ABSENT TET OFFENSIVE U.S. EXPERTS OVERLOOKED NORTH VIETNAMESE POLITICS

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32862, 10 March 1972, Page 8

ABSENT TET OFFENSIVE U.S. EXPERTS OVERLOOKED NORTH VIETNAMESE POLITICS

(By

VICTOR ZORZA)

t Why did the Tet offensive, so widely predicted for the period of Mr Nixon’s visit to Peking, never happen? Because Hanoi never made the decision to strike which had been imputed to it so confidently in the highest United States intelligence estimates.

Even as Defence Secretary, Mr Melvin Laird, was claiming, that ‘‘the enemy has advertised an offensive as they have advertised no other offensive in Vietnam,” there was evidence that the politburo in Hanoi was bitterly divided on the issue. In the end, the Hanoi hawks lost because the White House recognised the signs and gave the doves a helping hand.

cess in the leadership, which has been repeatedly underestimated. In the case of North Vietnam, there has been a tendency in intelligence quarters to dismiss the notion that anything like a political process exists at all —as it had once been dismissed in the case of the , Soviet Union and China. In fact, the evidence of the hawk-dove fight was available by the middle of December. A major analysis of the war published in the Hanoi Press made it clear that neither faction had yet won and that the options were still open. The Communist forces, it said, were now in a position either “to deal strong blows or to fight in a protracted fashion.” Much of the evidence was reminiscent of the previous debates in Hanoi, as, for instance, before the 1968 Tet offensive between hawks who wanted to strike hard and doves who preferred negotiations. This analysis was not generally accepted when it was first outlined by me in January. If it was correct then it followed that the administration might be able to avert an offensive by making certain concessions which would help the Hanoi doves to prevail against the hawks. January prediction [ln his “Washington Post” column on January 19, 1972, Zorza registered "sharp disapproval” with the prevailing Washington view. Mr Zorza continued: “The enemy,” according to the Defence Secretary Mr Laird “has advertised an offensive as they have advertised no other offensive in Vietnam.” This claim, accepted by most analysts, is not borne out by the Hanoi press and radio. All the “advertising” has come from Pentagoninspired leaks, which describe the supposed Communist preparations. If Hanoi were so demonstrative about its preparations in the field as the advertisers claim, it should now have launched its customary massive propaganda campaign to sustain troop morale during next month’s decisive battles. Instead the most significant signal to emerge from Hanoi makes it clear that a major offensive is only one of the two options now under consideration.] But the horrendous predictions persisted. General William Westmoreland, United States Army chief of staff, went to Vietnam and

forecast a “major offensive.’’ Mr Laird insisted that “several spectaculars” were to be expected, starting in February. John Paul Vann, the head of the American advisory effort in Military Region 11, announced to the press that he was “absolutely certain” about the coming offensive. “There isn’t any question as to what the enemy’s intentions are,” he said. Kissinger disaproval But the White House adviser, Dr Henry Kissinger, evidently disagreed. He too spoke of the preparations for the Tet offensive, but he explained that the publication of the secret offer he had made in Paris was designed to avert it. It was, he said, “an attempt to say to them once again, ‘it (the offensive) is not necessary, let’s get the war over with now’.” But the public announcement, which only restated the terms he had secretly proposed long before, could hardly be expected to avert the offensive without some advance on his previous offer. There is, in fact, evep’ reason to believe that an improved offer was made privately, and that it was this that helped the Hanoi doves to hold back the Tet offensive—for the time being, in the hope of further concessions to come.

At the end of December the Central Intelligence Agency was telling the White House to expect only a series of “high points” in the fighting, but by January it began to predict a major offensive. The rate of infiltration, captured documents, the order of battle—all these were used as the basis for the prediction. False guide But, as so often happens in intelligence work, the Communists’ intentions were inferred from their visible capabilities—which are easily discerned, but which have proved again and again to be a false guide—rather than from the political pro-

If the intelligence analysts learn from this incident to look more closely at the political evidence —and there is a great deal more of it than could be cited in this column —than at the order of battle, then their failure may prove to be of lasting benefit to their craft.—Copyright, Victor Zorza.