Leon Goure

Leon Gouré was born in Moscow in 1922 and became a Rand Corporation analyst in 1951, where he worked primarily on Soviet civil defense and military capability assessments before being assigned to lead the second phase of the Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Study in early 1965. His conduct of that study generated the most documented internal scandal in Rand's history during the Vietnam era, producing formal complaints from three of his own analysts, accusations of data manipulation and unauthorized use of colleagues' names, and a subsequent commissioned institutional history that validated nearly all of the complaints.¹

Phase II of the Viet Cong Motivation Study

When Gouré took over the VC Motivation and Morale Study from John Donnell, Joseph Zasloff, and Guy Pauker in early 1965, he redirected its emphasis from a broad assessment of VC organization and motivation toward the specific question of which weapons and tactics were most degrading enemy morale. The practical effect was to position the study as providing analytical support for air power operations rather than independent assessment. His published reports, including Some Impressions of Viet Cong Vulnerabilities (RM-4699-1-ISA/ARPA, August 1965) and Some Findings of the Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Study: June-December 1965 (RM-4911-2-ISA/ARPA, 1966), concluded that VC morale was declining under air pressure, that draftee quality was deteriorating, and that sustained bombing would produce surrender.¹

These conclusions were adopted by senior policymakers. National Security Advisor Walt Rostow, who used Gouré's work in preparing optimistic briefings for President Johnson, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara were the primary consumers. Gouré briefed General Westmoreland, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the NSC. Westmoreland later assessed even Gouré's optimism as excessive.¹

Suppression and Misconduct

Field analyst Anthony Russo documented that the interview data from which Gouré's conclusions were drawn was internally diverse enough to support almost any interpretation, and that Gouré systematically selected responses confirming his air power thesis while disregarding contradictory material. Gouré also instituted an informal requirement that interview transcripts be sanitized before analysis to remove all mentions of torture or mistreatment of prisoners by US forces or their South Vietnamese allies.¹

In February 1966, Gouré signed the names of Russo and analyst Douglass Scott to a policy memorandum promoting increased air strikes, Agent Orange use for population displacement, and refugee generation, without their knowledge or consent. In spring 1966, Russo, Scott, and analyst Russell Betts submitted a formal written complaint to the head of Rand's Social Science Department documenting these improprieties. Gouré remained in his position through his connection to Rostow at the NSC.¹

At the same time, Rand brought in Konrad Kellen, a former psychological warfare professional, to provide an independent second assessment. Working from the same interview transcripts Gouré had used, Kellen reached the opposite conclusions: that VC morale was high, that the organization was ideologically coherent, and that the war was unwinnable. Kellen's findings were documented in formal Rand reports but ignored by policy consumers.¹

Removal and Later Career

Rand pulled Gouré from Vietnam in April 1967 amid the mounting internal controversy. In 1969 he left Rand and joined the University of Miami's Center for Advanced International Studies, where he directed Soviet studies. In 1980 he moved to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), where he worked until retiring in 2004. He died March 28, 2007, in Washington, D.C., at age 84.¹

His Washington Post obituary (April 5, 2007) identified him as a "Sovietologist and Civil Defense Expert," framing his career primarily around his earlier Soviet work rather than the Vietnam study. His papers from 1919 to 2007 are held at the Hoover Institution Archives (Online Archive of California finding aid: ark:/13030/kt5290346d).¹

Rand's commissioned institutional history, RAND in Southeast Asia (Rand CP-564, 2010), validated nearly all of the complaints Russo, Scott, and Betts had filed in 1966, confirmed that Gouré had functioned as a promoter of air power policy rather than an independent analyst, and documented that former Rand president Gus Shubert called Gouré's assignment to the study "a disgrace," suggesting collusion between Gouré's predecessor and the Air Force in structuring the study's design.¹