Early Covert Action on the Ho Chi Minh Trail

 | Vietnam  | 0 comments  | Print This Post  | Email This Post

Understandably, all this activity unsettled the top brass in Saigon. Following the attacks of April 29, 1961, several of the ARVN’s leading officers pressed President Ngo Dinh Diem to retake Tchepone. Fearing a flurry of Communist propaganda, however, Diem waffled. Instead, he authorized only a limited cross-border foray to assist BV 33.

The core of the South Vietnamese relief column consisted of troops from the ARVN 1st Infantry Division, assisted by commandos from the 1st Observation Group. The latter unit was the chief action arm of the Presidential Liaison Office (PLO), an ambiguously titled special warfare/intelligence unit with a long and convoluted lineage. First known as Section Six during the French era, the PLO originally was intended as a counterintelligence office. After being turned over to the Republic of Vietnam in 1954, it underwent two name changes in as many years before Lt. Col. Le Quang Tung became its chief.

Tung was one of President Diem’s most trusted military officers. Like Diem, he was a Catholic from central Vietnam. Owing to his pedigree, the low-key, professorial Tung went from lieutenant to lieutenant colonel in just two years. While maintaining the PLO’s counterintelligence mandate, he was able to branch out in early 1957 when the U.S. government offered to raise a South Vietnam-ese special forces group.

Beginning with 70 officers and sergeants selected by the PLO, the contingent was put through airborne and communications training. In the summer of 1957, 54 of the troops began four months of commando training at Nha Trang under the direction of a U.S. Army Special Forces (USSF) training team. This first training cycle (nicknamed ‘Cycle Cramer,’ in honor of a USSF captain who died in October during demolition practice) yielded the first 38 soldiers who went on to form the core of the 1st Observation Group.

As South Vietnam’s designated special forces unit, the 1st Observation Group was unusual in that it was supported by both the U.S. Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency. Its initial function was to act as a resistance cadre in the event of an invasion by the People’s Republic of China — an event some American and Vietnamese officials considered likely during those tense years of Cold War confrontation.

The group grew quickly in its new role. In March 1958 Training Cycle B took shape, this time under the auspices of instructors from Cycle Cramer. Cycles C and D, each with roughly 50 officers and sergeants, were conducted the following year. Graduates were organized into 15-man teams, each assigned a specific geographic area of responsibility for establishing guerrilla pockets during any invasion of South Vietnam.

Although the 1st Observation Group was well trained and armed, it accomplished little during its first three years of existence. Colonel Tung’s attention was focused on covert operations inside North Vietnam, an additional CIA-supported mandate that the PLO assumed in early 1958. The group’s de facto commander, Captain Dam Van Quy — a minority Tho tribesman from northern Vietnam — was content to hold his commandos in readiness for the post-invasion mission. Aside from a few brief forays against the VC in the swampy Mekong Delta, the group rarely ventured far from Nha Trang.

Not until November 1960 did the South Vietnamese special forces get its true baptism by fire. Rather than facing an occupying Chinese army, however, they were ordered to fight their fellow countrymen. That came about after paratroopers from the ARVN’s Airborne Brigade took over parts of Saigon in an attempt to unseat the increasingly unpopular Diem. When the president turned to the loyal Tung for help, the 1st Observation Group rushed to the capital from Nha Trang and fought a pitched battle against the airborne troops near the city’s horse track.

In the aftermath of the failed paratrooper putsch, Captain Quy was promoted and placed in command of the rebellious 3rd Airborne Battalion. Captain Bui The Minh replaced him in the PLO. Although a Buddhist, Minh had joined a militant Catholic group during the First Indochina War, thereby earning the president’s trust.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to

Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, Vietnam War