Documents / FOIA release

Intelligence and Security Operations of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Ministry of National Defense

Central Intelligence Agency · 1979-12-01 · 120 pages · text from the file's own layer

This is a December 1979 Central Intelligence Agency study published by the Directorate of Operations Counterintelligence Staff. It describes the Enemy Proselytizing Department (Cuc Dich Van) of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Ministry of National Defense. The study traces the department's origins from 1941 through the French and Vietnam wars. It covers psychological warfare, fifth column penetration of ARVN and allied forces, the handling of US and allied prisoners of war, and the postwar reeducation of former ARVN personnel. It contains no material on UFOs.

  • p. 47 …In return, the SVNLA promised not to attack the units if they complied with the agreed…
  • p. 50 …These penetrations hampered the arrest of military proselytizing agents by providing them with advance warnings of…
  • p. 64 …Each category was given a three-day period, fixed in advance by the authorities, to report…
  • p. 90 …the MND Intermediate-Advanced Political School in Hanoi. Upon graduation, he was promoted to the rank…
.
March 1961-1975. Born about 1912 in Quang Ngai Province, Central
Vietnam, Luong joined the Indochinese Communist Party's Nghe
Tinh X0-Viet Movement in 1930. Between 1930 and 1945, he was
imprisoned several times by the French for revolutionary activities. In
March 1945, he and senior Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) cadre
Pham Kiet organized a successful revolt and break out from the
French Ba To District Prison in Quang Ngai Province. Between 1945
and 1953, he gained fame as the political officer of the PAVN
Interregion 5 Command Group in Central Vietnam. In January 1954,
he was cited as a deputy director of the MND General Political
Department, and was a member of the Central Agrarian Reform
Committee. In lune 1955, he led a three-man MND General Political
Department delegation which was assigned command over the Pathet
Lao Armed Forces. Luong was promoted to the rank of major general
in 1958. Following the Third National Party Congress in September
1960, he was appointed a full Lao Dong Party Central Committee
member and a member of the MND Central Military Party Affairs
Committee. In late 1960, he was sent to South Vietnam under the
alias Tran Nam Trung. At Han0i’s Central Office for South Vietnam
(COSVN), Luong became in March 1961 a Nam Bo (COSVN)
Current Affairs Committee (CAC) member, secretary of its military
affairs committee, and the first political officer of PAVN’s South
Vietnamese Liberation Army (SVNLA). He was concurrently a vice
chairman of Hanoi's National Liberation Front of South Vietnam
(NLFSVN) Secretariat and head of its military affairs commission. He
was the Lao Dong Party’s representative to the NLFSVN Central
Committee. After the People’s Revolutionary Party (PRP) was
established in December 1961 as the Lao Dong Party’s southern party
branch in South Vietnam, Luong became the PRP secretary-general,
and the PRP's representative to the NLFSVN Central Committee. In
April 1964, he relinquished his positions as the SVNLA political
officer and secretary of the COSVN Military Affairs Committee to
Senior General Nguyen Chi Thanh, who replaced Major General Tran
Van Quang as the SVNLA Commander. Following the establishment
of Hanoi's Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRC) of South
Vietnam in April 1969, Luong became the PRC Minister of National
Defense, a paper organization front for Hanoi’s SVNLA. Between
June 1961 and 1975, Luong in his position as a COSVN CAC member
was the direct supervisor of the COSVN Civil Health, Civilian
Proselytizing, Finance-Economics, and Military Proselytizing Sec-
tions. At an unknown date, he was promoted to lieutenant general.
After the Communist takeover of South Vietnam on 80 April 1975, he
was listed as a vice chairman of the Council for National
Reconciliation and Concord and a member of the National Electoral
Commission of South Vietnam. In April 1976, he was elected a
National Assemblyman. In July 1976, he.was appointed chairman of
the SRV Council of Minister's State Inspection Commission.
Le Mai alias Tu Kien, Chief, Saigon City/Region 4 Party Committee
MPS, August 1968 to 1975. Born in 1923/1928 in Sadec, South
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 120 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.