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If the American public, after more than twenty years of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, remains confused about the politics and objectives of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, it is primarily because of a steady diet of misinformation conveyed by the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments. The agents of this misinformation are primarily journalists and scholars who depend on the two governments for their facts.
During the long struggle in Vietnam it has been vitally important for successive U.S. administrations and their client regimes in Vietnam to persuade the American public of the justification for the intervention that is aimed at keeping local anti-Communists in power. Frequently, therefore, the same political warfare techniques used in Vietnam have been aimed also at the American public.
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- Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1973
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Notes
1. See D. Gareth Porter, The Myth of the Bloodbath: North Vietnam's Land Reform Reconsidered (Ithaca, N. Y., 1972). See also St. Louis Post-Dispatch (September 24, 1972).
2. Le Duan, “Under the Glorious Banner for Independence and Socialism,” Hoc Tap (February, 1970), translated in Joint Publications Research Service, Translations on North Vietnam, No. 702 (April 27, 1970).
3. See Le Monde (December 8-9, 1946); Franc-Tireur (January 22, 1947).
4. Virginia Thompson and Richard Adloff, The Left Wing in Southeast Asia (New York, 1950), p. 49.
5. See Paul Isoart, Le Phénomène National Vietnamien (Paris, 1961), p. 396, for citations of press accounts of the period. (See also Thompson and Adloff, p. 43.)
6. Philippe Devillers, Histoire du Viet-Nam du 1940 à 1952 (Paris, 1952), pp. 450, 455-56. This line of argument was also employed by officials of the French sponsored Bao Dai government. Prince Buu Loc, then premier, declared in 1952 mat the “satellization” of the Viet Minh by Communist China had begun in July, 1949, when “the extremist ‘Chinese’ wing of the Vietminh, led by Dang Xuan Khu [Truong Chinh] routed the “Western wing'” (Buu Loc, “Aspects of the Vietnamese Problem,” Pacific Affairs [September, 1952]).
7. The myth of Truong Chinh's “Yenan period,“ pushed by U.S. intelligence sources, has influenced a whole generation of Western scholars and journalists. (See Bernard Fall's introduction to Primer for Revolt [New York, 1964], p. xiv; Fall's “Power and Pressure Groups in North Vietnam” in P. J. Honey, ed., North Vietnam Today, p. 81; Robert S. Elegatt's Thought of Hanoi's No. 2 Man Gains Mao-Like Status,” Lot Angeles Times [February 10, 1969]; Who's Who in North Vietnam [Washington, D. C, 1972], p. 55.)
8. Hoang Quoc Viet, “Peuple Heroïque,” in Récits de la Résistance Vietnamienne (1925-1945) (Paris, 1968), p. 156.
9. This fact is noted in the brief introduction to Truong Chinh and Vo Nguyen Giap, Van De Dan Cay [The Peasant Problem] (Hanoi, 1959), 2nd printing.
10. Forty Years of Party Activity, serialized in Nhan Dan (January 12-19, 1970), translated in Viet-Nam Documents and Research Notes (Saigon: U.S. Mission in Vietnam), p. 19.
11. Thanh Nghi and Ngo Vu, Viet-Phap-Anh Tu Dien [Vietnamese-French-English Dictionary] (Saigon, 1960); Van Tan, Tu Dien Tieng Viet [Dictionary of the Vietnamese Language] (Hanoi, 1969).
12. Vo Nguyen Giap, Tu Nhan Dan Ma Ra [Bom of the People] (Hanoi, 1964), p. 27.
13. Le Van Luong, Nhan Dan (March 1-3, 1953), in Cuoc Khang Chien Than Thanh cua Nhan Dan Vietnam [The Magnificent Resistance of the Vietnamese People] (Hanoi), Vol. IV, p. 39.
14. See, for example, the Diemist pamphlet Land Reform Failures m Communist North Vietnam, special edition (1957), p. 11. This campaign even went so far as to assert that Chinese Communist cadres were in charge of the land reform campaign as well as almost everything else in the North. (See Porter, pp. 30-31.)
15. Nhan Dan (October 29 and 30, November 3, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 22, 23, 29, 1957).
16. Nhan Dan (December 25, 1957); Vietnam News Agency (December 25, 1957).
17. Vietnam News Agency (October 29, 1957); Nhan Dan (October 10 and November 4, 1957). The full text of Truong Chinh's November address is printed in Nhan Dan (November 27 and 29T1957).
18. Nhan Dan (October!l4, 1957).
19. Nhan Dan (November 8, 1957).
20. See Nhan Dan (July 8 and 19, 1960). One cannot, in any case, deduce anything from Giap's absence from the public eye. In a survey; of the appearances of Politburo members in the Party'newspaper during the entire year of 1963, David Marr found that Giap was the least visible of the well-known Party leaders, that almost all of the mentions of his name were merely in the listing of those present at meetings and ceremonial functions, and that his picture appeared only once-at the May Day celebration (David Marr, “North Vietnam and the Sino- Soviet Dispute” [unpublished manuscript, 1964]).
21. Truong Chinh, “On the Party's Ideological Work,“ in Third National Congress of the Vietnam Workers Party (Hanoi, 1969), p. 16.
22. See, for example, Zorza, “Hawks in Hanoi Seen Trying to Stall Peace Negotiations,'’ Washington Port (June 7,1968); P. J. Honey, China News Analysis (June 21, 1968), p. 7; “Hanoi Beset by War Setbacks, Political Strife,” Boston Record-American (April 8, 1968). The theme was also picked up by Joseph Kraft, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (May 20, 1968).
23. Peter Lisagor, Chicago Daily News Service, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (May 4, 1969).
24. NSM-1 was published in the Congressional Record, May 10 and 11,1972 (see especially pp. E4988, E5013-14 and E5025 for the answers of the State Department, Embassy and Joint Chiefs on North Vietnamese leadership “factions“). Unfortunately, the answer from the CIA to this question was among the pages omitted from the version of NSM-1 published in the Record.
25. Thus Honey wrote: “Although the policies of Le Duan's faction and those of Truong Chinh's faction are mutually contradictory, both are being implemented simultaneously at the present time, which reflects the current disarray in the Hanoi leadership and accounts for the obvious confusion in Communist strategy” (China News Analysis [March 14, 1969]).
26. Zorza, “Now a Hanoi Hawk Is Leading Shift to a Policy of Negotiation,” Washington Post (October 23, 1968).
27. Truong Chinh, “Let Us Be Grateful to Karl Marx and Follow the Path Traced by Him,” serialized on Hanoi Radio, September 16-19, 1968, and translated in Viet-Nam Documents and Research Notes, No. 51, p. 2.
28. Vo Nguyen Giap, The Party's Military Line Is the Ever-Victorious Banner of People's War in Our Country,“ Nhan Dan (December 14-17, 1969), translated in Viet- Nam Documents and Research Notes, No. 70, p. 47.
29. Le Duan, The Vietnamese Revolution: Fundamental Problems, Essential Tasks (Hanoi, 1970), pp. 70-71. This is a translation of Le Duan's political thesis written for the fortieth anniversary of the Party. An official Party publication explained that the work “manifests the collective ideas of the Political Bureau.” The Contents That Must Be Understood in Studying ‘Advance Toward New Victories Under the Glorious Banner for Independence, Freedom and Socialism,'” Tuyen Huan [Training], No. 7-8 (1970), translated in JPRS, Translations on North Vietnam, No. 811 (October 29, 1970).
30. See Victor Zorza, “End of a War,” Washington Post (October 15, 1972); Nguyen Tien Hung, “Hanoi: Peace as a Pause,” Washington Post (October 29, 1972); P. J. Honey, U.S. News and World Report (November 5, 1972).
31. Truong Chinh,“Let Us … Follow the Path,” op. cit.
32. Newsweek (November 6, 1972). (See also Christian Science Monitor [November 10, 1972]).
33. New York Times (January 26, 1972); also Joseph Alsop, Washington Post (January 24, 1973). A few days after the bombing of Hanoi began ABC News was informed by an Administration source that the raids were necessary because one faction in the Hanoi leadership was still stubbornly holding out for better terms, even though another faction was prepared to accept American terms (ABC Evening News, December 22, 1972).