South Viet Nam: Psywar

Tucked away in their hammocks beneath the dripping rain-forest canopy, the Viet Cong guerrillas could hardly believe their ears. Out of the night sky came an ominous, warbling whine, like bagpipes punctuated with cymbals. It was Buddhist funeral music—a dissonant dirge cascading from the darkness. Then a snatch of dialogue between a mother and child: “Mother, where’s Daddy?” “Don’t ask me questions. I’m very worried about him.” “But I miss Daddy very much. Why is he gone so long?” Then the music and voices faded slowly into the distance, and the platoon settled back to a restless sleep.

It was, of course, only one of the many sights and sounds that the Viet Cong are treated to every day, courtesy of JUSPAO—the Joint United States Public Affairs Office, which handles psychological warfare in South Viet Nam. Funeral dirges howl nightly over V.C. redoubts from the loud speakers of JUSPAO planes, along with the tape-recorded cries of little children, and weird, electronic cacophonies intended to raise terrifying images of forest demons among the superstitious terrorists. During daylight hours, JUSPAO’S eight aircraft dump tons of leaflets on the enemy—3,500,000 a week, ranging from safe-conduct passes to maps showing the best way out of Red territory. Says one of JUSPAO’S “psywar” adepts: “We’re the world’s worst litterbugs.”

Fake Bonds & Palm Readers. Led by U.S. Information Chief Barry (“Zorro”) Zorthian, 45, the 450 men of JUSPAO this year will spend $10 million on new tricks and techniques—three times as much money as was spent on psywar a year ago. The mark of Zorro was evident last week in the village of Phung Hiep, a district capital in the Mekong Delta where a South Vietnamese “rural spirit” drama troupe was busy maligning Red China and Ho Chi Minh. In between propaganda skits, the troupe sang classical Vietnamese ballads, and played boogie-woogie.

Begged, borrowed and sometimes stolen outright from the Communists, the psywar ploys cut in many directions. When the Viet Cong stopped paying in cash for staples and supplies last summer, and began issuing 1,000-piaster bonds redeemable after the V.C. victory, a U.S. psywar adviser in Camau ordered up 20,000 counterfeit bonds to be dropped in the territory. In Kien Hoa province, a South Vietnamese captain thought up a unique counter to the groups of women and old men that the Viet Cong were sending into town to protest the war. He ordered all local palm readers to advise their clients to avoid large crowds. Protests quickly dwindled.

Tigers & Sheepishness. Psywar works on friend and foe alike. During a tough battle in the Mekong Delta recently, local girls were sent aloft at night to warn the V.C. that they were “facing a unit that never loses, the 7th Division.” Recalls an American psywar expert: “It may not have worried the guerrillas, but it turned the South Vietnamese troops into tigers.”

At least a quarter of the 11,600 Viet Cong who have defected under the Chieu Hoi (“Open Arms”) amnesty program admit to having been moved by psywar appeals. Indeed, one young Red sheepishly admitted that he had quit the Viet Cong because he was sick of his job: policing the camp for propaganda leaflets. The psywarriors make good use of the Viet Cong who “rally” to the government side. Some ex-V.C. are used to help indoctrinate South Vietnamese popular forces; others are organized into 36-man “armed propaganda” teams that enter Viet Cong territory to tell the people why they defected. Since most of the former V.C. have had years of agitprop training, they make excellent salesmen for the government pitch.

Scattered here and there are biet kich (strike forces) composed of Viet Cong defectors. Clad in motley uniforms or black pajamas, and carrying a wide array of weapons (favorite status symbol: a Swedish “K” rifle), the defectors act as counterguerrillas. Last week a team of 40 sauntered out of their camp in the Mekong Delta, casually took up ambush positions in the nearby jungle. After hours of silent waiting, a Viet Cong patrol of about 50 men appeared. The former Reds greeted them with a withering burst of rifle fire. The V.C. fled, leaving 15 dead. As one proud psywarrior put it: “This team has done more to kill V.C. than a whole regiment.”