![\"020417-1\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/020417-1.jpg\")
\n(Boomer takes that critical first Happy Hour order. Photo Socotra).<\/p>\n
\n(Boomer takes that critical first Happy Hour order. Photo Socotra).<\/p>\n
The people and employees at Willow seem to blend together into an ersatz, if quite real, family. When things were going well at the restaurant, all was right with the world. When there was a shake-up in the personnel line-up behind the bar, it was like losing part of the family.<\/p>\n
Peter, Big Jim, Tinkerbelle, Liz-S, Boomer, Tall Sammy, Briana, Marvin\u2026the departure of each had special circumstances and a certain period of mourning.<\/p>\n
The bartenders were the highest visibility members of the crowd, of course, and Old Jim who holds court at the Amen Corner of the long bar. Boomer was still working there and had not moved down to Shooter McGee\u2019s on Duke Street, and she was big and bold as life there at Willow this afternoon.<\/p>\n
Mac and I had made plans to meet and talk about technical intelligence collection operations in the Vietnam conflict. He was still off alcohol (on Doctor\u2019s orders, dammit!) and just sipping a bit of his first Virgin Mary about halfway down the bar when I slid onto a stool next to him.<\/p>\n
![\"020417-2\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/020417-2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
We exchanged pleasantries but didn\u2019t talk about the election, or the economy or the prospects for World Peace breaking out. I had my pen, and I actually remembered to bring a notebook. No napkins this afternoon, and I looked at the Admiral expectantly, and he knew just where to start.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was 1961. In order to cope with expanding threats all over Asia, we had commenced a series of peripheral intelligence collection patrols along the Soviet and Chinese coasts known as the \u201cDeSoto Patrols.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cEd Nielsen and I originated the concept back in Washington before I went out to Hawaii. It was a valuable concept that got us unique intelligence on all sorts of emitters, communications and military training. In fact, using the Desoto platforms soon had them on station from the Bering Straits to the Java Sea and through the Malaka Strait. We were trying to patrol and collection in limited areas from the Arctic Circle to south of the Equator.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor example, when the Indonesians acquired SAM-2 GUIDELINE missiles from their cozy relations with the Soviets, we mounted DeSoto Patrols off the Indonesian coast to try to intercept the electronic signals from the missiles. That was some of the first SAM-2 missile ELINT that the United States ever obtained. Unique stuff and very useful.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe used to have pre-configured vans we could load on ships. Did you use the existing electronic warfare fit on the destroyers, or did you have them take on board special equipment?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo real difference except for the sophistication of the equipment. We put a hut on the limited deck-space available on the destroyers to house special. Our concept for the DeSoto Patrols was to take ships<\/p>\n
from the fleet, add equipment that the Naval Security Group would configure, and NSG would put a team onboard to work inside the hut. The intelligence collection mission was accomplished entirely from the hut by the NSG Ship-riders. They were just augmentees to the regular crew for the length of the patrol. It worked well.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt sounds just like some of the operations we conducted off Nicaragua with the USS Sphinx (ARL-24) when I was at Third Fleet, I said. \u201cThey pulled her out of the inactive ship facility at Bremerton to refurbish and patrol off the coast during the Contra war.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSphinx was with us in Vietnam, too. Want to know how the program got its name?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were interested in defunct American cars?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cClose,\u201d laughed Mac. \u201cWhen I was head of Special Intelligence Branch at ONI in the latter part of 1961, we received a message one morning from COMSEVENTHFLT.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI am proud to have been a 7th Fleet sailor, Admiral. My son was, too, after he did his time out there in Yokosuka.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI quite agree. But you asked about where the name came from. In those days, Navy messages were had a standard slug to put in the subject line. In the case of this message stream, the subject line was: DeHaven Special Operation Off Tsingtao. The 7th Fleet Staff was proposing a special collection effort by USS DeHaven [DD-727], with NSG shipriders to operate off the People\u2019s Liberation Army base at Tsingtao because there was some unusual training activity happening there. Ed Neilsen and I read that message early one morning in the Pentagon, and I said to Ed, “This is going to be voluminous; this operation which will create a ton of message traffic. And among, other things, we can no longer deal with that long slug line every time we have to write a message on the subject.”<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I took my pencil and I underlined the initial letters “DeHaven Special Operation off Tsingtao” and I abbreviated it, “DESOTO.” That, I guarantee you, is the source of the name for Desoto Program, which ultimately became extensive, successful, and eventually controversial.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTotally controversial after the attack on the Liberty, not to mention the loss of the Pueblo.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"020417-3\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/020417-3.jpg\")
\n(USS Liberty (AGTR-5) receives assistance after she was attacked and seriously damaged by Israeli forces off the Sinai Peninsula on 08 June 1967. An SH-3 helicopter is near her bow).<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is what takes us back to the Vietnam War, finally. It was a Desoto Patrol that created the Gulf of Tonkin incidents. Turner Joy (DD-951) was on a Desoto patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin when she was allegedly attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats.<\/p>\n
![\"020417-4\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/020417-4.jpg\")
\n(USS Turner Joy (DD-951)).<\/p>\n
\u201cI have wandered into the continuing academic debate about the Gulf of Tonkin incident and I am pretty sure there are still parts of me missing. Now, you say “allegedly.” Most people feel there is no doubt about the first of the two incidents, but obviously there is considerable controversy over the second.<\/p>\n
\u201cI say “allegedly” because of the controversy. I am personally convinced there were two attacks, but, I say “allegedly” so I don\u2019t get in trouble with the True Believers who maintain there was only one. Life is too short for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAmen,\u201d I said, putting down my pen and raising my now-empty glass to get Boomer\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cBottom line,\u201d Mac said, \u201cwas that SECDEF McNamara reviewed the purpose and efforts of the Desoto patrols in view of the Turner Joy incident and issued an edict that, henceforth and thereafter, DeSoto Patrols were terminated. The program ended because of the Gulf of Tonkin incident — and I thought at the time it was a rather short-sided view. The DeSoto program had been extremely effective. Sure, Turner Joy<\/p>\n
ran into a little trouble, but that was essentially one of the purposes of the program. What do you smart computer guys call it? \u2018Not a bug, but a feature?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI am a Luddite, myself, Sir. But I take your point. Presence has a certain imperative all its own.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cExactly. We were operating with a warship near the periphery in order to stimulate reactions and activities for intelligence collection purposes, and it worked like a charm. But here is where things went wrong. We stopped using real warships for a variety of reasons and went with platforms that had more deck-space, were cheaper to operate, and were not needed on the Gun Line in the South China Sea.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was part of the Soviet intelligence collection scheme. They labeled some big auxiliaries as \u201cAGI\u2019s,\u201d or Auxiliary General Intelligence. They were unarmed but awesomely capable of sucking every electron out of the spectrum, and they could hang around ports like Pearl for weeks and weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe bought into the concept that our collectors should be unthreatening. We decided to use dedicated auxiliaries as collectors instead of warships. We configured the Pueblo (AGER-2), Banner (AGER-1), and Palm Beach (AGER-3) as essentially unarmed platforms that would be non-threatening and non-provocative to continue the Desoto-type of intelligence collection. You remember what happened as a result of that. The North Koreans were able to pick off the Pueblo, steal the radios and crypto gear, seize the ship and hold the crew hostage for eleven months.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a mess. I understand that some people say the point of the capture was to give the radios on Pueblo to the Russians, which allowed them to reverse-engineer the devices so they could use the keying material that John Walker started providing them around the same time. Having both the device and the key-code gave them access to our tactical communications in Vietnam. It was still going on as late as the 1980s.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we had to fight them at sea, we would have had a worse situation than the Japanese when we penetrated their JN-25 communications,\u201d said Mac. \u201cIf you have no secure communications, the enemy knows your intent.\u201d<\/p>\n
I allowed myself a little shiver. \u201cI was out there then, and that would not have been pretty.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mac shook his head in agreement. \u201cI was part of the Pueblo damage assessment later at DIA. I wish that had been one of the key conclusions- that our communications had been massively compromise and we might have changed the radios sooner. I will have to tell you about it, and how I met Wanda, who wound up in the Front Office at DIA for the next thirty-odd years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have always respected her,\u201d I said. \u201c She was always kind and always professional.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd remember, it was the age of the mini-skirt,\u201d laughed Mac.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just wish I could have met her when you did, Sir!\u201d<\/p>\n
Mac just smiled.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2017 Vic Socotra
\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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