Tet - The Failure of Intelligence a debate
Bill Clarke
Ralph McGehee wrote in message <3770DEAE...@igc.org>...
Yup, blank as hell!
Bill Clarke
F Troop, 17th Cav
Bill Langston
the U.S. means a lot of different things to different people. The U.S. can
mean me and you or it can mean Stokley Carmichael or it can mean John Walker
or it can mean Stanfield Turner, or LBJ, etc., etc.. All I am saying is that
the men at the top knew what was going on because I relayed that stuff to
them. When I read your postings I get the impression that the people with
the information about the troop buildups and movements just sat on their
hands and did not disseminate this back to the different units. This to me
would be like the men of W.W.II discovering the Japs were going to bomb
Pearl Harbor and not telling anybody about it. I use that as an example
because that exact thing has been charged before when you and I know
different, that it was a failure of Western Union.
Yours truly, Bill Langston.
Ralph McGehee <rmcg...@igc.org> wrote in message
news:3770DEAE...@igc.org...
>
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> The Failure of Intelligence
>
> I appreciate the views that Mr. Langston cites re my post.
> He notes that his unit -- and the men in the field -- did a good job
> and that the U.S. was not taken by surprise at Tet 1968.
>
> His experience is echoed in my own. However doing a good job
> at the working level, (in my case) and his, made no difference.
>
> The momentum in Vietnam to win and to ignore pessimistic intelligence
> permeated the upper levels. I tried from 1967 to 1975 to warn about
> the structures of the enemy being underreported and for my efforts
> I was relieved of any position of influence.
>
> I disagree with Mr. Langston when he says the U.S. was not taken
> by surprise at Tet. I provided a number of citations to highly
> authenticated and checkable sources to document my case -- I would like
> to suggest that Mr. Langston acquire access to these sources and then
> advise who was lying and where. I do not wish to cause him or other
> Vietnam veterans pain -- I merely wish to demonstrate the proclivities
> and inability's of the upper levels of the intelligence community.
> Inability's that exist today. I worry that the United States can
> again be pulled into unwinnable situations by false, contrived and
> inaccurate, "forward-leaning" intelligence by this infrastructure.
>
> Ralph McGehee
> http://come.to/CIABASE