A Monument to Deceit: Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars

6 | Told to Lie

6 —————————— TOLD TO LIE At Camp Smith overlooking Pearl Harbor the newest MACV J-2, General Joseph A. McChristian, took his place at the center of the curved conference table. A West Point graduate, McChristian had piercing blue eyes, a beribboned uniform, and a reputation for professionalism. General Grover C. Brown, head of intelligence for CINCPAC, was also seated at the table, along with other military men such as Colonel Gains B. Hawkins of MACV and Major J. Barrie Williams of the Defense Intelligence Agency. General Earle Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was not in attendance, but it was he who had ordered the summit. Wheeler had recently been made aware of controversy surrounding the Viet Cong order of battle statistics, and he wanted the matter resolved forthwith.1 It was eight fifty-five on the morning of February 6, 1967, and the first session of the Honolulu conference convened. The conferees were to standardize and agree upon definitions, methodology, and reporting procedures relating to fifteen questions concerning the enemy’s military strength — but that was it. McChristian was not going to allow the proceedings to challenge certain basic assumptions. “Gentlemen,” McChristian said, rising to his feet, “I heard some loose remarks earlier in the day that we are here assembled to arrive at a new number for the order of battle. I would like to use this opportunity to inform anyone who harbors this notion to drop it, and to drop it at once. The Vietcong order of battle is MACV’s business, which is to say, my business . Don’t tread on me.”2 Five or six seats away from McChristian, Sam Adams of the CIA delegation sank down in his chair. Not only did Adams indeed harbor such a notion, but over the past month he had done his best to promote it. After 90 Hiam_A MONUMENT TO DECEIT_text_Layout 1 1/28/14 9:43 AM Page 90 New Year’s, when he became part of SAVA, he had taken advantage of his new position to institute a series of self-initiatives. Adams ordered the DDI to further research the Viet Cong order of battle problem, he pushed to have his guerrilla-SD/SSD paper published within the intelligence community , and he requested a hearing in front of the Office of National Estimates (ONE). As a result of listening to Adams’s case, ONE agreed that the official numbers on the Viet Cong were too low, and it informed CIA Director Richard Helms in memoranda that enemy “irregular strength was about 200,000.” On behalf of his newest boss, George A. Carver, Adams had also written various research papers for the staffs of the White House and the secretary of defense. These events, each very satisfying to Adams, were capped off with Carver’s instructions at the beginning of February to go to Wheeler’s summit in Honolulu. Unbeknownst to Adams, Carver was under intense pressure by the White House to get the order of battle discrepancies resolved, and resolved quickly.3 In concluding his opening remarks, General McChristian noted that “certain individuals in certain organizations” were raising questions about the categories of the Viet Cong order of battle and that Colonel Hawkins, head of the MACV J-2 order of battle section, had made a preliminary investigation into the enemy numbers. Adams slunk even lower in his chair and braced for the worst. Hawkins, a short, bald, cigar-chomping Mississippian with a crusty personality, took the floor. The colonel’s remarks regarding Viet Cong strength were succinct. “You know,” the colonel drawled, “there’s a lot more of these little bastards out there than we thought there were.” McChristian told the gathering that this meant drastic upward revisions would be needed to the various Viet Cong order of battle categories . Adams, now sitting erect, was elated.4 Inexplicably, Dean Moor had found his way to Honolulu as the senior CIA representative to the conference, but Adams paid his former boss little mind during the meetings and instead spent much of the five-day affair talking with Gains B. Hawkins. Adams seems to have taken an instant liking to the colonel. The first time Adams met Hawkins was in March 1966 in Vietnam, outside Hué, but a nearby Special Forces camp had just been hit by the Viet Cong and the colonel was too busy to chat. Now out of the battle zone Hawkins was free to spend time with Adams and to go...