Vietnam Defence Forum

[NiceGuy]

Mallorca. I have never eaten so much of paellas in my life. More than enough for a year.

interesting and never expected: I see a lot of our viet people here. And chinese. I will write a bit about it when I return. I can't say for Spain in general, but of what I see on the island, I am very optimistic on spanish economy. The crisis is over.

Bro, believe me. Aegis destroyers come. Just a matter of time. With or without the contribution of my little money. why? If one studies vietnamese naval history and how we went to wars against great sea powers since ancient time, the chinese, the champa, the siamese, the french and the americans. Against the chinese, we either ambushed them if we had fewer warships or headed on eye by eye if our warships were on par. By now, I think the best tactic against them is a combination of both. During the war against the Ming, we had over 1,000 warships. With a few shameful periods, we never back down.

Okay okay, Aegis is still far, lets think abt Mistral now, bro, this one is perfect for ramming & water spraying game in SCS(east sea)

 

[William Hung]

@Barmaley , @vostok or other members who can read Russian.

Can you help translate something for us Viets?There is an interesting discussion on airbase forum about the engines configuration of the Gepards:

Сторожевые корабли проекта 1166/11661 [и их модификации] (42/43)

Someone in that thread briefly mentioned about the new Vietnamese Gepards having German engines and some kind of special quiet mode. Google translate is hard to read, can yous help to translate that part of the discussion? Thanks.

 

[Barmaley]

@Barmaley , @vostok or other members who can read Russian.

Can you help translate something for us Viets?There is an interesting discussion on airbase forum about the engines configuration of the Gepards:

Сторожевые корабли проекта 1166/11661 [и их модификации] (42/43)

Someone in that thread briefly mentioned about the new Vietnamese Gepards having German engines and some kind of special quiet mode. Google translate is hard to read, can yous help to translate that part of the discussion? Thanks.

They mentioned some project and that's is.
btw, Vietnam planned to order another two Gepard frigates, maybe they will be installed there, but it's still not clear.

 

[Aqsuperman]

well i do hope some nice weapon configuration on Gepard this time , mainly about anti-air ability . On the side note , our Sigma will go as a frigate not a corvette so the weapon load out may differ slightly

 

[Viet]

August 5

a donation from our japanese friend: Hayato, 56 meters long and 9 meters wide, gross tonnage of 1,079 metric tons, 49 crew members. Built in 1993, maximum speed of 12.5 nautical miles per hour and can operate for 2 consecutive months without refueling. the first was delivered early this year. 4 more coming later this year. all 6 used ships are worth $4 million.

 

[Viet]

BM-14, a 140mm Soviet made artillery system. delivered by the Soviet Union in 1960, and even after 55 years still in active service. VN army is a master of maintaining things until they fall apart. so the VPA has weapon systems in storage, that were deployed on battlefields during the WW 2

 

[JaiMin]

The Man in the Snow White Cell
Limits to Interrogation

Merle L. Pribbenow

The war on terror is frustrating and confusing. It is a war of shifting targets and uncertain methods, a war that is unconventional in every sense of the word. One of the most difficult parts of the war for the average American to understand is the trouble we have had in obtaining information from some of the captured terrorists being held at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other locations around the world.

A college classmate of mine, someone who knows I am a retired CIA operations officer, recently expressed to me his frustration with the pace of the war on terror. He said he believed that the terrorist threat to America was so grave that any methods, including torture, should be used to obtain the information we need, and he could not understand why my former colleagues had not been able to "crack" these prisoners.

Our current war on terror is by no means the first such war our nation has fought, and our interrogation efforts against terrorist suspects in the United States, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay are (hopefully) based on lessons learned from the experiences of past decades. This article details one particularly instructive case from the Vietnam era.

Nguyen Tai
More than 30 years ago, South Vietnamese forces arrested a man who turned out to be the most senior North Vietnamese officer ever captured during the Vietnam War. This was a man who had run intelligence and terrorist operations in Saigon for more than five years, operations that had killed or wounded hundreds of South Vietnamese and Americans. US and South Vietnamese intelligence and security officers interrogated the man for more than two years, employing every interrogation technique in both countries' arsenals, in an effort to obtain his secrets.

Frank Snepp, the CIA officer who conducted the final portion of the interrogation, devoted a chapter in his classic memoir of the last years of the CIA station in Saigon to the interrogation of this man, whom he called the "man in the snow white cell."1 Snepp thought that the South Vietnamese had killed this prisoner just before Saigon fell in April 1975 to keep him from retaliating against those who had tormented him in prison for so long.

Snepp was wrong. The prisoner survived. A few years ago, he published a slim memoir of his years of imprisonment and interrogation titled Face to Face with the American CIA.2 It is an extraordinary book that describes how he resisted years of unrelenting interrogation by some of the CIA's most skilled, and South Vietnam's most brutal, interrogators. His book may provide some insights into the problems, both practical and moral, facing our interrogators today.



Nguyen Tai (Photo courtesy of author)

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Early Nationalist

Like Osama bin Laden, Nguyen Tai was a sophisticated, intelligent, well-educated man from a prominent family. His father, Nguyen Cong Hoan, was one of Vietnam's most famous authors. Tai's uncle, Le Van Luong, was a member of the Communist Party Central Committee and the second-in-command of the communist Ministry of Public Security (Vietnam's espionage, counterespionage, and security organization, patterned after the Soviet KGB).

Tai joined "the revolution" in 1944 at the age of 18. By 1947, when he was only 21, he was Chief of Public Security for French-occupied Hanoi city.3 Throughout the war against the French, Tai operated inside Hanoi, behind French lines, directing communist intelligence collection activities and combating French efforts to penetrate and eliminate the communist resistance. This covert war was a difficult, dirty, "no holds barred" struggle that employed assassination and terror as its stock in trade.

Tai was ruthless in the conduct of his duties. According to a history of Hanoi Public Security operations, in April 1947, just after Tai took over command of security operations in the city, his office formed special assassination teams called "Vietnamese Youth Teams" [Doi Thanh Viet] to "eliminate" French and Vietnamese "targets." The Hanoi history devotes page after page to descriptions of specific assassination operations conducted by these teams.4 In September 1951, as part of a classic operation run jointly by the national-level Ministry of Public Security and Tai's Hanoi security office, a woman pretending to be the wife of the leader of a pro-French resistance faction operating behind communist lines sank a French naval vessel with a 60-pound explosive charge she carried aboard in her suitcase. The woman kept the suitcase next to her until it exploded, thereby becoming perhaps the first female suicide bomber in history.

Following the communist victory at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and the communist takeover of North Vietnam that followed, Nguyen Tai rose quickly in the hierarchy of the communist Ministry of Public Security. One aspect of his rise was said to have been his assistance in the prosecution of his own father for anti-regime statements.5 In 1961, Tai was appointed director of the Ministry of Public Security's newly reorganized counterespionage organization, the dreaded KG-2--Political Security Department II [Cuc Bao Ve Chinh Tri II].6

In that capacity, he directed double-agent operations against South Vietnamese and American forces, including the successful effort to capture and double back US-trained spies and saboteurs dispatched into North Vietnam by parachute and by boat during the early-to-mid-1960s.7

Tai was also responsible for a ruthless crackdown on internal dissidents and directed the initial investigations that resulted in the infamous "Hoang Minh Chinh" affair, a purge of senior communist party "revisionists." The operation sought out allegedly pro-Soviet and pro-Vo Nguyen Giap elements--including members of the party's central committee and the cabinet, and several army generals--opposed to the policies of then-Communist Party First Secretary, Le Duan.8

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Moving South
In 1964, leaving his wife and three young children behind, Tai was sent south to join the struggle against the Americans in South Vietnam. He became the chief of security for the Saigon-Gia Dinh Party Committee in 1966.9In one respect, at least, Tai's assignment made sense: He had extensive experience at running a similar clandestine security/intelligence/terrorist organization behind enemy lines from his work as Chief of Hanoi Public Security during the war against the French. However, Tai carried in his head some of North Vietnam's deepest, darkest secrets--including the fact that all the US and South Vietnamese "spies" in North Vietnam were now working for the North Vietnamese; the identities of communist spies in South Vietnam's leadership; specific points of friction in North Vietnam's relations with the Soviet Union and Communist China; and internal splits and factionalism within the North Vietnamese leadership. Therefore, sending him to operate covertly behind enemy lines was a tremendous risk for the Hanoi regime.

Tai immediately threw himself into his new assignment. One of his mission orders, contained in a 17 May 1965 memorandum from the Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN) Security office, directed him to "exploit every opportunity to kill enemy leaders and vicious thugs, to intensify our political attacks aimed at spreading fear and confusion among the enemy's ranks, and to properly carry out the task of recruiting supporters among the lower ranks of the police."10

Tai attacked this mission with a vengeance, launching a program of bombings and assassinations against South Vietnamese police and security services and leadership figures. According to a Vietnamese Public Security press release in 2002, "Making great efforts, Public Security forces under Tai's command recruited agents, transported weapons into the city, and conducted many well-known attacks that terrified enemy personnel. Of special note were the assassination of a major general assigned to the Office of the President of the Saigon government and the detonation of a bomb in the National Police Headquarters parking lot...."11 Tai directed many other terrorist operations, including numerous bombing attacks against police personnel and locations frequented by police and security officers; the assassination of a senior member of the Vietnamese National Assembly; an assassination attempt against future South Vietnamese President Tran Van Huong; and assassinations of individual police officers and communist Viet Cong defectors.12

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Capture
In 1969, Tai was forced to move his operations to a more secure area in the Mekong Delta, following the decimation of the communist infrastructure in the Saigon area by the Americans and South Vietnamese in response to the 1968 communist Tet offensive. While traveling to a political meeting in December 1970, he was arrested by South Vietnamese forces. The cover story and the identity documents carried by Tai and his traveling companions were quickly discovered to be false.

After an initial interrogation and physical beating by South Vietnamese security personnel, Tai shifted to his fallback position to avoid being forced to reveal the location and identities of his personnel in the area. He "admitted" to being a newly infiltrated captain from North Vietnam. When the interrogation became more intense, he "confessed" that he was really a covert military intelligence agent sent to South Vietnam to establish a legal identity and cover legend before being sent on to France for his ultimate espionage assignment (which he claimed to have not yet been fully briefed on).13 Each time he shifted to a fallback story, Tai made an initial show of resistance and pretended to give in only when his interrogator "forced" him to make an admission. He did this to play on the interrogator's ego by making him think that he had "cracked" his subject's story and to divert attention from the things that Tai wanted to protect--such as the location of his headquarters, the identity of his communist contacts, and his own identity and position.

Tai's effort succeeded in buying time for his colleagues and contacts to escape to new hiding places and in diverting his "enemy's" attention onto a false track. But his claim to be a covert military intelligence agent ensured that he would receive high-level attention. Instead of being detained and interrogated by low-level (and less well-trained) personnel in the Mekong Delta, Tai was sent to Saigon for detailed questioning by South Vietnamese and American professionals at the South Vietnamese Central Intelligence Organization's (CIO) National Interrogation Center (NIC).14

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Counter-Interrogation Strategy
As any professional interrogator will tell you, the most important requirement for a successful interrogation is knowledge of your subject. The problem facing the interrogators at the NIC when Tai first arrived was that no one had any idea who he really was. Tai devised a cover story, complete with fake name, family and biographic data, and information on his work assignments. He pretended to be cooperative, but provided only information that was either already known or that could not be checked. To claim ignorance about the local communist organization and local contacts, he said he had just arrived from the North on an infiltration boat (one whose arrival was already known because the South Vietnamese had attacked and destroyed the boat when they discovered it at a dock in the Mekong Delta in November 1970). He stated he had been selected for the assignment in France because of his excellent French language skills and had been told that for reasons of security he would be informed of the precise nature of his mission in France only after he established a cover identity and received legal papers in Saigon for his onward travel.

The information Tai provided about his military intelligence training and instructors in North Vietnam was information he knew had already been compromised by communist agents captured previously. He was thus able to give his interrogators what seemed to be "sensitive" information they could confirm, thereby enhancing their belief in his story while at the same time revealing nothing that might cause further damage to his cause. The fact that he had initially "concealed" this information and only "confessed" after being beaten by South Vietnamese officers would, he knew, enhance the story's believability. Tai said his first CIA interrogators, an older man named "Fair" [sic] and a younger man named "John," believed his story.

Suspicions began to surface about Tai's cover story. Tai claims that his story began to fall apart when members of his Saigon Security Office staff, desperate to find out what had happened to their boss, asked one of their agents inside the city to try to locate him, giving the agent his alias (but not his true name and identity) and the date and place he was arrested. When the South Vietnamese arrested this agent, Tai says that the South Vietnamese CIO began to wonder why an agent from Public Security would be trying to locate someone who claimed to be from military intelligence, an entirely separate organization.

Tai may believe this version of how his story began to come apart. But, in fact, he may not have been as successful at deceiving the Americans as he thought. According to former CIA officer Peter Kapusta, who told author Joseph J. Trento in 1990 that he had participated in Tai's interrogation, "John" quickly became suspicious of Tai's cover story and launched an investigation.15 Tai admits that after the polygraph examination he had a confrontation with "John" when "John" tried to reinterview him about his biographic data.16 Whatever the origin of the suspicions, Tai was turned back over to the South Vietnamese, who decided to conduct their own interrogation using their own methods.

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Extracting a Confession
The South Vietnamese set to work to force Tai to admit his real identity, the first step in breaking him. They began confronting him with gaps in his story and tortured him when he maintained he was telling the truth. They administered electric shock, beat him with clubs, poured water down his nose while his mouth was gagged, applied "Chinese water torture" (dripping water slowly, drop by drop, on the bridge of his nose for days on end), and kept him tied to a stool for days at a time without food or water while questioning him around the clock. But Tai held to his cover story.

After showing Tai's picture to the large number of communist Public Security prisoners and defectors then in custody, the South Vietnamese quickly learned Tai's true identity as the chief of the Saigon-Gia Dinh Security Section. They began to confront him with informants, former security personnel who knew him and identified him to his face as the chief of Saigon Security. One of these informants was a female agent who, according to Tai's account, had planted a bomb at the South Vietnamese National Police Headquarters on Tai's orders.17 Tai continued to maintain his cover story, and his attitude toward his confronters was so threatening (when combined with his past reputation) that he thoroughly terrified his accusers, one of whom reportedly committed suicide shortly afterward.18

The South Vietnamese tried a new ploy. They told Tai they were planning a secret exchange of high-ranking prisoners, but he would only be exchanged if he admitted to his true identity. They promised that he would not have to tell them anything else, but they could not exchange him if he did not confess his true identity.19 They confronted him with captured documents he had written and with photographs of him taken years before when he served as a security escort for Ho Chi Minh during a state visit to Indonesia. Exhausted and weakened, both physically and psychologically, and comforting himself with the thought that, whether he confessed or not, the enemy clearly already knew his real identity, he finally gave in. Tai wrote out a statement admitting that, "My true name is Nguyen Tai, alias Tu Trong, and I am a colonel in the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam."20

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No Respite
As Tai must have anticipated, his confession did not end his ordeal. After giving him a short rest as a reward, his South Vietnamese interrogators came back with a request that he provide details about his personal background and history. Tai refused, and the torture resumed. He was kept sitting on a chair for weeks at a time with no rest; he was beaten; he was starved; he was given no water for days; and he was hung from the rafters for hours by his arms, almost ripping them from their sockets. After more than six months of interrogation and torture, Tai felt his physical and psychological strength ebbing away; he knew his resistance was beginning to crack. During a short respite between torture sessions, to avoid giving away the secrets he held in his head during the physical and psycho-logical breakdown he could feel coming, Tai tried to kill himself by slashing his wrists. The South Vietnamese caught him before he managed to inflict serious injury, and then backed off to let him recuperate.21

Tai says he sustained himself during this period by constantly remembering his obligations to his friends and his family. At one point, when he was shown a photograph of his father, he swore to himself "that I will never do anything to harm the Party or my family's honor."22

Exactly what motivated him is difficult to say, but the key appears to be the reference to "my family's honor." As the educated son of an intellectual rather than a member of the favored "worker-peasant" class, it is likely that Tai's loyalties to the Party had been questioned many times. Tai does not disclose, nor does any outsider really know, what happened between Tai and his family when his father was criticized and fell out of favor with the Party shortly after the communist takeover of North Vietnam in 1954. He may have felt a need to prove his loyalty at that time. If, as Snepp wrote and Tai's interrogators believed, Tai helped prosecute his father during this period, his memoir suggests that he subsequently reconciled with his father and appears to have resolved never to cause such pain to his family again. Human psychology is a tricky business, of course, but in this case what appeared on the outside to be an exploitable weakness--Tai's apparent betrayal of his father--had been turned into a strength.

Lest anyone be too quick to condemn Tai's South Vietnamese interrogators, we should remember that the prisoner had just spent five years directing vicious attacks against these same men, their friends, their colleagues, and their families. They knew that if Tai escaped or was released, he would come after them again. During 1970, the last year of Tai's freedom, in spite of the losses his organization had suffered during the Tet offensive, communist accounts boast of at least three bombings and several assassinations conducted by Tai's personnel against South Vietnamese police and intelligence officers in Saigon.23 It was as if members of the New York Police Department were suddenly handed Osama bin Laden and asked to extract a confession. If things got "a little rough," that certainly should not have come as a surprise to anyone. In addition, accounts by US prisoners of war of their torture by North Vietnamese interrogators at the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" reveal that the methods of physical torture used on them were identical to methods Tai says were used on him. The war was vicious on all sides; no one's hands were clean.

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The White Cell
What might have happened if the torture had continued can only be guessed. In the fall of 1971, Tai's superiors made a move that ensured his survival. On 9 October, US Army Sgt. John Sexton was released by his communist captors and walked into American lines west of Saigon carrying a note written by Tran Bach Dang, the secretary of the Saigon-Gia Dinh Party Committee. The letter contained an offer to exchange Tai and another communist prisoner, Le Van Hoai, for Douglas Ramsey, a Vietnamese-speaking State Department officer who had been held by the communists since 1966 and whom the communists believed was a US intelligence officer.24 Tai's torture and interrogation immediately ended. Even though the negotiations for an exchange quickly broke down, Tai had suddenly become, as his communist superiors intended, too valuable for his life to be placed in jeopardy.25 He was now a pawn in a high-level political game.

In early 1972, Tai was informed he was being taken to another location to be interrogated by the Americans. After being blindfolded, he was transported by car to an unknown location and placed in a completely sealed cell that was painted all in white, lit by bright lights 24 hours a day, and cooled by a powerful air-conditioner (Tai hated air conditioning, believing, like many Vietnamese, that cool breezes could be poisonous). Kept in total isolation, Tai lived in this cell, designed to keep him confused and disoriented, for three years without learning where he was.26

Tai's interrogation began anew. This time the interrogator was a middle-aged American whom Tai knew as "Paul." Paul was actually Peter Kapusta, a veteran CIA Soviet/Eastern Europe counterintelligence specialist with close ties to the famed and mysterious chief of CIA counter-intelligence, James Jesus Angleton.27 Even by Tai's account, Kapusta and the other Americans who interrogated him ("Fair," "John," and Frank Snepp) never mistreated him in any way, although Tai was always suspicious of American attempts to trick him into doing something that might cause his suspicious bosses back in the jungle to believe he was cooperating with the "enemy." Kapusta and the other American officers tried to win Tai's trust by giving him medical care, extra rations, and new clothing (most of which Tai claims to have refused or destroyed for fear of compromising his own strict standards of "revolutionary morality"). They also played subtly on his human weaknesses--his aversion to cold, his need for companionship, and his love for his family.28

According to his memoirs, Tai decided he would shift tactics after learning that he was being returned to American control. Rather than refusing to respond with any answers other than "No" or "I don't know," as he had with the South Vietnamese, he now resolved: "I will answer questions and try to stretch out the questioning to wait for the war to end. I will answer questions but I won't volunteer anything. The answers I give may be totally incorrect, but I will stubbornly insist that I am right."29

In other words, Tai would engage in a dialogue, something he could not trust himself to do when being tortured by the South Vietnamese out of fear that his weakened condition and confused mental state might cause him to slip and inadvertently reveal some vital secret. He would play for time, trying to remain in American custody as long as possible in order to keep himself out of the hands of the South Vietnamese, whom he believed would either break him or kill him. This meant he would have to engage in a game of wits with the Americans, selectively discussing with them things they already knew, or that were not sensitive, while staying vigilant to protect Public Security's deepest secrets: the identities of its spies, agents, and assassins. This was, however, a tricky strategy, and even Tai admits that it led him into some sensitive areas. Interestingly, Tai blames the communist radio and press for broadcasting public reports on some sensitive subjects, thereby making it impossible for him to deny knowledge of such areas. Sounding not unlike many American military and intelligence officers during the Vietnam War, Tai writes:

I had always been firmly opposed to the desires of our propaganda agencies to discuss secret matters in the public media....Now, because the "Security of the Fatherland" radio program had openly talked about the [Ministry's] "Review of Public Security Service Operations," I was forced to give them [the Americans] some kind of answer.30

Peter Kapusta worked on Tai for several months and believed he was making progress. Then he was reassigned. Washington sent Frank Snepp to take over the case.

Snepp decided to try a new ploy to crack Tai's facade. Like other American officers who had interrogated Tai, Snepp did not speak Vietnamese. Interrogations were always conducted using a South Vietnamese interpreter, usually a young woman. Snepp decided to cut the South Vietnamese completely out of the interrogation to see if this might lead Tai to speak more freely. One day he brought in a Vietnamese-speaking American interpreter to take over the duty.

Tai, ever suspicious, believed that as long as Vietnamese were directly involved in his interrogation, there was a chance that word about him might leak out to his "comrades" on the outside. If the Americans took over completely, Tai's superiors would have no chance of locating him, or of verifying his performance during the interrogation. Tai was always desperately concerned with leaving a clear record for his superiors to find that would prove he had not cooperated with his interrogators. He believed this was essential for his own future and that of his family. As a professional security officer, Tai was well aware of the Vietnamese communist practice of punishing succeeding generations for the sins of their fathers. He decided to force the Americans to bring back the South Vietnamese interpreter by pretending not to be able to understand the American, whom he admits spoke Vietnamese perfectly well.31

The ploy worked in the end. Meanwhile, however, it led to the author's only involvement in this case. As Tai had planned, Snepp became angry and frustrated, blaming the American interpreter for the lack of results. After the session, Snepp came to see me (we had become friends during his first tour in Vietnam), told me of his unhappiness with the "performance" of the interpreter (who was a close colleague of mine), and asked if I would be free to interpret for him in future sessions with Tai. As it happened, I was not available, and Snepp was forced to return to the use of an ethnic Vietnamese interpreter. I always wondered what could possibly have caused the problem that Frank described to me that afternoon. Thirty years later, when I read Tai's memoir, I finally understood.

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Impact of the Paris Accord
On 27 January 1973, the Paris Peace Agreement was signed, calling for the release of all prisoners of war and civilian detainees. In compliance, Snepp, without obtaining prior authorization from the South Vietnamese CIO (which was still the organization officially responsible for Tai's detention), informed Tai and other communist prisoners of the agreement and its prisoner exchange provisions. Tai, totally isolated from information about the outside world, was suspicious at first. Finally, he managed to persuade one of his guards (who were under instruction not to talk to the prisoner unless absolutely necessary) to confirm Snepp's information.32

The American interrogation ended with the signing of the agreement in Paris, although he remained incarcerated in the snow white cell. Tai was able to use the information Snepp had given him about the prisoner exchange provisions to resist further efforts by the South Vietnamese to interrogate him. He was left isolated, but in peace, for the next two years, until Saigon fell in April 1975. He credits Snepp's information on the Paris accord with enabling him to resist and survive until his final release. Frank Snepp may have saved Tai's life.

According to his memoirs, Tai maintained his sanity and survived by reminding himself of his allegiance to his nation, his Party, and his cause, and by constantly thinking of his family. He followed a strict daily ritual of saluting a star, representing the North Vietnamese flag (a red flag with a single gold star in the center), that he had scratched on his cell wall and then silently reciting the North Vietnamese national anthem, the South Vietnamese Liberation anthem, and the Internationale, the anthem of the world communist movement.33He wrote poems and songs in his head, memorizing them and reviewing them constantly to make sure he did not forget. While some of these poems were the obligatory paeans to the Party, most were about his love for his children and his family.34

Just before communist troops entered Saigon on 30 April 1975, a senior South Vietnamese officer ordered Tai's execution to prevent his release by victorious comrades. By some measure at least, it was not an unreasonable order--as Frank Snepp noted, "Since Tai was a trained terrorist, he could hardly be expected to be a magnanimous victor."35

The order came too late, however. All of the CIO's senior personnel were in the process of fleeing the country, and the junior enlisted men entrusted with the task of disposing of Tai, men who had no opportunity to escape, understandably decided that they might have more to gain by keeping the prisoner alive. They were afraid of retribution if the communist victors learned that they had killed him and they might even have hoped for some reward.36 Tai survived and returned to his family in Hanoi in the fall of 1975. Tai went on to other important positions, including a term as an elected member of the reunified nation of Vietnam's National Assembly. In June 2002, in a solemn ceremony held in Ho Chi Minh City (the former Saigon), Nguyen Tai was officially honored with Vietnam's highest award, the title of "Hero of the People's Armed Forces."

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Reflections
What conclusions can we draw about the efficacy and appropriateness of the interrogation techniques used by the South Vietnamese and the Americans in the Tai case? While the South Vietnamese use of torture did result (eventually) in Tai's admission of his true identity, it did not provide any other usable information. The South Vietnamese played the key role in cracking Tai's cover story, but it was their investigation and analysis that put the pieces together to make a solid and incontrovertible identification of Tai, not their use of torture, that scored this success. A sensitive, adept line of questioning that confronted Tai with this evidence and offered him a deal--like the offer by his torturers to exchange admission of his identity for consideration in a notional prisoner exchange--would almost certainly have achieved the same result. Without doubt, the South Vietnamese torture gave Tai the incentive for the limited cooperation he gave to his American interrogators, but it was the skillful questions and psychological ploys of the Americans, and not any physical infliction of pain, that produced the only useful (albeit limited) information that Tai ever provided.

This brings me back to my college classmate's question. The answer I gave him--one in which I firmly believe--is that we, as Americans, must not let our methods betray our goals. I am not a moralist. War is a nasty business, and one cannot fight a war without getting one's hands dirty. I also do not believe that the standards set by the ACLU and Amnesty International are the ones we Americans must necessarily follow. There is nothing wrong with a little psychological intimidation, verbal threats, bright lights and tight handcuffs, and not giving a prisoner a soft drink and a Big Mac every time he asks for them. There are limits, however, beyond which we cannot and should not go if we are to continue to call ourselves Americans. America is as much an ideal as a place and physical torture of the kind used by the Vietnamese (North as well as South) has no place in it. Thus, extracting useful information from today's committed radicals--like Nguyen Tai in his day--remains a formidable challenge.

Source: The Man in the Snow White Cell — Central Intelligence Agency

@Viet, @NiceGuy, @DaiViet, @xesy, @Yorozuya

 

[Aqsuperman]

Base on a South Africa model.........Still not too much picture abot them in active service

 

[Viet]

the coming autumn will be a very HOT season. Xi Jinping and Barack Obama are expected to pay state visit to Vietnam. the first time ever. It is not a secret when I say Vietnam stands at a crossroad. the season will indicate which direction the country is likely heading for the future. economically as well as politically.


Vietnam's adroit balancing act

Daljit Singh
Published The Straits Times
Aug 13, 2015, 5:00 am SGT

In the past year, there has been a flurry of visits by Vietnamese leaders to major foreign countries to forge closer bilateral partnerships.

Only a month ago, Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong paid an official visit to Washington.

Next month, he will visit Tokyo for talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan. In November, Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Hanoi and, later in the month, US President Barack Obama is expected in the Vietnamese capital. Vietnam is also joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership.


What is going on?

It is all part of Vietnam's strategy to balance between China and a host of its other partners.

It wants to deepen political, strategic and economic relations with important players - the US, Japan, India, Russia, Australia, the European Union and Asean - to cushion itself from China, but without entering into a formal alliance arrangement with any great power.

It is part and parcel of Vietnam's adroit strategy of balancing its partnerships.

At one end is China. Vietnam was ruled by China for a thousand years and then fought China for over 800 years or paid tribute to maintain its independence.

As China once again takes its place as a leading world power after a hiatus of two centuries, an ancient and primordial security issue again haunts the Vietnamese mind: How to protect itself from Chinese domination and maintain a measure of independence. Clashes of interest with China in the South China Sea have raised tensions and made this issue more pressing.

China and Vietnam were allies during much of the Vietnam War (1965-1975), but relations deteriorated in the later stages of that conflict, culminating in the 1979 border war, when China launched a punitive military assault against Vietnam for its invasion of Cambodia to replace the Khmer Rouge regime with something more acceptable to Vietnam.

Through much of the 1980s, Indochina was a theatre of bitter Sino-Vietnamese and Sino-Soviet rivalry as Vietnam, armed and financed by the Soviet Union, confronted the Chinese-sponsored Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

However, Vietnam could not sustain this confrontation once Soviet military and financial support withered after the ascent of President Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union.

This vast change in its circumstances compelled Vietnam to settle the Cambodian conflict and normalise its relations with China. It helped that, after the Tiananmen suppression and Western sanctions, China was eager to expand its international ties.

Since then, the VCP has gone to considerable lengths to accommodate China's interests.

Apart from the curse of geography, historical antagonisms and the vast asymmetries in power between the two states, accommodation was facilitated by the fact that Vietnam shared with China a deep ideologically-rooted fear of liberal political and economic ideas which could activate civil society demands for democracy and individual rights and undermine communist party rule.

However, with the persistence of Chinese pressures in the South China Sea , Vietnam now feels that concessions in the spirit of Vietnam-China communist brotherhood will not change Chinese behaviour.

One might ask:

why Vietnam does not then opt for an alliance with the US to counter China?

The answer is straightforward.

The US would be wary of "entrapment", that is, being lured by Vietnam into fighting a war with China over interests of only marginal concern to US security.

Even if the United States were keen on an alliance, Vietnam might fear US abandonment if the political and economic costs to the US of such a commitment become unsustainable in the future, as happened in South Vietnam in the early 1970s and, more recently, in Iraq.

Vietnam might also be wary of being a pawn in big power collusion between the US and China at some point. In 1954, after defeating the French at Dien Bien Phu, the Vietnamese were denied the full fruits of victory at the Geneva conference because China, in an understanding with the US, pressured them to accept partition of the country at the 17th parallel.

In 1972-1973, during the Paris peace talks to end the Vietnam war, China again applied pressure on Vietnam to make concessions to the Americans, leading the Vietnamese to believe that Beijing did not want the reunification of Vietnam.

Today, the US and China have a complex relationship, made up of both cooperation and rivalry, with conflicting interests on the role of each in East Asia.

While nobody knows how this relationship will play out in the future, among the longer-term possibilities is a Sino-American accommodation in which the US allows some parts of the region to slide into a China sphere of influence. The Vietnamese, with a deep store of bitter experiences with great powers, have sensitive enough antennae to know this.

So Vietnam prefers to widen its strategic options by deepening partnerships with all important players. It is also strengthening its national capacities, including military capacities, to resist.

Will Vietnam's strategy succeed?

For now, it looks like the best or the least bad option. Much will depend on what China does and what the naval balance in the South China Sea between China and the US and its allies will be like in the future. One thing is certain: Vietnam has centuries of experience in dealing with China through an adroit mixture of resistance and obeisance.

•The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies-Yusof Ishak Institute.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on August 13, 2015, with the headline 'Vietnam's adroit balancing act'. Print Edition | Subscribe

Vietnam's adroit balancing act, Opinion News & Top Stories - The Straits Times

 

[Viet]

6 August

ROK destroyer Wang Geon led by Col. Kang Hee arrives for a 4 day visit to Saigon. built in 2005, 5,520 tons, 150 m long. equipped by RGM-84 Harpoon missiles. one of the most powerful destroyers of the ROK. I believe the koreans come not only because they love viet foods.

 

[Viet]

Hanoi, August 10

Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Chi Vinh received the second most powerful man of the chinese army: deputy Chief of the General Staff of the China People’s Liberation Army Sun Jianguo. the aim of the talk is (official diplomatic speech) finding ways to narrow differences and create strategic trust for the friendship between the two armies and peoples. If possible.

Sun will stay for 4 days and have the chance to visit a number of units of the Vietnam People’s Army.

visiting to the Minister of Defense Phung Quang Thanh

 

[Viet]

Infantry Unit #325 (Division #2) during an exercise at night

 

[Aqsuperman]

Remind me of the Hurt Locker :v

 

[William Hung]

A very interesting article written by a US army colonel, giving details of his view on how the US should implement its military strategy (The Wolverine Strategy) with the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia. Basically arm VN/PH to the teeth with surface combat vessels, fighters and network them all with US long range bombers. He is too optimistic about Malaysia though. I doubt Malaysia would dare to stand up to China.

Regaining the Initiative in the South China Sea | The Diplomat

A New Defense Architecture

If we are to successfully contain the PRC’s ambitions in the SCS, we will have to change the defense architecture in the region. Only four countries hold a commanding position over the SCS: China, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines. Arguably, the PRC pairs the largest military with the poorest geographical position. A U.S. containment policy can be immeasurably improved with the addition of the active participation of one or more of these critical neighboring nations. Even without U.S. permanent basing, established defense relationships and an improved PN military posture can provide a bulwark against PRC aggression.

Vietnam, which has a thousand years of Chinese occupation in its history, is also the most recent victim of full-scale Chinese military aggression, having suffered an invasion by the PRC in 1979. Vietnam has also suffered more casualties in the South China Sea in direct conflict with China than any other nation. With a commanding position over the SCS, claims to the Paracel Islands and a robust basing structure, Vietnam is logically the highest-payoff country in the region with which to improve a defense relationship, with or without forward basing accessible to the U.S. The future of military cooperation is currently somewhat limited because Title 22 CFR 126.1 prohibits lethal military aid to Vietnam; waiving this prohibition with respect to maritime weapons systems has already allowed an expanded, if limited, defense relationship with Vietnam. The waiver could be expanded to encompass aviation capabilities, and Senator John McCain has announced a plan to introduce legislation that would remove CFR 126.1 restrictions on Vietnam.


The Wolverine Strategy

The process of strengthening local partners to compete with a regional hegemon is often referred to as the “hedgehog” strategy. A hedgehog is a difficult challenge for a predator intent on a quick meal. A hedgehog doesn’t have to be impossible to eat, it just has to be more difficult and less worthwhile than the other meal options. A wolverine, on the other hand, is a nasty, aggressive predator that is not only difficult to eat, but dangerous to be around and worth avoiding. A “wolverine” strategy, intended to improve the offensive counterair and countermaritime capabilities of partner nations, would hold part of the key to neutralizing China’s initiative.

The PRC’s claims in the SCS have no standing in international law, and only very tenuous historical backing. Many of the islands have been only occasionally inhabited for centuries, some remain claimed by the Republic of China, and some have been seized by force by the PRC. In 1974, the PRC seized the Crescent Group of the Paracels from the Republic of Vietnam. In 1994, Mischief Reef was occupied during a lull in Philippine Navy patrols and in 2012 the PRC abrogated a U.S.-brokered agreement which would have pulled back PLAN and Philippine Navy vessels. A three-year blockade of the Philippine Marine detachment on Second Thomas Shoal is ongoing. The PRC has been aggressive in pursuing SCS claims, not only within the 200-nm Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of other nations, but also within the territorial 12-mile limit of the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia.

China is a signatory of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), but believes that it does not apply in the SCS. To date, none of the adjacent countries has resisted PRC encroachment militarily, with the notable exception of Vietnam. This can only change if those countries become strong enough to make PRC advances costly or easily reversed. For local defense within a country’s EEZ, land-based airpower is the decisive force because Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia could all potentially maintain air superiority within 200nm of their shores, while China would be challenged to operate at a much longer distance. If the countries surrounding the SCS had robust, offensive air and sea capabilities, not only would they be better prepared to resist PRC aggression, they would also be able to reverse temporary gains and raise the costs of Chinese intervention.

U.S. participation in developing offensive air and sea capabilities is critical, but at this juncture not particularly feasible. The U.S. has no lethal, affordable and transferable air or naval systems that our regional partners can afford to purchase, operate and maintain in sufficient numbers. In the 1970s, the U.S. Air Force provided a large number of air forces worldwide with Vietnam-surplus aircraft to provide an effective bulwark against a common Communist-inspired threat. A-37s, F-5s, A-7s, C-7s, C-119s, C-123s, O-1s, O-2s and OV-10s were provided to a number of air forces. Those aircraft are now only marginally operational, if at all. The U.S. now have few alternatives to offer while, at the same time, demand for U.S. assistance with air forces is only growing. If a PN cannot afford an F-16 with a midlife upgrade, we cannot supply them with combat aircraft. Similarly, we do not build naval vessels that can be used effectively by less-capable partners – our best options are retired FFG-7 frigates and the occasional long-endurance cutter. Littoral combat ships are too expensive by an order of magnitude, and we do not build a surface combatant like the Pegasus-class hydrofoil, Skjold-class corvette, or Type 022 fast missile boat. If we were to attempt to execute a Wolverine Strategy, we are short the necessary tools – the U.S. will have difficulty providing common hardware, effective training, and the most important aspect of all – a long-term relationship that helps shape partner militaries to be a key ally for a global effort with values common to both.

This is an acute problem in Southeast Asia, as U.S.-built combat aircraft have reached the end of their service lives. The last U.S. export fighter, the F-5E Tiger II, has so far been replaced by non-U.S. fighters, forfeiting a major security cooperation opportunity. The last remaining F-5s in Southeast Asia will retire in the next five years with no American replacement options except the much more expensive F-16, F-18 and F-15E.

If we are to successfully execute a Wolverine Strategy, we will have to do something about both our air advisory capability and our stable of available aircraft. Combat variants of the T-X trainer (AT-X and FT-X) might well serve as a mid-term, exportable fighter in the mid 2020s. Similarly, ACC’s OA-X (AT-6B or A-29B) could help rebuild the essential skills needed by the Philippines to allow an effective transition to a multirole force – and those aircraft are ready today. If the U.S. were also to design and build small missile combatants akin to the PLAN’s Type 022 Houbei-class, partner nations could add small, lethal combatants to the list of capabilities used to offset the PRC’s current maritime superiority over other regional navies. Most importantly, we must accompany any advisory effort with a long-term commitment akin to Plan Colombia, which took a decade, but resulted in a well-equipped, thoroughly professional Fuerza Aérea Colombiana.

The Bombers

The final ingredient is a modernized long-range bomber force, consisting of LRS-B, B-2, and upgraded B-52J. (The B-1B is simply too fuel inefficient, and has such low availability ratings, to be cost-effective to keep in the inventory. The loss of B-1s will be offset by new LRS-B and by moving additional B-52 from storage into operational units.) The long distances typical of combat in the Pacific, and the increasing range of the PRC’s missile threat, may necessitate operating from well outside the region. Bombers may operate from foreign locations such as RAAF Tindall or Diego Garcia, but a re-engined B-52J could also operateunrefueled into the SCS from distant bases like RAAF Amberly or U.S. territory such as Wake, Guam, or even Hawaii. With modernized sensor systems including inverse synthetic aperture (for ship identification) and pulse-Doppler (for air to air situational awareness) modes, the bombers will be able to support countermaritime operations in and around the South China Sea.

Against the Soviet Navy, a three-ship flight of Harpoon-armed B-52Gs was a formidable force, and might well have proven a dominant force in the North Atlantic. Armed with modern antiship weapons such as the Naval Strike Missile or improved Harpoon, a loaded flight of B-52s has the salvo size to overwhelm naval air defenses from standoff range. In addition to antisurface warfare, the large capacity of the bombers could allow effective isolation of PRC military island installations by direct attack from standoff, or employment of precision standoff aerial mining capabilities exemplified by Quickstrike-ER and Quickstrike-P. Isolating island bases by preventing their resupply could effectively neutralize them – airbases require a lot of fuel to be effective, and air defenses require power generation, which is also fuel-intensive. Island bases isolated by standoff mining of the nearby waters may not be able to redeploy their heavy military equipment, which can then be attacked at leisure.

The small, congested conditions on fortified islands limit the effectiveness of active defenses, which cannot rely on a mobility doctrine due to the small area and cannot rely on tight emissions control due to the lack of supporting, land-based infrastructure. Moreover, bases built on landfill cannot be effectively hardened with underground facilities – a condition that also bedevils U.S. island bases in the region. Any hit by a weapon on an artificial island base is likely to have an outsized effect due to the congestion of assets.

Conclusion

The steady advance of the PRC’s territorial claims in the South China Sea has put the U.S. and partner nations at a disadvantage. China’s incremental approach relies more on the advantages of position and the threat of military force, which is often threatened but rarely used. China is able to get away with this kind of behavior because the competing nations do not have a regional defense arrangement and because the imbalance in force size and capabilities is substantial. However, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines do have substantial geographical advantages over China in that each of them, alone, has a commanding position over parts of the South China Sea. The three of them together, properly equipped and supported by the U.S., could provide a robust counter to any isolated military presence that the PLA might establish outside the Chinese EEZ.

A combination of improved defense relationships and U.S.-built air and sea capabilities backed by a modernized long-range strike capability from USAF bombers would require a substantial investment in time and resources, but does not place the burden for offsetting China’s advances solely upon the United States. Given the rebalance to the Pacific, a robust engagement strategy is a necessary component of any U.S. effort to contain the PRC and assure Asian partners and allies that the rebalance is more than empty words. Airpower is a key component of this strategy and well-suited to the maritime challenges posed in the South China Sea.

What this colonel is concerned about, is that the US no longer have or produce any small and low cost ships and fighters that can be operated by VN/PH/ML. And if we buy non-US toys, it would be hard to integrate them with the US bombers. So he want the US to start develop cheaper toys, or joint-development with VN/PH.

....A combination of improved defense relationships and U.S.-built air and sea capabilities backed by a modernized long-range strike capability from USAF bombers would require a substantial investment in time and resources, but does not place the burden for offsetting China’s advances solely upon the United States.

So in his view, it will take lots of time and investment to implement this plan, but in the long term, it would still be cheaper for the US as it will not be the only country that can militarily challenge China. It will have partners with interoperable naval and airforce assets that will work together to challenge China.

If the U.S. were also to design and build small missile combatants akin to the PLAN’s Type 022 Houbei-class, partner nations could add small, lethal combatants to the list of capabilities used to offset the PRC’s current maritime superiority over other regional navies. Most importantly, we must accompany any advisory effort with a long-term commitment akin to Plan Colombia, which took a decade, but resulted in a well-equipped, thoroughly professional Fuerza Aérea Colombiana...

^^^So I guess this was what they had in mind when the US agreed to co-develop military hardware with VN in the previous meeting iwth the VN defence minister.

 

[Viet]

Hospital Ship USNS Mercy, JHSV USNS Millinocket Visit Vietnam
By: Sam LaGrone
August 18, 2015 1:40 PM • Updated: August 18, 2015 4:20 PM



Hospital ship USNS Mercy (T-AH 19) sits at anchor upon its arrival off the coast of Da Nang, Vietnam on Aug. 17, 2015. US Marine Corps Photo

The San Diego-based hospital ship USNS Mercy (T-AH-19) and the Joint High Speed Vessel USNS Millinocket (JHSV-3) are in Da Nang, Vietnam this week as part of a humanitarian aid and disaster relief (HADR) exercises.

The visit is part of the 2015 iteration of the ongoing Pacific Partnership exercise in which the U.S. partners with countries in the region for HADR training and Vietnam is the last stop of the exercise for the two ships.

“While in Da Nang, U.S. and partner nation service members as well as non-governmental organizations will work together to conduct subject matter expert exchanges on various medical and disaster relief topics, dental engagements, and engineering civic action programs,” read a statement from the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

While the subsequent exercises with the crews of Mercy and Millinocket will focus on disaster relief and how to handle mass casualties, the visit of the two ships comes at the 20th anniversary of Vietnam and the U.S. normalizing diplomatic relations and months after a U.S. guided missile destroyer conducted limited exercises with the Vietnamese People’s Navy.

“This is the sixth time the U.S. has visited Vietnam in the 10 years we have been conducting Pacific Partnership. The visit by Mercy and Millinocket to Vietnam also coincides with the 20th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and Vietnam,” said Capt. Christopher Engdahl, the mission commander for Pacific Partnership 2015 in the statement.

“We look forward to working with our Vietnamese partners to fully understand the dynamics of preparing for disaster relief in this modern urban environment and furthering the partnership between our nations.”


USNS Millinocket (JHSV-3) arrives in Vietnam on Aug. 17, 2015. US Navy Photo

In April, USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62) and USS Fort Worth (LCS-3) traveled to Vietnam for the first ever at sea exchange between the two navies since the normalization of diplomatic relations.

In the last several years, the U.S. and Vietnam have cautiously expanded military-to-military contact against the backdrop of an expansionist China in the South China Sea.

Historically, the U.S. has taken care to walk a delicate balance between China and other South China Sea border countries by claiming neutrality in the territorial feuds.

However, the U.S. has taken more of a strident tone in the last several weeks as China continues land reclamation efforts in disputed territories — notably in the Paracel and Spratly island chains and continued to restrict movement in those areas near the reclaimed islands.

“Freedom of navigation and overflight are among the essential pillars of international maritime law,” Secretary of State John Kerry told the East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur according to a report in Reuters earlier this month.

“Despite assurances that these freedoms would be respected, we have seen warnings issued and restrictions attempted in recent months.”

In late July local press reported two Vietnamese fishing vessels had been rammed by a ship that matched the characteristics of a Chinese Type 072A Yuting II tank landing ship.

Hospital Ship USNS Mercy, JHSV USNS Millinocket Visit Vietnam - USNI News