The Viet Cong was an epithet and umbrella term to call the communist-driven armed movement and united front organization in South Vietnam. Formally organized as and led by the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, it fought under the direction of North Vietnam against the South Vietnamese and United States governments during the Vietnam War. The organization had both guerrilla and regular army units, as well as a network of cadres who organized and mobilized peasants in the territory the Viet Cong controlled. During the war, communist fighters and some anti-war activists claimed that the Viet Cong was an insurgency indigenous to the South that represented the legitimate rights of people in South Vietnam, while the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments portrayed the group as a tool of North Vietnam. It was later conceded by the modern Vietnamese communist leadership that the movement was actually under the North Vietnamese political and military leadership, aiming to unify Vietnam under a single banner.
Graham Anderson Martin was an American diplomat. He was the ambassador to Thailand and as U.S. representative to SEATO from 1963 to 1967, ambassador to Italy from 1969 to 1973 and the last United States Ambassador to South Vietnam from 1973 until his evacuation during the Fall of Saigon in 1975.
Edward Geary Lansdale was a United States Air Force officer until retiring in 1963 as a major general before continuing his work with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Lansdale was a pioneer in clandestine operations and psychological warfare. In the early 1950s, Lansdale played a significant role in suppressing the Hukbalahap Rebellion in the Philippines. In 1954, he moved to Saigon and started the Saigon Military Mission, a covert intelligence operation which was created to sow dissension in North Vietnam. Lansdale believed the United States could win guerrilla wars by studying the enemy's psychology, an approach that won the approval of the presidential administrations of both Kennedy and Johnson.
Frank Warren Snepp, III is a journalist and former chief analyst of North Vietnamese strategy for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Saigon during the Vietnam War. For five out of his eight years as a CIA officer, he worked as interrogator, agent debriefer, and chief strategy analyst in the United States Embassy, Saigon; he was awarded the Intelligence Medal of Merit for his work. Snepp is a former producer for KNBC-TV in Los Angeles, California. He was one of the first whistle blowers who revealed the inner workings, secrets and failures of the national security services in the 1970s. As a result of a loss in a 1980 court case brought by the CIA, all of Snepp's publications require prior approval by the CIA.
The Phoenix Program was designed and initially coordinated by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Vietnam War, involving the American, Australian, and South Vietnamese militaries. In 1970, CIA responsibility was phased out, and the program was put under the authority of the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS).
Theodore George "Ted" Shackley, Jr. was an American CIA officer involved in many important and controversial CIA operations during the 1960s and 1970s. He is one of the most decorated CIA officers. Due to his "light hair and mysterious ways", Shackley was known to his colleagues as "the Blond Ghost".
The fall of Saigon was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by North Vietnam on 30 April 1975. The event marked the end of the Vietnam War and the collapse of the South Vietnamese state, leading to a transition period and the formal reunification of Vietnam into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam under communist rule on 2 July 1976.
Kieu Chinh is a Vietnamese-American actress, producer, humanitarian, lecturer and philanthropist.
Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) was a highly classified, multi-service United States special operations unit which conducted covert unconventional warfare operations before and during the Vietnam War.
Ralph Walter McGehee Jr was an American case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for 25 years and an author. From 1953 to 1972, his assignments were in East Asia and Southeast Asia, where he held administrative posts. After leaving intelligence work in 1977, he publicly expressed views highly critical of the CIA.
Malone is a 1987 American action thriller film starring Burt Reynolds in the eponymous role alongside Cliff Robertson, Cynthia Gibb, Lauren Hutton, Scott Wilson, and Kenneth McMillan. It is an adaptation of William P. Wingate's novel Shotgun, written by Christopher Frank and Rudy Wurlitzer, and directed by Harley Cokeliss.
Dr. Trần Kim Tuyến was the chief of intelligence of South Vietnam under its first President Ngô Đình Diệm from 1955 to 1963. As a Roman Catholic, he was trusted by the Ngô family, and was part of their inner circle. Tuyến was responsible for a variety of propaganda campaigns against communists, and was prominent in operating the secret Cần Lao party apparatus which maintained the Ngô family's rule. In the course of his work, Tuyến emulated the tactics of the communists. He eventually became disillusioned and plotted against the regime before being exiled. After Diệm was deposed, Tuyến returned to South Vietnam, but the military junta which had replaced the Ngô family jailed him for five years. He fled the country in 1975 as Saigon was falling.
The Army of the Republic of Vietnam Special Forces were the elite military units of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Following the establishment of the Republic of Vietnam in October 1955, the Special Forces were formed at Nha Trang in February 1956. During the rule of Ngô Đình Diệm, the Special Forces were run by his brother, Ngô Đình Nhu, until both were assassinated in November 1963 in a coup. The Special Forces were disbanded in 1975 when South Vietnam ceased to exist after the Fall of Saigon.
CIA activities in Vietnam were operations conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency in Vietnam from the 1950s to the late 1960s, before and during the Vietnam War. After the 1954 Geneva Conference, North Vietnam was controlled by communist forces under Ho Chi Minh's leadership. South Vietnam, with the assistance of the U.S., was anti-communist under Ngo Dinh Diem's leadership. The economic and military aid supplied by the U.S. to South Vietnam continued until the 1974. The CIA participated in both the political and military aspect of the wars in Indochina. The CIA provided suggestions for political platforms, supported candidates, used agency resources to refute electoral fraud charges, manipulated the certification of election results by the South Vietnamese National Assembly, and instituted the Phoenix Program. It worked particularly closely with the ethnic minority Montagnards, Hmong, and Khmer. There are 174 National Intelligence Estimates dealing with Vietnam, issued by the CIA after coordination with the U.S. intelligence community.
Doan Hoang or Đoan Hoàng or Doan Hoàng Curtis is a Vietnamese-American documentary film director, producer, editor, and writer. She directed and produced the 2007 documentary Oh, Saigon about her family, after leaving Vietnam on the last civilian helicopter as Saigon fell. The documentary won several awards at film festivals and was broadcast on PBS from 2008 to 2012, and multiple channels at streaming services. Hoang was selected to be a delegate to Spain for the American Documentary Showcase. Hoang has received awards and grants from the Sundance Institute, ITVS, Center for Asian American Media, the Ms. Foundation for Women, Brooklyn Arts Council, and National Endowment of the Humanities.
From 1944 to 1945, during the final stage of World War II, the Allies undertook the strategic bombing of South-East Asia. The main targets of Allied air raids were Thailand and Japanese-occupied Indochina.
Cao Văn Viên was a four-star army general in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam War. He rose to the position of Chairman of the South Vietnamese Joint General Staff. Considered one of "the most gifted" of South Vietnam's military leaders, he was previously called an "absolute key figure" and one of "the most important Vietnamese military leaders" in the U.S.-led fighting during the Vietnam War. Along with Trần Thiện Khiêm he was one of only two four-star generals in the entire history of South Vietnam.
The United States Embassy in Saigon was first established in June 1952, and moved into a new building in 1967 and eventually closed in 1975. The embassy was the scene of a number of significant events of the Vietnam War, most notably the Viet Cong attack during the Tet Offensive which helped turn American public opinion against the war, and the helicopter evacuation during the Fall of Saigon after which the embassy closed permanently.
During the Cold War in the 1960s, the United States and South Vietnam began a period of gradual escalation and direct intervention referred to as the "Americanization" of joint warfare in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. At the start of the decade, United States aid to South Vietnam consisted largely of supplies with approximately 900 military observers and trainers. After the assassination of both Ngo Dinh Diem and John F. Kennedy close to the end of 1963 and Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 and amid continuing political instability in the South, the Lyndon Johnson Administration made a policy commitment to safeguard the South Vietnamese regime directly. The American military forces and other anti-communist SEATO countries increased their support, sending large scale combat forces into South Vietnam; at its height in 1969, slightly more than 400,000 American troops were deployed. The People's Army of Vietnam and the allied Viet Cong fought back, keeping to countryside strongholds while the anti-communist allied forces tended to control the cities. The most notable conflict of this era was the 1968 Tet Offensive, a widespread campaign by the communist forces to attack across all of South Vietnam; while the offensive was largely repelled, it was a strategic success in seeding doubt as to the long-term viability of the South Vietnamese state. This phase of the war lasted until the election of Richard Nixon and the change of U.S. policy to Vietnamization, or ending the direct involvement and phased withdrawal of U.S. combat troops and giving the main combat role back to the South Vietnamese military.
Peer de Silva was a station chief in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). A 1941 West Point graduate, during World War II he served as an Army officer providing security for the Manhattan Engineer District; this undercover project sought to build the first atomic bomb. After the war, he joined a pre-CIA military intelligence unit. Then, having learned Russian, he worked in central Europe, frequently traveling to Moscow. Resigning from the Army, he rose within CIA ranks, becoming a chief of station (COS). He first held such rank in Vienna, 1956–1959.
