Ho chi minh and USA through the OSS (premise of CIA

Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency, California: California University Press, 1972, p.. In mid August 1942, Price was appointed as the c

The Impact of OSS on Vietminh: A reconsideration of events between 1944-1945

Circumstances giving rise to empowering of Vietminh resulted in the August Revolution After its foundation in 1941, Vietminh gradually seized power taking the advantage of a number of events Ho Chi Minh’s distinctive character significantly contributed to this result It is the focus of this essay on the relationship between US, namely OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and Ho Chi Minh before and just after the proclamation of Vietnamese independence in August 1945

Brief Chronology of the events before March 1945, Japanese Coup

Vietnam was a French colony in the beginning of World War II, since the second half

of the 19th century After the onset of the war, France was partially conquered by Germany within a couple of months and Japan sent troops to Indochina without formally conquering it

In appearance, the French rule continued in the region; at that time a collaborator Vichy regime was in administration in France The arrival of first Japanese troops Indochina rapidly drew the attention of USA to that region This attention subsided with the acute and unexpected entry of USA to the war in 1941, however, with the feeling of an imminent victory

in 1943, a renewed interest in terms of post war peace plans of Roosevelt was evident.1 The anti-French and anti-colonialist attitude of President Roosevelt was evident and the trusteeship formula on his agenda for Indochina was well known.2 This led to an increased

1 Michael H Hunt.,Lyndon Johnson’s War: America’s Cold War Crusade in Vietnam, 1945-1968,

(New York: Hill and Wang, 1996), pp 5-6.

2 R Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency,

(California: California University Press, 1972), p 327 R Harris Smith is an academician, journalist

He worked for CIA for a brief period and resigned in 1969

need of intelligence about Indochina OSS, which was founded by William Donovan after the entrance of US into the Second World War, established a base at Kunming in 1942 In mid August 1942, Price was appointed as the chief for secret intelligence, Far East divison of OSS.3 From a China base OSS officers could launch missions Korea, Thailand, Philippines, Indochina and Japan.4 Although the importance of Indochina probably ranked last by the end

of 1942 this situation had changed Chinese, American and British Intelligence services began

to deal seriously with obtaining accurate information about what was going on there Naturally, there was a functioning French administration and a French intelligence in that territory; however, as goals of Allies diverged towards the oncoming war, an urgent need for

an independent first hand intelligence emerged Thus, Donovan forced to look for a man for this purpose who was capable of holding good relationships with Tai Li and Chiang Kai-Shek The person chosen for this job was U.S Naval Captain Milton Miles Tai Li was the head of Chiang Kai-Shek’s secret service organizations Miles was interested in Chinese culture and history and managed to learn a bit of both Cantonese and Mandarin.Miles and Tai Li quickly developed good relationships and Li permitted Miles to pursue his intelligence goals.5 Miles was appointed chief of the OSS for Far East in December 1942 His initial studies about North Vietnam revealed that there were noteworthy activities in terms of intelligence in that territory For organization of an intelligence mission in Indochina, Miles selected Robert Meynier, a young French Naval Officer to run the operation with the assistance of his Eurasian wife, a Vietnamese from maternal side Despite the anticipated advantages because

of his wife’s connections, Meynier’s operations were almost dominated by French agents.6

3 Maochun Yu, OSS in China: Prelude to Cold War, (London: Yale University Press, 1996), p.19.

4 R Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency, p 243.

5 Dixee R Bartholomew-Feis, The OSS and Ho Chi Minh: Unexpected Allies in the War Against

Japan , (University of Kansas Press, 2006), p 69

6 Mark Philip Bradley, Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam,

1919-1950, (Chapel Hill: University of North Caroline Press, 2000), pp 94-95.

However, because of the tensions between Miles and OSS headquarters, and French intervention this enterprise proved short-lived Miles was dismissed of his position as the chief of OSS China in December, 1943 Consequently, Meynier network collapsed in a short time.7 Yet again, Meynier’s group was not the only one performing intelligence activities in Vietnam There were some other independent groups as well Among these, most influential was the GBT group Being one of the most remarkable groups in the history of Intelligence, GBT was made up of the initials of surnames of three exceptional individuals: Laurence Gordon, Harry Bernard and Frank Tan Gordon was a British subject born in Canada with a home in California After selling his coffee plantation in Kenya he dealt with various businesses In 1938 he was in Haiphong, French Indochina, directing oil operations for Cal Texaco Corporation.8 After the Japanese occupied the area, Gordon and his family settled in California However, in 1941, he was encouraged by the company to return to South East Asia He initially confined his activities to maintaining a company presence among the former employees of Cal Texaco Later, under the guise of free lancing oil agent he travelled through Tonkin, Annam and Cochinchina, renewing old contacts, regrouping loyal Frenchmen and Vietnamese, while at the same time organizing a network of informers.9 What at first may have been a casual arrangement soon converted to an amateur intelligence organization In a short time, utilizing British funds, radios and equipment and Chinese personnel, Gordon was joined by two American associates One was Frank Tan, a Bostonian of Chinese extraction who had known Gordon in Haiphong, and the other was Harry Bernard, a former Cal-Texaco

7 R Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency,

pp 323-24.

8 Dixee R Bartholomew-Feis, p 64.

9 Archimedes L.A Patti, Why Viet Nam ? : Prelude to America’s Albatross, (California: University of

California Press, 1980, p 44 Archimedes Patti was an OSS officer Later, he became a critical actor in relations with Viethmin and Ho Chi Minh

employee in Saigon This organization, by the end of 1943 became invaluable for Chinese and Chennault’s 14th Air Force in Kunming.10

Although OSS clearly knew about GBT, it was not until Miles’s dismissal from OSS and the subsequent collapse of all hopes for the Meynier network that they began to seriously investigate Gordon, Bernard and Tan and the information web they had created The network involved a wide array of agents, including both French and Vietnamese personnel Although, there is no concrete evidence about a bond between GBT and Vietminh, Cecil Currey claimed that, since 1942, Vietminh cadres had provided helpful information to GBT group.11 The man tasked to establish a relationship with GBT was Major Austin Glass He moved to Vietnam in his early twenties, worked for Standart Oil Company for 25 years, married a Vietnamese woman and retired in 1937 In his report to OSS, Glass stated that without doubt the GBT was the best equipped both in and outside of French Indochina to obtain information.12 Resultantly, OSS assigned Lieutenant Charles Fenn as a liaison between OSS and GBT For the last three months of 1944, Charles Fenn was the only OSS officer working with and reporting on GBT activities Fenn was born in 1909 in UK In his early twenties he emigrated to U.S and settled in California In 1941 he became war correspondant and photographer for Associated Press and he joined OSS in 1943 Through the end of the

1944 he was accepted to accompany the GBT group in return for fund and equipment support from OSS In a short time he was able to hold good relationships with the members of GBT.13 From the beginning of his work with GBT, Fenn continuously considered using Vietnamese groups for intelligence GBT members expressed their attitudes against working with

10 ibid., p 45

11 Cecil B Currey, Victory at Any Cost: The Genius of Viet Nam’s Gen Vo Nguyen Giap, (Washington, DC: Brassey, 1997), p 84, qouted in Dixee R Bartholomew-Feis, p 88

12 NARA document, RG 226, Entry 92A, Box 26, Folder 391 Untitled document regarding Austin

Glass, quoted in Dixee R Bartholomew-Feis, p 89.

13 Dixee R Bartholomew-Feis, pp 94-100

Indochinese, but Fenn also queried Chinese General Chen for the reason behind the Chinese objection to using Vietnamese agents Chen’s response was decisive: “They aren’t to be trusted… They are not really interested in the war against Chinese It’s true they are anti-Japanese, but they are equally anti-French To a lesser degree they are anti-Chinese… I suppose you are already heard that they profess to be pro-American This is because they hope you will help them to gain independence when the war is over and we kick the Japanese out You may be approached by a group known as the Vietminh, which is more or less communist although they pretend to be strictly nationalist.” Additionally Chen remarked that offending France for the sake of helping an insignificant group never amount to anything He also added that they have a big sales talk but nothing much to sell.14

One of the tasks of GBT was to rescue the pilots which were downed Gordon established a complex system for this purpose Through the end of the 1944, they heard news about the rescue of a downed American pilot by Vietminh guerillas On November 11, 1944 a U.S plane piloted by Lieutenant Rudolph Shaw encountered engine trouble while flying over the Sino-Vietnamese frontier and parachuted safely Although French authorities saw this and dispatched to locate him, members of a local Vietminh unit were first to reach him and immediately brought him to Ho Chi Minh Ho Chi Minh greeted him effusively colloquial English “How do you do Pilot? Where are you from?” Shaw was reportedly so excited that he hugged Ho and later said to him “When I heard your voice, I felt as if I were hearing the voice

of my father in the United States.”15 Fenn gave an account of this event from the Vietminh point of view: “It so happened that while he was on his way through Caobang, one of his guerilla units rescued an American pilot Lieutenant Shaw, who had parachuted into the jungle

14 Charles Fenn, Memoirs, unpublished diary, quoted in Dixee R Bartholomew-Feis, pp 105-6

Bartholomew-Feis quoted from the Memoirs by the courtesy of Fenn

15Rudolph Shaw, The Real Indochina, unpublished paper, quoted in William Duiker, Ho Chi Minh: A

Life, (New York: Hyperion,2000), p 188

when his plane had been shot by the Japanese The French and Japans actively searched for him but the revolutionary masses protected him and brought him to Pham Van Dong’s office… Ho instructed a team to take Shaw over the border and deliver him safely into American’s hands He could hardly have guessed that this action would prove a magic key to open doors otherwise impregnable”.16 Ho accompanied Shaw and took him to American base

at Kunming He refused the offered reward and requested only to meet General Chennault; however he was politely shown the door U.S was not ready to operate inside Vietnam with its own teams; and following the new Truman directive, it did not wish at this stage to quarrel with the French by backing the natives Nevertheless, Fenn called this rescue operation as the first “ace” of Ho Chi Minh.17 The second one was just on the way

The Japanese Coup

On 9 of March, suddenly, Japanese sent an ultimatum to French governor with the request that French should join to the Japanese in the defense of Indochina in the event of an Allied incursion and all the French military and Police forces be placed under the command and control of Japanese military authorities The time limit was specified as 2 hours The answer was asking for more time for a consultation with the French government However, at the end

of two hours, Japanese military was ordered to seizing posts and taking over the administration.18 This was a shocking and unexpected event that changed all the dynamics in Indochina Now, this territory converted to land under direct administration of the enemy All the French civil and military elements were eliminated Roosevelt’s first directives as follows:

16 Charles Fenn: Ho Chi Minh, A Biographical Introduction by Charles Fenn, (New York: Charles

Scriber’s Sons, 1973), p 73.

17 ibid., p 74-75.

18 Archimedes L.A Patti, Why Viet Nam? ,p 72-73.

“No equipment of arms will be given French Indochina under any circumstances Food and medical supplies may be furnished on humanitarian grounds but it was not indicated that we should supply those OSS may do as much as they can in French Indochina for intelligence purposes only and may only take in such equipment and arms as necessary for teams’ own protection, no sabotage work to be done.19

First Official Contact with Ho Chi Minh

Most of the foreign citizens inside Indochina were now placed under arrest or removed from their positions and the GBT group fled to South China Faced with the loss of their chief source of intelligence in Indochina, U.S officials began to seek new channels of information, even from anti-French Vietnamese resistance groups.20 Fenn described the situation as follows: “… the Japanese coup of March 9, silenced the GBT and all existing networks This meant no information coming in about targets, air defenses and Japanese troop movements, and no weather reports to headquarters therefore directed me to replace our lost French agents with a Vietnamese network.”21 Fenn had just heard about a Vietnamese connected to a large political group who rescued a pilot When he asked how he might meet him, it was said that

he was still in Kunming and occasionally could be found at the American Office of War

Information, where he read everything from Time magazine to the Encyclopedia Americana.

The meeting was arranged for 17 March, only 8 days after the Japanese coup Fenn wrote his diary in that date: “Ho was not what I expected… It seems that he had already met Hall, Glass

19 NARA document, Memo from Colonel Bird to Colonel Heppner, April 25, 1945, RG 226, Entry

154, Box 199, Folder 3373, quoted in Dixee R Bartholomew-Feis, p 131 This was General

Wedemeyer’s directive based on his interview with FDR in March.

20 William Duiker, Ho Chi Minh: A Life, (New York: Hyperion, 2000), p 288

21 Charles Fenn: Ho Chi Minh ,p 76.

and Sibour (OSS officers), but go nowhere with any of them I asked him what he had wanted

of them He said only recognition of his group… I told him about our work and asked whether

he would like to help us He said they might be able to but had no radio operators nor of course any equipment We discussed taking in a radio and generator and a radio operator… I asked him what he would want in return for helping us Arms and medicines, he said… It was agreed we should have a further meeting.22 After this meeting Bernard and Tan agreed that it would be helpful to work with this group and we decided that one of our Chinese radio operators Mac Shin and Tan would go to Vietnam with Ho In the second meeting everything went well and they agreed on everything Although Ho asked for high explosives Fenn promised only about light weapons, medicines and further radio sets However, Ho had one more request He wanted to meet Chennault whom he admired and could not be able to meet previously Fenn accepted this as long as he agreed not to ask him for anything: neither supplies nor promises for support.23 The meeting came in 29 of March and took place in a formal, graceful manner At the end of the meeting, Ho requested a photo of Chennault and after obtaining it requested him to sign it Chennault signed it and wrote: “Yours Sincerely, Claire L Chennault” Just before the voyage to the base of Vietminh with Tan and the Chinese radio operator Ho asked Fenn for a last favor, six new Colt 45 automatic pistols in their original wrappings Fenn accepted this last request as well.24 The group set out in 15th of April for Bac Bo, Ho’s base

Americans at Vietminh’s Base

22 ibid.

23 ibid, p 77.

24 ibid, p 78-79.

After arriving the Vietminh headquarters at Bac Bo at the end of April, Tan wrote his initial impression: “The country where I am is very poor They could not afford to pay taxes and still exist As near as I can judge, this league is quite powerful and has several hundred followers.”25 Mac Shin quickly began to teach some of them radio technique Tan also gave an account of the weapons they brought with them: Two riffles, three carbines, a Bren gun and a few six shooters.26 Ho quickly sent a his first intelligence report to Patti in Kunming, with some details about the Japanese 37th Division, their location, units and names of theis officers Patti considered this as a good start.27 As Frank Tan and Mac Shin settled into a routine in the Vietminh base camp, the GBT intelligence network began to take shape Charles Fenn and Harry Bernard received the reports in Kunming and passed information to AGAS (Air Ground Aid Service) an aid organization of the 14th Air Force Training of Vietminh cadres was not confined to Bac Bo.28 A number of personnel was sent to Kunming to be educated by the OSS officers In a letter to Fenn Ho wrote: “I will be very much obliged to you of taking care of our boys I wish they can learn radio and other thing necessary in our common fight against Japs.”29 Probably this group consisted of few man and they were trained largely for intelligence purposes The first couriers from the Bac Bo brought a wealth of information from inside Indochina including letters, maps, documents, Japanese leaflets and other morale operation material During their months together, Ho, Tan and Shin developed a close friendship He recalled: “As my relationship with Ho became closer, I began to see him as the

25 NARA document, GBT Indochina Inteeligence report from Frank Tan, May 10, 1945 and, May 12,

1945, RG 226, Entry 140, Box 40, Folder 314, quoted in Dixee R Bartholomew-Feis, pp 163-4

26 ibid.

27 Archimedes L.A Patti, Why Viet Nam? ,p 102 Archimedes Patti was appointed as Secret

Intelligence chief of the Indochina desk arrived at Kunming on April 13 He was a proponent of using Vietnamese agents for intelligence purposes.

28 Dixee R Bartholomew-Feis, p 165.

29 Charles Fenn: Ho Chi Minh ,p 76.

man he was –a man who dedicated his life to win freedom for his people”30 During these days Fenn heard an interesting event from one of the couriers of Ho The courier told him the event

as follows: “Since Ho was away so long there were rumors he had died Others said he had gone to America… When he arrived at the base he had with him this Chinese American as well as a radio operator and all sorts of weapons, better than anything either the French and Japanese had… he invited all the top leaders to an conference, not his own people but rivals working for the other groups, who had used his absence to push themselves forward Ho told them he had now secured the help of the Americans including Chennault At first nobody believed him Then he produced the photograph of Chennault signed “Yours sincerely” After this he sent for the automatic and gave one to each of the leaders as a present The leaders considered Chennault had sent these presents personally After this conference there was never any more talk about was the top leader.”31 Fenn adds: “Soon after we dropped in a load of supplies; radio sets, medicines, gadgets, weapons According to Tan, this drop caused

a sensation and Ho’s stock went up another ten points.32

Although Vietminh seemed to be a powerful organization in mid 1945, the beginning

of its armed propaganda was new The nucleus of Vietminh, ICP had declared in 1941 that the

“watchword of the party is to liberate the Indochinese people from the Japanese and French yoke For three years Vietminh engaged in little more than an empty rhetoric Foundation of the first Armed Propaganda Brigade for liberation took place in 1944 Despite this fact, popularity of the organization seemed indisputable namely in the north Its attitude against famine gained the hearts of people When ICP perceived that famine could be used as a means

to stir up the hatred against French and Japanese, the slogan “destroy the granaries, solve the

30 Full Transcript of 1997 OSS/Vietminh Meeting, p 21, quoted in Dixee R Bartholomew-Feis, p

169 Bartholomew-Feis make this quotation from Duiker by the courtesy ho him

31 Charles Fenn: Ho Chi Minh , p 81.

32 ibid.