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by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian
COMBINED MILITARY INTERROGATION CENTER ESTABLISHED IN SAIGON
On 27 September 1965, the Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) and the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (RVNAF) agreed to a combined effort in the field of military intelligence. One of the results of this agreement was the establishment of the Combined Military Interrogation Center (CMIC) in Saigon.
When Maj. Gen. Joseph A. McChristian arrived in South Vietnam as the MACV J-2 in July 1965, the United States military lacked its own intelligence structure in country and was acting primarily in an advisory role to the RVNAF. As the U.S. accelerated its commitment of ground forces, however, the Americans required a more integral role in the war’s intelligence activities to support combat operations. McChristian recognized the benefits of combining American technical expertise with South Vietnamese knowledge of the culture, people, and terrain.
McChristian first broached his concept for a combined intelligence program with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara during the latter’s visit to South Vietnam in July. With McNamara’s approval, McChristian worked with the RVNAF Joint General Staff (JGS) to finalize, on 27 September 1965, an agreement for the creation of a Combined Intelligence Center, Vietnam (CICV). With South Vietnamese and American intelligence personnel working side-by-side, the CICV would rely heavily on information provided by three other combined centers for document exploitation, materiel exploitation, and interrogations.
McChristian’s vision included combined interrogation centers in each division and corps area as well as a Combined Military Interrogation Center (CMIC) in Saigon. U.S. Army interrogators had been working in an advisory role at the South Vietnamese Military Interrogation Center since 1962. At the time of the signing of the September 1965 agreement, that support consisted of just two Army noncommissioned officers, Sfc. Richard Mayer and Sgt. Sedgewick Tourison, and the oversight of a major. When the CMIC stood up, it was divided into co-equal U.S. and South Vietnamese elements. In late October 1965, Maj. Lawrence Sutton and his two sergeants conducted the first independent U.S. interrogation, symbolically opening the CMIC, although it would not become fully operational until January 1967.
In the interim, the personnel situation improved with the arrival of fifty interrogators of A Company, 519th MI Battalion. Additionally, construction began on a new CMIC compound on To Hien Thanh Street. Sandwiched between a hospital complex and a Protestant church, the new compound had twenty-eight interrogation rooms, sixty-three prisoner and returnee rooms, and classrooms for training interrogators assigned to the corps and division interrogation centers. Two barbed wire fences, a two-meter-high brick wall, and guard posts at each of three gates enhanced the security for CMIC personnel.
CMIC’s mission was to conduct interrogations of those prisoners and returnees believed to have significant information pertaining to intelligence requirements levied by higher headquarters. Prisoners flowed from capturing units to brigade or division level detention centers, where they were interrogated for perishable tactical intelligence. They were then transferred to one of four combined corps interrogation centers. At CMIC, a Requirements Branch selected which prisoners to transfer in from the corps centers. Five functionally aligned teams then conducted the interrogations using questions based on specific intelligence collection requirements from the field and MACV. Published interrogation reports and daily summaries were disseminated to the CICV as well as nearly one hundred headquarters and organizations in Vietnam and in Washington, D.C. CMIC also provided “Go Teams” to field units to augment their limited interrogation capabilities.
During 1967, the center's first full year in operation, the U.S. element conducted 3,159 interrogations and published 1,999 interrogation reports. Additionally, it produced 288 knowledgeability briefs or dossiers of the prisoners being held for interrogation. Critical information about the enemy included order of battle, tactics, weapons, political infrastructure, logistics, and communications, as well as details on American soldiers being held as prisoners of war. Notably, CMIC interrogations provided intelligence that triggered CEDAR FALLS and JUNCTION CITY, two of the most significant operations conducted during 1967. By the end of the war, the CMIC had conducted more than 20,000 interrogations.
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| Date Taken: | 09.20.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 09.20.2024 16:39 |
| Story ID: | 481446 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 131 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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