The Ho Chi Minh Trail Sensor War: What Both Sides Wrote

The Ho Chi Minh Trail sensor war, 1966 to 1972: what Robert McNamara told President Johnson about his anti-infiltration system, and what Vietnamese soldiers on the trail wrote about the sensors they called tropical trees. Every figure comes from declassified memos in Foreign Relations of the United States, the Air Force history The War Against Trucks, a 1971 Senate subcommittee report, and published Vietnamese accounts. You will hear McNamara's September 1967 estimate of about $780 million for two years, and his line "We do not expect to stop infiltration cold." You will see how the sensors dropped over Laos sent their signals to the Infiltration Surveillance Center at Nakhon Phanom, and why Air Force Secretary Harold Brown warned in December 1968 about double-counting of trucks. The Vietnamese passages come from Nhan Dan (2009), including the account of Maj. Gen. Nguyen Ba Tong of Group 559, and from Phap Luat TP.HCM (2009). They are official Vietnamese accounts, translated from Vietnamese for this video, and I give them as their authors' accounts. Where the price tags and the truck counts differ, I give each one and say who made it. CHAPTERS 0:00 McNamara's Price Tag, 1967 1:12 How This Channel Checks 2:22 The Short Answer 3:56 Where the Idea Started 8:13 What McNamara Expected 10:21 Sensors, Relay Planes, Khe Sanh 13:11 What the Other Side Wrote 16:01 How the Americans Graded Themselves 19:03 The Truck Count Argument 20:49 The Senate Report and 1972 SOURCES FRUS 1964-68, Vol. V, doc. 313, McNamara to President Johnson, Sept. 11, 1967 -- https://history.state.gov/historicald... FRUS 1964-68, Vol. IV, doc. 233, McNamara order, Sept. 15, 1966, with concept -- https://history.state.gov/historicald... FRUS 1964-68, Vol. IV, doc. 307, McNamara to President Johnson, Nov. 14, 1966 -- https://history.state.gov/historicald... FRUS 1964-68, Vol. XXVIII, doc. 399, Harold Brown memo, Dec. 11, 1968 -- https://history.state.gov/historicald... FRUS 1969-76, Vol. VIII, doc. 1, Abrams message, Jan. 20, 1972 -- https://history.state.gov/historicald... Bernard C. Nalty, The War Against Trucks (U.S. Air Force, 2005; DTIC ADA476352) -- https://archive.org/download/DTIC_ADA... Senate Armed Services Committee, Investigation into Electronic Battlefield Program (1971) -- https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/C... FRUS 1964-68, Vol. XXVIII, Abbreviations and Terms (Muscle Shoals, Igloo White) -- https://history.state.gov/historicald... Also cited: FRUS 1964-68, Vol. XXVIII, doc. 394, Northeast Monsoon Plan, Nov. 20, 1968 -- https://history.state.gov/historicald... FRUS 1964-68, Vol. V, doc. 121, State Dept. memo, March 27, 1967, and editors' notes -- https://history.state.gov/historicald... Vietnamese sources (official accounts, translated for this video): Nhan Dan, account of Maj. Gen. Nguyen Ba Tong, May 18, 2009 -- https://nhandan.vn/chuyen-ve-cay-nhie... Phap Luat TP.HCM, Dec. 2009 (republished on tuoitre.vn, Jan. 10, 2010) -- https://tuoitre.vn/plo/bo-doi-truong-... PHOTO CREDITS CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons: Archives Branch, USMC History Division; USMC Archives; wilford peloquin CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons: qwesy qwesy CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons: Chris Light ARCHIVE MATERIALS Public domain: U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, National Archives, LBJ Presidential Library, CIA (via Wikimedia Commons). Photos not taken at the moment described carry their own date and place on screen. Footage: U.S. National Archives / archive.org -- Bugging the Battlefield (DoD, NARA 330-DVIC-65037); Press Conference - Secretary McNamara and Mr. Vance (1967, NARA 111-LC-53653) -- it shows McNamara in 1967 at a conference on another subject, not the sensor system. AI illustrates scenes where no photograph exists and never draws a real person: named people appear only in real photographs; George Kistiakowsky and Nguyen Ba Tong, with no public-domain photograph found, are identified by on-screen source cards. MUSIC "Unseen Horrors", "Night Vigil", "Ossuary 4 - Animate", "Clean Soul", "Lost Frontier", "Ossuary 1 - A Beginning", "Dark Times", "Deliberate Thought", "Anguish", "Aftermath" -- Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Sound effects: freesound.org (CC0) and synthesized for this film. Company Clerk: both sides, on the record. Corrections are pinned in the comments. If you served, tell me your unit and the year. #VietnamWar #HoChiMinhTrail #VietnamVeterans #History