Vietnam War Intelligence Failure Essay

Vietnam War Intelligence Failures Introduction In President Kennedy’s inaugural address, he proliferated the dedication of the United State’s to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, [and] oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.” Henry Kissinger, the Former United States Secretary of State, introduced this sentiment as a key contributor to the United State’s intelligence failures during the Vietnam War. The first phases of the Vietnam War further depicted Kissinger’s use of Kennedy’s sentiment towards US foreign policy, in that the US mentality supplied the evidence for their predicted victory based on their democratic values, military and industrial strength, and overall American brilliance.

forces during the 1968 Tet offensive.” The onsite policy was mirrored across all levels of the war effort, extending across presidential administrations, but beginning with the Kennedy administration’s generation of positive accounts and affirming that US victory would define the war’s conclusion. Thus US policy in Saigon and Washington DC was “based on appearances; [in that] Vietnamese realities did not matter, but the appearances of Vietnamese realities mattered because they could affect American realities.” The combination of self-deception and misperception of the enemy resulted in the eventual withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam. While this withdrawal did not occur immediately after the Tet Offensive, its impact on public opinion of the war efforts contributed to President Johnson’s decision to rescind US presence. Therefore, the Tet offensive represents an interesting case study in that it is the culmination of the US’s inability to recognize and evolve accordingly with NVA military strategies and determination. This essay serves as an exploration of the main intelligence failures experienced by allied forces in Washington and Vietnam and their facilitation of each other’s failures. On-Site Intelligence Failures The inability to predict and prepare for the Tet Offensive belongs to a culmination of several contributing

The first signal, according to Wirtz’s book “The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War,” consisted of North Vietnamese dignitaries being recalled to attend meetings in Hanoi in July of 1967 under the guise of a military funeral. Then, in August 1967, North Vietnam entered agreements with China and later in September with the Soviet Union to gain weaponry and technology to better support their insurgency. The importance of these signals is mimicked in Steven Hayward’s chapter on the Tet Offensive in his book The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order: 1964-1980. Hayward additionally discusses the concealment and dispersal of North Vietnam’s battle outline via radio