--- category: Major Conflict created: 2026-09-22 location: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia summary: American war in Vietnam, escalated after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964, in which the CIA ran the Phoenix program and Air America and the Army and Rand applied behavioral science to the enemy. tags: - Event - Conflict - Vietnam - CIA - PsychologicalOperations updated: 2026-09-22 --- The Vietnam War followed the French defeat at [Dienbienphu](/events/dienbienphu/) and the division of [Vietnam](/places/vietnam/). On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese boats attacked the USS *Maddox* in the Gulf of Tonkin; a second attack reported on August 4 almost certainly did not take place, as an [NSA](/organizations/nsa/) history declassified in 2005 concluded. The Johnson administration used the reports to obtain the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the legal basis for the escalation that brought American ground troops in 1965 (see [Gulf of Tonkin Incident](/events/gulf-of-tonkin-incident/)).[^1] ### The CIA's War [William Colby](/people/william-colby/), formerly the [CIA](/organizations/central-intelligence-agency/)'s station chief in Saigon, headed Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) from 1968 to 1971, under which the [Phoenix Program](/programs/phoenix-program/) sought to identify and "neutralize" the Viet Cong's infrastructure through capture, interrogation and killing.[^2] [Ted Shackley](/people/ted-shackley/) became Saigon station chief in 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive, after running the agency's secret war in Laos, where the Hmong army of General Vang Pao fought the Pathet Lao and the North Vietnamese on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.[^3] [Air America](/organizations/air-america/), the agency's proprietary airline, flew covert transport across Southeast Asia and was accused of carrying heroin from the [Golden Triangle](/places/golden-triangle/).[^4] [Richard Secord](/people/richard-secord/) served in air operations in Laos and Vietnam.[^5] ### Behavioral Science The [Rand Corporation](/organizations/rand-corporation/)'s Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Study, commissioned by [ARPA](/organizations/advanced-research-projects-agency/) in the mid-1960s, produced about 2,371 interviews, more than 60,000 pages, conducted at some forty sites in South Vietnam, including detention centers; Rand's own history later confirmed that its analyst Leon Gouré had promoted the air war with findings the interviews did not support.[^6] The Army's [4th Psychological Operations Group](/organizations/4th-psychological-operations-group/) developed leaflet and loudspeaker equipment; in March 1969 alone 713 million leaflets were dropped over Vietnam, the main channel for the [Chieu Hoi](/programs/chieu-hoi/) defection program.[^7] In Top Secret testimony to the Church Committee in October 1975, [Sidney Gottlieb](/people/sidney-gottlieb/) said that during the war the military had been "considering the use of [LSD](/concepts/lsd/) on a fairly large scale."[^8] ### Opposition [Martin Luther King Jr.](/people/martin-luther-king-jr/) set out his opposition to the war in "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, a year before his assassination.[^9] In April 1968 [Andreas Baader](/people/andreas-baader/) and [Gudrun Ensslin](/people/gudrun-ensslin/) set fire to two Frankfurt department stores in protest against the war; they later founded the [Red Army Faction](/organizations/red-army-faction/).[^10] The CIA's domestic surveillance of antiwar groups, reported by [Seymour Hersh](/people/seymour-hersh/) on December 22, 1974, led to the [Rockefeller Commission](/events/rockefeller-commission-1975/) and the [Church Committee](/events/church-committee/).[^2] [^1]: Hanyok, Robert J. "Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery, 2-4 August 1964." *Cryptologic Quarterly,* National Security Agency, declassified 2005; *The Pentagon Papers,* Senator Gravel edition, Beacon Press, 1971. [^2]: Powers, Thomas. *The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA.* Knopf, 1979; Hersh, Seymour M. "Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against Antiwar Forces." *The New York Times,* December 22, 1974. [^3]: Shackley, Theodore G. *The Third Option: An American View of Counterinsurgency Operations.* Reader's Digest Press, 1981; Corn, David, and Jeff Goldberg. "The Old Boy Network." *Mother Jones,* October 1994. [^4]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998, ch. 16. [^5]: As cited on the Richard Secord page. [^6]: Elliott, Mai. *RAND in Southeast Asia: A History of the Vietnam War Era.* RAND CP-564, 2010; Watson, Peter. *War on the Mind: The Military Uses and Abuses of Psychology.* Basic Books, 1978, pp. 388-394. [^7]: Watson, pp. 403-416. [^8]: National Security Archive. "Top Secret Testimony of CIA's MKULTRA Chief, 50 Years Later." October 30, 2025, documents 1-4. [^9]: Garrow, David. *Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.* William Morrow, 1986. [^10]: Aust, Stefan. *The Baader-Meinhof Complex.* Bodley Head, 2008.