During the years of 1968-1975, during my aah tenure in Vietnam, I had processed and interrogated approximately four thousand, that is personnel...Tell you about that later...During the time that I was...During the time that I was in Vietnam in Bien Hoa, 1968-1975, I'd processed and interrogated or debriefed approximately four thousand Viet Cong – ex-Viet Cong and ex-North Vietnamese regular soldiers and during this we did this in such a complex manner as to learn the entire structure of the Viet Cong Communist party, commonly called the People's Revolutionary Party, in South Vietnam, in Military Region 3.

We learned who they are, where they are, how they followed their instructions and where their instructions came from and aah we became experts. Our expertise became outstanding. This was a a long and tedious project but aah from the personnel in my office approximately 55 people working for me in Bien Hoa we learned about the Viet Cong – a little late, you might say, in 1968, after the war had been on for many years.

Tell us now what the essentials of of uhm of their motivation or what were they fighting for?

The Viet Cong, as I learned – I was quite surprised to learn that they basically were fighting for not a Communist philosophy, but for land reform. They wanted land. They wanted a pad to grow some rice. They did not want absentee landowners which they had. They were not in support of their government – that is the Saigon government, no matter – whoever was the president. They did not support that in any... generally speaking in any manner because they are a village structure – they believe in their village – they believe in their village secretary, and their village council, and that is their home, that is their, aaah that's the only thing that they're interested in, now the the Communist of course, took advantage of this and aah caused many in many cases aaah the villagers and the peasants to be alienated from the government. This was their tool but...

What other abuses were there that they felt strongly about?

Generally speaking, aah you have to go back in history, but also from what I saw, was the village, the government of Vietnam, village secretaries, the _____ and militia, the regional forces, popular forces, were of course over taxing the the peasants. They were taking land from the peasants; soldiers were stealing the chickens and the ducks, and that's a very valuable item. Aah, this was a common occurrence throughout Military Region 3. And I can speak for aah a twelve provinces that I was constantly in in in the neighboring Saigon area. This is aah Military Region 3. I've talked to many people at all levels but primarily the four thousand Viet Cong. That's where I learned their motivation. And the Viet Cong morally...

Ok, go ahead... Start that again, the Viet Cong were...

The Viet Cong cadre were, the political officers of course were Communist indoctrinated and trained. They were in minority and in control. But the Viet Cong aah I had I would say a 100 personal friends of ex Viet Cong and I would judge most of them to be morally and ethically superior to the average citizen I met in the South Vietnam, who were involved in corruption, in some manner in bars, in mili—in civilian police were establishing checkpoints.

The checkpoints would shake down the people who would travel from one area to the other, aah. There was the constant and continuous corruption by the gov—the officials of the government of Vietnam at all levels. There were a few, if you want to call them good guys, there were a few honest men and I could name those and discuss those but there's no need for that who did sincere fine jobs – and some of the people in the army were sincerely good soldiers – but the government of Vietnam, maybe because of aah a hundred years of or eighty years of French colonialism had degenerated to the point where they're just not good citizens. Aah, the four thousand Viet Cong...

Stop there.

...in terms of corruption and that impede the people and came in their lives. Wait for me to give you the little hand...

When one thinks of of corruption in in South Vietnam, it's difficult to to visualize what happens to the average citizen in Vietnam but it happened to me on two occasions. Aah, I registered aah a motor bike – legally tried to register a motor bike to get my local license. And the government official accidentally because he knew he would not do this to a foreigner but accidentally pulled out the drawer where I was supposed to drop the money and I of course refused. Another time I was stopped by a policeman and aah on the way to Saigon and aah we always just simply had to pay them off. But this happened at all the checkpoints.

When Vietnamese people would travel from one province to the other to see relatives or do conduct business, or any legitimate reason, on may occasions they'd be stopped by a national policeman and the national policeman would say well I don't think your ID card is legitimate. And aah this is the signal that the individual then had to pay the policeman to travel. Now, little things like this – this is only one example but others – if you wanted to register a birth certificate in the family book in a hamlet you'd pay extra money than a normal tax to register a document. Now Vietnamese people will even today probably deny many of this kinds of things that occurred in Vietnam but this was so wide spread. I'd like to cite another example.

A soldier about to be drafted – if he had three hundred thousand piestras he could buy himself a draft exempt medically disformed arm or wrist or finger and hand. This was done thousands of times in Vietnam and I don't have first hand information of specific cases but I do know several instances where employees of mine took advantage of this. One man gave up his entire salary in the regional forces to his commander in order to work in my office, as a draft evader. And this was the kind of thing that happened. It was common, the Vietnamese know it, the Americans knew it and the Americans condoned it and said whereas the effect, well, we can't stop it. But no one really gave it the effort to stop. The aah corruption administratively affected every South Vietnamese citizen, whether he be Viet Cong or government of Vietnam's citizen.

How did the the VC exploit that?

Well, when the Viet Cong would recruit, and we had excellent information about recruiting, from peasants and guerrillas, when they recruited at their highest levels, like in 1964, 1965 and through... they would obviously use this as corruption in government as a recruitment pitch to a guerrilla – a young man living in a hamlet. That young man in the hamlet aah he would listen to GVN, Government of Vietnam officials, he would register for the draft or he would go to the Viet Cong. The Viet Cong would legitimately and honestly have a more reason to recruit and convince that young man to serve against the Government of Vietnam.

Communist ideology had nothing to do with it. There were very few Viet Cong recruited because they were Communist, and we learned this a little bit late, maybe, but the Communist were in control, The peasants of Vietnam supported the Communist and in huge numbers, in thousands and in hundreds of thousands because, basically because of the corruption, the impossibility for them to obtain a piece of land – a small plot where they could have their family and raise the rice without paying absent landowners. By the hundreds who controlled most of the land in Vietnam.

There were absentee landlords. These absentee landlords aah were making plenty of money, pay the... the peasant would pay the rent, much more than he could afford, and the situation across the board, throughout South throughout Viet—South Vietnam, particularly in Military Region 3, where I was... aah considered the northern part of the Rice Bowl of South Vietnam, the peasant absolutely had no chance. The absentee landlord, the government officials, the army officials, were in control of the country. And this in essence is about the situation the Viet Cong faced at recruitment so in the earlier...

Why didn't we support aah the good guys?

Why didn't we support the good guys? It's not a question of... in my mind of supporting the good guys, because they were the Communist aggression in South Vietnam. That was true. We never supported anything except the Government of Vietnam's military cliché if you want to call it that, the former French trained corporals became generals and presidents. Most of the officers probably 90% of the officers or the national policemen...

Hold that...

... or recruiting or things like that... See, this is not going to come out very...

...Why'd we ended up supporting them...

Yeah...

Ok. Come on. Tell me about...

Now in asking the question, why did we end up supporting these kinds of people in the Government of Vietnam, I may try to relate it in this manner. I worked with the special police branch and the national police at the colonel level at liaison at the colonel level and I developed some friends in the Government of Vietnam Air Force, and in the aah in the local government circles in the city of Bien Hoa where I resided. From these people, and I want to say that I learned this this from Vietnamese people about the corruption in the police and the special branch. Then I learned factually on the job, the corruption in the special police.

They did not have the motivation to fight the Viet Cong, They were hustling second jobs. They were involved in owning bars. They were involved in seeking money from the United States government. They were involved in selling United States military supplies from Bien Hoa Airbase. Hundreds were caught doing that by Americans and this was reported continuously. So the corruption as a whole aah and my liaison with some high ranking officers – everything that I learned from these officers was supported by two Vietnamese colonels who were very close friends of mine who kept continuously asking me to help stop it.

They identified... I'll give you an example. I won't name any names but the local colonel in charge of military security service – MSS – as one of the most corrupt officials in Military Region 3, they identified the commanding general. In the drug traffic, the last commanding general had been deeply involved in drub traf—drug traffic in Military Region 4 before he came to Military Region 3. This kind of thing made the average officer like myself, made us literally sick at the stomach that we continued to condone and support and work with these people with no attempts, very little attempts made to stop it.

But why?

I got a call (sneeze)...The reasons why we did this, has got... we must refer back in to in history back to our own leadership from Washington, DC. When they said to us in the field, "you must win the war at all costs. You must work with the special police. You must work with this government," even though we knew that was impossible, later we went totally independent on our own to accomplish the things that we did and we were very successful. It was impossible to do this with the Government of Vietnam officials. Except on a very selective base. And I'd like to identify one 'cus he's now dead, Colonel Tong, from the Province of Hau Nghia, the province chief, was an outstanding, honest province chief.

On forty-four provinces in Vietnam, you only had one or two. He was a good man. The Viet Cong killed him – they assassinated him – we had agent reports that they would do this, in 1972. And we told him, generally speaking, about how this would happen, but he he walked into an ambush anyway. Aah, his family now live in Fullerton, California and I see the the Madam Tong occasionally. Colonel Tong had a government in his province literally corrupt non corrupt proof. Aah, no real corruption on large scale aah in that province.

Aah, a another man in Bien Hoa, the city of Bien Hoa, who is still in Vietnam and I should not identify him, was an honest man who told me so much about policemen and what they were doing and the government and the commanding general but he said can we do? What can I do? I said well, they can be reported to your superiors and I believe him when he said he could not. If he had done that he would have just simply lost his job. That was also true when you talk about the why.

Why weren't Americans doing more? To this day I can't honestly answer that question except that most Americans realize even though we were totally dedicated to doing our job, most Americans realized that if they raised too much of a problem in reporting against the government of Vietnam they were not going to be in the country very long. So you had to subtly and carefully work and try to accomplish something against the corrupt officials. And I'd like to relate one rather quick story because he's a very dear friend, and I'll just call him Bob. He was a super boss supervisor, officer in command in Military Region 3 of our offices. (Blows nose) During the last six or eight months of his tour he was transferred to Saigon and he had liaison at a very high level. He invited me to his house for dinner several times and one of our conversations...