Document created: 25 March 04
Air University Review, March-April
1971
In reviewing United States military experience in Vietnam, one is impressed with the vastly increased importance that must be attached to the psychological aspects of that conflict. These aspects emerge as both challenges and opportunities. In many cases the challenge has not been fully met, nor have the opportunities been fully exploited.
There are many philosophies on the role of psychological operations (psyops) in military activities. They range from that expressed by Richard Crossman, Britain’s Deputy Director of Psychological Warfare during World War II: “There is no such thing as operational psychological warfare . . .military operations must be left to services with responsibilities for operations and psywarfare must be coordinated with other military or diplomatic activity. . .”1 to the more inclusive concepts that consider psyops as one of four major weapon systems available to a nation-state.2
Regardless of one’s basic concept, many agree that today psychological operations are, in effect, a great magnifying glass by which the total impact of all our military actions can be increased manyfold; and in some cases this is the only way our objectives can be achieved. The challenge, then, is for the schooled and trained psyops and political action experts to consciously seek out the psyops potential of all our military weapons—whether they be Army, Navy, Marine Corps, or Air Force—and skillfully apply their special talents to produce this magnification effect.
Accounts of psyops in the narrower context of psychological warfare (psywar) go back to ancient times. In more recent history, however it has played an important role in the development of our country from its beginning. For example, just after the Battle of Bunker Hill, George Washington dictated a message which carried a four-point contrast between the conditions of the British, who were holding Bunker Hill, and the Continental Forces entrenched on Prospect Hill close by. This leaflet described the British soldiers as “being paid three pence a day, fed rotten pork, suffering from scurvy, and living as slaves and beggars in want.” Meanwhile, the Americans were receiving $7 a month with fresh provisions aplenty, enjoying good health, and looking forward to a life of freedom, ease, affluence, and a good farm.”3 Loosely speaking, these leaflets were delivered via the air lanes—they were tied to rocks and thrown by the American to the British.
In 1846 during the Mexican wars, the United States was more the victim than implementer of psyops. Mexico launched an effective psywar campaign against U.S. forces across the Rio Grande, using strong religious appeals. General Zachary Taylor reports that on 6 April he lost thirty men who deserted to the Mexican government plus six more who were shot or drowned while crossing the river. These men were not deserters avoiding the war, for they formed the nucleus of the “San Patricia” unit which later fought against their former countrymen.4 (The United States does not employ political actions towards our own forces, but history indicates that General Taylor could have used a little help here.)
The timing, wording, and ancillary political statements surrounding the Emancipation Proclamation present a classic example of both a psyops and psywar* effort during the Civil War, the former oriented towards the European neutrals and the latter against the Confederacy.5 An excellent example of combining peacetime psyops activity with military action can be seen in President Theodore Roosevelt’s actions and associated public statements of 1907–1909 when he sent the U.S. fleet with most of its battleships around the world on a goodwill tour as a counter to Japan’s rumblings in the Far East following her victory over Russia in 1905.6 For this occasion, these battleships were all painted white as a symbol of peace; but the large, prominent Naval guns also contained an unmistakable psyops message.
*In the context of this article, psywar is considered as psychological actions against the enemy; psyops is considered the broader field and includes psychological actions targeted towards both enemy and neutral populations.
World War I
The science of psywarfare and psyops was used extensively by both sides during World War I. This period saw the first practical use of airplanes for leaflet delivery. Balloons were also used as leaflet vehicles, although the time-fuze balloon technique was first used in 1870-71 by the French defending Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. (Even earlier, kite delivery techniques were used in battle between warring Chinese cities in A.D. 549.)7 Over one million leaflets were dropped over the German lines during the month of September 1918, shortly before the Armistice. This effort resulted in as many as fifty surrenders per day in certain sections of the front.8 One ponders the impact of this psywar effort on the surrender of the German armies two months later, especially since these armies, though somewhat mauled by the Allied summer offensive of 1918, were still generally intact. Not a single Allied footprint had been made on German soil, nor for all practical purposes had a single Allied bomb or bullet struck her territory. From all indications, the Germans attributed greater achievements to the Allied psywar efforts than did the Allies themselves. In one of the Germans’ last propaganda efforts they stated: “The enemy has defeated us not as man against man in the field of battle or bayonet against bayonet. No, bad content in poor printing on poor paper has made our Army lame.9”
World War II
World War II and the events leading up to it saw a rather extensive marriage of psyops and air operations. Germany foresaw the impact of air power more clearly and a little earlier than other nations. As far back as 1927 she appointed a committee of psychologists to study the possibilities of air propaganda.10 The Nazis launched the Luftwaffe in 1935 and gave it both a military and political peacetime mission. The political or psychological mission involved such techniques as inviting leading airmen from all countries of the world to visit Germany to bear witness to the might of her emerging air force. Some prominent Americans became involved in controversies over this development. Additionally, Germany staged mass flights of several hundred bombers and fighters along England’s and Scotland’s coast in 1937. These propaganda efforts were augmented periodically by massive flyovers during Nazi military parades. These impressive displays of air power witnessed by the visiting observer were genuine enough. However, they were represented as only a part of the Luftwaffe’s capability when in reality they represented eighty to ninety percent of the entire German tactical air force.11 One wonders just what part this psyops effort played in the 1938 Munich conference and Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement.
During World War II, two uses of psywarfare in conjunction with air operations loom above all others. One occurred in the Pacific, the other in Europe. One contains a prime example of the magnifying effect of psywarfare on bombing operations; the other is an example of psywarfare, skillfully applied, coming to the assistance of the Air Corps people who found themselves almost totally frustrated.
Most people are generally familiar with the extensive fire bombing of Japan during the spring of 1945. Many are less aware of the equally extensive psywar campaign carried on concurrently. In fact, the psywar mission was included in the Joint Chiefs of Staff directive to the Twentieth Air Force not only to inflict physical destruction on Japan but also to “undermine the morale of the Japanese people to where their capacity is decisively defeated.”12 This psywarfare campaign, launched by General LeMay and later taken over and run by Hq CINCPAC, started with leaflets dropped by the bombers along with their bomb loads. Later the campaign became considerably more sophisticated, and leaflets were dropped on separate missions preceding the bombing raids by a day or two. These leaflets would name about ten towns in Japan and state that a number of them would be bombed and that the people should evacuate the area.13 We could afford to bomb only a few of the towns listed, but the uncertainty and fear of the unknown created a severe mental strain on all the cities involved. As reported by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) following the war, this psyoperation was most effective. At the height of the campaign, more than 8½ million Japanese were involved in evacuating their cities—many from cities never touched.14 This caused mass confusion and completely saturated the various municipal services. A measure of the effectiveness of this two-pronged attack can be found in the USSBS’s finding. As late as June 1944, only 10 percent of the people of Japan expressed concern that their government could not achieve a victory. With the commencement of the night firebomb attack in March 1945, this figure climbed to 19 percent. In June, after the initiation of our extensive psywar campaign and intensive bombing, the figure rose to 46 percent. In July it rose to 68 percent. All this occurred prior to the first atomic attack on 6 August.15
In Europe psywarfare played an equally important but distinctly different role. Here a psywarfare campaign enabled air power to achieve an objective that for a while appeared unattainable. This was in conjunction with Operation POINTBLANK, an operation intended to neutralize the combat potential of the Luftwaffe. The problem was to destroy sufficient German aircraft in the months prior to OVERLORD to assure Allied supremacy of the air over the beachhead. It was obvious that the German Air Force was closely husbanding its fighter resources in the spring of 1944. Intercepts against Allied bomber intrusion were down to less than 1800 in March of that year. Moreover, German fighter attacks were most conservative and launched only under the most favorable conditions. The psywarfare people from the Office of War Information were called upon to assist in initiating a campaign to force the Luftwaffe into launching more intensive attacks so that their aircraft could be destroyed by the Allied bomber formations, which at the same time adopted new tactics to provide maximum protection against fighters. The theme of this campaign was “Where is the Luftwaffe?” The subtlety with which it was done made it a classic. After initiation of the campaign, the number of fighter intercepts rose from 1800 in March to 2500 in April to 3200 in May. At the same time the Luftwaffe began to abandon its conservative tactics. In May alone, 1315 enemy aircraft were destroyed in battle. This figure represented 25 percent of the German first-line fighters. After his capture, German Lieutenant General Dittmar related an emotion-laden argument between Air Marshal Goering and Propaganda Deputy Goebbels in which Goering was goaded into relaxing his caution by some biting remarks from his own propagandists, who also began to ask “Where is the Luftwaffe?”16
Not all of our psywarfare efforts during World War II were as effectively handled as these two. The Strategic Bombing Survey found that the people of Munich were very bitter towards the Allies after the bombing raids of 1944. These raids were carried out in retaliation for the German buzz-bomb attacks on London, but this reason was never relayed to the people of Munich. They only received propaganda emanating from Berlin. The Strategic Bombing Survey people expressed the opinion that had the Allies employed an adequate psywarfare campaign in conjunction with the bombing raids they could have turned much of this resentment against the Nazi government.
All told, however, the military came out of World War II with a healthy respect for the contribution of psychological operations. General Eisenhower best expressed this sentiment when he wrote: “Without a doubt psychological warfare has proven its right to a place of dignity in our military arsenal.”17
Korean War
Between World War II and Korea an event occurred that, for all its other virtues, caused a recession in the progress made in the natural affinity between psychological operations and air operations. This was the establishment of an autonomous Air Force in September 1947. The new service was not steeped in a knowledge of the science of psychological operations, nor was this expertise transferred into the Air Force from the parent service, the Army. As a result, air operations lost connection with the science of psychological operations. For example, at the outbreak of the Korean War, the first war the USAF fought as a separate service, there were only two fully qualified USAF psywarfare officers in the Far East. One was in Headquarters Far East Command and the other in Headquarters Far East Air Forces; neither was in a tactical unit.18 Later a few more arrived, but some of these were siphoned off into intelligence jobs. Although some notable psywar operations were carried out, many more opportunities were missed, and some psywar miscues also occurred, as when the USAF was dropping surrender leaflets to the enemy while United Nations troops were hastily “redeploying south” from the Yalu.19 Early in the Korean War, the USAF experimented with loudspeakers in the door of C-47s. The idea was given up as too dangerous because of the circling tactics involved. A design was then drawn up for belly installation, and in May 1951 they started installing loudspeakers in the bottom of the planes.20 Although at the time this was considered to provide increased efficiency, the same installation proved totally inadequate when again tested in the early part of the Vietnam war.
The leaflet picture was not much brighter. Although about half a billion leaflets were dropped during the Korean War, postwar surveys indicated that more than one-third of the bundles or leaflet bombs failed to open.21 (Incidentally, over fifteen times that many were dropped in Vietnam during the single year 1968.22) Another revealing Korea statistic is that out of 220 different leaflets examined in one postwar analysis, only 22 alluded to or contained themes on air operations or bombardment.23 This was a far cry from the Japan psywar campaigns of World War II.
In February 1951 the Air Force, becoming painfully aware of its weakness in psyops and unconventional warfare, took a giant step in the right direction. It formed three aerial resupply and communications (ARC) wings.24 These units were equipped with aircraft that included long-range B-29 and SA-16 amphibians. Although their primary mission was the logistical support of friendly guerrilla units, their almost equally important secondary mission was psyops.25 Concurrently, the Air Force initiated a comprehensive program with Georgetown University for training officers in psychological operations. This university instruction was followed by a training period with either the Voice of America or an Army psywarfare unit.26 Specialization training was also given ARC wing personnel at a psywar and intelligence school at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho. Unfortunately, this excellent start was one of the first victims of post-Korean War economizing, the units being gradually disbanded and the talent diffused throughout the Air Force. The disbandment was abetted by the belief held by many USAF officers that all psyops missions belong to the Army.
Vietnam
In 1961, in response to President Kennedy’s order to all services to bolster their counterinsurgency capability, the USAF established the 4400th Combat Crew Training Squadron. Known as Jungle Jim, it later became the 1st Air Commando Squadron and finally evolved into the present Special Operations Air Force. Its original mission gave high priority to the conduct of psychological operations. Because of scarcity of experience in psyops, the Jungle Jim personnel turned to the US Army Special Warfare Center for some accelerated instruction in the subject. On 15 November 1961 they deployed to South Vietnam. On 4 December they flew our first psyops mission in C-47s equipped with belly-mounted loudspeakers, following the idea conceived during the Korean War. This mistake cost us about two years in redesign time. The systems proved to be totally unfeasible because of the Doppler effect. Like the train blowing its whistle as it comes down the track, the voice from the air kept changing pitch as the aircraft approached and departed, leaving no more than two or three intelligible words out of a complete sentence. Of course with the speakers protruding down and directly to the rear of the aircraft, circling techniques were out of the question. So back to the drawing board.
In 1964 the Air Force, still searching for its legitimate and complete requirement in the psyops area, contracted with the Data Dynamics Corporation to survey just what was needed. Although the report identified many areas for USAF concentration and application, implementation of these recommendations has been slow and hesitant. For example, establishment of a USAF psyops school was recommended, but only one or possibly two classes were conducted. One reason might be the belief of some in the Air Force that we should merely be concerned with flying aircraft and that someone else will assure that the total psychological impact inherent in the tactical employment of aircraft will be properly calculated. Therefore, if the psychological aspects of air power or air operations are to be maximized, most of the impetus, at least at present, must come from graduates of non-USAF psyops schools. Many of these officers (members of all services) will find themselves on joint staffs where they will have an opportunity to parlay their special talents by applying them to the extensive potential of air power. There is room for questioning whether this has always been adequately done in South Vietnam (SVN).
Besides the early SVN problems already mentioned, many people more recently have expressed disappointment at the failure of the limited bombing of North Vietnam (SVN) to completely disintegrate the morale of the North Vietnamese. Perhaps an indication of what we should have expected can be found by again reviewing the findings of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey. In brief, it found that although the demoralizing effect of the bombing of Germany was almost complete, there were certain categories of people who retained an exceptionally high degree of resistance to morale erosion.27 They can be categorized in three groups (1) highly disciplined Nazi party members, (2) firm converts to the philosophy of Nazism whether or not a party member, and (3) those who were convinced in their own minds that their government was doing everything possible to protect them from the bombing raids. Another point made by the Survey was that the psywarfare effect (not necessarily the total military effect) can reach a saturation point under prolonged and incessant bombing. This is brought about by the fact that after a period of time most of the vulnerable and weaker elements of a society flee from the cities and only the strong-willed and dedicated elements remain. This, of course, makes the psywar warrior’s job much more difficult, for among other things it reduces the contagious effect of demoralization. A third significant finding of the USSBS was that a government can do much to prepare its citizens psychologically for nonatomic air attacks.28
Applying these lessons to the North Vietnamese campaign is rather provocative. We know, for example, that the North Vietnamese government was given ample time and warning by the slowly escalating nature of the U.S. air attacks, and did, in fact, move great numbers of people into the countryside before intense raids commenced. They also had ample time to prepare those remaining psychologically. Additionally, we expended a considerable amount of rhetoric describing the intense aircraft defense system employed in SVN. Was this not in effect telling the people of North Vietnam just how well their government was trying to protect them? Perhaps instead we should have launched a psychological campaign emphasizing that their defense was unable to halt our penetrations, that no single authorized target was spared, and that their government was not doing all it could to defend its people. For example, “Where was North Vietnam’s air force?”
Many other parallels or reciprocals can be drawn between psyops past and present. The purpose of this article is to direct attention to the facts that in new and changing situations military planners must constantly re-evaluate their techniques and that in so doing they should not ignore the lessons of history. If they apply, we should use them. If they do not, we should disregard them. But in either event, we should consciously examine them.
A new challenge facing psychological operations officers concerns the nature of today’s conflicts. Before the advent of nuclear weapons, most wars involving major powers were fought to a conclusion: victory for one side, defeat for the other. Deficiencies and omissions that may have occurred in conducting the psychological aspects of those wars were to a great extent obscured by the euphoria surrounding the final and total surrender of the enemy. Today’s conflicts are not fought to such black-and-white resolutions. Indeed, in today’s wars a military operation may be judged a success or failure not by its tactical accomplishments but by the effectiveness of the psywarfare and military/political actions that accompany it. Put more bluntly, many victories are victories because one side convinces the other, or neutrals, that this is so.
This situation places psywar in an entirely new context and demands a greater awareness of both the favorable and unfavorable psychological impact of every military action, even, for example, the selection of operational nicknames. Richard H. S. Crossman, the British authority, points out, “The central substance of effective propaganda is hard, correct information . . . and it is necessary to make truth sound believable to the enemy.”29 Therefore, while such a name as “Operation Total Victory” (for the U.S. sweep into Cambodia) may have a euphemistic sound when used by friendly troops, it may provide grist for the enemy propaganda mill if the operation does not achieve the goal the nickname portends. This is not the first occasion when the choice of a nickname has been questioned from a psychological warfare viewpoint. In February 1951 the Eighth Army in Korea launched “Operation Killer,” a nickname obviously in conflict with the accompanying psywar effort to persuade the Chinese troops to surrender. Similarly, the Fifth Air Force in Korea launched a railroad interdiction campaign as “Operation Strangle,” a name that was counterproductive in that those who did not understand the real objective of interdiction were given a vehicle for proclaiming its failure.30
Finally, the psyops officer is challenged to conduct his programs and develop his themes in a manner to avoid their neutralization by information emanating from other sources. According to Sir Stewart Campbell, a British psywar expert, “There must be no conflicting arguments not only between outputs from the same sources but also those of different sources.”31 Every conflict fought since the Crimean War (when the invention of the telegraph first allowed war correspondents to communicate on a daily basis with their home editors) has been subject to criticism from the press as well as the loyal opposition within the govemment.32 In wars where the vital interest of the United States is obvious, such as World Wars I and II, criticism from these sources has been minimal. In conflicts where our vital interest has been more obscured (albeit just as legitimate), the criticism can he expected to be more vocal and persistent. The psyops officer’s challenge is to avoid the vitiating effects of this criticism to the extent possible and, above all, to resist the temptation to use the psyops arena to engage the press in any semblance of a military/political psyops argument. Steps in this direction would include limiting psyops actions as much as possible to military objectives and continually soliciting the cooperation of the press in the conduct of these efforts. This latter suggestion lends itself more to psyops activities than to conventional military actions, for the essence of psychological warfare is subtlety and truth, not secrecy or deception.
If this discourse appears somewhat critical of past Air Force participation in psywar operations, it is not intended to detract from the dedication of aircrews performing these missions. In fact the first USAF crew lost to presumed enemy ground fire in South Vietnam during the early phases of the current conflict was on a psyops mission. This occurred on 11 February 1962 (a Ranch Hand C-123 was lost nine days earlier but on a crew familiarization mission). On 10 February a Farm Gate C-47 carrying USAF and USA instructors, together with Vietnamese personnel, distributed leaflets bearing Tet greetings from RVN President Diem to numerous villages between Da Nang and Saigon. Upon landing at Tan Son Nhut, the aircraft was discovered to have picked up several bullet holes. The program called for a return flight the following day over the same villages to deliver another Tet message, this time from President Kennedy. The crew, not knowing where the ground fire was picked up but anxious to complete the two-phase psyops project, elected to fly the return mission. It was on this flight that the aircraft was lost north of Da Lat, causing the death of its joint (USAF-USA) and combined (U.S.-Vietnamese) crew.
Despite its initial shortcomings, the air psyops campaign has proved productive. For example, over ninety percent of the Chieu Hoi defectors first learned of that program from air-dispersed leaflets.33 More revealing are the reactions of the Communist world to our psyops efforts. One can easily detect a “whistling in the dark” attitude in an article contained in the World Marxist Review in which the author says “. . .moreover [s]cattering leaflets urging the population to turn against their government in areas that were the cradle of the Vietnamese revolution is one of the stupidest blunders the ‘psychological war’ experts ever made.”34 One wonders just what part this “blunder” played in causing North Vietnam to issue its infamous decrees “on the punishment of Counterrevolutionary Crimes” a few years later. These decrees list fifteen specific crimes that needed special attention and punishment, including treason, plotting to overthrow the people’s democratic power, espionage, defecting to the enemy, undermining the people’s solidarity, disseminating counterrevolutionary propaganda, and others. 35 The necessity of issuing these strongly antipsywar decrees in the “cradle of the Vietnamese revolution” is perhaps our best evidence that our air war and psywar campaigns were having a telling effect against North Vietnam. The vastly increased importance of psychological warfare, especially in a restricted Vietnam-type war environment, is illuminated in the remarks of General Van Tien Dung, chief of staff of the North Vietnamese army, when he repeated an often emphasized theme that it is “the people, not the weapons, who form the backbone of [North Vietnam’s] air defense.”36 We should also remember that it is the people, not the weapons, who are targeted through psychological warfare.
Aerospace Studies Institute
This article was adapted from an address given to the graduation classes of the US Army Psychological Operations Unit Officer Course and the Political Warfare Advisor Course, US Army Institute for Military Assistance, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, 25 June 1970. The author wishes to express his appreciation to Dr. Robert F. Futrell for his assistance in obtaining source material and for his critical review.
Notes
1. From an address by Richard H. S. Crossman to the British Royal United Services Institute, quoted by William E. Dougherty, “The Creed of a Modern Propagandist,” in William E. Dougherty and Morris Janowitz, A Psychological Warfare Casebook (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956), p. 38.
2. Precis of Courses October 1969, US Army Military Assistance, Fort Bragg, N.C.
3. Dougherty and Janowitz, p. 60.
4. Marshall Andrews, “Psychological Warfare in the Mexican War,” in Dougherty and Janowitz, p. 72.
5. Morris Janowitz, “The Emancipation Proclamation as an Instrument of Psychological Warfare,” in Dougherty and Janowitz, p. 73.
6. Penelope Babcock, “The World Cruise of the US Navy 1907-1909,” Dougherty and Janowitz, p. 84.
7. John C. W. Field, Aerial Propaganda Leaflets (Francis J. Field, Ltd., Kent, England, n.d.), p. 14.
8.George G. Bruntz, “Allied Propaganda and the Collapse of German Morale in 1918,” in Dougherty and Janowitz, p. 103.
9. Ibid., p. 101.
10. H. J. A. Wilson, “The Luftwaffe as a Political Instrument,” Eugene M. Emme, ed., The Impact of Airpower (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1959), p. 58.
11. Ibid.
12. Bernard Peters, Major, USAF, “The USAF and Psychological Warfare,” Air University Quarterly Review, II, 4 (Spring 1949), 5.
13. William E. Dougherty, “Bomb Warning to Friendly and Enemy Civilian Targets,” in Dougherty and Janowitz, p. 359.
14. Peters, p. 9.
15. A Review of Past and Present Criticisms of Military Airpower, DCS/P&O, Hq USAF, June 1967, pp. 13-15.
16. Wallace Carroll, “Where Is the Luftwaffe?” in Dougherty and Janowitz, p. 373, extracted from Carroll’s Persuade or Perish (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1948), pp. 215-31.
17. James H. Straubel, How Airpower Can Fight the Psycho War,” Air Force, February 1952, pp. 22-25.
18. Ibid.
19. Interview with Lieutenant Colonel Edward R. McLean, former Psyofficer, Far East Forces, by Dr. R. F. Futrell, February 1954.
20.W. Phillips Davison, “Air Force Psychological Warfare in Korea,” Air University Quarterly Review, IV, 4 (Summer 1951), p. 48.
21. Ibid., pp. 45-46.
22. Report of Army Concept Team in Vietnam (ACTIV), Department of the Army Active Project No. ACG 47F PH-10, 7 June 1969.
23. Straubel, p. 10.
24. “Air Force Training Program in Psychological Warfare,” Air University Quarterly Review, V, 1 (Winter 1951-52), 94. (Hereafter called “Training Program.”)
25. Straubel, p. 11.
26. “Training Program,’’ p. 95.
27. Peters, p. 15.
28. Ibid.
29. Dougherty, “The Creed of a Modern Propagandist,” in Dougherty and Janowitz, p. 38.
30. Dr. Robert F. Futrell, The United States Air Force in Korea, 1950-1953 (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1961), p. 436.
31. Field, p. 10.
32. Timothy Gowing, Sergeant Major, Voice from the Ranks (London: The Folio Society, 1954), p. xii.
33. Press Release, Director of Information, Hq Seventh Air Force, 2 January 1967.
34. Michael Vincent, “Vietnam Fights Back,” World Marxist Review, VIII, 8 (August 1965).
35. Vietnam: Documents and Research Notes, U.S. Mission, Saigon, 1968, pp. 1-2.
36. “China and US Far East Policy, l945-1967,” Congressional Quarterly Background (Washington Quarterly Service, 1967), p. 220j.
Colonel Robert L. Gleason (B.S., Troy State University), a special warfare operations officer, is on the Corona Harvest staff, Aerospace Studies Institute, Air University. A graduate and former faculty member of Air War College, he was a part of the original Jungle Jim organization and remained in special warfare operations, including tours in Vietnam and Latin America. Colonel Gleason was assigned to the Air Staff 1965-68, when he became Deputy Chief, MACSOG, Vietnam.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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