PSYOP MISTAKES?

SGM Herb Friedman (Ret.)

Note: Images from this article were used in Three Practical Lessons from the Science of Influence Operations Message Design by M. Afzal Upal, Canadian Military Journal, Volume 14, No 2, 2014.

What is a mistake on a psychological operations (PSYOP) propaganda leaflet? Donald Fish wrote about such a leaflet in Airline Detective, Collins, London, 1962. His story could be true or could be apocryphal. Allegedly, when the time came for the invasion of North Africa, a decision was made to prepare a leaflet to rally the Arabs to the Allied cause. The job of translating the text went to the sole Arabic expert in the Political Warfare Department, a certain Mohammed Ali, a green-tea merchant from Casablanca who had first rallied to the Free French and later come over to the British after the collapse of France. The pro-Allied leaflet was printed using his translated Arabic text and dropped in the millions over the local population. After the invasion, an American intelligence officer who had taken part in the landings found his way to the Allied Political Warfare Group on Gibraltar. He had a handful of the leaflets and he said to the officer in charge, "What the hell is this stuff you have been dropping all over the country?" The political warrior replied, "Those are leaflets to rally the Arabs." "Do you know what they say?" asked the American. "Yes" said the propagandist, "of course I do." They say, "Victory rests with the Allies." "No they don't" said the American. "They say Buy Mohammed Ali's green tea." I am positive that story is a myth, but it leads us to the concept of psychological campaigns that were prepared but had some minor error of lack of understanding of the local culture that made them less than valuable. There are many such blunders. We will just discuss a few of the more interesting ones. World War I Im Not Sure I Want That Medal The German propagandists have always been heavy-handed. Someone once said that they so love propaganda that they cannot do it well. One of their worst WWI propaganda blunders occurred when a medal was commissioned to honor the submarine sinking of the unarmed British passenger liner Lusitania. The Germans were so proud of the sinking of the commercial vessel that Karl Goetz designed a medallion honoring the victory. One side shows the ship going down with the words "No contraband" at the top and The liner Lusitania sunk by a German submarine 5 May 1915 at the bottom. The engraver added cannons and airplanes on the deck of the ship to justify its sinking. The back of the medallion depicts a mob of people buying Lusitania tickets from a figure representing death and the words "Business above all" while a man in the crowd reads a newspaper with the headline U-Boat Danger! Unfortunately for Karl Goetz, he put the wrong date of sinking on the medal, an error he later attributed to an error in the newspaper account he had read. Instead of the correct date of 7 May, Goetz engraved 5 May, two days before the actual sinking of the Lusitania . This allowed the British to claim that the Germans had waited for the ship to leave port and committed wholesale premeditated murder. Goetz later corrected the date but it was too late by then. British Intelligence copied the medallion and advertised it around the world to show the barbarian nature of the Germans. Some 300,000 British replicas of the medallion were made on the instructions of Captain Reginald Hall R.N., the Director of Naval Intelligence. The British imitations were presented in special boxes with a view of R. M. S. Lusitania on the outside. They were sold for 1 pound each, with the proceeds going to St. Dunstan's Blinded Soldiers and Sailors Hostels and the Red Cross. A label on the box holding the medal read: The Lusitania (German) Medal. An exact replica of the medal which was designed in Germany and distributed to commemorate the sinking of the Lusitania. This indicates the true feeling the War Lords endeavour to stimulate, and is proof positive that such crimes are not merely regarded favourably, but are given every encouragement in the land of Kultur. The Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine on May 7, 1915. She had on board at that time 1,951 passengers and crew, of whom 1,198 perished. This German medallion infuriated Americans who had relatives on the liner. In some ways it helped to lead the United States into World War I. It surely was one of the great propaganda blunders of all time. Inside Outside Whats the Difference? The British also blundered while trying to counterfeit enemy Turkish banknotes during WWI. They went to great pains to produce a very good imitation of the genuine note, and then ruined the entire effect by printing some numbers facing in the wrong direction. The story was first reported by Scott Cordry in an article entitled "World War I counterfeits of German and Turkish notes," Coin World, July 13, 1988. The British military forged the Turkish 10 livres regular issue banknote of 1915. This was part of a plan to destroy the Turkish economy and weaken their political strength in the Near East . The forgeries each have a different serial number. The size and feel of the paper is identical to the genuine notes and the colors are almost perfect. The excellent forgeries have a glaring error. All along the border of the note there are small Western and Islamic number 10s inside small six-pointed stars. Somehow the British forgers engraved the Western and Islamic 10's along the left border of the back side facing toward the outside of the note, rather than inward as on the genuine notes. This is a major error and one that would make the counterfeit immediately recognizable to even the most unskilled eye. The error certainly destroyed any chance these fake banknotes had of destroying the Turkish economy. World War II Surrender? Whats that? During WWII the Japanese forces had a well-earned reputation for fighting to the death. On Island after island thousands died in "Banzai" charges or committed suicide rather than be taken prisoner. Under their rules of Bushido, if they surrendered they were disgraced and lost from their family and ancestors forever. Ignoring this cultural belief, the United States printed propaganda leaflets for the Japanese that said "I Surrender." They did not work. The Japanese troops continued to fight to the death. The Manila Chronicle, 19 October 1945, interviewed Sergeant Albert B. Gerger about persuading Japanese soldiers to surrender. The Associated Press later distributed the story worldwide. Gerger mentions that the early leaflets were unsuccessful. The Americans were not sure why leaflets that seemed to be so well written and illustrated had such poor results. Filipino scouts were sent into the field to study the problem. A Japanese soldier was seen to examine one of the leaflets and then throw it on the ground, grinding it under his heel as he muttered 'Mujokan Kofuku,' the most despised term a Japanese soldier can utter, 'surrender.' From the time a Japanese can understand the meaning of simple words it is driven into his mind that the worse crime he can commit is to surrender. For this there is no forgiveness and one who surrenders sacrifices everything; his property, honor, rights, rights in life and after-life, and the respect of his fellow man. Our experts in psychological warfare held a huddle and came up with a new one, replacing the 'I surrender' on the leaflet with 'I cease resistance.' It worked. The Japanese indoctrination was not based on logic or intelligent thought. The Japanese knows that he must not 'mujoken kofuku' and that is all. There is nothing in his learning that prohibits the cessation of resistance. The failure of the "I Surrender" leaflets led the American PSYOP specialists to carefully construct a leaflet with the words "I Cease Resistance." The change was minor, but to the Japanese the new wording meant a world of difference. One could cease resistance, pretend to be unconscious, or run out of ammunition and allow himself to be taken while never surrendering. A curious use of the Asian concept of "face." Anybody Know Where Cassenverein Is? During WWII the American Office of Strategic (OSS) Services authorized an operation called "Cornflakes." The idea was to drop mailbags over the site of trains that had been attacked and derailed. The mail, containing propaganda material from the Allies, would then hopefully be delivered by the Germans to the addresses on the fake envelopes. Of course, this all assumes that you have spelled the town correctly. The "Cassenverein" cover became famous because it was the first of the OSS items to be identified as a forgery by the German postal authorities. Over a dozen raids took place with the Germans faithfully recovering the fake mailbags and restoring them to the Reichpost. Then, at the conclusion of the 16 Match 1945 raid on a train near St. Poelten, the fake mail to citizens in the cologne area was being processed when a sharp-eyed postal clerk noticed that the return address on the envelopes was "Wiener Giro-und Cassenverein." The correct spelling of the final word should have read "Kassenverein." For the want of a "K" the game was lost. The Nazis became suspicious, the envelopes were opened and the propaganda placed inside was discovered. Corey Ford (Little Brown, Boston, 1970) mentioned this campaign briefly in the book Donovan of the OSS. He mentions the attack on railways and marshaling yards; the dropped mail bags, and concludes with the statement, "There is no evidence that this device was ever detected." He is wrong, since as we have shown, on at least one occasion the bags were detected and identified. This was not the only such Allied spelling error. The British were guilty too. In her dissertation, Smoke and Mirrors: the Role of British Clandestine Psychological Warfare in Breaking the German Will to Resist, 1944-1945, Jessica Simpson says that Operation Rosebush was undertaken in July 1941. The operation involved the counterfeiting and dissemination by air of forged German clothes ration cards for men. However, the operation failed when the rubber stamp on those cards intended for the city of Hamburg misspelled Hansastadt as Hanfastadt. Apparently, German is difficult language. Are you Jeuish?...Juwesh?...Whatever? During WWII Heinrich Himmler's Schutzstaffel (SS) ran a secret forgery shop inside Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. A number of Jewish inmates were forced to counterfeit British currency and parody British stamps. The stamp operation was run by SS Major Bernhard Krüger, and thus called Operation Bernhard by the Allies. The Germans called it Wasserwelle for the wavy lines on the papers watermark. I first wrote in depth about this operation in the Society of Philatelic Americans Journal of February 1974. One of the British commemorative stamps that was parodied by the inmates was the green one-half penny stamp of 1935. This stamp was issued to honor the silver jubilee of the rule of King George V. The stamp is inscribed in large capitals "SILVER JUBILEE" above and "½ HALFPENNY ½" at the bottom. The face in profile of the British King is illustrated in the center. In the left area the King's crown is depicted under the date "1910." This was the year when King George assumed his throne. To the right of the portrait the date "1935" marks the silver jubilee of his rule. A laurel wreath is seen under the figure. In the German propaganda parody the inscription was altered to "THIS WAR IS A" at the top and "JEWSH WAR" at the bottom. The years were replaced by "1939" and "1944." A hammer and sickle emblem with Soviet star replaced the laurel wreath, and the Star of David topped the crown. The Russian dictator Josef Stalin is depicted in the center instead of the British King. The inscription above is flanked with two Jewish stars, the term "JEWSH WAR" with a small hammer and sickle emblem at left and right. The stamp is an excellent NAZI propaganda production. It implies that the British are fighting the war for the Jews and the Communists and is full of small symbols of Communism and Jewry. The visual image and message are quite striking. There is one problem however, the spelling of the word "Jewish." The forgers left out the "I." There was some talk after the war that this might have been a secret plan by the Jewish forgers to sabotage the design and embarrass the Nazis. I spoke to Bernhard Krüger on several occasions and he told me that it was just "a terrible printing error. The word 'Jewish' had been translated properly but the engraver omitted the letter 'I.' The mistake was spotted and there was an attempt to halt production. However, the SS hierarchy decided to push on with the project. They were just propaganda stamps of no importance so who cared if there was an error on them?" In fact, at any hint of sabotage on the part of the Jewish prisoners the SS would have immediately killed the inmates suspected of the treasonous action. That was made clear to them constantly and as a result they were always on their best behavior. About one million copies of the defective stamps were printed. They are often offered for sale and always popular among collectors. Be warned, excellent forgeries abound and these days they are regularly offered to unsuspecting buyers on philatelic auction sites. Women don't Sweat, They "perspire" Good use of the enemy's language is key in propaganda. A misspelled word means disaster as the leaflet becomes not a destroyer of morale, but instead the butt of jokes, and with it the producer become a laughing stock with no credibility. A good example is German leaflet AW-25. This small crudely printed black and white leaflet depicts a beautiful woman on the telephone and the text, "Will you ever hear her sweat voice again?" The back depicts dead Allied soldiers and the text, "Life is short - Death is quicker!" The leaflet was dropped by the Germans on Allied troops around the Normandy beachhead in 1944. It was surely meant to make the soldier think of his beloved wife at home, but instead the word "sweat" in place of "sweet" made the leaflet valueless and the German producers appear to be stupid. Wow Look at her. Im Not Fighting Anymore! We would be remiss if we did not mention the use of sexual images on leaflets. American policy was generally against such images, but the Axis powers of Germany and Japan used them quite often. The theory is that a lonesome GI thousands of miles from home will find the propaganda leaflet showing a naked female, think of his wife or girlfriend, lose the will to fight, and be virtually worthless as a soldier. In reality, the result was quite different. Many troops were bored as they waited for the next battle or sat behind the lines in reserve. The sudden appearance of thousands of photographs or drawings of naked women falling from the sky was quite exciting. The Germans often dropped the leaflets in numbered sets of six. As the leaflets fell or lay scattered on the ground, the soldiers would go from leaflet to leaflet, trying to complete the sets. If a buddy had a leaflet that was needed, a trade would be made, not unlike the old bubblegum or trading cards. In some cases there were reports of cigarettes and other commodities traded for the sex leaflets. The result seems to be that instead of lowering the morale of the troops, the use of sexual leaflets actually raises the morale. Another problem occurs when sexual leaflets are disseminated on a nation with parochial views toward sex in general. The United States prepared leaflets for both North Vietnam and North Korea showing young ladies in bathing suits. These leaflets were a total failure. The very prudish communists assumed that the women were either prostitutes or foreigners. No proper Vietnamese or Korean woman would be seen in such an outfit. Once again, a nice idea that was a total failure. Sometimes sex could be used as a ploy. An old German SS panzer officer once told me that while on the Russian front his men suddenly began to yell and gesture. Across an open field a number of naked Russian women were walking through the forest. The Germans all moved to an area where they could get a better look with binoculars. As soon as they were concentrated, Russian artillery opened up, killing many of them. I suppose in this case the German mistake was reacting to the sexual propaganda. Marilyn Longmuir tells of another WWII problem of cultural differences in The Money Trail: Burmese Currencies in Crisis, 1937-1947, Northern Illinois Press, 2002. The author states that in March 1942, British Special Operations Executive (SOE) operative Mr. J.A.T. Galvin proposed the counterfeiting of Japanese invasion money (JIM) for Burma . It was believed that like most Europeans, the recipients would be suspicious if the banknotes were not aged and used. Thus, the SOE artificially aged their forged Burmese JIM by soaking them in weak tea, and then folding and crinkling them and rubbing dirt on them. The British then discovered that the Burmese favored crisp, clean notes. Once they realized their error they stopped the artificial aging and sent mint, crisp counterfeit notes to Burma . Even Your Best Friends Won't Tell You This WWII mistake is a little different. The error was not on the part of the producers of the propaganda, but on the part of a friendly intelligence agency that was completely fooled by it. In an attempt to drive a wedge between the leaders of the Nazi Party, the British put a plan called "Himmler for President" into motion. The idea was to pass rumors that Heinrich Himmler was jealous of Adolf Hitler's position and working behind the scenes to replace the German leader. As part of the plan, a fake German postage stamp was printed that had Himmler's face in place of that of Hitler. The stamp was quietly distributed through Europe by British agents, with the hope that philatelists would see it and the story would break big in the newspapers. Sefton Delmer, the British spy chief, told me: I was in charge of the unit that did the counterfeiting. The rumor that went along with the stamp was that Himmler in his megalomania was preparing for the time when he would succeed Hitler either by coup, Allied action, or Hitler's death, and that in his preparations he had gone so far as to have stamps designed and printed with his image. The most impressive thing about this philatelic side of our wartime work was the utter failure of philatelists to observe these forgeries even when they were deliberately posted to them. In the end our agents had to take them to stamp dealers to get publicity for them. So, the plan was a complete failure. Nobody in Germany or the rest of Europe believed the Himmler story. Well, not quite. The British did fool one person. The American Office of Strategic Services Official Dispatch dated 10 June 1944 from Allan Dulles in Berne to Director Donovan in Washington says in part: Some months ago I reported briefly about the mysterious Himmler stamp, which has turned up here in Switzerland . Since then, I have had someone investigate some stamp dealers in regard to the situation with this stamp and the mystery deepens. The Stamp Collector's Journal, published here in December, 1943, had a brief article with regard to this stamp, with a facsimile and a full description. The next issue printed in 1944 had a further article about the stamp and stated that it was not an official issue of the German Post Office. As far as I can tell, pressure was brought to bear on the editors of this stamp journal by the German authorities to play the matter down. It may have been a trick pulled by some of Himmler's enemies to make trouble for him, or it may be that some enthusiast in the Ministry of the Interior thought that it might be nice to honor Himmler in this way, possibly in connection with some charitable drive. In any event, the mystery of the stamp has not been cleared up. This is an interesting case where the British did not tell their own ally about a propaganda campaign and as a result time, money, and manpower was spent investigating a bogus anti-Hitler scheme within Germany . Readers who would like to learn more about this black operation should see my article, "A Philatelic View of Heinrich Himmler," The American Philatelist, February, 1970. How to Make sure that a PSYOP Campaign Fails A constant problem through all the wars of the last century has been trying to convince friendly troops that it is worthwhile to talk to enemy troops and change their attitudes. We read descriptions of U.S. Marines refusing to take Japanese prisoners during WWII, or aerial gunships following loudspeaker aircraft in Vietnam to fire on any enemy who seems recalcitrant or fires at the propaganda aircraft. A perfect example of such an act us found in War by Stealth: Australians and the Allied Intelligence Bureau, Alan Powell, Melbourne University Press, 1996. One of the Australian pilots drops leaflets from his fighter, and then returns to wreak havoc: I fly along the tracks I know the Japs are using and drop leaflets on the way down. Then when I finish the run and come back, find the Japs picking up the leaflets, and shoot them up. This is probably not as uncommon as one might think, and certainly did nothing to help the Allies convince the Japanese that their cause was lost and to give up. There are numerous other blunders that occurred during the Second World War. Some were written, some were broadcast. One of the more notable radio errors was mentioned in U. S. Psychological Operations in Vietnam, a monograph on national security affairs written by Harry D. Latimer, Brown University, September, 1973. He says: Perhaps the most famous blooper was an Office of War Information broadcast referring to Italys King Victor Emmanuel as "the moronic little king" and Marshall Badoglio as a "high ranking Fascist" just at the time the Allies were trying to persuade the Italian Government of Badoglio to proclaim an armistice. President Roosevelt himself repudiated and denounced the OWI broadcast. In this instance there had been a sudden change in Allied policy at the highest level, but OWI was not informed and had received no new instructions. You Are Forsaken Another leaflet operation might be called more an embarrassment than a mistake. The story is told in Alaska s Hidden Wars, Otis Hays, Jr., University of Alaska Press , Fairbanks , 2004. The Japanese had occupied the Aleutian Island of Kiska on 6 June 1942 as a diversion for their plan for the battle of Midway. The United States wanted it back. The Americans prepared an anti-Morale leaflet depicting the North Pacific between Alaska and Japan with the island of Kiska highlighted. The leaflet text said: You have been forsaken. There is no hope of reinforcement. During early August 1943, American bombers flew over Kiska and dropped hundreds of thousands of these leaflets. On 17 August 1943, an invasion force consisting of 34,426 Allied troops, including elements of the 7th Infantry Division, 4th Infantry Regiment, 87th Mountain Combat team, 5,300 Canadians, 95 ships (including three battleships and a heavy cruiser), and 168 aircraft landed on Kiska, only to find the island completely abandoned. When the Allied forces hit the beaches with bugles blaring they discovered that the Japanese troops had been safely evacuated on 28 July. While the Japanese were gone before the invasion of Kiska was launched, Allied casualties during the operation nevertheless numbered 313. All of these casualties were the result of friendly fire, booby traps set out by the Japanese, disease, or frostbite. Only three or four mongrel dogs were left behind by the Japanese. This led a U.S. pilot to remark: We dropped a hundred thousand propaganda leaflets on Kiska. But those dogs couldnt read. This embarrassment led to a song called The Song of Kiska. Some of the lyrics are: One hundred thousand men at muster,

Admirals, generals adding luster;

Two hundred planes, as many ships-

All were bound for Kiskas Nips. Dog Day Plus one and two and three,

Found three more in captivity;

But as for Japs we couldnt say-

Wed seen one either night or day. Dont Talk Soldier! There is an interesting leaflet that might be from the aftermath of this battle. It claims to tell American soldiers not to mention anything about Alaska for safety and security reasons, but could it be because the planners were so embarrassed about invading a deserted land they wanted to hush it up? This has happened more than once, There is a Desert Storm leaflet where the text on an Army booklet depicting it incorrectly states that the PSYOP people did not know that Arabic went from right to left. It was an embarrassing and hopefully incorrect admission. When that caption was discovered, the offending section was blacked out on all the books. Perhaps we should end this look at WWII with some interesting PSYOP stories from the U.S. Army Air Force 308th Bomb Wing. They appear in a letter dated 16 July 1945. The writer says: During one mission run out of Darwin by B-24s, a bundle of leaflets was dropped from a plane without cutting the string. This bundle passed through the wind shield of a lower plane and the co-pilot was cut by the breaking glass. It did nothing to help the war effort or defeat the Japs, but it got the co-pilot a Purple Heart. Another time a Nip jumped on the tail of a B-25. The gunner threw out a bundle of leaflets, and the Jap, fearing for the safety of his engine pulled away. During a take off at Lingayen a bundle dropped out of the hatch and covered the field with leaflets. The tower immediately called to let us know that the air field was not a wastebasket. Sometimes planes in the forward element drop leaflets which blow back over the remainder of the aircraft. The crews said it was like flying through a snow storm. I am going to need more Erasers! During WWII, the Air Force and OWI psychological warfare staff decided on a campaign to announce by leaflets, dropped by B-29s on weather runs, the names of a dozen Japanese cities, four or five of which would be bombed within the next 24 hours. The leaflet depicted a flight of five B-29s dropping bombs with Japanese cities printed in small circles below. The first run of 886,000 leaflets were printed showing the cities of Tokyo, Ujiyamada, Tsu, Kooriyama, Hakodate, Nagaoka, Uwajima, Kurume, Ichinomiya, Oogaki, Nishinomiya, and Aomori. At some point, General Curtis Lemay who had already firebombed Tokyo asked that the city be removed from the leaflet. The first leaflet in this series was dropped on the night of 27 July 1945. I have seen reports that the entire run was reprinted without the word Tokyo. However, I have also seen leaflets from Japan that show the leaflet was dropped with Tokyo partially erased. My question is, if this actually happened: was who got the detail of erasing Tokyo from 886,000 leaflets, and how did he do it? Korean War Thats a Chinaman? During the Korean War the United States prepared a number of leaflets that failed due to the inability of the target audience to understand the visual image. They are mentioned in A Psychological Warfare Casebook, Daughterty and Janowitz, The John Hopkins Press, Baltimore, MD, 1958. In early 1951 the Psychological Warfare Detachment of the Eighth U.S. Army prepared a leaflet coded 8028. It depicted an F-80 Shooting Star and a tank attacking an individual who flees in terror. The text is, Death  in many forms  awaits you on this foreign soil. The soldier has no form of identification, either rank or unit. He wears no headgear. About the only thing that might make an American believe that he is Chinese is that he wears a padded jacket of the type some Chinese wore during the war. The problem is that the Chinese had not a clue who this person was. When eight Chinese prisoners of war were questioned about the image on the leaflet (without text) not one believed that he was Chinese. One actually thought that he represented an American soldier. If you intend to show a person from another culture, make sure that you use identifiers that are recognizable within that culture. Elliot Harris mentions the problem with Chinese perception in The Un-American Weapon, Psychological Warfare: The Chinese did not appear to identify symbols in the way U.N. leaflets had intended. Skeletons were not identified as such. A leaflet showing Stalin kicking the Chinese was interpreted as Stalin kicking the Americans. Leaflets using the picture-in-a-balloon technique to indicate the subjects thoughts or dreams were completely alien to the Chinese. One leaflet with three balloon scenes was interpreted to be four unconnected pictures. Whos the Funny Looking Guy at Dinner? The same problem occurred on Korean War leaflet 7115, printed by the 1st Radio Broadcast and Leaflet Group in December 1951. This leaflet depicted a Chinese family of eight individuals sitting around a food-laden table that was not unlike an American Thanksgiving dinner. The bones show through one of the diners, so an American might assume that he is a ghost. The text is on the front is, Your place will be empty. Text on the back is, Because Communists officials continue to stall at the Armistice talks  YOURS WILL BE THE EMPTY PLACE AT YOUR FAMILYS NEW YEAR REUNION. Because Communist leaders compel you to continue this hopeless war  IN THE HEARTS OF YOUR FAMILY THERE IS GREAT EMPTINESS. This leaflet confused the Chinese. First of all, the seating arrangement of the people was all wrong. There were children at the table instead of respected elders and family members. The children would have eaten earlier. The table was full of food where a proper family would remove the dishes from each course before bringing new dishes. If the family was so rich that they could eat in a fashion that had not been seen since the late 1930s, why would a son be in the military? Who is the person with the bones showing through? This is not a traditional way to show a ghost in China (or the United States for that matter). This is another case where the American psywarriors knew exactly what they wanted to say, but the illustration completely confused the target audience. The Chinese did not understand the wealth depicted on the leaflet and truly believed that the family of a soldier would be poor. The leaflet served no military purpose and failed in its attempt to demoralize the Chinese Army. The Americans were thinking Thanksgiving dinner, and the Chinese had no clue. The mistake of thinking that what is meaningful to an American soldier would also be meaningful to a Korean soldier is pointed out by USAF Major Norman D. Vaughn in My Life of Adventure, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, PA, 1995. We have all read of Chinese farmers killing female children and wanting to raise only boys that could grow strong and help with the farm work. Apparently some Koreans had the same attitude. Vaughn tells of a particular Korean War leaflet deigned in Tokyo : Some time later I was transferred to our headquarters in Tokyo . Thats where we wrote, illustrated and printed the larger, more important leaflets My staff of three writers and four artists and I functioned like an advertising agency, creating new themes and ideas. In the cellars of the U.S.A.F. Headquarters in Tokyo , eight North Korean prisoners of war had volunteered to read and respond to our leaflets. Four were officers, four were enlisted men. The enlisted men reviewed leaflets in one room, the officers in another. We had pictured a handsome, smiling soldier, wearing a distinctive UN uniform. He was on one knee and had picked up a little girls doll. He was putting the arm back on the doll while a little girl standing next to him is crying. The picture was intended to show that UN soldiers were human, liked children, and were willing to help. I thought it was an excellent message. I hoped the communist soldiers would reason, If they treat kids this way, they will treat me the same way. I had better surrender if I want to stay alive. When we showed this leaflet to the enlisted men, the first one snorted, letting us know it was awful. Another pretended to spit on the floor, which was his way of showing disapproval. The other two nodded in agreement. The officers had the same response. Through an interpreter, we asked, Why is this so terrible? Their answer was, To hell with little girls. We only care for boys. And our girls dont have baby dolls anyway. The next day we presented revised artwork. The child was now a crying boy. The doll had become a cart, and the soldier was fixing a wheel that had come off. All the test prisoners smiled their approval. It was a good leaflet. This is one interesting anecdote about leaflets from the Korean War that although not an error in printing certainly might be considered an error in judgment. William E. Daugherty tells in the declassified technical memorandum Evaluation and Analysis of Leaflet Program in the Korean Campaign June  December 1950 of a headquarters officer so diligent in seeing that no papers fell into the hands of the Communists that he destroyed the propaganda leaflets printed for them to read: There is one known occasion of the destruction of at least one-quarter million leaflets at Pyongyang , as the result of the forced evacuation of that city. An officer on the general staff at Eighth Army ordered enlisted personnel to dump the entire supply of propaganda leaflets on hand at Eighth Army Headquarters into a latrine, instead of leaving them for the Chinese and Koreans to read. The propagandist must be very careful that his methods only influence the enemy, and not terrify friendly forces. Three cases come to mind. During the Korean War one enterprising PSYOP specialist assigned to the 25th Infantry Division went to the Seoul Zoo where he recorded growling lions and tigers at feeding time. One evening when he was feeling bored, he played the tape at full volume. Not only did the Communist troops directly in front of the loudspeakers start to run toward their rear, but the South Korean troops along the friendly line took off running too. The innovative psywarrior soon found himself attached to the 45th Infantry Division. A decade later during the Vietnam War American PSYOP tapes featured funeral dirges and the sound of wailing ghosts. This worked quite well on the enemy but also terrified the Friendly ARVN forces. As a result, a directive ordered that the tapes not be played within earshot of friendly forces. A 1967 Army paper entitled Vietnamese Superstitions explains the peril: The first step in the manipulation of a superstition as an enemy vulnerability is its exact identification and detailed definition of it spread and intensity among the target audience. The second step is to insure friendly control of the stimuli and the capability to create a situation that will trigger the desired superstitious behavior. Both conditions must be met if the PSYOP effort will not yield the desired results; it might even backfire! Sergeant Timothy Wones in Nangahar Province, Afghanistan In Afghanistan, a PSYOP trooper may have emptied a chow hall while testing out his new tape with the sound of an attacking A-10 Warthog. Retired Sergeant Timothy Wones told me about an experience he had back around 2007 as a member of A Company of the 13th PSYOP Battalion. Wones was in mid-tour in 2007 based at Forward Operating Base Mehter-lam. He was testing his vehicle-mounted loudspeaker system for a mission he was assigned to perform the next day. He knew that the terrorists were afraid of the Close Air Support A-10 “Warthog” and its mini-gun that sounded like a zipper opening and the depleted uranium ammunition that could take an enemy tank apart like a hot knife going through butter. He had downloaded the sound effects of a low flying A-10 but without the Brrrrrrt of the minigun. He told me: I pumped up the volume and played it several times in multiple directions, shifting the turret back and forth since I wanted to hear what it sounded like bouncing off the hills around us. It was good. The jet screaming overhead was very loud and very realistic. I thought it would scare the hell out of the fighters hiding in the hills. I did not know the effect it was having on my own people. The unit's S-5 (the civil- military operations staff officer) told me about it later. He was laughing hard while telling me. He said that the Sergeant Major of the unit we were supporting came charging out of the chow hall furious. He wanted to know “Who is that damn pilot and why in Hell is he flying so low around us? Nobody called in any air assets for us that I know of! I have to get to the Tactical Operations Center and wave that SOB off.” I don’t know if I scared the fighters in the hills, but I think I did a pretty good job of making our own troops in the chow hall damn nervous. The PSYOP specialist also has to be sure that he has the confidence of his own soldiers. Sometimes they may feel that he is not working in their best interests. In the last stages of the Korean War the Chinese put a bounty of ten thousand dollars in gold for captured loudspeaker personnel and threatened to hang them if captured. The loudspeaker teams also drew artillery fire and were attacked with small arms fire by Communist scouts about one-third of the time that they were out in front of friendly troops. The infantry took the situation in their own hands on several occasions and cut the wires from the generators to the loudspeakers or filled the loudspeakers with snow. The American loudspeaker teams did have a secret weapon to get them out of a jam when their broadcasts stirred up a hornets nest. Charles H. Briscoe tells us about the weapon in Volunteering for Combat: Loudspeaker Psywar in Korea , Veritas, volume 1, number 1. For some reason, the Americans and Chinese loved listening to Doris Day. When our efforts had really stirred them up, resulting in artillery and mortar barrages and machine gun fire being directed at us, and in turn from the American lines, we quickly switched to Doris to quiet things down Only Doris Day worked. As long as we are on the Korean peninsula we should mention an interesting error that occurred during the Cold War period when leaflets were being dropped by the Americans from far out at sea under the codename Operation Jilli. Specialist Fifth Class (SP5) Dennis Kaliser, a lithographic plate maker with the 15th PSYOP Detachment of the 7th PSYOP Group told me that about 1966 none of the Americans could read Korean in the printing branch, and as a result, close to one million of the leaflets were printed backwards. He adds: There never was any linguists attached to the printing branch. There were many Koreans among the leaflet designers and probably in the 7th PSYOP Group near the graphics branch (in the Green Compound) about a mile from the printing plant. The problem was one of communication breakdown in the production process. I can only surmise that somebody, somewhere checked the first copies of any press-sheet before we printed too many with mistakes. Cartoon depicting leaflet dissemination mistake over Korea

Ironically, the letters ZD on the leaflet stand for Zero Defects Lieutenant Colonel Dave Underhill was assigned to the 7th PSYOP Group on Okinawa during Operation Jilli. He had some targeting problems with his young navigators: There was a rush to train Navigators to plan the missions. I had 120 hours of instructional material. They got six hours a day for five days (30 hours). They were smart, but on their very first mission, I got a call from Korea Detachment saying the people along the DMZ were up to their butt in our leaflets. I asked for their winds aloft report in plotting the mission. Where the DMZ takes a rather sharp turn to the Southwest when traveling West, I calculated there would be 1,100,000 leaflets in South Korea . So much for smart navigators. They failed to consider the natural dispersion in still air effect. From 25,000 feet, it is substantial. You need to add 6,250 feet on both sides of the flight path when flying into the wind. They were away from the DMZ and still dropping leaflets over a mile wide into the South Korean side. That was still better than our jets did that dropped the old Monroe Leaflet Bomb. Army crews loaded the bombs, packed, not rolled. They destroyed the known drift and dispersion characteristics. When they moved in close and released their Monroe Bombs, they reported leaflets on target. I think it was Hanoi . I asked for a  winds aloft report. I ran the plot. Not only did they miss the target, they even missed the Red River Delta with most of the leaflets. They ended up in Southern China . A leaflet bomb results in a long stretch of leaflets along the net drift vector. Dropping leaflets on the enemy instead of our troops has been a problem in every war. There are many stories of German-language leaflets found in the fields and on the cottages of British farmers. An interesting story is told by Colonel Kenneth K. Hansen in Psywar in Korea . It seems that General Ridgway, Commander of the Eighth Army in Korea sent a message to Major General James Cassels the commander of the British Commonwealth Division: Your leafleting plane has been over my division this morning and dropped many thousands of leaflets. We have read them. I am ready to surrender with my division whenever you send forward a representative. Staff Sergeant Steve Jones of the 15th Physiological Training Flight, Kadena AFB, Okinawa, flew support for the 90th Special Operations Squadron (later renamed 1st Special Operations Squadron ) and the 374 Tactical Airlift Wing from 13 March 1972 to 9 January 1973. He talks about similar problems and ways that the leaflet kickers amused themselves during long propaganda flights. One time when we were flying out of Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Base we were assigned to drop leaflets over Laos . During the drop the wind changed drastically and instead of Laos , we covered our own base and the city of Nakhon Phanom . It looked like a snow storm as we landed. The Thai government didnt approve of propaganda so we kept a very low profile that day while the rest of the base was assigned the duty of picking up the leaflets and hauling them away. Sometimes on a very boring drop some of the kickers would intentionally forget to hook the static line and attempt to drop the loaded boxes on selected targets. It was especially fun trying to hit fishing boats in the harbors because we could see the splash caused by the boxes when they hit. We never did hit a boat, but we came close a few times! On the subject of Okinawa there were some leafleting problems there during WWII. The most interesting is told by naval pilot Garland E. Buddy Bell who flew a scout plane off the cruiser USS Tuscaloosa . He says: My most vivid memory occurred during a spotting mission over Okinawa when I flew into thousands of falling propaganda leaflets dropped by one of our planes. The airplane appeared to be running into a snow storm. Hundreds of the leaflets caught on the wings and the cockpit canopy. Cracking the canopy, I was able to grab one before they all blew off. The leaflet was the Ryukyu Shuho [Ryukyu Weekly] or Okinawa Weekly. A similar problem happened to an American Army helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War. He told his story to Robert Fulton, the Executive Officer of the Regional Service Center in Manila where leaflets were printed. I was on an assault mission, flying Vietnamese Army troops low over the countryside and just a few minutes from coming in hot at the landing zone. It was a tense moment. Suddenly, all I could see was white. Being from a northern state, my instant reaction was to call out an immediate abort mission to the other pilots while shouting into the microphone, Were in a snow storm Were in a major white out! I instantly banked up and away, and was suddenly in clear blue sky. Looking around, I realized we had just been hit with a large drop of propaganda leaflets. The worst part was when I got back to his base, and everyone I passed shouted at me: Were in a white out. Were in a white out! Its snowing! Its snowing! Similar cases occurred during the Cold War when Radio Free Europe and the Free Europe Press sent anti-Soviet propaganda leaflets by balloon to Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. Unfortunately, many of these leaflets ended up in Greece and Turkey. In 2012, Greek researcher Thanassis Vembos wrote an article entitled Cold War Balloons and the Greek UFO Wave of 1954. He points out that some of the Greek UFO sightings seem to line up with balloon launchings and it is possible that they are one and the same. He mentions several cases: On 2 October 1954, at Agios Georgios village, on Pilion mountain, 50 year-old Elias Voyagis was returning home from his fields around 7 p.m. Half a kilometer from the village he looked at the sky and noticed a huge, bright object. It was a conglomeration of four extremely bright circles, like luminous spots constituting a longish thing moving with airplane speed. He described it like a long moving balloon target for anti-aircraft guns. Interestingly, several hours before the Pilion sighting, a real balloon created a big fuss in Rhodes Island, Dodecanese. At 3:15 a.m. on 2 October, a small white balloon coming from northwest crashed on a fence at Kremasti town and blew off. In a little carton hanging below the balloon, leaflets in Hungarian were found. To my knowledge this was the first documented account of a stray balloon of Operation VETO that ended up on Greek soil. Significantly the operation had commenced just the previous day! Alan Michie adds in Voices through the Iron Curtain: The Radio Free Europe Story, Dodd and Mead, NY, 1963: Reports began to come in of these long-range balloons coming down as far afield as central Turkey Sig Mickelson adds more about balloons gone astray in America's Other Voice: The Story of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, Praeger, New York, 1983. Balloons were discovered as far away from West Germany as Turkey. At least one was caught in the air currents that carried it to Scotland, prompting an irate Scottish farmer to write angry letters to British newspapers condemning the operation. EGYPT Suez Crisis Leaflet

An Egyptian Propaganda leaflet in the form of a postage stamp showed a terrified Jamal Abdul Nasser. The text is:

Nasser said: "I am ready to fight until the last drop of blood for the freedom of Egypt and the Egyptian people"- 1 November 1956 The Suez Crisis was a military attack on Egypt by Britain , France and Israel beginning on 29 October 1956. The attack followed Egypt 's decision of 26 July 1956 to nationalize the Suez Canal after the withdrawal of an offer by Britain and the United States to fund the building of the Aswan Dam. Prior to the operation, Britain deliberately neglected to take counsel with the Americans, trusting instead that Nasser's engagement with communist states would persuade the Americans to accept British and French actions if they were presented as a fait accompli. This proved to be a fatal miscalculation. Although the attacking nations were winning in the field, the United States , fearing a public relations fiasco, forced a cease-fire on Britain , Israel , and France . The U.S. demanded that the invasion stop and sponsored resolutions in the U.N. Security Council calling for a cease-fire. There were a limited number of propaganda leaflets dropped on the Egyptians, but the mistake in this case involved their leaflet bombs. Paul Lashmar and James Oliver say in Britain s Secret Propaganda War 1948-1977, Sutton Publishing, UK , 1998: The psychwar operations were run by Lieutenant Colonel Bernard Fergusson; a man with no previous experience in psychological warfare The Royal Air Force flew operations to drop propaganda leaflets on the Egyptian population. The problem was that the leaflet bombs were designed to explode at 1000 feet using an altitude fuse, and scatter paper over a wide area. However, because of barometric differences in Egypt , the bombs exploded at just six feet causing death or injury to any Egyptian in the vicinity. ADEN From 1963 to 1967 the British Army fought Communist terrorists in Aden . During that time they produced many propaganda leaflets including a great number offering rewards for weapons. Two of them were printed with the wrong text, offering rewards for a weapon that was not pictured on the leaflet. It is possible that the person that prepared the text made the mistake, but it is more likely that the printer, not reading Arabic, simply reversed the text on each leaflet. The uncoded leaflet above depicts a bazooka rocket and the Arabic text: This is a hand grenade Inform the security services if you find one and receive 25 dinars. The uncoded leaflet above depicts a single British Mills 36 hand grenade and the incorrect Arabic text: This is ammunition for the bazooka

If you see this anywhere, inform the security services.

You will receive 50 dinars. Vietnam Nguyen Why are They Playing Cards? During the Vietnam War, many American troops dropped the ace of spades on the bodies of dead Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops in the belief that it terrified the enemy. The ace of spades was also featured in movies about the Vietnam War such as Apocalypse Now. The symbol is also depicted on various unit crests, special operations patches, collar insignia, and on flags and painted vignettes on military aircraft and gun trucks. This was a psychological warfare campaign that came from the troops, not headquarters, G-2 (Intelligence) or the Psychological Operations experts at Battalion and Group. American troops just loved them. Were the Vietnamese really terrified by the ace of spades? It appears not. Robert W. Chandler says in War of Ideas: The U.S. Propaganda Campaign in Vietnam, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1981, in a section entitled "Major Psychological Appeals and Themes," under "Fear": But not all such approaches were effective. One major misassumption occurred about 1966 when U.S. soldiers scattered fear-appeal leaflets with the ace of spades as an omen of death. In some cases actual playing cards were left along trails in Communist-controlled territory (to supplement the campaign American troops wrote to playing card manufacturers requesting numerous aces of spades to supplement the campaign). A subsequent review and evaluation by the United States Information Agency revealed, however, that the ace of spades was not included in the Vietnamese deck of cards. Thus, except for a few Montagnard hill tribesmen, they were unfamiliar with its meaning as a death omen. Despite these finding and a Joint United States Public Affairs Office policy directive prohibiting the aces of spades practice, American soldiers began using the technique again in 1971. This repeated error was probably symptomatic of trying to maintain continuity and high-quality psychological operations with military persons being shuffled into and out of the country on one-year tours of duty. So, although thousands of aces of spades were sent to Vietnam and many were placed on the bodies of the dead Viet Cong, it appears that the enemy had no idea what the cards represented. Hes a Martyr No he Isnt The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong sometimes made mistakes in their propaganda campaign. In one case a young Viet Cong guerrilla named Nguyen Van Be was on a mission with his comrades in May 1966. They were attacked and Nguyen Be was captured. The American and Vietnamese troops demanded that he instruct them on the workings of an unknown explosive mine. He allegedly did so. According to the Lao Dong (Communist) Party sources, he picked up the mine high over his head, and shouted, "Long live the National Front for Liberation. Down with American Imperialists." He then smashed the mine against an armored vehicle, killing himself and dozens of American and Vietnamese officers and soldiers. For six months, the Communists bragged of his heroics in prose and song. Young men were urged to emulate the fallen hero. Be had been a model guerrilla. He had joined the Peoples Youth League at an early age and later became a volunteer in the Liberation Army. There were poems, booklets, plays and radio broadcasts telling of Bes death and sacrifice. The communists in the North even wrote an opera for Be. In addition, two statues were erected in his honor. The Viet Cong awarded him the posthumous title of "Indomitable Loyalty and Magnificent Bravery." The problem was, Nguyen Be had not martyred himself, but instead had surrendered. He was alive and well in a Vietnamese prison camp. He agreed to cooperate with the Government of Vietnam and told the true story of his capture in a 13 March 1967 interview. He said that the battle lasted just a few minutes and he had never fired a shot. Instead, he dove into a canal in an attempt to escape, but was captured when a Vietnamese soldier grabbed him by the hair. The Joint United States Public Affairs Office (JUSPAO) produced leaflet 1775 in February 1967. The front of the leaflet depicts Nguyen Van Be holding a newspaper with his picture on the first page. The text is "The Late Hero Nguyen Van Be reads about his own death." The back is all text, "A very strange story indeed. According to the Communists, Nguyen Van Be died a glorious death in the service of the cause. Supposedly, after the South Vietnamese Army forces captured him he detonated a mine killing himself and 69 American and Vietnamese Government troops. Glowing accounts of his death were printed in communist newspapers and read over Radio Hanoi and Liberation Radio. Many poems and songs were written about his exploits. A statue was even built in his honor. However, as can be plainly seen, Be is very much alive. He is shown reading about his own death in the Hanoi newspaper Tien-phong. The Communists say he chose a hero's death. Be says that he never fired a shot and did not even think about exploding a mine." This should have been a defeat for the enemy, but they simply denied that Be was alive and said that it was all an American plot. This is a case where the enemy made a major propaganda mistake, but never had to pay for it. The people believed the North Vietnamese Communist Party more than they believed the Americans. Don Rochlen Flying Be to his Home Village Monta L. Osborne was the Chief of Field Development Division in the Joint United States Public Affairs Office (JUSPAO) in Saigon in charge of the Chieu Hoi (Open Arms) program during the Vietnam War. His letters home recall the campaign: One of my assistants, Chief of Special Projects Don Rochlen, found that Nguyen Van Bes family (father, mother, brothers and sisters) were living in an area where they could be captured by the Viet Cong, in retaliation for Bes anti-Hanoi propaganda. Don proposed that he visit the contested area in which they were living, and with the help of a U.S. Army company enter the area and remove the family from their danger. We were able to gain approval for this project. Does Anyone Have a Map? Continuing with the strange campaign of Nguyen Van Be, the Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office had one more little fiasco in its bag of tricks. The continuing disaster is told by civilian psychological warfare advisor John R, Campbell and 6th PSYOP Battalion member Nelson Voke. JUSPAO decided to hold a big propaganda ceremony at Nguyens home village. There would be a welcoming banner over the entrance to the village, his mother would be greeted and honored, Be would be introduced to the press, the villagers would enjoy a feast, they would be entertained by music and dance, medics would offer attention, and all this would be observed and photographed by the media. Two planeloads of reporters were flown in to observe the action. They noticed that there was little excitement among the villagers. When one was asked why, he was told that it was a nice party, but Nguyen Be was not from that village, he was from the next one over. Don North with Vietnamese cameraman Ngia near Da Nang. Don North was hired as a staff correspondent for ABC radio and TV News following several years of freelance photojournalism in Vietnam. He was one of the members of the press that took part in the propaganda junket to the village of Kim Son on April 21, 1967. He told me: The Army filled two Huey helicopters with about thirty journalists from Saigon, which included all three networks and the major newswires and newspapers. We were already familiar with the Nguyen Van Be story since he and his family had been presented to journalists at the so-called Five O'clock Follies; the daily news briefings. Earlier that day four companies of the United States 9th Infantry Division had landed to secure Kim Son Village along with the Regional Forces stationed in and around the village. Loads of rice and gifts were brought in and distributed. There was a band and strolling musicians. A big attraction was a tent where Army medics extracted bad teeth and gave out medicine. A large crowd of villagers assembled around a makeshift stage and Nguyen Van Be was brought out with his family. He was greeted with puzzled stares. The Government Planning Director of PSYOP tried to generate enthusiasm for the miraculous return of Be, but nobody recognized him. Be had been taken to the right village but his own Hamlet was more than three kilometers away. One old man recognized Be as coming from another Hamlet. In rural areas like this there is little contact or transportation between Hamlets. The Army considered moving the troops to secure the correct Hamlet but it was too late in the day to mount a new operation. I actually wrote a script about this operation and sent it back to the United States along with film. I called the story Psywar Goof. I sent background notes for Peter Jennings to read. Some of my comments were: This is the largest assault on a Viet Cong village by the Free world press in Vietnam. The hoped for objective  a major psychological warfare victory for the government Finally the star of the show arrived with his family, but he was greeted by puzzled, unfriendly glares. Bewildered eyes flashed between Be and the villagers Although this hamlet was held by the Allies for a few hours while the futile charade was acted out, theres little doubt where the loyalties of most of the villagers lie. Some of them are undoubtedly Viet Cong agents. Even if they had recognized Be and his family it could have meant severe Viet Cong punishment for those who admitted it American and Vietnamese Psy-warriors go back to their maps and planning boards having lost face by the mistake of geography and lack of prior checking. In PSYWAR you can never afford to be wrong about anything. It was a bold psychological warfare move to bring Nguyen Van Be to his village, still effectively controlled by the Viet Cong. But, just like in military operations, one slip up and the battle was lost. This was not a story that interested U.S. news agencies. They wanted war stories about American troops in combat. I don't think my story was ever broadcast in the United States on television. However the film should still be on file at ABC News in New York City. Is that you Tran? You look different!

The Original Photograph of Tran Do

Brigadier General Tran Do, (real name Ta Ngnoc Phac), a deputy commander-in-chief of the so-called "Liberation Army of South Vietnam," (the Viet Cong Armed Forces), and a Major General in the North Vietnamese Army, as well as Alternate Member of the Central Committee of the Lao Dong Party (formerly Indochinese Communist Party). This photo is believed to have been taken in South Viet Nam. It was discovered during Operation "Junction City" in War Zone "C" (Tay Ninh Province), in March 1967.

Lieutenant General Tran Do was a hero of the Vietnamese resistance. He helped defeat the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and later commanded all the resistance in the South against the Allies during the Vietnam War. He was one of the leaders during the Tet uprising of 1968. During that battle, the Americans believed that they killed him and prepared several propaganda leaflets to display the corpse. Leaflet 2448 Leaflet 2448 depicts the general as he looked in 1967 and his body with face shot away in 1968. The text on the leaflet is: The Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces has completely crushed the Viet Cong's general offensive against the cities. From 30 January 1968 to 15 February 1968, over 34,000 North Vietnamese Regulars and Viet Cong soldiers paid for their crimes. Among them was Major General Tran Do, who was killed in an action at 46th Street in Cholon in the outskirts of Saigon City. The death of Tran Do, Tran Van Tra and Nguyen Chi Tranh proved that the Communist aggressive policy to take over South Vietnam has severely failed. It was not their inability or incompetence, but the Communist adventurous acts that cause their deaths. Why do you still hesitate? Try to find an opportunity to return to the National Community and rejoin your families, as tens of thousands have already done. Leaflet 96 The same images were used on leaflet 96 dropped during the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam. The text on that leaflet is: Dear Fellow Citizens in North Vietnam Lieutenant General Tran Do was killed at the corners of Nguyen Tieu La and Trieu Da Streets in Cholon (on the outskirts of Saigon) while he was personally commanding the general offensive against Saigon and other cities in South Vietnam during the recent TET holiday. Together with the death of General Tran Do, from 30 January to 29 February 1968, over 42,000 North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong were killed, 7,000 others captured, and over 12,000 pieces of assorted weapons seized. Fellow citizens: He who sows the wind reaps the tempest! The deaths of Generals Nhuyen Chi Tranh and Tran Do and the recent heavy casualties on the Communists constituted a blow of the Republic of Vietnam people and Army, and revealed the complete failure of the Communist plot to take over South Vietnam. Fellow citizens, be determined to thwart all the attempts of the North Vietnamese Communists who aim to send poor children to die foolishly in South Vietnam. Under the two photos are the captions: Photograph of Lieutenant General Tran Do taken last year. The photograph was captured in February 1967 in South Vietnam. The body of Lieutenant General Tran Do after the battle in Cholon during the attack of the Viet Cong on the occasion of Tet. 1993 Painting of General Tran Do on a piece of Bark by Marcelino Truong General Tran Do in in Study in Hanoi in 1993 There was a problem. General Tran Do was still alive. We dont know if this was a clever disinformation ploy with fake documents placed on a body since the Phoenix Program had put a bounty on his head, or simply a terrible mistake by the Americans who wanted to believe that they had killed their most dangerous enemy. At any rate, the old general lived on well after the war. Curiously, in his old age he became quite democratic and an enemy of the people. In January 1998, he wrote a letter to the Vietnamese Communist Party asking it to reform and implement democracy for all the people of the nation. He quoted Ho Chi Minh in his letter: An independence without freedom and happiness is a meaningless one. Freedom and happiness require democracy! In 1998, General Tran Do revealed he has been transformed from an idealistic youth fired by revolutionary zeal to a disillusioned old man, shocked by what he saw as a government worse than its former colonial state. Some of his comments were: We have a huge public security machine equipped with more modern and variegated instruments of terrorism than the security forces of older regimes could ever dream of. All the things that we held in contempt, cursed out and opposed, we now repeat, but at a more perfect level, a level which is made more and more sophisticated. On 15 November 2000, The Communist Party retired the old general who was once the head of the Party's ideology and culture Department. He was expelled from the party in January 1999 for advocating that it give up its monopoly on power. On 9 August 2002, 78-year-old Tran Do died after more than a month in a hospital. Perhaps it would have been better for Tran Do if he had died in the Tet uprising of 1968. He would have died a happy revolutionary without disillusionment or questions about the Communist regime. Will I be Rich or Poor? The use of an absolutely accurate translation of a propaganda message is essential. The United States discovered this in Vietnam. A one-dong propaganda banknote was prepared to attack the inflation of the money of the Democratic Republic of North Vietnam. PSYOP specialists called these notes "The inflation series." The campaign was meant to convince the Vietnamese that the cost of the war would lead to the destruction of their economy. The notes were coded 4540 and 4543 (horizontal). They differed in size ever so slightly, just enough to change their drift patterns when airdropped over the enemy. The original leaflet description sheet is dated 20 July 1972. The leaflet theme is Hardship of war  Survive the War inflation. The rationale is To cause the target audience to think about the adverse effects of war upon the economy. The original one-dong notes were found to have an error in the text. The error was discovered and the leaflets were printed again with the same code numbers, but now printed vertically instead of horizontally. The intended text on the front is "Hay coi chung mot cuoc cai cach tien te nua. Cac ban co the mat tat ca tai san, cong lao mo hoi nuoc mat cua ban." ("Beware of another money reform. You may lose all your wealth, fruit of your sweat and tears.") The intended text on the back is "Dang thi vung-phi tien cua dong-bao vao mot cuoc chien-tranh tuyet-vong. Khi chien-tranh con tiep-dien thi tan-pha que-huong dong-bao. Tien dong-bao de danh se tro nen vo gia-tri." ("The Communist Party is spending your money on a hopeless war. If the war goes on, there will be nothing for you to buy. The war is destroying your country. All your savings will be worthless.") Two errors in the Vietnamese dialect crept in  one detected and corrected at an early stage, and one that somehow escaped detection for over 30 years! The first error is the omission of the word "cach" between "cai" and "tien" in the first sentence on the front of the 1 dong with horizontal code numbers. This omission renders the sentence meaningless, and was corrected in the 1-dong notes with vertical code numbers. The second error, at best ambiguous, is the presence of "vo-gia" instead of the correct "vo gia-tri" at the end of the text on the back of all the notes. "Vo-gia" translates to "priceless" instead of "worthless," thus changing the meaning of the last sentence to "All your savings will be priceless." Discussions with native Vietnamese and Vietnamese-speaking Americans reveal that, although Vietnamese would understand the intent of the message and would accept the error with mild amusement, the error would have been an embarrassment to the Americans had they known of it. Perhaps this explains why the error has not been reported earlier. I asked an expert about these language errors and he said: Your description of the language errors in banknote leaflet is perfectly correct, as are the translations you gave of the Vietnamese text. Frankly, as a psywar trick the banknote seems a waste of time because the target was the North Vietnamese population, which had absolutely no power to exert any public opinion pressure on the North Vietnamese communist regime. Years later I talked to a veteran Military Assistant Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group (MAC-V SOG) member about some of the leaflet problems that occurred during his tour in Vietnam. He could only think of two minor ones. He said that in one case the Americans produced a leaflet for the Australians that depicted burning Viet Cong. He didnt exactly recall the message but he said it was something like: Surrender! We would much rather treat you humanely rather than the way we now treat you. Of course, the message meant, we dont want to burn you alive with napalm. Apparently a reporter with the Australians saw the leaflet and wrote an article implying that the message proved that the Viet Cong were being treated inhumanely. Apparently the Vietnamese did not have an exact word for humanely, so another term was used that did not quite mean what the translator thought it meant. Dead or Alive We have a Choice? Leaflet 72 The leaflet is coded 72 and that shows that it was dropped on North Vietnam during President Nixons bombing campaign. The back is a statement by United States Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker. It has the message on the front in inch-high letters: Reward 50 Taels of Gold Reward The SOG veteran told me that the problem with this message is that it did not indicate that the Americans wanted their airmen back alive. A Vietnamese reading the front of the leaflet could kill the airman and then bring him in for the reward in gold. He said that shortly after someone took a close look at this text, the message was changed to indicate that the reward was for a live airman. The PSYOP-POLWAR Newsletter Nguyen just went Chieu Hoi with his three wives and 36 Children The PSYOP Newsletter was printed by the United States Military Assistance Command to inform commanders, PSYOP personnel, and PSYWAR advisors of psychological operations in Vietnam and to exchange idea and lessons learned. Later Vietnamese POLWAR personnel were added and the name was changed to the PSYOP-POLWAR Newsletter. Looking through my copies from 1967 and 1968 I find the following comment: October 1968: OOPS! A Goof! JUSPAO printed three million sheets of weapons rewards and Returnee benefit stationary (leaflet 2623). One side lists the prices paid for weapons and the benefits given to the Hoi Chanh; the reverse side is left blank for local use. Where it reads that $1000VN will be paid to the Hoi Chanh and each member of his family, it should read that the $1000 will be paid to the Hoi Chanh only. No additional monies will be given to him for members of his family. An American Air-dropped Radio to Vietnam A similar error is reported to have occurred on the small black radios that were dropped over Vietnam so that the Viet Cong and the people could hear Allied propaganda broadcasts. According to an American CIA psywarrior who served in Vietnam during the war years: The fixed-tuned Special Operation Group peanut radios are a case in point. I had one of the black brick varieties and instantly saw that its on/off switch was marked with the Vietnamese words meaning fat and off. The first was the Vietnamese word "mo" with a ~ over the vowel, instead of the correct diacritic mark, which looks like a small ? The wrong mark completely changed the meaning from on to fat or lard. I guess that before the radios were manufactured, the Special Operation Group guys asked the nearest South Vietnamese to write the labels. A Northern Vietnamese would not have made that stupid mistake, because Northerners spell and write more correctly. How do these errors occur? Several American PSYOP officers in Vietnam during the war spoke of the impossibility of knowing exactly what their Vietnamese counterparts were writing on propaganda leaflets. A former Army Captain who was assigned to MACVSOG from February to August in 1964 said: Are these people [Vietnamese nationals working with the Americans] on the other side really with us or against us? You never know that and I never knew, I dont have any idea personally other than we tried to double test so-called known people that belonged with us but they were still Vietnamese. Id write up the leaflets in English and take them over and get translated, and theyd say that means this, but did it really? I dont know and the people back in Washington will never know. A former Army Major assigned to MACVSOG OP33, which provided staff supervision to OP39 (PSYOP) from June 1969 to June 1970, adds: However, since neither we nor the US civilians in OP 39 were proficient in Vietnamese, the content, context, and scope of the various PSYOP products (radio broadcasts, leaflets, mail, etc.) were always sus­pect, in my mind. We really didnt have a way of ascertaining the quality of the product that was being put out or the nuances in a political sense. Second Lieutenant Winston Groom of the 245th PSYOP Company in Vietnam talks about the problems that sometimes occurred when using local interpreters and translators: One curious situation arose when I received word from Nha Trang not to use the standard surrender tapes they had made for us in Saigon and which we played over the bullhorn or over the loudspeaker system in the U-10 aircraft if the enemy were encountered. Somebody had discovered that the Vietnamese who translated the tapes was apparently Viet Cong, because he told the guerrillas not to surrender but to fight on. After that, we made our own tapes on a small and unreliable recorder using our own interpreters, who hopefully were not Viet Cong. I believe that after a month or so, they sent us new vetted tapes out of Saigon . It should not have taken that long. It should have taken only a few days. A Vietnamese friend told me about another translation misunderstanding: An American officer was drilling a group of Vietnamese cadets and ordered, “Left, face!” They did so; and, “Right, face!” and they did that, too. But when he barked “About, face!” the cadets seemed confused and there came a timid question from a cadet: “What about our faces, sir?” One of the best examples of a translation problem is mentioned in Noel Barbers The War of the Running Dogs  The Malayan Emergency 1948-1960, Weybright and Talley, NY, 1971. The author tells of a guerrilla ambush that caused the British commander to immediately fly to the nearest village where he harangued the collected inhabitants: Youre a bunch of bastards, shouted Templer; and Rice, who spoke Chinese, listened carefully as the translator announced without emotion: His Excellency informs you that he knows that none of your mothers and fathers were married when you were born. Templer waited, then, pointing a finger at the astonished villagers to show them who was the Tuan, added You may be bastards, but youll find out that I can be a bigger one. Missing the point of the threat completely, the translator said politely, His Excellency does admit, however, that his father was also not married to his mother. Wrong Colors in a Viet Cong Flag Leaflet with the Correct Viet Cong Flag Color Note that the corrected leaflet has a Vietnamese code number which indicates that one was disseminated by them. The short message on the back is: Attention All Residents of This Area DO NOT RUN! DO NOT HIDE! Do not run and try to hide from the Allied army as it conducts ground or helicopter operations. Stay where you are right now until you receive an order broadcast by loudspeaker, then do as you are instructed. If you follow the orders you receive over the loudspeaker you will not be harmed. 245N-?-67 The above leaflet was produced by the U.S. Army 245th PSYOP Company in 1967. It depicts a heroic South Vietnamese soldier on horseback carrying his colors and trampling the flag of the Viet Cong on the ground. The enemy flag should have been a gold star on a field of red at the top and blue at the bottom. Instead the colors are red and green. The leaflet was later corrected with the proper color blue. Note that the code number on the back has been scratched out. We know it is the 245th PSYOP Company in Nha Trang and we know the year was 1967, but they have blacked out the center leaflet number. It may be that they were embarrassed by the error so just covered the number, but that does not make a lot of sense. The Americans made other minor PSYOP errors during the Vietnam War. For one, the early JUSPAO leaflets all had the printed code SP, for special project plus a number. The Americans wanted the target audience to believe that these leaflets were Vietnamese in origin. However, there was no Vietnamese equivalent for SP, so it was obvious that the Americans produced the leaflets. The letters were soon removed and only a numerical code printed on subsequent leaflets. Another problem occurred when the printers tried to clean up the Vietnam-language leaflets of various spots and holes. One former printer says: There was also the tricky business of opaqueing the Vietnamese negatives. When shooting a negative of the mechanical art prepared by the graphics branch, there were inevitably pinholes that must be painted out on the negative before it is used to make plates. Vietnamese has all those diacritical marks which are crucial to reading the language correctly. As none of us knew any Vietnamese, it was always a risk that we might wind up painting out one of those marks thinking it was a dust spot on the negative. I don't know if there were any consequences of this but maybe some of those leaflets read just a little different than was intended. There were also some problems with the photography used in the printing of leaflets although I suspect these were just in selected areas and perhaps early in the war. For instance, in the Operation Report - Lessons Learned, Headquarters 4th Psychological Operations Group, period ending 31 January 1968, we find complaints about Army-issued Polaroid cameras. The report claims that 95% of the pictures utilized in leaflets in Vietnam are taken by Polaroid cameras and careful judgment must be made on the scene when the picture is taken. It recommends that several pictures be taken to insure proper pose, contrast and most important of all, that the picture tells its own story as far as possible. Six months later in the DA Army Contact Team in Vietnam Study  Employment of US Army Psychological Operations Units in Vietnam, 7 June 1969, there is a complain that in many cases the Polaroid film received for use in PSYOP has passed the expiration date and the resulting picture are often of poor quality. The report goes on to say that on an experimental basis 35mm film has been used and the results have been favorable. The film has longer shelf life and is cheaper to use. Some of the problems of using 35 mm film are the inability to develop the film on the spot and insure that the picture is good and the fact that the camera must be returned to the photo shop so the exposed pictures can be cut from the film so that the rest of the film can be used. When I read these complaints they didnt make much sense. I asked a photographer who was assigned to the 7th PSYOP Battalion in 1970 if he had been issued a Polaroid camera. He said: I never heard of issued Polaroid cameras for anything that the Army did, except for laboratory work. We did all of our lab work (leaflet and wanted posters) with a brownie 4X5. I was issued a Nikon F W/55mm lens. I bought other lens from the PX and other sources. All after-action reports (official) were done with Nikon 35mm cameras. Pictures taken at the Interrogation Center were all 35mm cameras. Also note that some of the pictures that were on leaflets were from original pictures taken from Viet Cong bodies or from Hoi Chanhs (ralliers). A photographer from the 10th PSYOP Battalion in 1968 agreed in part with the report: Polaroid cameras were super slow, big unwieldy boxes, and yes, poor quality. Often, the photographer didn't follow the directions and wait the right amount of time. Color was more sienna ranging with faded greens and blues, lots better tans and Indian reds. I had a personal Minox that was even worse. Got a Miranda Sensorex 35mm after Tet and it was great. I still have it. It still works when you use an outboard meter. The 1.9 lens was rated the same as or better than Nikon at the time. I can only assume from the differing statements this shortly after the second report much better cameras were issued to the Army photographers. JUSPAO Field Memorandum 42, Lessons Learned from Evaluation of Allied PSYOP in Vietnam, dated 13 December 1967 mentions some Vietnam War Allied PSYOP mistakes that had occurred and should be avoided. There are a great number of recommendations and we show just a few: A few examples of errors of this sort are shown below. They are intended to be illustrative only, not a complete list: Items have been issued which referred to Chinese Communist weapons in terms of their caliber, rather than in terms of metric scale. Since neither the North Vietnamese nor the South Vietnamese measure anything in terms of inches or feet, caliber car readily identify the PSYOP item as originating from a source other than the Government of Vietnam . Direct translations from English employ a sentence structure that is easily identified as coming from a non-Vietnamese source. Vietnamese sentence structure differs so grossly from English sentence structure that it does not require a highly perceptive expert to see that something is wrong with the text. Leaflets have been issued which encourage the Viet Cong to rally to the U.S. Army. A phrase such as this readily gives the impression that the message came from the Americans that the Americans are the real sovereign power in the South. Do not include anything in a PSYOP message which may directly or indirectly lend credence to Viet Cong propaganda. For instance, numerous items have been distributed which contain statements such as The people no longer support the National Liberation Front. There is at least an implication that the Viet Cong had the support of the people Do not distribute items which might facilitate the job of the Viet Cong political cadre. For instance, a leaflet which contains a flattering likeness of Ho Chi Minh may well end us as a useful tool of the Viet Cong cadre. The pictures can be cut out of the leaflets and serve as wallet sized photos for the Viet Cong troops to carry. The same thing could happen with a leaflet that incorporates a colorful picture of a Viet Cong flag the primary impact could be detrimental to the Allied forces. Other propaganda problems appear when you read through various operations reports. For instance, an October 1969 report says: Leaflet requests accompanied by photographs of Hoi Chanhs, villagers, families etc., in groups of three have been submitted on occasion for propaganda development. Testing and evaluation panels and field testing show that the use of three people in a photograph is counter-productive because the Vietnamese people think this is a symbol of bad luck. Two or four people in a photograph are acceptable, but three should be avoided. Another problem is the use of the nations colors. When some Operation Phoenix posters and leaflets were prepared the Vietnamese colors of red and gold were used around the borders to add authority. It was found that the Vietnamese saw these national colors and assumed that the government was backing these terrorists and bombers. The colors were quickly removed. There were also problems with stationery ordered for Vietnamese officials and military officers. Someone made a decision to place Chieu Hoi symbols on all the writing paper. Many of the Vietnamese officials refused to use the paper because they thought it should only be used on Chieu Hoi topics. A decision was made to order all those people to order their own stationery locally and an order went out that nobody was to add images to any writing paper ordered by Group. There was also a problem with producing photographs of dead Viet Cong. The people could take the products and make martyrs of the terrorists. Worse, many Viet Cong were pointed out as murderers and bombers on posters and at the bottom it would offer them money for defecting. Somebody figured out that the people would complain about some murderer who just blew up an orphanage being given thousands of dollars to defect. Who knew leaflets and posters could be so difficult? It also appears that many of the products that were printed outside of Vietnam got lost upon arrival. I see constant complaints about having to hunt for 10 million or 20 million Tet leaflets. The final conclusion was that all products printed outside of Vietnam should be delivered at least a month before needed so the Army would have time to find where they were sent. POST PROPAGANDA WHEN YOU LEAVE, NOT WHEN YOU ARRIVE This is not so much a mistake as an error that led to death. It is a good lesson learned for the PSYOP trooper. Staff Sergeant Leo E. Seymour was assigned to Command and Control Detachment, MACV-SOG in 1967. On 3 July 1967, Seymour was a team leader of a joint U.S and indigenous reconnaissance patrol on a combat mission in Laos. The team was called Recon Team Texas and was operating about ten miles inside Laos in Attopeu Province. During the mission, the patrol observed a number of enemy forces moving down a trail 25 meters from their position. SSG Seymour directed an air strike on the enemy location. Following the air strike, Seymour prepared an ambush on a small secondary trail. Meanwhile, two sizeable enemy columns converged at the trail junction and noticed a PSYOP propaganda poster which had been tacked on a tree by a member of the Texas patrol. Realizing the poster had not been there before; the enemy began searching and spotted the patrol. An intense firefight followed and SSG Seymour was lost. The lesson seems simple enough now in retrospect. Put up your posters and leave your leaflets as you exit an area, not as you enter. Leaflet 2316 This is a fairly common Vietnam leaflet depicting Viet Cong guerrillas firing at a U.S. helicopter and then receiving return fire. The text on the back is: THE GOVERNMENT WANTS TO PROTECT PEOPLE The Viet Cong are misusing your lands and your home for hostile activities against the people. The Government of Vietnam must destroy the Viet Cong. It will destroy them unless they see the light and come to the cause of justice of the Government of Vietnam. Because the Viet Cong are hiding in your homes and on your land, you might be affected by the Government effort to destroy the Viet Cong. The Government of Vietnam has urged you not to collaborate with the Viet Cong. The Government of Vietnam does not want to hurt you. As best you can, stay away from the Viet Cong. Do not help them or shelter them so that you will not be hurt when the Government of Vietnam destroys the Viet Cong. This is a very straight forward leaflet and one might ask why we show it in it an article about mistakes? An early version of this leaflet had the two images in a horizontal format and in the wrong order. In that leaflet printed in the Army Printing Office in Japan, the helicopters appear to shoot up a poor innocent Vietnamese farmers house, and then the heroic Viet Cong show up to chase away the American invaders. As you can imagine, that was not the message the United States wanted to pass on. The images are now in a vertical format and can be clearly understood by anyone, even if they are illiterate and cannot read the message on the back. Is it a good idea to stir the enemy up? Portrait of Ho Chi Minh It is always dangerous when non-PSYOP personnel decide to create and disseminate leaflets. In early May 1967, a 2nd Lieutenant (Assistant S-5) with the 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, announced to his Brigade Commander that he had dropped 10,000 full page portraits of Ho Chi Minh (on his own initiative, that had on the other side: Soldiers of Ho Chi Minh: The 1st Infantry Division invites you to come out and celebrate your leader's birthday...........in BATTLE! The Commander told him that his initiative was stupid and that the enemy had the capability to overrun the Brigade at Phouc Vinh if he went all out. Even the professions can err. For Tet 1971, JUSPAO prepared a leaflet coded 4450 that was disapproved. The leaflet text said in part: The Communist forces are unable to mount a major attack anywhere in South Vietnam. Your food, medicine, weapons, supplies and men have decreased considerably. A reviewing PSYOP officer wrote on the page from intelligence information he had gathered: Since they are planning a major high point in January, this would seem ill-advised. Leaflet 4465 was disapproved because it talked to the Viet Cong about ever since 1962  and are not 10 years of survival in the Communist ranks  The approving officer stated: Forget it. The overwhelming majority of our target audience is composed of young conscripts, not time tested veterans exposed to a decade of lies. The leaflet would not be credible to the audience. Leaflet 4466 was considered too accusatory so it was disapproved too. It said in part: Why follow the Communists, the murderers of our compatriots, even your wives and children would not be spared death at their hands. Apparently, the U.S. did not want to talk too badly about the Communist leaders. At any rate, it is good to see that there were people looking over every leaflet and checking the text to assure that it was appropriate. CANCEL THAT APPOINTMENT!

(C47 Equipped with Loudspeaker) In modern psychological warfare one of the favored weapons is the loudspeaker aircraft. Many different airplanes have been tested along with many types of loudspeakers and sound equipment. The advantage of such a system is that the aircraft can fly over the enemy, generally safe from most small-arms fire, and broadcast a PSYOP message that cannot be censored by his leaders or political commissars. The C47 Dakota equipped with a loudspeaker was first tested during the Korean War at 8,000 and 10,000 feet. It was discovered that at those heights it was impossible to hear the message on the ground. The best results were at about 1,500 feet but that put the crew at risk. A compromise was reached and the missions were generally flown from 2,000 to 4,400 feet. Robert Chandler says in War of Ideas, The US Propaganda Campaign in Vietnam, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1981: One technique developed in 1967, used 2,100-watt loudspeakers that could be heard in a two mile radius from altitudes of 3,000 to 4,500 feet. This was important because early in the conflict airborne broadcasts from equipment developed during the Korean War were generally inaudible on the ground. The new system permitted thousands of hours of taped messages to be aired during the remainder of the war. Particular was the use of them at night against Communist troops in the jungle to try to wear down morale and persuade them to give up the fight. Such PSYOP flights were not always successful. Occasionally, scheduling errors caused confusion. One such case occurred in 1968 when a PSYOP officer in the 1st Australian Task Force arranged for a US loudspeaker aircraft to fly over a planned infantry operation. The officer says: The PSYOP officer of the 1st Australian Task Force and his staff were coordinating all the psychological warfare aspects of the operation. An aerial loudspeaker broadcast mission was scheduled once the operation had started. A U.S. PSYOP aircraft was requested and confirmed. The PSYOP officer then went to Vung Tau on business for a couple of days. The operation was delayed for a day and all the coordination was shifted to fit the new operation timetable. The only activity that was not cancelled was the U.S. PSYOP aircraft coming from Bien Hoa. On the original day of the start of the operation the U.S. loudspeaker aircraft flew over the area of operations broadcasting the message about the current operation underway, warning the Viet Cong of impending death and calling for them to surrender. The actual operation started the following day according to the new schedule, but the Viet Cong had left the area. They had been warned of the attack by the loudspeaker aircraft. Naturally, the military being what it is, the PSYOP officer (who was not even in the AO) was blamed, but in fact it was the Operations Officer who failed in his role as coordinator. Why Wont Anyone Listen to Me? When you talk to numerous PSYOP veterans, certain stories seem to be heard over and over again. One is their reaction to receiving fire while flying overhead and dropping leaflets or broadcasting messages. I have been told by several PSYOP troops that after receiving ground fire they began following their leaflet or loudspeaker aircraft with a blacked-out gunship. This is all very cool as far as killing the enemy goes, but if we were trying to gain their trust and have them read our propaganda, this firing on the readers and listeners was counter-productive. No Viet Cong guerrilla is coming out of the woods to pick up a Chieu Hoi leaflet and possibly defect if he fears being shot to pieces by a blacked out gunship hiding just out of sight. One member of the 8th PSYOP Battalion in Vietnam told me that they called these "Chicken Hawk" missions. AC-47 Spooky gunship This use of PSYOP to kill the enemy had been practiced often in Viet Nam. In 1966, under an operation known as "Quick Speak," the USAF 5th Air Commando Squadron flew C-47 aircraft equipped with 3000 watt loudspeakers over the enemy. They would fly over a target at 3,500 feet broadcasting a propaganda message. When the enemy fired at the aircraft, an AC-47 Spooky gunship flying escort behind and below the loudspeaker aircraft would open fire with three 7.62 mm mini-guns that loosed 16,000 rounds a minute. An Army PSYOP Lieutenant recalls: I remember when the PSYOP squadron I worked for got shot up particularly bad one night while playing Robert Brown's "Fire" to the Viet Cong over the big University 1000-Watt speaker. The next night they went up again but Spooky flew with them. Our speaker plane flew a wide orbit playing "Fire" again, and Spooky flew opposing orbit. It was night and the speaker plane was lit up like a Christmas tree to draw attention. Spooky was blacked out. The enemy opened fire with everything they had. Spooky opened up with all three miniguns on at high cyclic rate and mysteriously all of the ground fire suddenly ceased. Specialist Fifth Class Paul Merrell was stationed in Vietnam from April 1968 until August 1970. He was a member of the 8th PSYOP Battalion of the 4th PSYOP Group trained as an 83F20 offset press operator. During his three tours in Vietnam he worked in both HQ and the field in a number of diverse operations and positions. We talked about these missions and he told me: One mission that was unique in my experience was reconnaissance-by-PSYOP. That operation used a recording distributed by Group HQ named "Tintintabulation," a title that was either a misspelling of or perhaps a deliberate word-play upon "tintinnabulation." The recording was designed to draw enemy fire so we could call in the artillery on them. The single such mission I did was on a moonless night, about 2 a.m., using the 1,000 Watt speakers broadcasting from a Huey helicopter. It worked. We drew fire from a North Vietnamese Army 50-caliber machine gun. The aggressive warrant officer piloting the craft violated orders and decided to engage in a duel with the enemy from about 300 feet altitude rather than withdrawing and immediately calling in artillery. If we hope to have the enemy believe in our message and our sincerity, it is probably a bad idea to shoot at him when he reads or listens to our message. This is good war-fighting and can kill many enemies, but it is lousy PSYOP. Everyone seems to hate PSYOP loudspeakers. In WWII, the Germans and Japanese would open fire on them. Sometimes the American combat troops would shoot their own loudspeakers because they knew they drew fire to a quiet area of the front. In Vietnam we see that Charlie regularly opened fire on loudspeakers. Here we find another American PSYOP specialist being shot at because the message annoyed the hell out of the North Vietnamese. Former Sergeant Jerry C. Bowman landed in Vietnam on 3 October 1967 assigned to the 8th PSYOP Battalion. He supported the 173rd Airborne. He learned early that you have to be careful what kind of tapes you play at the enemy. His first battle was at Dak To in the Central Highlands. It was an area of triple canopy jungle and hills and it was infiltrated by the North Vietnamese army regulars. Discovering that the enemy lines were porous, a commander ordered Bowman and his interpreter to make their way to a village of Montagnards, Vietnams mountain people who were American allies. Bowman said: We set up our speakers on a hill and started playing tapes to the North Vietnamese. I asked my interpreter what we were saying in Vietnamese, and he told me a mother was telling a North Vietnamese soldier a baby crying on the tape was not his. It was a psychological game. She was basically telling the soldier that she had cheated on him while he was away at war. The ploy was not successful: It upset the enemy and they started mortaring the village and shooting rockets at us. It was like the Fourth of July. We had really pissed them off. I had two other tapes with me, one was the Mamas & the Papas and the other was the Four Tops from Motown. I started playing them and it was echoing all over the place. I guess the echoing kind of confused them and they stopped shooting. Perhaps the North Vietnamese simply enjoyed hearing the latest American hits rather than the annoying sounds of a crying baby. Are These Leaflets for Us or For Them? There are numerous cases of mistakes occurring during leaflet drops. We mention just a few here: In one operation where the mission was to drop propaganda banknotes in Vietnam from the back of an aircraft a problem arose. The operation did not go smoothly and the plane returned with thousands of the banknotes scattered all over the cargo area. The local airport security spotted the banknotes as the plane opened its cargo doors and immediately assumed that they had discovered a currency smuggling operation and placed the crew under arrest. It all got smoothed over of course, but better mechanical methods were clearly needed. A similar calamity is mentioned in Air America. William Wofford is on a mission to drop CIA-forged banknotes over Laos : They were just in paper bags and had these devices the kicker pulled which ignited a small charge and blew the bag apart. When we got back to Vientiane , we had to spend two hours cleaning the airplane because some of the bags burst before we could get them out and we had counterfeit money from one end of the airplane to the other. Not exactly the same thing, but sometimes you run across that leaflet mess on the ground. One veteran told me that sometimes out on patrol deep into enemy country he would run into a sight to behold: We'd find areas along the border with thick layers of leaflets both old and new. I was afraid they would make us come back after the war and police them up. That stuff is not biodegradable. It is still a foot deep in some places as far as I know. It is funny that this soldier talks about biodegradable leaflets. Retired Major Ed Rouse told me: I was with the 1st PSYOP Battalion in 1973. They were testing different types of paper. For instance one type made of a biodegradable material that was supposed to break down in a matter of a few days after getting wet from the morning dew. The idea was they would not have to waste time after a training exercise walking through the woods picking up leaflets. Another type could not be torn. Someone with a sense of humor came up wit