Discovery of North Vietnamese Intelligence Operation

While on a sweep in Binh Duong Province near Saigon during Operation TOUCHDOWN, Soldiers of the U.S. Army 1st Infantry Division find an enemy bunker and capture a dozen members of a North Vietnamese reconnaissance unit. The Soldiers also find signal-intercept equipment and thousands of intelligence documents.

The materials demonstrate that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong have a large, highly competent network of personnel intercepting and analyzing allied communications throughout South Vietnam. They also show that Communist forces are surprisingly adept at exploiting these communications, affording them early knowledge of incoming air strikes and troop movements. The discovery, along with the findings of the Purple Dragon Study, leads to greater U.S. operational security.¹