Global Security and Intelligence Studies Volume 5, Number 1, Spring / Summer 2020 | Page 46

Global Security and Intelligence Studies
effort—they relied on the South Vietnamese
to be more effective.
The South Vietnamese helped
the US transmit the haunting audio.
Soldiers and helicopters both carried
loudspeakers in order to create the perception
that the haunting sounds were
coming from multiple locations within
the jungle. The audio failed to fool
some soldiers but appeared to unsettle
other soldiers. Even if enemy soldiers
knew the sounds were false, they still
reminded them that if they die, their
souls could end up wandering the jungles
in a similar fashion. Any moments
of confusion or fear that the US could
gain through Operation Wandering
Soul was useful. The Sixth PSYOP even
modified the audio to bolster the South
Vietnamese rumor of a tiger attacking
the North Vietnamese Army and Viet
Cong troops. The Sixth PSYOP included
tiger growls on the audiotape, and
people reported that 150 men fled Nui
Ba Den Mountain where the audio with
tiger sounds was played (Friedman
n.d.). While the US and South Vietnam
played on the enemy’s belief system to
cause fear and confusion, other efforts
focused on garnering support. One way
they did this was through counterinsurgency
efforts.
The South Vietnamese created
a counterinsurgency program called
Phuong Hoang—named after a mythological
bird from Vietnamese and
Chinese culture—while US officials in
Vietnam called their supporting efforts
the Phoenix program (Miller 2017).
One influential figure, a South Vietnamese
Army officer named Tran Ngoc
Chau, demonstrated how effective efforts
to “win hearts and minds” could
be. Chau worked to counter insurgents
in Kien Hoa. Kien Hoa was a difficult
place to work because the government
had difficulty identifying insurgents
and villages were angry with local officials
and police forces, which tended
to be corrupt. Chau decided to conduct
the Census-Grievance program to interview
every adult in Kien Hoa, with
the goal of collecting information about
the enemy. While he was able to use
these methods to track down enemies
to have them captured, or killed as a last
resort, one of the big wins of the Census-Grievance
program was engaging
the populace. By doing so, he showed
that he listened to their complaints
and responses, and then addressed the
problems within his control. Chau did
not approve of the Phoenix program’s
heavy use of force and lack of emphasis
on mobilizing the population (Miller
2017). Instead, the lesson learned from
the Census-Grievance program emphasized
that understanding how and why
people think led to an increased ability
to gain population buy-in.
While the authors have discussed
the role of deception and of understanding
the populace, other efforts
focused on increasing defectors among
the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese
Army. Operation Roundup on Kien
Gieang targeted potential defectors by
having defectors photographed and
having them write messages on leaflets
encouraging their former colleagues
to defect and join the cause. Project
Roundup also used loudspeaker teams
of former Viet Cong soldiers to speak
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