by Larry Berman
Some wild ideas were wilder than others. One was to airlift PBRs over to the rivers in Laos. “So we worked for about two weeks putting together a great deal of data on the subject,” recalled Rex. “We finally convinced Zumwalt that to land a bunch of PBRs in the middle of the enemy, with no basing and that sort of thing, was questionable.”65 The process also encouraged staff dissent. “A great thing about Zumwalt, one might say, is that you could almost literally pound your fist on the desk and say ‘Admiral, you can’t do this. It’s wrong. I don’t believe what you’re doing. You shouldn’t do this.’ ” The staff also learned that they had better have their facts right, because “he could destroy your arguments in rebuttal, but you could literally tell him he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about, and he doesn’t hold it against you,” recalled Rex.66 Bob Salzer offered a similar perspective: “The fact that I disagreed with Zumwalt on many occasions was amply documented. Once in a meeting I said, ‘Could I differ with you?’ He looked up and he said, ‘I wouldn’t know how to conduct myself if you didn’t.’ ”67
Back in Naval Forces of Vietnam headquarters, it was time for another ZWI. After Bud left the room, Bob Salzer ran the meeting. The group went through a process whereby each task force identified its priorities and the resources needed for accomplishing its goals. At 2:00 p.m., Zumwalt returned for a briefing led by Salzer. Each task force was given the opportunity to explain and defend its recommendations. Bud asked a few questions, quickly making the point that this was exactly what he wanted. Before leaving the room, he said, “Write the operation plan!” Salzer tossed Glickman a legal pad and said, “Start writing.”
Pacing around the U-shaped conference table, Salzer slowly dictated a basic operation plan in a point-by-point paragraph format: situation, mission, execution, administration, logistics, and finally, command and signal. Those six paragraphs are the basic plan and do not include annexes and other supplemental items. When Glickman developed writer’s cramp, Rex relieved him as note taker. The operation plan came into being in about nine hours. The handwritten draft was sent directly to the communications center and prepared in message format. Later that day Admiral Zumwalt personally carried it to General Abrams for approval.68 “Thus, we were there for the birth of COMNAVFORV OPLAN 111-69,” wrote a proud Tom Glickman.
With their work completed, Glickman, Wayne Beech, and Dewey Feuerhelm returned to Binh Thuy in order to prepare a briefing for Captain Art Price, who was en route from San Diego. Glickman recalled, “We thought of opening with, ‘Oh, by the way Boss, while you were out of town, Admiral Zumwalt had this idea, and . . .’ ” In fact, no other ZWI would have a greater effect on the navy’s in-country forces than Operation SEALORDS. At last, the United States Navy’s three operating forces in Vietnam combined their assets and capabilities and cohesively started operating together to attain common goals. The operational merger of the three in-country task forces offered a deltawide approach to control of the waterways—essentially a plan to move coastal Swift Boats and river patrol boats into the canal system of Vietnam in order to interdict shipments moving from the Cambodian border throughout the delta and to attack the enemy in previously safe sanctuaries.
The backbone of SEALORDS was the heavily armored riverine craft, the Swift Boats (PCFs) and the river patrol boats (PBRs). Four campaigns followed between November 2, 1968, and January 2, 1969—Operations Search Turn, Foul Deck, Giant Slingshot, and Barrier Reef all established interdiction barriers that successfully reduced the flood of goods from the north to barely a trickle. Giant Slingshot and other border interdiction campaigns, like Tran Hung Dao (named after the patron saint of the South Vietnamese navy), along with Barrier Reef, formed an interdiction barrier that stretched from Ha Tien on the Gulf of Thailand to Tay Ninh north of Saigon. General Abrams credited these operations with causing major disruption of the enemy’s infiltration effort. East of Saigon, Operation Ready Deck used fiberglass PBRs to patrol areas of heavy VC activity. On the west coast of the delta, Search Turn and Breezy Cove provided arterial interdiction of enemy movements into the Three Sisters and Ca Mau base-camp areas. Concurrently, Operation Sea Float sought to pacify the Nam Can district, located 150 miles southwest of Saigon in An Giang Province, a haven for enemy arms shipments arriving by sea. The best defense in the area was the Cua Lon River, which bisects the peninsula. Into the middle of this swift, four-hundred-yard-wide river, the navy towed a complete floating support base built on pontoons, called Seafloat, and anchored it there. The base was sandbagged and heavily armored, with American and South Vietnamese ships protecting it. The presence of this base, with its Swift Boats and armored craft, so opened the Ca Mau peninsula that refugees soon resettled the area and profited from the lucrative woodcutting trade. This pacification process was seen by Bud as one of the most important keys to the success of a free South Vietnam. “As this effort began to clear out VC sanctuaries, we had refugees returning to the banks of the rivers. Instead of doling out bullets, the PCFs and PBRs gave the refugees water, medical assistance, and even delivered several babies aboard their craft.”69
Commodore Bob Salzer was given the title of first sea lord of Task Force 194. “He did a magnificent job in pulling his assets together and quickly and efficiently moving the support ships and raiders into position,” wrote Bud in a letter to his family.70 The larger PCFs were taken from purely offshore coastal patrol and integrated with the navy’s river divisions of PBRs and other larger craft. These craft were then sent on east-west patrols across the Mekong Delta from the Saigon River to the Gulf of Thailand on the canal system built by the French on the Vam Co Dong and Vam Co Tay rivers of the Parrot’s Beak, and through the Song Ong Doc, Cua Long, Bo De, and other rivers of Ca Mau Province in the southern tip of Vietnam. Immediately upon commencing these patrols across III and IV Corps, the navy began making aggressive contact with the enemy units heading south or east to supply munitions and troops to the delta. Rectanus believed that had Zumwalt been in Vietnam to implement SEALORDS in 1966, “I’m convinced that the whole outcome of the war, certainly in the Delta, in III Corps, would have been entirely different.”71
Lieutenant Bernique was soon given the honor to lead a mission, known as Operation Foul Deck, that became a key part of SEALORDS. From that point forward, the Rach Giang Thanh became known as Bernique’s Creek. Patrols were soon augmented throughout the length of the Rach Giang Thanh, from its northeastern head along the Vinh Te Canal all the way to the western bank of the Bassac River. Interdiction operations included not only Swift Boats, but also PBR units of the navy’s Mobile Riverine Force and units of the South Vietnamese navy’s River Assault Group 26.72
The plan for transforming the strategic use of naval capabilities in a land environment spawned other innovative programs. SEALORDS required a reconfiguration of the naval intelligence program supporting naval forces. The naval intelligence liaison officer (NILO) program had previously positioned a small number of naval officers as support intelligence officers for the tactical commanders who were performing the static patrols of Market Time and Game Warden. These officers reported directly to the tactical commanders, and their duties were at those tactical commanders’ whims, so commanders missed the importance of those intelligence reports to the strategic “big picture” of enemy infiltration and operations in the delta.
Rectanus persuaded Bud to reconfigure the entire NILO program to flexibly position these naval intelligence officers as SEALORDS naval war, intelligence, and combat operations demanded.73 In order to do this, the NILO program was restructured to place each of the NILOs on independent duty, reporting directly to Bud and Rectanus, supporting and answering direct strategic intelligence questions in addition to providing support to the naval assets and operational commanders. A reinvigorated naval intelligence program, which produced useful strategic and tactical intelligence, also fulfilled General Abrams’s demand to the navy to bring chips to the intelligence table if it wanted to play.
Along the Cambodian
border, where PCFs and PBRs set up nighttime ambushes to intercept enemy munitions and troop infiltration, the NILOs’ reconnaissance observations and reports from their local intelligence networks provided information about potential enemy movements each night. The NILOs would brief the boat crews going out on night ambush as to where the likely crossing points and reported threats were.
On the staff side of the NILO program, Zumwalt encouraged initiative by emphasizing the personal side of intel. Whenever the navy took a casualty, Bud would ask, “Could this have been prevented?” Staff would then search to see whether they had overlooked a warning or report that could have made a difference. Bud’s attitude meant that even those who wanted to cover their tracks in the intel process couldn’t just sit on something. Information kept flowing with positive or negative or even neutral recommendations and comments. As a result, NILOs felt someone back at headquarters would pay attention to and read carefully any report they sent and would make sure the appropriate people would see it. They understood that their reports would not disappear into some black hole.
Besides obtaining reports from local agent networks, NILOs rode boat patrols to gain local intelligence. NILOs stationed at army air bases along the border flew visual reconnaissance flights—sometimes three or four times a day—to locate large enemy troop movements along the Cambodian border, the Rach Giang Thanh River, the Vinh Te Canal, and the Vam Co Tay and Vam Co Dong rivers, which formed the Parrot’s Beak where the Cambodian border intruded close to Saigon. In the Parrot’s Beak area, North Vietnamese army (NVA, or the Vietnam People’s Army) main-force units in large numbers regularly crossed into Vietnam and could be seen in plain sight by air reconnaissance both day and night, then would come under fire from American and South Vietnamese boats and aircraft.
In the strategic intelligence area, NILO reports identified main-force NVA units and large enemy munitions storage and crossing points, allowing Bud and his staff to see a detailed picture of what the enemy was doing and to decide how to respond by redeployment of patrol forces. At the height of the Zumwalt tenure in Vietnam, there were no more than twenty to twenty-six NILO posts at one time. These NILOs were naval officers from very different backgrounds.74
All these officers, especially the line-officer NILOs, came from a naval tradition of independent command and direct operational action. The appointment as NILOs of naval officers in their twenties who came from this tradition of operational independence was in many ways a risky proposition. It was entirely conceivable to Bud and Rex that young men in their twenties could make potentially disastrous mistakes along the border of neutral Cambodia, which would have explosive consequences for them and the president they served. Nonetheless, they took this calculated risk and put these young men on independent duty as NILOs, and their bet paid off.75
Along the Cambodian border and the Song Ong Doc–Seafloat areas, the NILOs participated in direct combat action against crossing enemy units, in combat provocations of the enemy, which allowed heavyweight U.S. reprisals at and across the Cambodian border in hot pursuit, and in covert direct action with SEAL (sea, air, and land) teams, LDNNs (Lien Doc Nguoi Nhia, or Vietnamese navy SEAL teams), Kit Carson Scouts (Vietcong defectors used as scouts), Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs, South Vietnamese–CIA direct-action teams), and the U.S. and South Vietnamese naval patrol units. In 1969 and 1970, these NILO combat activities actually cleared the Vietcong presence from the Ha Tien Peninsula at the western end of the Cambodia-Vietnam border. On the Vam Co Tay and Vam Co Dong rivers, there were numerous detections and decimations of large enemy crossing units, resulting in hundreds of enemy casualties and a rollback of VC units. On the Song Ong Doc River, naval activities allowed the establishment of the first allied land base there during the war. NILOs also participated in Bright Light POW rescue missions throughout the delta. NILOs ran intelligence-agent networks of the navy’s Blackbeard Collection Plan Collection Team 5, and one reported the first sighting of North Vietnamese main-force units entering Vietnam’s Mekong Delta at the west end of the Cambodian border.
The Zumwalt NILOs and Collection Branch staff officers went even further. A NILO was sent on special covert missions to the port of Sihanoukville, Cambodia, to undertake a naval port survey and surveillance to determine how to destroy the port if the new Lon Nol government changed allegiances and restarted enemy munitions supply through the port, to discover a Soviet eavesdropping communications-intercept site in Cambodia, and to negotiate a secret U.S. weapons supply agreement with the Cambodian navy.76 NILOs were sent by Bud on temporary additional duty to act as intelligence officers for Market Time units participating in the Cambodian incursion along the Gulf of Thailand and as support for the naval invasion of Cambodia up the Mekong River to Neak Luong, Cambodia. Additionally, NILOs supported MACVSOG (Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group) and its insertion teams, the “Roadrunners of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.” NILOs were called upon regularly in the field to brief admirals and generals from high commands on the intelligence picture in their AOs (areas of operation).
The NILO program was innovative and adaptive within an aggressive strategy that resulted in the rollback of enemy forces in their areas of operation, especially in 1970 along the Cambodian border and in the Nam Can district.77 The effectiveness of these programs undoubtedly contributed to the decision by the Vietcong to assassinate “the admiral in command of the U.S. Navy in Vietnam.”78 The attack that took place on May 11, 1969, had been planned for weeks by Trai Hai Phong and his covert team of assassins operating with near impunity in Saigon. Assisted by an informant working as a cook within the compound, who had been carefully monitoring Bud’s daily routine, a plan was devised to throw a satchel charge over the thick seven-foot-high masonry wall of the compound during the admiral’s daily noontime volleyball game with his staff. The court was just inside the wall, adjacent to one of Saigon’s busy streets. The satchel hit center court, and the explosion rocked the compound, but the target had been called away for a meeting at MACV headquarters and the game had been canceled. The satchel charge exploded on an empty court.
One event secured Bud’s seat at General Abrams’s table. Early on the morning of Saturday, November 2, 1968, a number of senior officers and their aides assembled in the main conference room of the MACV headquarters. The air force and the navy were scheduled to brief General Abrams on how they were going to turn things over to the Vietnamese—to present Abrams with preliminary briefings that included their assessments of the time and resources needed to train and equip the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (RVNAF) to take an expanded role.
Howard Kerr and Bud took their seats along the wall behind the long, horseshoe-shaped table. The only people in the room were flag officers, the MACV chief of staff, and a couple of aides. Bud noticed that Abrams looked haggard and exhausted, probably because he had just returned from a series of meetings in Washington with President Johnson and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. The president had warned Abrams that he intended to announce a bombing halt in Vietnam, hoping this carrot might induce the Vietnamese parties to start negotiations in Paris. Johnson still expected MACV to keep continuous pressure on the enemy and to get the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) to do the same.
The air force briefer went first. “These two Clark Kent looking colonels got up to give the presentation,” recalled Kerr. “They were right out of Hollywood casting. Their uniforms were perfectly tailored.” The colonels presented slides with the Seventh Air Force crest, thunderbolts, and other impressive symbols to highlight their statistics for turning over aircraft and supporting facilities, logistics, and training programs.
During the air force briefing, Kerr became uneasy, thinking it was really impressive with all those bells and whistles. “Oh shit—wait until the general sees ours,” mused Kerr, who had worked late into the previous night preparing handwritten charts for the briefing. “What we had was a flip chart, and either the admiral or myself or both ha
d written what he was going to use as a guide in longhand on these flip charts. As the person who was going to do the flipping and the pointing, I was struck by the fact that they were going to think that we had just fallen off the turnip truck.”79
Everything came to an abrupt halt when the air force planners stated that they envisioned an eight-year process, with complete turnover accomplished by 1976. General Abrams turned to General George Brown of the air force. “Look, when I ask you to present something to me, I want it presented to me. I don’t want that kind of trash.” Lew Glenn recalled that Abrams used a few other choice words.80 Abrams placed his cigar in his mouth, slowly lifted his right fist, and brought it down onto the table with such force that the ashtray in front of him went up in the air, turned over, and landed with a crash. The briefer immediately fell silent. “Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! That’s all I ever get out of the fucking air force is bullshit,” yelled Abrams. “Everybody was stunned,” recalled Kerr. “I was mesmerized.”81
All eyes were on General Abrams. The officers in the room considered ducking for cover. “Don’t you people understand what’s happening? Don’t you have any sense for the pressure-cooker environment the president is in back in the United States? He has no consensus of support for this war. What support he has is dwindling. It’s clear that the policy is to get us out of this war and turn it over to the Vietnamese. That policy change will be implemented by the incoming administration.”82