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Army Security Agency Arrives in Vietnam

May 14, 1961

1961-05-14_ArmySecurityAgencyArrives
1961-05-14_ArmySecurityAgencyArrives
Soldiers of the 3d Radio Research Unit listen for Communist radio transmissions at a listening station at Tan Son Nhut Air Base. (U.S. Army)

The first unit of the Army Security Agency (ASA) arrives in South Vietnam, establishing headquarters at Tan Son Nhut Air Base. As the U.S. Army’s signals intelligence branch, the ASA mission is to intercept Viet Cong and North Vietnamese electronic communications and use them to locate Communist troops. It designates its units as “Radio Research” to conceal their true purpose, and ASA personnel pose as military advisers attached to MAAG, Vietnam. The agency’s personnel also train their South Vietnamese counterparts.1

1Richard W. Stewart, Deepening Involvement, 1945–1965, The U.S. Army Campaigns of the Vietnam War (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 2012), 37–38; Lonnie M. Long and Gary B. Blackburn, Unlikely Warriors: The Army Security Agency’s Secret War in Vietnam, 1961–1973, (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2013), 40–42; “They Served in Silence: The Story of a Cryptologic Hero, Specialist Four James T. Davis, USA,” U.S. National Security Agency publication, 2004 (available on NSA website http://www.nsa.gov/about/_files/memorial_wall/davis.pdf (accessed 3/10/14). See also ASA timeline at http://www.nasaa-home.org/history/historyindex.html (link is external) (accessed 3/10/14).