Fwd: Fwd: (RIP) (INTEL) Doris Allen, Analyst Who Saw the Tet Offensive Coming, Is Dead at 97
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Arnold Isaacs
Jul 1, 2024, 3:03:33 PMJul 1
to Vietnam Old Hacks
Passing along for your possible interest...
<https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/world/asia/doris-allen-dead.html>
Doris Allen, Analyst Who Saw the Tet Offensive Coming, Is Dead at 97
Her warning of a big buildup of enemy troops poised to attack South
Vietnam in 1968 was ignored, a major U.S. Army intelligence failure
during the war.
Doris Allen, an Army intelligence analyst during the Vietnam War whose
warning about the impending attacks in early 1968 by North Vietnamese
and Viet Cong forces that became known as the Tet offensive was ignored
by higher-ups, died on June 11 in Oakland, Calif. She was 97.
Her death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Amy Stork, chief of public
affairs for the Army Intelligence Center of Excellence.
Specialist Allen, who enlisted in the U.S. Army’s Women’s Army Corps in
1950, volunteered to serve in Vietnam in 1967, hoping to use her
intelligence training to save lives. She had been the first woman to
attend the Army’s prisoner of war interrogation course and worked for
two years as the strategic intelligence analyst for Latin American
affairs at Fort Bragg, N.C., now Fort Liberty.
Working from the Army Operations Center in Long Binh, South Vietnam,
Specialist Allen developed intelligence in late 1967 that detected a
buildup of at least 50,000 enemy troops, perhaps reinforced by Chinese
soldiers, who were preparing to attack South Vietnamese targets. And she
pinpointed when the operation would start: Jan. 31, 1968.
In an interview for the book “A Piece of My Heart: The Stories of 26
American Women Who Served in Vietnam” (1986), by Keith Walker,
Specialist Allen recalled writing a report warning that “we’d better get
our stuff together because this is what is facing us, this is going to
happen and it’s going to happen on such and such a day, around such and
such a time.”
She said she told an intelligence officer: “We need to disseminate this.
It’s got to be told.”
But it wasn’t. She pushed for someone up the chain of command to take
her report seriously, but no one did. On Jan. 30, 1968 — in line with
what she predicted — the enemy surprised American and South Vietnamese
military leaders with the size and scope of their attacks.
Image
Several bloodied and injured U.S. soldiers are being transported by an
Army tank being used as a makeshift ambulance during the Tet Offensive
in Vietnam in 1968.
Wounded U.S. soldiers aboard a makeshift ambulance weeks after the Tet
Offensive started in Vietnam in 1968.
Specialist Allen had warned the Army in late 1967 of a large-scale
attack by the North on the South, even pinpointing when it would happen,
but her intelligence went ignored.Credit...John Olson/Getty Images
U.S. and South Vietnamese forces sustained heavy losses early on before
later repelling the attacks. It was a turning point in the war, further
undermining American public support for it.
The Army’s refusal to take Specialist Allen’s analysis seriously
suggested to her that she was viewed with prejudice, as a Black woman
who was not an officer. She was one of about 700 women in the corps,
known as WACs, serving in intelligence positions during the Vietnam era,
and only 10 percent were Black.
In 1991, she told Newsday, “My credibility was like nothing: woman —
Black woman, at that.”
In 2012, she told an Army publication: “I just recently came up with the
reason they didn’t believe me — they weren’t prepared for me. They
didn’t know how to look beyond the WAC, Black woman in military
intelligence. I can’t blame them. I don’t feel bitter.”
Lori S. Stewart, a civilian military intelligence historian for the Army
Intelligence Center of Excellence, said in an email that Specialist
Allen’s analysis was not the only one that went unheeded.
“Both national and theater-level organizations believed an enemy
offensive was likely sometime around the Tet holiday,” she wrote, but
“too many conflicting reports and preconceptions led leaders to misread
the enemy’s intentions.”
Regarding Specialist Allen, Mrs. Stewart added, “Like many other
intelligence personnel in country, she was a diligent and observant
intelligence analyst doing what she was supposed to do: evaluate the
enemy’s intentions and capabilities.”
Specialist Allen was inducted into the Military Intelligence Corps Hall
of Fame in 2009.
Image
Specialist Allen, in civilian clothes, receiving a framed certificate
from an officer in a full dress olive green uniform. Specialist Allen
was inducted into the Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame in 2009.
Maj. Gen. John Custer, commanding general of the U.S. Army Intelligence
Center of Excellence, presided over the ceremony. Credit...U.S Army
Doris Ilda Allen was born on May 9, 1927, in El Paso to Richard and
Stella (Davis) Allen. Her mother was a cook, and her father was a barber.
Ms. Allen graduated from Tuskegee Institute (now University) in 1949
with a bachelor’s degree in physical education. She taught at a high
school in Greenwood, Miss., and enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps the
next year.
After basic training, she auditioned for the WAC Band, playing trumpet.
But she and two other Black woman were told afterward by a chief warrant
officer that “they couldn’t have any Negroes in the band,” she recalled
in “A Piece of My Heart.”
She served in a number of roles over the next dozen or so years: as an
entertainment specialist, organizing soldiers shows; the editor of the
military newspaper for the Army occupation forces in Japan during the
Korean War; a broadcast specialist at Camp Stoneman, Calif., where her
commanding officer was her sister, Jewel; a public information officer
in Japan; and an information specialist at Fort Monmouth, N.J.
In the early 1960s, Specialist Allen learned French at the Defense
Language Institute and completed her training in the prisoner of war
interrogation course at Fort Holabird, Md. She completed interrogation
and intelligence analyst courses at Fort Bragg.
After asking to go to South Vietnam, she arrived in October 1967 for the
first of her three tours of duty there.
“I had so many skills, so much education and training being wasted in
various posts around the country that I decided I wanted to make a
difference in a high-action post like Vietnam,” she told Lavender Notes,
a publication for older LGBTQ+ adults, in 2020.
She left no immediate survivors.
Image
Specialist Allen in Vietnam in an undated photo. She is wearing her Army
uniform, a hat, black rimmed glasses and a watch.
Specialist Allen at the Women’s Army Corps barracks at Long Binh,
Vietnam, in an undated photo. She left in 1970 after seeing a stolen
enemy document with her name on a list of targets to kill.Credit...via
Christina Brown Fisher
Specialist Allen’s Tet analysis was not the only warning of hers to go
unheeded. She advised a colonel not to send a convoy to Song Be, in
southern South Vietnam, because of a possible ambush, which occurred.
Five flatbed trucks were blown up; three men were killed and 19 wounded.
But she was listened to when she warned in early 1969 that the North
Vietnamese had placed scores of 122-millimeter rockets around the
perimeter of the Long Binh operations center, northeast of Saigon, and
that they were to be used in a major attack. She wrote a memo that led
to an airstrike that destroyed the rockets.
Later that year, Specialist Allen learned that the North Vietnamese were
planning to use 82-millimeter chemical rounds. She wrote a report that
saved as many as 100 Marines, who had been instructed in her memo to
avoid any contact with them when they fell in their area; they later
exploded. A grateful colonel sent a memo suggesting that whoever had
written the report deserved the Legion of Merit.
Specialist Allen did not receive that decoration but did earn a Bronze
Star with two oak clusters, among many awards. She left South Vietnam in
1970 after seeing a stolen enemy document with her name on a list of
targets to kill.
After serving 10 more years in the Army she retired as a chief warrant
officer.
By then she had received her master’s degree in counseling from Ball
State University in Indiana in 1977. After her military service, she
worked with a private investigator, Bruce Haskett, whom she had met when
they were in counterintelligence. She earned a Ph.D. in clinical
psychology from the Wright Institute in Berkeley, Calif., in 1986, and
mentored young psychologists.
“She was incredibly savvy about people and had an innate ability to size
people up quickly,” Mr. Haskett said in an interview. “She was the kind
of person who could walk into a pit of vipers and have everybody eating
out of her hands in 15 minutes.”
Christina Brown Fisher contributed reporting.
Richard Sandomir, an obituaries reporter, has been writing for The Times
for more than three decades. More about Richard Sandomir
<https://archive.ph/o/RFGa9/https://www.nytimes.com/by/richard-sandomir>
Skip Isaacs
--
<https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/world/asia/doris-allen-dead.html>
Doris Allen, Analyst Who Saw the Tet Offensive Coming, Is Dead at 97
Her warning of a big buildup of enemy troops poised to attack South
Vietnam in 1968 was ignored, a major U.S. Army intelligence failure
during the war.
Doris Allen, an Army intelligence analyst during the Vietnam War whose
warning about the impending attacks in early 1968 by North Vietnamese
and Viet Cong forces that became known as the Tet offensive was ignored
by higher-ups, died on June 11 in Oakland, Calif. She was 97.
Her death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Amy Stork, chief of public
affairs for the Army Intelligence Center of Excellence.
Specialist Allen, who enlisted in the U.S. Army’s Women’s Army Corps in
1950, volunteered to serve in Vietnam in 1967, hoping to use her
intelligence training to save lives. She had been the first woman to
attend the Army’s prisoner of war interrogation course and worked for
two years as the strategic intelligence analyst for Latin American
affairs at Fort Bragg, N.C., now Fort Liberty.
Working from the Army Operations Center in Long Binh, South Vietnam,
Specialist Allen developed intelligence in late 1967 that detected a
buildup of at least 50,000 enemy troops, perhaps reinforced by Chinese
soldiers, who were preparing to attack South Vietnamese targets. And she
pinpointed when the operation would start: Jan. 31, 1968.
In an interview for the book “A Piece of My Heart: The Stories of 26
American Women Who Served in Vietnam” (1986), by Keith Walker,
Specialist Allen recalled writing a report warning that “we’d better get
our stuff together because this is what is facing us, this is going to
happen and it’s going to happen on such and such a day, around such and
such a time.”
She said she told an intelligence officer: “We need to disseminate this.
It’s got to be told.”
But it wasn’t. She pushed for someone up the chain of command to take
her report seriously, but no one did. On Jan. 30, 1968 — in line with
what she predicted — the enemy surprised American and South Vietnamese
military leaders with the size and scope of their attacks.
Image
Several bloodied and injured U.S. soldiers are being transported by an
Army tank being used as a makeshift ambulance during the Tet Offensive
in Vietnam in 1968.
Wounded U.S. soldiers aboard a makeshift ambulance weeks after the Tet
Offensive started in Vietnam in 1968.
Specialist Allen had warned the Army in late 1967 of a large-scale
attack by the North on the South, even pinpointing when it would happen,
but her intelligence went ignored.Credit...John Olson/Getty Images
U.S. and South Vietnamese forces sustained heavy losses early on before
later repelling the attacks. It was a turning point in the war, further
undermining American public support for it.
The Army’s refusal to take Specialist Allen’s analysis seriously
suggested to her that she was viewed with prejudice, as a Black woman
who was not an officer. She was one of about 700 women in the corps,
known as WACs, serving in intelligence positions during the Vietnam era,
and only 10 percent were Black.
In 1991, she told Newsday, “My credibility was like nothing: woman —
Black woman, at that.”
In 2012, she told an Army publication: “I just recently came up with the
reason they didn’t believe me — they weren’t prepared for me. They
didn’t know how to look beyond the WAC, Black woman in military
intelligence. I can’t blame them. I don’t feel bitter.”
Lori S. Stewart, a civilian military intelligence historian for the Army
Intelligence Center of Excellence, said in an email that Specialist
Allen’s analysis was not the only one that went unheeded.
“Both national and theater-level organizations believed an enemy
offensive was likely sometime around the Tet holiday,” she wrote, but
“too many conflicting reports and preconceptions led leaders to misread
the enemy’s intentions.”
Regarding Specialist Allen, Mrs. Stewart added, “Like many other
intelligence personnel in country, she was a diligent and observant
intelligence analyst doing what she was supposed to do: evaluate the
enemy’s intentions and capabilities.”
Specialist Allen was inducted into the Military Intelligence Corps Hall
of Fame in 2009.
Image
Specialist Allen, in civilian clothes, receiving a framed certificate
from an officer in a full dress olive green uniform. Specialist Allen
was inducted into the Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame in 2009.
Maj. Gen. John Custer, commanding general of the U.S. Army Intelligence
Center of Excellence, presided over the ceremony. Credit...U.S Army
Doris Ilda Allen was born on May 9, 1927, in El Paso to Richard and
Stella (Davis) Allen. Her mother was a cook, and her father was a barber.
Ms. Allen graduated from Tuskegee Institute (now University) in 1949
with a bachelor’s degree in physical education. She taught at a high
school in Greenwood, Miss., and enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps the
next year.
After basic training, she auditioned for the WAC Band, playing trumpet.
But she and two other Black woman were told afterward by a chief warrant
officer that “they couldn’t have any Negroes in the band,” she recalled
in “A Piece of My Heart.”
She served in a number of roles over the next dozen or so years: as an
entertainment specialist, organizing soldiers shows; the editor of the
military newspaper for the Army occupation forces in Japan during the
Korean War; a broadcast specialist at Camp Stoneman, Calif., where her
commanding officer was her sister, Jewel; a public information officer
in Japan; and an information specialist at Fort Monmouth, N.J.
In the early 1960s, Specialist Allen learned French at the Defense
Language Institute and completed her training in the prisoner of war
interrogation course at Fort Holabird, Md. She completed interrogation
and intelligence analyst courses at Fort Bragg.
After asking to go to South Vietnam, she arrived in October 1967 for the
first of her three tours of duty there.
“I had so many skills, so much education and training being wasted in
various posts around the country that I decided I wanted to make a
difference in a high-action post like Vietnam,” she told Lavender Notes,
a publication for older LGBTQ+ adults, in 2020.
She left no immediate survivors.
Image
Specialist Allen in Vietnam in an undated photo. She is wearing her Army
uniform, a hat, black rimmed glasses and a watch.
Specialist Allen at the Women’s Army Corps barracks at Long Binh,
Vietnam, in an undated photo. She left in 1970 after seeing a stolen
enemy document with her name on a list of targets to kill.Credit...via
Christina Brown Fisher
Specialist Allen’s Tet analysis was not the only warning of hers to go
unheeded. She advised a colonel not to send a convoy to Song Be, in
southern South Vietnam, because of a possible ambush, which occurred.
Five flatbed trucks were blown up; three men were killed and 19 wounded.
But she was listened to when she warned in early 1969 that the North
Vietnamese had placed scores of 122-millimeter rockets around the
perimeter of the Long Binh operations center, northeast of Saigon, and
that they were to be used in a major attack. She wrote a memo that led
to an airstrike that destroyed the rockets.
Later that year, Specialist Allen learned that the North Vietnamese were
planning to use 82-millimeter chemical rounds. She wrote a report that
saved as many as 100 Marines, who had been instructed in her memo to
avoid any contact with them when they fell in their area; they later
exploded. A grateful colonel sent a memo suggesting that whoever had
written the report deserved the Legion of Merit.
Specialist Allen did not receive that decoration but did earn a Bronze
Star with two oak clusters, among many awards. She left South Vietnam in
1970 after seeing a stolen enemy document with her name on a list of
targets to kill.
After serving 10 more years in the Army she retired as a chief warrant
officer.
By then she had received her master’s degree in counseling from Ball
State University in Indiana in 1977. After her military service, she
worked with a private investigator, Bruce Haskett, whom she had met when
they were in counterintelligence. She earned a Ph.D. in clinical
psychology from the Wright Institute in Berkeley, Calif., in 1986, and
mentored young psychologists.
“She was incredibly savvy about people and had an innate ability to size
people up quickly,” Mr. Haskett said in an interview. “She was the kind
of person who could walk into a pit of vipers and have everybody eating
out of her hands in 15 minutes.”
Christina Brown Fisher contributed reporting.
Richard Sandomir, an obituaries reporter, has been writing for The Times
for more than three decades. More about Richard Sandomir
<https://archive.ph/o/RFGa9/https://www.nytimes.com/by/richard-sandomir>
Skip Isaacs
--
Dan Southerland
Jul 3, 2024, 7:57:22 AMJul 3
to vietnam-...@googlegroups.com
Dear Skip,
This is a fascinating story.
Thanks so much for sharing it with us.
I'd never heard of Doris before.
Dan Southerland
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