>Sender: >To: >X-Original-Message-ID: <00eb01bf26f5$5508b420$9acf69cf@pacbell.net> >From: "Peter McWilliams" >Subject: The Secret Drug War? >Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 10:49:32 -0800 >X-Mozilla-Status: 8001 >X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 > > >Thirty years after Vietnam, some of the inhuman activities used by our >government in that war are finally being revealed. In reading this, I wonder >what will be revealed about governmental dirty tricks in the War on Drugs 30 >years after its end. > >Take care, > >Peter > >--------- > > >New York Times > >November 4, 1999 > >U.S. Program Aimed to Make Hanoi Think Released Prisoners Were Spies, Book >Says >By JAMES RISEN > >WASHINGTON -- A secret American program was created during the Vietnam War >to frame enemy prisoners as spies and then send them back to North Vietnam, >where they would face possible execution, according to a new history of >covert action during the conflict. > >In a program begun in 1968 and code-named Project Urgency, some North >Vietnamese soldiers and others held as prisoners by American forces were >handpicked from prisoner-of-war holding areas and sent back to North >Vietnam, either landed by helicopter or dropped by parachute, the book >states. > >Incriminating espionage items were hidden in their clothing without their >knowledge, so that when they were picked up by North Vietnamese security >forces, they would appear to be American agents. > >In his new book, "The Secret War Against Hanoi," to be published next month >by HarperCollins, Richard H. Shultz Jr., a national security historian, says >that the program was designed to make the North Vietnamese believe that >America had infiltrated far more spies into the North than it actually had. >The United States wanted the Communist regime to "worry about its home >front," Shultz said in an interview on Wednesday. > >In another secret operation run by the Studies and Observation Group, the >military's covert arm during the Vietnam conflict, North Vietnamese >fishermen were kidnapped, blindfolded and taken to an island off the coast >of South Vietnam, where the United States had created a phony North >Vietnamese village, according to the book. > >The ruse was designed to convince the fishermen that they had arrived in the >North Vietnamese haven of an anti-Communist rebel group called the "Sacred >Sword of the Patriots League." After three weeks, they were blindfolded >again and returned home, in the hope that they would spread the word that >there was a liberated area in North Vietnam controlled by rebel forces. >About 1,000 North Vietnamese were kidnapped and secretly brought to the >island between 1964 and 1968, the book states. > >Drawing on thousands of pages of classified documents and interviews with >many of the participants, Shultz's book also states that President John F. >Kennedy had urged the CIA to launch guerrilla operations against North >Vietnam almost immediately after taking office in 1961. The request came at >his first National Security Council meeting on Jan. 28, 1961, the book >states. > >Kennedy's initiative led to nearly a decade of covert operations in Vietnam >and Laos that spawned troubling actions by American troops in the field and >bitter interagency feuds back in Washington, while failing to turn the tide >of the battle. > >The actions of the military's covert arm during the Vietnam war became a >renewed topic of debate last year after a CNN report alleged that nerve gas >was used during a secret U.S. military operation in 1970 to assassinate >American defectors in Laos. Confronted with overwhelming evidence that the >broadcast was wrong, CNN subsequently disavowed the story. > >Shultz, director of the international security studies program at the >Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, is completing a study of the >controversy surrounding CNN's "Operation Tailwind" report for the Joan >Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard >University. > >With the cooperation of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, which he >obtained while previously on the faculty at West Point, he began his own >history of Vietnam-era covert operations long before the CNN account was >broadcast. He now argues that, while the CNN story was false, the historical >record does raise some troubling questions about actions of the military's >covert arm during the war. > >In Project Urgency, for example, Shultz found that the military's covert arm >understood that it was sending North Vietnamese POW's to face possible death >in their homeland. Lt. Col. Robert McKnight, who was a key officer in the >covert group in 1968, is quoted in Shultz's book as saying that it "was >hoping they'd all be killed or give false information that we planted." It >is unclear how many POWs were sent back to North Vietnam through the >operation, Shultz said. > >In addition to Project Urgency, the military's covert group also created >Project Borden, through which North Vietnamese POWs were recruited, this >time supposedly as willing agents, to return to the North. They were fed >false information, however, about how to make contact with nonexistent >guerrilla teams, according to the book, in order to make the North >Vietnamese believe that there were guerrillas operating throughout the >North. > >But both Borden and Urgency were just gearing up when President Lyndon >Johnson, seeking to conduct peace talks with the North Vietnamese, ordered a >halt to such operations in late 1968. > >For the remainder of the war, the military's covert group focused primarily >on efforts to interdict North Vietnamese supply shipments along the Ho Chi >Minh trail in Laos, the book shows. > > > > > > > > >================================================================ > >This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to > the mailing list . >To unsubscribe, E-mail to: