again.
Vietnam was a hard country to threaten. We already had a trade embargo against them and they were pretty poor to begin with. It was difficult to take something away from someone who didn’t have anything to begin with.
They told us to blow off when we wanted to send in inspectors. It was not so much that we wanted to send in inspectors. We’d done that before. We wanted the inspectors to have unlimited access to the country and their own government records.
They said no way.
That night there was the speech. It must have gotten Vietnam’s attention.
The Vietnamese government capitulated the week after my two kids went back to school. United Nations inspectors were allowed into the country.
Major Timothy Sullivan
United States Air Force Combat Controller
Hanoi was a relatively modern city by Asian standards. It was the capital of the Communist government and center of business for Vietnam. Downtown was a series of office buildings and city parks. Dominating all other structures was the Ho Chi Minh tomb. It was a concrete monolith in the center of the city. The lights were on there day or night. The building supposedly had three backup generators.
I got off the plane with the rest of the American delegation wearing a suit and tie. We were greeted by representatives of the Vietnamese government as soon as our feet hit the ground. I was there officially as one of five military advisors to the secretary of state. In my briefcase I carried a GPS transmitter/receiver.
For their part the Communists were being fairly accommodating. This was before the shooting started though so I could not tell you what their state of mind was. I don’t think they saw us as a threat yet, just an inconvenience. We weren’t the first official US group to come to Vietnam looking for the lost. Certainly public outcry in the states was at a frenzied height that had never been seen before. There was more clamor for action than there had been during the entire all of V1. Still the Vietnamese had being the winners on their side. They felt safe. At least they felt like America would not go down the same road twice. Not a road that had been built on blood.
I had one mission and one mission only on the trip. When we got to the hotel I got it done.
The hotel had a small courtyard. I took my briefcase with me as I went for a stroll. When I found a bench I sat down. I opened the briefcase, took a GPS reading and then put the machine back into the case.
The rest of the visit was uneventful. We were taken out to prearranged inspection sites to look at empty camps and prisons.
The GPS receiver stayed in my briefcase for the rest of the trip and the briefcase never left my possession. I took it with me to every meal, every meeting and even the toilet. When I got back to the states I took the GPS receiver out again and I handed it over to an intelligence agency in Langley. From that one reading, the exact coordinates of that courtyard were determined by aerial photography and cross checked to my GPS reading. Then that position served as the origin of a coordinate system used to determine targets all over Hanoi and the entire country of Vietnam.
When the plane departed for home I remember watching the city from my window. It was lit up at night and you could mistake Hanoi for any midsized city in the states. The next time I saw it would be after and it would be in ruins.
BUILD UP
Lieutenant Colonel Paul Adams
State Department
Washington D.C.
America’s first move was to hurt the Vietnamese economically. U.S. seapower moved into the Gulf of Tonkin to deny Vietnam access to the resources he needed to maintain their own forces. The United Nations imposed an embargo, which was enforced by an international force of destroyers and frigates in the Gulf of Tonkin. They blocked arms
Vietnam was a hard country to threaten. We already had a trade embargo against them and they were pretty poor to begin with. It was difficult to take something away from someone who didn’t have anything to begin with.
They told us to blow off when we wanted to send in inspectors. It was not so much that we wanted to send in inspectors. We’d done that before. We wanted the inspectors to have unlimited access to the country and their own government records.
They said no way.
That night there was the speech. It must have gotten Vietnam’s attention.
The Vietnamese government capitulated the week after my two kids went back to school. United Nations inspectors were allowed into the country.
Major Timothy Sullivan
United States Air Force Combat Controller
Hanoi was a relatively modern city by Asian standards. It was the capital of the Communist government and center of business for Vietnam. Downtown was a series of office buildings and city parks. Dominating all other structures was the Ho Chi Minh tomb. It was a concrete monolith in the center of the city. The lights were on there day or night. The building supposedly had three backup generators.
I got off the plane with the rest of the American delegation wearing a suit and tie. We were greeted by representatives of the Vietnamese government as soon as our feet hit the ground. I was there officially as one of five military advisors to the secretary of state. In my briefcase I carried a GPS transmitter/receiver.
For their part the Communists were being fairly accommodating. This was before the shooting started though so I could not tell you what their state of mind was. I don’t think they saw us as a threat yet, just an inconvenience. We weren’t the first official US group to come to Vietnam looking for the lost. Certainly public outcry in the states was at a frenzied height that had never been seen before. There was more clamor for action than there had been during the entire all of V1. Still the Vietnamese had being the winners on their side. They felt safe. At least they felt like America would not go down the same road twice. Not a road that had been built on blood.
I had one mission and one mission only on the trip. When we got to the hotel I got it done.
The hotel had a small courtyard. I took my briefcase with me as I went for a stroll. When I found a bench I sat down. I opened the briefcase, took a GPS reading and then put the machine back into the case.
The rest of the visit was uneventful. We were taken out to prearranged inspection sites to look at empty camps and prisons.
The GPS receiver stayed in my briefcase for the rest of the trip and the briefcase never left my possession. I took it with me to every meal, every meeting and even the toilet. When I got back to the states I took the GPS receiver out again and I handed it over to an intelligence agency in Langley. From that one reading, the exact coordinates of that courtyard were determined by aerial photography and cross checked to my GPS reading. Then that position served as the origin of a coordinate system used to determine targets all over Hanoi and the entire country of Vietnam.
When the plane departed for home I remember watching the city from my window. It was lit up at night and you could mistake Hanoi for any midsized city in the states. The next time I saw it would be after and it would be in ruins.
BUILD UP
Lieutenant Colonel Paul Adams
State Department
Washington D.C.
America’s first move was to hurt the Vietnamese economically. U.S. seapower moved into the Gulf of Tonkin to deny Vietnam access to the resources he needed to maintain their own forces. The United Nations imposed an embargo, which was enforced by an international force of destroyers and frigates in the Gulf of Tonkin. They blocked arms