Battle of Khe Sanh - La Thanh Ton
From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 11:49 PM
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Dear All,
let me ask if any of you has some information about La Thanh Ton, a North Vietnamese military defector, who, according to this brief description from Wikipedia, provided the U.S. forces with some valuable information about PAVN plans against Khe Sanh:
On 20 January, La Thanh Ton, a PAVN lieutenant of the 14th Anti-Aircraft Company, 325th Division, defected at the base and laid out the plans for an entire series of North Vietnamese attacks. Hills 881 South, 861, and the main base itself would be simultaneously attacked that same evening.
Unfortunately, I have no access to the publication that mentions his role (Schulimson, Jack; Blaisol, Leonard; Smith, Charles R.; Dawson, David (1997), The U.S. Marines in Vietnam: 1968, the Decisive Year. Washington DC: History and Museums Division, United States Marine Corps), but I doubt if its authors did any further investigation on his later fate. I wonder if it was ever suggested that he may have been a fake defector whose mission was to focus U.S. attention on Khe Sanh (and distract it from the preparations for the Tet Offensive). As is well known, it is hotly debated if the siege of Khe Sanh was a diversionary operation or an unsuccessful attempt to repeat Dien Bien Phu, but I haven't seen yet a reference to Ton's role in these events.
For me, the special importance of this issue lies in that the so-called Blue House raid (a North Korean commando operation aimed at assassinating South Korean President Park Chung Hee) was launched on 21 January 1968, i.e., the same day when the Battle of Khe Sanh and Operation Niagara II started. The raid failed, but if it had been successful, the risk of South Korean (and possibly U.S.) retaliation would have been quite high, since in 1966-67, South Korean forces were prone to carry out retaliatory raids whenever they were attacked by North Korean commandos. For this reason, the North Koreans were naturally interested in making the raid coincide with a period of intense military activity in Vietnam; but even if we suppose that they were privy to the PAVN's battle plans (which, in the light of the very close cooperation that existed between Hanoi and Pyongyang in 1966-67, I consider quite likely), such a precise coordination was possible only if (a) the starting date of the continuous artillery barrage at Khe Sanh (January 21) was pre-planned, and (b) there was sufficient reason to expect a strong American military response.
If La Thanh Ton happened to be a fake defector (which, taking the story of Pham Xuan An & Co. into consideration, is not impossible, and in fact in March 1967 the North Koreans did carry out such a fake defector operation in order to provoke a violent U.S. response along the DMZ), the aforesaid two conditions are at least partly met, since he defected only a day before the attack, and the information he brought was definitely suitable for attracting U.S. attention to Khe Sanh. However, if he was a genuine defector, the validity of the hypothesis is at least partly undermined.
Even if the other members have no specific information about Ton, I would be greatly interested in their opinion about the objectives of the siege of Khe Sanh.
With best regards,
Balazs Szalontai
East China Normal University
Department of Saola Studies
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From: <ellen.pinzur@verizon.net>
Date: Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 6:39 AM
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Balasz--
Khe Sanh veteran Ray Stubbe and I covered La Thanh Tonc quite extensively in our book VALLEY OF DECISION. See pp. 230-33, 242, 249, 254, 267, 268, 304. I did in fact argue that Tonc may have been a plant. However, I think it highly unlikely that there is any connection between Tonc and the Blue House raid. The People's Army was not prone to expose its plans in tactical detail even to allies, and its command control apparatus was not sophisticated enough to coordinate with a North Korean activity thousands of miles away. You'll have to look elsewhere.
Best,
John Prados
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 8:25 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear John,
thanks a lot for your helpfulness! Since I have no access to your book at the moment, I would be greatly interested in your arguments in favor of the hypothesis that Ton may have been a plant. I would be also very grateful if you could briefly tell me whether the starting date of the artillery barrage (January 21) could have been pre-set either three days or 2-3 weeks in advance, or conditions in the field did not render possible such accuracy in planning. The North Korean commandos crossed the border on January 18, having undergone two weeks of final training for this specific mission. Thus the final North Korean preparations for the raid seem to have started in the first week of January, but of course the mission could have been still postponed or cancelled if necessary. How much this chronology is compatible with PAVN preparations for the siege?
Concerning the issue of Hanoi's willingness or unwillingness to release such confidential information to Pyongyang, the following two arguments may be made in favor of my hypothesis:
(1) The Hungarian archival documents I saw indicate that in 1966-67, mutual trust and cooperation between North Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba was considerably more intense than between Hanoi and its other allies (the USSR, China and the East European countries). They maintained a triangular relationship based on their common opposition to the U.S. and their common distrust of both Communist Great Powers.
(2) If Ton was in fact a plant, his mission appears to have included to provide information about the starting date of the attack, because he did actually predict it. Thus the information about the starting date of the attack was not to be concealed, though a premature release would have been certainly harmful. From a North Korean perspective, it was sufficient to know that a major operation with a potential to attract U.S. attention and preoccupy U.S. forces was about to start on a specific day; it was not necessary to provide them with further details about the area of operation, the name of the units involved, etc.
Still, it is certainly possible that I am on a wrong track, and thus I would greatly welcome if we could continue this discussion.
With much gratitude,
Balazs
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From: Edward Miller
Date: Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 9:33 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Balazs:
Following on John’s skepticism about the possibility of coordination between the siege of Khe Sanh and the Blue House raid: you should also consider the recent work that Merle Pribbenow has done which shows that the DRVN leadership put off final approval for the Tet Offensive until the last minute, due to internal disagreements about some elements of the plan. Amazingly, the date for the launch of the main offensive at the end of January was not set until January 15! See: Merle L. Pribbenow II, “General Võ Nguyên Giáp and the Mysterious Evolution of the Plan for the 1968 T?t Offensive,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Summer 2008), pp. 1-33, esp. pp. 18-19. Given the uncertainty and internal controversy in Hanoi, I am inclined to agree with John that coordination with the North Koreans was unlikely.
Best,
Ed Miller
Dartmouth College
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 10:22 AM
To: Edward.G.Miller@dartmouth.edu, vsg@u.washington.edu
Dear Ed,
thanks a lot for your helpfulness! By any chance, have you got access to an electronic copy of this article? I checked the JVS website, but it is not freely available. In a technical sense, Pribbenow's analysis is not necessarily incompatible with mine, because the extent of coordination needed was the following:
(1) To make a basic plan for the raid, the North Koreans needed to know in advance that the PAVN intended to carry out large-scale operations in the coming dry season. This was well within the range of probabilities, since in November 1967 Le Duan did tell the Soviet leaders that the PAVN intended to gain considerable military successes for a period of 4-5 months so as to create favorable conditions for negotiations, and the scale and type of NLF operations in October-November indicated that an operation of unprecedented magnitude was to come in the near future.
(2) To carry out the final training session, the North Korean team needed about two weeks; taking into consideration that this session started in the first week of January, they needed to know that large-scale fighting would not start well before January 20-25, for if it would, they might not have sufficient time to prepare. If, however, it was to be postponed a week or two, they could simply continue the training until the final date is set. Since Pribbenow's description suggest that a later starting date was a more likely modification than an earlier, the North Koreans could cope with this degree of uncertainty.
(3) To carry out the mission itself, they needed about 3-4 days to reach the Blue House; they obviously marched at maximum speed, and, having crossed the border on January 18, they reached Seoul by the night of January 20, to launch the raid the next evening. Thus they needed to know the starting date of the Khe Sanh siege by January 18. If, as Pribbenow unearthed, the final date of the Tet Offensive (and presumably that of the Battle of Khe Sanh) was set on January 15, the North Koreans could receive this information by January 18 if there was sufficient willingness on Hanoi's part to disclose it.
Still, as I said before, I may be wrong, and hence I would like to ask for the continuation of the discussion.
With much gratitude,
Balazs
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 10:45 AM
To: Edward.G.Miller@dartmouth.edu, vsg@u.washington.edu
PS: I may add this detail about the raid that seems to indicate that the North Koreans adapted their planning to that of Hanoi:
The timing of the raid was quite atypical if compared with the earlier patterns of North Korean commando operations. In the periods of December 1966 – January 1967 and November 1967 – January 1968, the intensity of raids, at least in certain respects, underwent a significant decrease, illustrated by the absence of fatal North Korean attacks on U.S. soldiers in these months. This decline seems to have been of a seasonal nature, for winter conditions, such as snow and the absence of thick foliage, considerably hindered infiltration operations, whereas conditions in spring, summer, and fall increased the commandos’ chances to avoid being detected and tracked down by ROKA and police forces.[1] Since the Blue House was strongly protected on a permanent basis, and the public signs of North Korean bellicosity remained as conspicuous as ever, the element of surprise resulting from the unusual timing of the raid was presumably limited at best, yet the KWP leaders elected to carry out the raid under such relatively unfavorable conditions, rather than in another season.
[1] Sarantakes, “The Quiet War,” p. 444. On U.S. combat fatalities in the DMZ per month, see “Summary of Events on Korean DMZ. Chronology of Incidents.” Korean War Veterans National Museum and Library:http://imjinscout.com/DMZ_History2.html (Accessed 29 August 2011).