Query: Where was "Abram's Acres"?
David Biggs biggsbiggs at gmail.com
Thu Oct 13 13:28:22 PDT 2016
Dear List-
I recently returned to an article that may interest some about an NSA
whistleblower from the Vietnam War era, Perry Fellwock. Very briefly, he
disclosed his work at radio listening posts for the NSA in Vietnam where
they called in bomb strikes on suspected NVA or PLAF positions. One of
those posts was at Phu Bai near Hue, Vietnam. His original essay was
published in the anti-war journal *Ramparts*. Vol. 11, No. 2, August, 1972,
pp. 35-50. The story "went viral" as it was, soon on the front page of the
NY Times.
In 2013, the blog company Gawker published a "40 years later" piece on
Fellwock and the story.
http://gawker.com/after-30-years-of-silence-the-original-nsa-whistleblow-1454865018
.
The story is a very polarizing one for old-timers, and I do NOT wish to
engage the merits of it. Many of the 1972 claims were later proven to be
false.
MY QUERY: However, what I WOULD really appreciate any help on from the
List, maybe the Vietnam Archives?, regards a site that Fellwock and others
describe as "Abrams Acres". Are any war specialists or vets familiar with
this place? According to Fellwock, radio intercepts tracked the movement of
a North Vietnamese brigade somewhere in the mountains, I believe near Nam
Dong or further south at the Thua Thien/Quang Nam border. According to
Fellwock, Abrams authorized 36 B-52 bombing sorties over a few days to this
area later nicknamed "Abrams' Acres".
Is anyone familiar with this story? The NVA brigade? Possibly Vietnamese
histories of the event? If you like whistleblower stories from the Cold
War, then Fellwock's is an interesting one!
Best,
David
--
David Biggs
Department of History & School of Public Policy
1212 Humanities & Social Sciences Building
University of California - Riverside
Riverside CA 92521
ph: 951-827-1877 | fx: 951-827-5299
David G. Sox chesahbinu at comcast.net
Fri Oct 14 14:18:41 PDT 2016
Without stepping on anybody's sensitive toes, I translated radio messages at Phu Bai in 1965 and then in the first half of 1967 at Phu Bai, decrypted and translated them. This was at the Army Security Agency's 9th Radio Research Unit (RRU) at Phu Bai. I was never told who was using the data I worked on, but many years later I learned that it had been sent eventually to Building 230 at Fort Shafter, Honolulu, HI, where people drew up targets for use by B-52 bombers and I suppose other aircraft. That Building 230 was coincidently where I started working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Pacific Ocean Division in 1975, doing environmental impact assessment. In the middle 1960s, the Corps of Engineers were located elsewhere in Honolulu.
I am sure there must have been others in my unit that knew what our intelligence findings were being used for, but the decrypters/translators did not. The 9th RRU was essentially divided into the radio operators who listened to the Morse code messages, the translators and decrypters, and then the folks that used our circular array of antennas along with similar antenna arrays in Thailand, the Philippines and Japan to triangulate the location of the NVA radio transmitters sending the Morse code messages.
And this is the first time I have heard about the term "Abram's Acres." I would speculate that the term either came from the bomber pilots or the group at Fort Shafter in Honolulu that prepared the targets.
I know and knew nothing about the National Security Agency.
David Griffiths Sox
Independent Champa Researcher
Fairfield, CA
David G. Sox chesahbinu at comcast.net
Sat Oct 15 13:08:15 PDT 2016
It was the 9th RRU at Phu Bai, and later, I believe, called the 9th Radio Research Field Station.
David Sox
David Marr david.marr at anu.edu.au
Mon Oct 17 17:57:53 PDT 2016
The Marines had a radio intercept unit at Phu Bai earlier, perhaps shared with the Army. I encountered them in 1963-64. I’ve completed a mini-memoir on my Vietnam experience then, if anyone knows of someone who is editing a new book on the Vietnam War.
David Marr
ANU
David G. Sox chesahbinu at comcast.net
Mon Oct 17 20:15:00 PDT 2016
Davids, et. al.,
I recall now that there was a very small Marine outfit at Phu Bai (8th RRU) in 1965 whose mission had something to do with long-range reconnaissance. I recall one marine who had just come back from--I believe it was after several months in the "jungle". He looked exhausted and sort of like he had been close to death for a long time. I seem to recall he had been in the north somewhere along the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos.
My memory cells are recharging. The Marines did have a small radio station or unit there and used our circular array of antennas across Hwy 1 from Trai Bac Station, just north of the Phu Bai Airport buildings. I recall they had some mission like listening for naval or maritime activity along the southern part of NV coast, and worked with U.S. Navy ships offshore. I think perhaps LLR marines were being inserted along that coast. This is from memory and not any research on the war; I rarely read about the war.
My tours of duty were in stations that were isolated from the real war. I never encountered bullets or shrapnel, but came close them. In 1967, Phu Bai had a swimming pool, air conditioned barracks and rather large library, while the 3rd Marine Division were living in tents outside our perimeter.
As for Abram's Acres, I am clueless. What I took from Vietnam and my then fluency in Vietnamese was a love for the people and the countryside that I did see, and a long-term commitment to Vietnam-oriented research, and for me personally, Champa research.
David Sox
Independent Champa Researcher
Fairfield, CA
Chuck Searcy chuckusvn at gmail.com
Mon Oct 17 20:36:32 PDT 2016
A few years ago an American veteran in a delegation I was accompanying
insisted on trying to find what he referred to -- as I recall him
describing it -- as the ASA listening post where he was based during the
war. We found the remnants of it across the road from the Phu Bai airport,
in what was now a People's Army restricted base, although when our taxi
driver took us off the main highway and around to the back of the property
there was no fence or any security whatsoever. The one or two uniformed
military personnel we saw seemed uninterested as we drove around.
Part of the area was being converted to a commercial factory of some kind
-- maybe ceramic tile production. I'll look more carefully the next time
I'm in Hue. The U.S. vet noted that the array of antennas and dishes which
were there were all gone. They were used to intercept and pass along
messages, which was the unit's intelligence-gathering mission.
I believe this guy was an Army vet, not Marine. But it was some years ago,
and I can't find his name today.
*====================*
*CHUCK SEARCY*
*Project RENEW*
*VFP Chapter 160*
*71 Trần Quốc Toản*
*Hà Nội, Việt Nam*
*Email chuckusvn at gmail.com <chuckusvn at gmail.com>*
*Skype chucksearcy*
*Cell VN +8 490 342 0769*
*Cell US +1 404 740 0653*
*====================*
David G. Sox chesahbinu at comcast.net
Tue Oct 18 08:11:34 PDT 2016
There are websites for former ASA soldiers that contain the bantering of now old ASA veterans; the main one is called "We Served in Silence." There is also an old 509th Radio Research Gp, 8th Radio Research FS [Field Station] website that has VN war period and contemporary aerial and ground photographs of the Trai Bac Station campus. I have downloaded many of these photographs, and I have a few of my own slides from 1965 and 1967 that need to be digitally copied.
One may be able to find veterans there who might have insight into "Abram's Acres" but I believe that most of us who worked at Phu Bai really did not have a clear idea of where our data was going or how it was being used, except that those who worked inside a super-secured room where the radio transmitter site triangulation occurred. My top-secret, crypto security clearance did not get me into that room. The only other big secret to which I had purview was a TS analysis of the ChiCom Army that concluded if they invaded mainland Southeast Asia, they could have over run it in not more than a month or so. Am I going to jail for revealing that?
David Sox
Independent Champa Researcher