Vietnam Defence Forum

[Viet]

Welcome to Vietnam!
Interesting: the USNS Millinocket, a US warship that usually tranports the US Marines Corps accompanies the hospital ship. the guests will stay for 12 days.

 

[Viet]

In a military factory, specilising on anti aircraft missiles.

 

[NiceGuy]

Hoàng Thu Trang ‎Ghép đôi Chiến Sĩ - Hậu Phương

Họ tên: Hoàng Thu Trang
NS: 1991
Quê quán: Tuyên Quang
Nghề nghiệp: bộ đội- Bộ CHQS tỉnh TQ
Lý do: Hưởng ứng phong trào smile emoticon



----------------------------------
a Cute soldier from Tuyen Quang province

 

[Viet]

I think we need more aircraft to secure the airspace. I know the economy has more priority, nevertheless the airforce should look for ways how to speed up the acquisition process of new fighters. the chinese clowns become more and more aggressive with everyday passing by.

assembling a new arrived SU-30 in a hangar. some technicians and engineers from russia are seen on the picture.

a new hangar under construction

 

[Aqsuperman]

with the incoming Gali Ace , i wonder what will happen to those TAR-21 units ? will they be moving inland ?

 

[Viet]

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



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.



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.



^^^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.

actually the US, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and others in the region profit by our effort from preventing the chinese taking over the SC Sea. we keep the balance of power on land and at sea with our limited resources. so I think it is fair to ask the US, Japan and Korea to finance a part of our cost, easing our burden.

no, Malaysia has no military power to confront China. nore have they guts. if theoretically the malays begin to challenge the chinese, the likelyhood of a domestic civil war is very high, the fate of chinese ethnics is at stake.

last, I post here a pic: this field gun is probably used at parades only.

 

[William Hung]

actually the US, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and others in the region profit by our effort from preventing the chinese taking over the SC Sea. we keep the balance of power on land and at sea with our limited resources. so I think it is fair to ask the US, Japan and Korea to finance a part of our cost, easing our burden.

no, Malaysia has no military power to confront China. nore have they guts. if theoretically the malays begin to challenge the chinese, the likelyhood of a domestic civil war is very high, the fate of chinese ethnics is at stake.

last, I post here a pic: this field gun is probably used at parades only.

They are not going to finance anything. They themselve are fighting to increase or keep the budget to maintain their military. We just need them to lift the arms embargo, carry out joint-development that wont cost them anything but might even make them money since their companies would get paid. We can build the platform in VN.

For example, something like this Ambassador MK 3 FAC. Its similar to our Molniya but more modern with better air defence:

600 tons
41 knots top speed.
8 Harpoons
Phalanx
RIM-116 SAM

This Ezzat class FAC was designed and built by an American company for the Eqyptian navy. All we need is a joint-developmemt project with them for similar platforms and we can just build it at our domestic shipyard to save cost.

 

[Aqsuperman]

this field gun is probably used at parades only

That is a 76 mm howitzer Zis-3 and yeah maybe this time it will shot blank ammunition in the 2/9 but it can change back to the HE as soon as required :3

 

[Aqsuperman]

a BTR-152 with top armor to cover troops from airburst round but also remove the ability to mount 12.7mm DSHK

 

[Viet]

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

bro luckily the war is over. right now we enjoy the longest peace period in our modern history. torture and other cruels are not the things that human can be proud of. in this regard, I am happy to see VN has signed the UN convention against torture. I´m not saying now everything is fine, but the first step is made. follow the convention in the reality, and not only on paper.

Vietnam joins UN Convention against Torture - News VietNamNet

 

[64:0]

Vietnam is seriously concerned about Indonesian authorities’ sinking of several Vietnamese vessels that had been found fishing illegally in Indonesian waters, the foreign ministry said Thursday.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a diplomatic note on this issue to Indonesia earlier the same day, spokesman Le Hai Binh said at a press conference in Hanoi.
Indonesia sank 34 foreign vessels, including those from Vietnam, on Tuesday to deter vessels from illegally fishing, local media outlets reported.
Vietnam asked Indonesia to handle Vietnamese fishermen who violated Indonesia’s territorial waters "in line with the strategic partnership between the two countries," and "in a humane fashion," Binh said.
Vietnam has continually asked its fishermen to strictly adhere to other countries’ regulations and not infringe upon foreign waters, he stressed.

 

[Aqsuperman]

well i would like to see missile in those pod too............

 

[Rechoice]

Hoàng Thu Trang ‎Ghép đôi Chiến Sĩ - Hậu Phương

Họ tên: Hoàng Thu Trang
NS: 1991
Quê quán: Tuyên Quang
Nghề nghiệp: bộ đội- Bộ CHQS tỉnh TQ
Lý do: Hưởng ứng phong trào smile emoticon



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a Cute soldier from Tuyen Quang province

Chè Thái, gái Tuyên, bro.

 

[Viet]

Vietnam’s Defence Boom Entices Global Firms

Global Risk Insights
by Jeremy Luedi , August 5, 2015

Concerns over China have prompted a massive defence procurement campaign in Vietnam. Hanoi is entering a multitude of contracts and agreements with foreign nations, which has created opportunities for defence firms, as well as a means for Vietnam to engage internationally.

In the wake of increased Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea, Vietnam is undergoing a massive defence-spending boom, as Hanoi seeks to prevent Chinese regional domination. Hanoi’s defence spending has increased 128% since 2005, and 9.6% in 2014 alone, reaching a total of $4.3 billion.

This increased spending is supported by the fact that Vietnam has witnessed sustained, robust growth rates averaging 6.15% since 2000, reaching 6.44% in Q2 2015.

While Vietnam’s expenditure is dwarfed by China’s, Hanoi has undertaken an aggressive procurement strategy with a focus on maritime surveillance and interdiction. These measures are designed to counter Chinese activities in the South China Sea, many of which occur in waters claimed by Vietnam.

Last year’s oil rig crisis brought Sino-Vietnamese relations to a new low. Tensions have continued to simmer this year as Beijing’s aggressive island-building program in the South China Sea has incited strong condemnations from Vietnam and other ASEAN nations.

It is important to note that Vietnam is not simply purchasing equipment, but is making a concerted effort to diversify its defence ties to realize its geo-strategic goals. This stance is a marked departure from Vietnam’s long-standing ‘Three No’s’ (no military alliances, no foreign bases in Vietnam, and no reliance on others when fighting other countries) policy. This new approach offers new opportunities for defence contractors, as Vietnam represents an enticing emerging market.

Washington Seeks Market Share

Vietnam’s procurement drive promises lucrative deals, with Vu Tu Thanh, chief Vietnam representative of the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council noting that “there is a surge of interest among American defence contractors.” Slower domestic defence spending has led U.S. firms to eye emerging Asian markets.

Specifically, American firms are hoping to capitalize on regional anti-Chinese sentiment to boost sales. Such a trend also aligns perfectly with American foreign policy interests as Washington seeks to strengthen relations with smaller Asian nations on China’s periphery.

To this end, on April 22nd the U.S. embassy organized a meeting between the Vietnamese military and American contractors, allowing U.S. firms to pitch products to Hanoi. Sources present at the meeting noted the palpable excitement of American companies present, with one company’s representative requesting details about Vietnam’s defence budget, only to be politely rebuffed by Vietnamese military officials.

This private sector enthusiasm is mirrored by Washington’s recent donation of six patrol boats to Vietnam. Indeed, Senator (and war veteran) John McCain’s call for the U.S. to increase weapon sales to Vietnam perfectly highlights the purely pragmatic nature of entire affair.

Vietnam is particularly interested in buying spare parts for its fleet of American UH-1 helicopters, which it acquired in the wake of the American withdrawal in 1973. Historically, Vietnam’s rival has always been China, which has over the millennia invaded its smaller neighbour dozens of times. Consequently, Vietnam is interested in purchasing sophisticated U.S maritime surveillance systems to aid its interdiction of Chinese vessels.

Vietnam’s Defence Market Diversifies

While the U.S. is keen to increase market penetration in Vietnam – having partially lifted its weapons bans in October 2014 – it remains a minor player. Vietnam has already signed a deal with long-standing arms supplier Russia for six Kilo-class submarines, as well as two Tarantul-class missile corvettes.

Similarly, Vietnam has signed a military-technical cooperation agreement with Belarus on July 9th. This agreement will facilitate scientific and technological sharing, personnel training, and joint production of certain weapon systems.

Belarus is an obvious partner given its shared familiarity with Russian equipment, a tradition that benefits Minsk’s recent efforts to woo Southeast Asian nations. This agreement with Belarus comes just months after Vietnam signed a free trade agreement with the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).

Importantly, Vietnam has also been fostering the creation of a world-class ship building industry, becoming the fifth largest shipbuilding nation by orders in 2010. The government has made the sector a key priority, seeking to capitalize on Vietnam’s cheap work force and proximity to expanding markets.

As a result Vietnam is also increasingly seeking to procure domestically produced naval vessels. The Hong Ha Shipbuilding Company has already built five TT400 class vessels for the Vietnamese navy. These ships are designed for maritime border patrol, foreign vessel interdiction and anti-smuggling/piracy operations.

Hanoi Courts the Globe

Vietnam’s pragmatism is again highlighted by agreements with former colonial powers such as France and Japan. In 2007 Hanoi signed an MoU on Modernizing Technical Equipment with France. This was followed by the initiation in 2010 of annual Vietnam-France Joint Committee on Defence Cooperation meetings.

Furthermore, last year Japan donated six naval vessels to Vietnam, a move that coincided with Tokyo’s loosening of its long-standing arms export ban. This donation boosts pro-Japanese sentiment in Vietnam, as well as encourages Hanoi to purchase Japanese products such as a Kawasaki P-1 maritime surveillance aircraft in the future.

Hanoi’s expansive defence agreement campaign has also prompted the 2015 India-Vietnam joint statement expressing wishes to increase joint training and defence industry cooperation. Last week, Vietnam also concluded talks with Israel to establish an Israeli defence attaché office in Hanoi, with both governments already agreeing to their first joint defence working group meeting in November.

Similarly, this year has already seen a meeting between Vietnamese and South Korean defence ministers, itself the result of deputy level meetings in 2012 and a memorandum of understanding on defence in 2010.

By adopting a pragmatic approach and capitalizing on its growing economic strength, Vietnam is seeking to position itself as a strong regional player to balance against potential local Chinese hegemony. Hanoi’s growing international connections demonstrates that Vietnam’s Communist Party has paid close attention to its modernizing Chinese counter-part.

Vietnam’s Defence Boom Entices Global Firms | Global Risk Insights

 

[Viet]

crazy and threatening idea. unthinkable. a U.S. nuclear strike on North Vietnam would have provoked North VN allies at that time, the USSR and China to respond. Especially the Soviet Union. Luckily it was just on paper until the war was over.


Worst Idea Ever: Dropping Nuclear Bombs During the Vietnam War

Steve Weintz
August 23, 2015

A crazy idea that would have broken the "nuclear taboo."


By February 1966, frustration with the U.S. bombing campaign against North Vietnam rose high enough to spur talk of going nuclear. Throughout the Vietnam War, such talk was mostly just that, but in 1966, it worried certain people enough to gin up a classified study of tactical nuclear weapons use in Southeast Asia. The study's authors—members of the JASONs, the Pentagon's "wise men"—concluded that any way you looked at it, nukes in 'Nam were a very bad idea.

The JASONs were and are highly respected within the Defense Department. Defense consultants drawn from the cream of academia, they had the Pentagon's ear and the freedom to choose their research topics. Early in 1966 four of them—chemistry professor Robert Gomer, quantum physicist Steven Weinberg, particle physicist Courtenay Wright, and mathematician Freeman Dyson—decided to look into the the use of nukes in Vietnam for that summer's study.

According to Seymour Deitchman, who served with the Institute for Defense Analysis, the organization that supported the JASONs, "...there had been not infrequent talk among some of the military people involved in planning the war effort, with whom I had contact, that 'a few nukes' dropped on strategic locations, such as the Mu Gia pass through the mountainous barrier along the North Vietnamese-Laotian border, would close that pass (and others) for good."

Freeman Dyson recalled, "We were prompted to write this report by some remarks we heard at an informal party, probably in Spring 1966. A high-ranking military officer with access to President Johnson was heard to say, ‘It might be a good idea to toss in a nuke from time to time, just to keep the other side guessing.’ We had no way to tell whether the speaker was joking or serious. Just in case he was serious, we decided to do our study."

All four men entered the project believing that nuclear weapons would only make a brutal war more terrible. But they faced a rhetorical dilemma: if they addressed ethical and moral issues around tactical nuke use, they risked being dismissed as "soft" and unreliable. Therefore, they chose to explicitly exclude ethical and moral issues and focus solely on military and political ramifications. Steven Weinberg said the analysis was "…honestly done, but I have to admit that its conclusions were pretty much what we expected from the beginning."

Those conclusions were eye-opening. Although a RAND Corporation study estimated that one tactical nuclear weapon equaled twelve conventional bombing attacks, the JASONs concluded that an all-nuclear “rolling thunder”–style bombing campaign would require 3000 tactical nukes a year. Not even the massive U.S. nuclear production complex could support that kind of use.

Even with such awesome firepower, the results looked unsatisfying. Wargames played under Big War conditions—massed troop and armor concentrations in Europe—indicated that each nuke would only kill one hundred soldiers. Attacks against small, dispersed forces moving under jungle cover looked even less effective.

Mountain passes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail could be shut down and large areas of forest blown down by tactical nukes very effectively, but only until the Vietnamese cleared new paths. Maintaining damage and radiation levels would require repeated nuclear attacks and as one JASON said, "a tree only falls once."

Tactical nukes could destroy tunnel systems, but required precise targeting. If targeting were that precise why not just use conventional B-52 strikes? Said former CIA analyst Daniel Ellsberg, "If you don’t have a target for B-52s, you don’t have a target for nuclears."

In sum, the JASONs concluded that unilateral U.S. use of tactical nukes wouldn't make much of a difference to the war effort. It could, however, provoke some very nasty consequences. Says historian Alex Wellerstein, "Since World War II, the US has the strongest interest in not breaking the 'nuclear taboo' because once nukes start becoming normalized, the US usually stands to lose the most, or at least a lot."

U.S. nuclear strikes in Vietnam might have compelled the USSR and/or China to respond. The Soviet Union could not afford another loss of face only four years after the Cuban Missile Crisis and might well have supplied North Vietnam with tactical nukes. Such weapons, the JASONs noted, were just the sort of military forces the U.S. deployed to Vietnam in large bases and ports and large troop concentrations.

If weapons comparable to the Honest John battlefield missile or the Davy Crockett nuclear bazooka made it into Viet Cong hands the results would have been catastrophic. "If about 100 weapons of 10-KT yield each could be delivered from base parameters onto all 70 [US] target areas in a coordinated strike," wrote the JASONs, "the U.S. fighting capability in Vietnam would be essentially annihilated [emphasis added]."

Even a few VC retaliatory nukes fired from time to time rather than all at once would have seriously degraded U.S. military capacity in Vietnam. But U.S. prestige would take far more damage. "The effect of first use on world opinion in general and on our Allies in particular would be extremely unfavorable," the study concluded.

The study's authors made another prescient observation: U.S. use of nukes in Vietnam against a local insurgency and a defiant state would have taught the same lesson learned by North Korea and Iran. Only with one's own nukes could one face up to the United States. Proliferation would explode. The thought of nuclear-armed guerrilla movements, which really worried the JASONs, still frightens us today.

When he received the report, Defense Secretary McNamara dispensed with a briefing and asked pointed questions. By all accounts, further consideration of nukes in 'Nam ended there. The JASONs’ hope that their study's findings would take nukes off the table seemed borne out.

The Tet Offensive in 1968 demonstrated what Communist resolve and capacity could achieve with conventional forces. Had nuclear weapons been introduced into the conflict by both sides, the United States would have faced the JASONs’ worst-case scenario. Apparently some talk picked up again about using nukes to relieve the siege at Khe Sanh, but it went as far as similar talk in 1954 about Dien Bien Phu. Despite all the frustration with the war and the desire to pull out the big guns, the nuclear taboo held.

Nuclear weapons still engender deep contradictions. The most powerful weapons ever devised serve no other purpose but to prevent their use by others. Some people in Washington, Moscow and Islamabad may still view them simply as extraordinary munitions and tilt towards their use, but the arguments the JASONs made in 1966 still hold up. And casual talk about "tossing a few nukes around" is as crazy now as it was then.

Steve Weintz is a writer, filmmaker, artist, animator. Former firefighter, archaeologist, stuntman.