--- category: Private Organization created: 2025-07-22 location: Santa Monica, California start: 1946 summary: The Rand Corporation is the US Air Force's principal Cold War nonprofit think tank in Santa Monica, founded as Project RAND in 1946 and incorporated in 1948, whose Vietnam-era Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Study produced critical findings that were suppressed at the time and later vindicated by Rand's own official history. tags: - Organization - ThinkTank - ColdWar - PsychologicalWarfare - Counterinsurgency - Vietnam - USAirForce - RemoteViewing title: Rand Corporation updated: 2026-06-12 --- The Rand Corporation, whose name is an acronym for Research and Development, is headquartered in Santa Monica, California, with a Washington, D.C., office near the White House. It arose from the partnership between university scientists and the military that developed during the Second World War, established as Project RAND in 1946 with the [U.S. Air Force](/organizations/us-air-force/) as its primary institutional sponsor and incorporated as an independent nonprofit in 1948. It is not primarily a psychological research organization; economists and political scientists form the largest part of its staff. In the [Cold War](/concepts/cold-war/) it was among the first institutions to apply systematic psychological and social scientific methods to military problems, including censorship policy, the psychological effects of weapons, propaganda organization, and, most controversially, the morale and motivation of enemy forces during the Vietnam War.[^1] ### Early Psychological Work Rand produced a classified 1949 conference report on methods for studying the psychological effects of unconventional weapons, one of the earliest institutional contributions to the field. Its early Cold War work on propaganda and psychological operations included studies of censorship policy, the effects of translation and mistranslation on message delivery, and the organization of psywar efforts. Other Rand studies relevant to psychological operations examined folk tales relating to swindling and dishonesty in Third World societies and graft and corruption among government officials in Nigeria, the Philippines, and Brazil. [Daniel Ellsberg](/people/daniel-ellsberg/), then a Rand analyst, produced a paper exploring in theoretical terms how blackmail techniques might prove useful to the military.[^1] ### The VC Motivation and Morale Study In the early 1960s, [ARPA](/organizations/advanced-research-projects-agency/) commissioned Rand to study the motivation and morale of the Viet Cong. The project, known as the Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Study (the M&M Study), ran from late 1964 through end of 1968, jointly sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs and ARPA. It produced approximately 2,371 interviews totaling over 60,000 pages of documentation, conducted at approximately forty locations across South Vietnam including CIA detention centers and provincial holding facilities. Respondents were Viet Cong prisoners of war, defectors (Chieu Hoi ralliers), refugees, and others with knowledge of VC activities. Respondents were not informed of the interviewer's affiliation or the project's nature.[^1] ### Phase I: Donnell, Zasloff, and Pauker The project's first phase (mid-1964 through early 1965) was led by John Donnell, a Dartmouth political scientist fluent in Vietnamese and Chinese; Joseph Zasloff, a political scientist who had taught at the University of Saigon; and Guy Pauker, a Rand political scientist. The preliminary report (RM-4507/3-ISA, March 1965) found that the Viet Cong comprised a unified, disciplined force with widespread popular support among peasants interested in social justice, land reform, and education. It documented that the air war contributed to anti-American hatred, that bombing caused more civilian than VC casualties, and that American military operations gave the VC opportunities to build local trust by providing post-strike support. When Donnell and Zasloff briefed Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton in January 1965, McNaughton reportedly expressed doubt about whether the United States had aligned with the right side. The report was deemed "un-actionable" by the Pentagon, which was already deeply committed to escalation.[^1] ### Phase II: Goure and the Air Power Thesis Phase II (early 1965 through April 1967) was controlled by [Leon Gouré](/people/leon-goure/), head of Rand's Social Science Department, previously a Soviet civil defense expert. Gouré redirected the study's emphasis toward identifying which specific weapons and tactics, particularly air power, most eroded VC morale. His published reports concluded that continued bombing pressure would be effective, that VC morale was declining under air assault, and that forces would surrender under sufficient sustained pressure. These conclusions were consumed favorably at senior levels. Walt Rostow, National Security Advisor to President Johnson, drew on Gouré's work in preparing optimistic briefings. Robert McNamara was described by colleagues as reading Gouré's reports "like good scotch." Gouré briefed General Westmoreland, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the NSC. Even Westmoreland later found Gouré's optimism excessive.[^1] Field analyst [Anthony Russo](/people/anthony-russo/), who arrived in Saigon in February 1965 and conducted interviews across the country, found the interview data so diverse that "it could be used to argue anything." He documented that Gouré's published conclusions required systematic selection of responses supporting his air power thesis while suppressing contradictory material. He also prepared a separate report documenting systematic torture of VC prisoners at detention sites where Rand's interviews were conducted, a document Ellsberg later described as "the first to document American complicity in the routine use of torture." Gouré instituted an informal censorship policy by which interview transcripts were sanitized before analysis, removing all mentions of torture or mistreatment of detainees by US forces and their allies. In February 1966, Gouré signed Russo's and Scott's names to a memorandum promoting increased air strikes, Agent Orange use for population displacement, and refugee generation without their knowledge or permission.[^1] In spring 1966, Russo, analyst Douglass Scott, and analyst Russell Betts wrote formally to the head of Rand's Social Science Department documenting these improprieties. Gouré maintained his position through his connection to Walt Rostow at the NSC. Russo's torture documentation paper, his formal methodological critique of the M&M Study, and a defoliation civilian impact analysis he prepared all remain either classified or missing from accessible archives.[^1] ### Kellen's Counter-Findings Rand brought in [Konrad Kellen](/people/konrad-kellen/), a Second World War veteran and former psychological warfare expert, to provide an independent second opinion on Gouré's work. Working from the same interview transcripts, Kellen reached the opposite conclusions. He identified a distinction Gouré had missed between "near miss" victims (injured, physically weakened, demoralized by bombing) and "remote miss" victims (those whose homes and families were destroyed but who survived and emerged with intensified hatred of Americans and deepened commitment to the war). Kellen concluded that enemy morale was in fact high, that the VC's ideological commitment was durable, and that the war was unwinnable. His findings were documented in RM-5462-1, *A View of the VC: Elements of Cohesion in the Enemy Camp in 1966-1967* (November 1969) and RM-6131-1, *Conversations with Enemy Soldiers in Late 1968/Early 1969* (September 1970). These analyses were ignored by the White House and military leadership.[^1] ### The Crop Destruction Sub-Study Betts and Denton's RM-5446-1, *An Evaluation of Chemical Crop Destruction in Vietnam* (October 1967), drew on 206 interviews and found that chemical crop destruction had not denied food to the VC in any militarily significant sense, that most destroyed crops belonged to farmers rather than guerrillas, and that the program was generating increasing hostility toward the United States and the South Vietnamese government among the rural population. Russo separately briefed Westmoreland's scientific advisor on a finding that for every pound of food denied a guerrilla, one hundred pounds were denied to civilians. The briefing lasted under fifteen minutes and produced no policy response.[^1] ### Structural Secrecy and Policy Consequences The central problem with the VC Motivation and Morale Study was not that individual documents were classified in the standard government sense but that Rand's private contracting status placed its findings entirely outside the normal mechanisms of congressional oversight and academic peer review. Because the reports were proprietary documents held by a private contractor, neither Congress nor independent researchers could scrutinize them. Watson concluded that Gouré's conclusions "lay at the heart" of President Johnson's bombing strategy and that the study "cost many lives and millions of dollars and may actually have lengthened the war." The secrecy that insulated the study from criticism was structural rather than bureaucratic: it resulted from the contracting arrangement itself rather than from a formal classification decision.[^1] ### Outcome and Vindication Gouré was pulled from Vietnam by Rand in April 1967 amid mounting internal criticism and moved to the University of Miami's Center for Advanced International Studies in 1969. He died March 28, 2007. Russo published "Looking Backward: RAND and Vietnam" in *Ramparts* magazine (October 1972), calling Gouré "a snake oil salesman" and the M&M Study "a whitewash of genocide." Russo was later indicted alongside Ellsberg for their role in copying and disseminating the Pentagon Papers; charges were eventually dismissed. Russo died August 6, 2008.[^1] Rand's commissioned institutional history, *RAND in Southeast Asia: A History of the Vietnam War Era* (Rand CP-564, 2010), validated nearly all of Russo's claims, confirming Gouré had acted as an air war promoter whose analysis did not match the data, and documenting that former Rand president Gus Shubert called Gouré's assignment "a disgrace" suggesting collusion between Gouré's predecessor and the Air Force. The Donnell and Zasloff Phase I findings were subsequently described as the first Rand intelligence cited in the Pentagon Papers.[^1] Kellen continued at Rand and became its leading terrorism analyst. His obituary noted his characteristically "contrarian or independent view." He died April 2007, within days of Gouré.[^1] ### Institutional Structure Rand's Santa Monica headquarters is described in accounts from the period as resembling a small university with prominent security restrictions. The Washington office operates under similar conditions. While Rand is most closely identified with Air Force sponsorship, it took on Army-commissioned work throughout the Vietnam era, and its operational research methods were adopted by [HumRRO](/organizations/humrro/), [ORO-RAC](/organizations/oro-rac/), [CRESS](/organizations/cress/), and [USARIBSS](/organizations/usaribss/).[^1] ### Remote Viewing Era References In accounts of the 1970s parapsychology research milieu, Rand is noted as larger and more prestigious than the [SRI](/organizations/stanford-research-institute/) among scientific think tanks, and it figures in the early, later-debunked rumors of a [USS Nautilus](/programs/the-nautilus-telepathy-project/) telepathy experiment.[^2] [^1]: Peter Watson, *War on the Mind: The Military Uses and Abuses of Psychology*. Basic Books, 1978. pp. 388-394 (Ch. 21), 462-468 (App. II); Mai Elliott, *RAND in Southeast Asia: A History of the Vietnam War Era*. RAND CP-564, 2010; Anthony Russo, "Looking Backward: RAND and Vietnam," *Ramparts*, October 1972; RAND report series: RM-4507/3-ISA (March 1965), RM-4911-2-ISA/ARPA (1966), RM-5446-1-ISA/ARPA (October 1967), RM-5462-1 (November 1969), RM-6131-1 (September 1970). [^2]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.