes to take on warships.
More than two years previously, Admiral Arleigh Burke had pushed for greater efforts from the Navy to prepare for river and restricted water operations, to include the development of shallow-water craft and coastal-patrol craft. Captain Joseph Drachnik, chief of the Naval Sector for MAAG-Vietnam (Military Advisory Assistance Group-Vietnam), devised a concept for a “Riverine Warfare Force” with river craft backed up by helicopters and armed support ships. The CNO rejected both proposals on the ground that “we are required to remain in an advisory role [that prevented] our development of a U.S. force for use in your area.”
If I hoped to change minds, I needed the personal experience of conditions along the South Vietnam coast to bolster my argument. There was only one way to acquire it. I informed Del Guidice I would accompany a boat inserting South Vietnamese saboteurs into North Vietnam. He frowned but said nothing.
* * *
The sun sank into the South China Sea, turning the ocean blood-red, as though in premonition of an uncertain future. I boarded a Viet junk at the floating docks to ride north with the crew to insert an espionage team of five Vietnamese north of the DMZ. The five huddled together in the open stern, muttering nervously among themselves and glancing anxiously about as the fishing junk departed and rode the outgoing tide from the bay.
I couldn’t blame the poor bastards for being jittery.
Full darkness descended. I wore unmarked dungarees and a black cone hat, as though a disguise made a difference if the VC captured a six-four round-eye. Sails sloughed in a moderate night breeze. We pretended to be a fishing boat as the crew navigated past shadows of other fishing boats off the point of the bay and headed north. The black mound of Monkey Mountain disappeared into the night.
I rode easy at the bow with the captain, who spoke some English but was such a taciturn individual that he uttered few words even in his own language other than to bark orders at his crew. I looked up at the stars, at the sliver of a moon already high, back toward the black-pajamaed “fishermen” shaking out nets and lines for the sake of appearance should we be stopped by enemy patrol boats once we crossed the invisible water line into North Vietnam.
What a hell of a way to make a living.
Still, tonight, this night, with the salt scent in my nostrils, the soft brush of ocean breezes in my face, the gentle billowing huff of sails, the buzz of the small outboard engine, the motion of the boat, and the sing-sing of a foreign language in my ears—I could imagine being no other place in the world. I was born to the sea, I belonged to the sea.
An uneasy feeling stirred in the pit of my stomach as the low black line of landfall unraveled off our port side. The captain navigated not by the stars or moon or even an ordinary compass. He followed the coast and depended on his fishermen’s masquerade to protect us. Not a good course of action.
We arrived off the enemy’s shore between midnight and dawn. The sea was black and calm. The sliver of moon disappeared, leaving stars reflected in the water. Land and sea seemed to merge.
Low brittle words full of tension were exchanged between crew and swimmers as our infiltrators cautiously checked radios, weapons, and other gear in their waterproof bags. The junk swung in toward shore and cut speed. The silhouettes of men, like little pieces of stirred night, slipped over the gunnels and with barely a splash vanished into the black of night and water.
I had questions: How had this particular site been selected? What about security? How many people knew about it, and about tonight? Could contacts ashore be trusted? What was the point in all these infiltrations if the operatives were betrayed and captured once they reached landfall?
It suddenly occurred to me why our boats were rarely sunk. Swatows weren’t going to mess with our boats. Sonsofbitches wanted us to keep transporting sacrificial lambs to the slaughter. The only way to stop the slaughter was to bring in armed, fast patrol boats with skilled navigators and operators.
“Wait!” I commanded when the captain ordered full sail for departure.
“No—No. We go now,” he insisted.
“We go pick up those men before it’s too late,” I snapped. “Do you understand?”
I couldn’t be sure he did. The other two crewmen stared into the darkness, waiting for further commands.
I latched on to the captain’s shirt front and jerked him up on his toes. “Those men are going to die. Do you understand? Go after them. Now!”
The junk lay only a short distance offshore. About now the swimmers should be emerging from water onto sand. Suddenly, a fusillade of rifle shots erupted from the beach. Screams and shouts and more shots. Muzzle flashes sparked, a grenade exploded,
The massacre ended as quickly as it began. Silence returned to the night. I glared in disbelief and horror. We had killed those five men as surely as if we had squeezed the triggers ourselves.
Our captain turned the junk south to return to China Beach. I stood alone on the fantail and watched North Vietnam vanish into darkness. We couldn’t keep sending brave men to their deaths like this. There was a better way—bring in fast American patrol boats and skilled special warfare operators.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
A MAJOR DISAGREEMENT WAS BREWING in D.C. over the conduct of a war that was not a war and over whether the U.S. should continue to support it. Powerful and influential officials lined up on each side of the issue. Muttering and grumbling spread throughout the federal government as people jockeyed for position. Backbiting, snitching, struggling to wrest concessions, infighting to press their views. I was fast learning that unconventional warfare encompassed more than SEALs, Green Berets, and foreign intrigue. It also included domestic political intrigue, plotting, and conspiracies in the seats of power. I hadn’t realized before just how dirty a business politics could be.
“Things are going to hell,”
DCI McCone said. “Hang on. It’s going to be a hairy ride.”
Buddhist monks and their dispute with South Vietnam president Ngo Dinh Diem proved to be the catalyst that propelled the issue of “yes we will, no we won’t” into crisis. My new friend Jocko Richardson, CIA station chief in Saigon, filled me in on internal politics in South Vietnam. We were lunching on the terrace of the Majestic before I caught my flight back to the United States.
A Catholic, President Diem was growing increasingly unpopular largely because of his discriminatory policies against the country’s Buddhist majority. On top of that, Richardson said, Diem was a power-hungry sonofabitch who consolidated his political strength through staged elections and by banning opposition parties and eliminating rivals through jailing or assassinating them. So far, he had survived two major attacks against him—one in 1960 when factions of the military unsuccessfully tried to force him out of office, again in early 1962 when disgruntled air force pilots dropped bombs on the palace.
“South Vietnam is plagued by corruption and political intrigue—and we Americans are contributing to it,” Jocko said. “President Kennedy is slipping us into a quagmire.”
“From what I understand,” I replied, “JFK wants to pull a Bay of Pigs and get out of Dodge.”
Richardson sipped hot black tea and rubbed lines in his forehead with his fingertips. He looked up at me across the tiny wrought-iron table.
“Bone, I’m telling you this for what it’s worth: Word has it that Henry Cabot Lodge is being appointed new ambassador to Vietnam to replace Fred Nolting. From my point of view, that signals a policy change. I’ve warned the DCI to use caution. Because if State screws this up, the CIA is going to own this war. We’re going to own it, Bone.”
He paused. Sweat beaded on his forehead, although it was a cool morning. “Bone, I’ve also heard talk of a coup against Diem—and talk of assassinating him that may be coming from State and the White House. I don’t much care for Diem either, but someone is fucking Kennedy over.”
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