Federation of American Scientists

Spartans in Darkness: American SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945-1975

Robert J. Hanyok

Center for Cryptologic History

National Security Agency

2002

Note: Additional declassified material from this report was released in May 2008 (see link below)

Front Matter

Prelude: Indochina Before 1950

Chapter 1 - Le Grand Nombre Des Rues Sans Joie: [Deleted] and the Franco-Vietnamese War, 1950-1954

Chapter 2 - The Struggle for Heaven's Mandate: SIGINT and the Internal Crisis in South Vietnam, [Deleted] 1962

Chapter 3 - "To Die in the South": SIGINT, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and the Infiltration Problem, [Deleted] 1968

Chapter 4 - The Burden's First Fanfare: American SIGINT Arrives in the Republic of Vietnam, 1961-1964

Chapter 5 - Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery, 2-4 August 1964 (alternate version at the National Security Archive)

Chapter 6 - Xerxes' Arrows: SIGINT Support to the Air War, 1964-1972

Chapter 7 - A Springtime of Trumpets: SIGINT and the Tet Offensive

Chapter 8 - In Our Own Image: NSA, Vietnamization, and the Expansion of South Vietnamese SIGINT, 1969-1973

Chapter 9 - The Last Ramparts of Our Conceits: The DGTS, American SIGINT, and the Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-1975

The Still, Small Voice: Aftermath and Conclusions, 1975 and Beyond

Glossary, Sources, Index

Full Document in a Single File (35 MB) (as released December 2007)

Additional Declassified Material (93 pages, 8 MB) (as released May 2008)

Sources and Resources

• NSA Releases History of American SIGINT and the Vietnam War, Secrecy News, January 7, 2008
• Declassified Study Puts Vietnam Events in New Light by Peter Grier, Christian Science Monitor, January 9, 2008
• Thanks to Michael Ravnitzky
• Tonkin Gulf Intelligence "Skewed" According to Official History and Intercepts, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, 1 December 2005
• Gulf of Tonkin Documents from the National Security Agency