Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group

Foundation

The Studies and Observations Group (also known as SOG, MACSOG, and MACV-SOG) was a top secret, joint unconventional warfare task force created on 24 January 1964 by the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a subsidiary command of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV). It eventually consisted primarily of personnel from the United States Army Special Forces, with attachments from the United States Navy SEALs, the United States Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance, the United States Air Force (USAF), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as well as various units from the South Vietnamese armed forces.

The Special Operations Group, as the unit was initially titled, was in fact controlled by the Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities (SACSA) and his staff at the Pentagon.a This arrangement was necessary since SOG needed some listing in the MACV table of organization and the fact that MACV's commander, General William Westmoreland, had no authority to conduct operations outside territorial South Vietnam. This command arrangement through SACSA also allowed tight control (up to the presidential level) of the scope and scale of the organization's operations.

Its mission was:

...to execute an intensified program of harassment, diversion, political pressure, the capture of prisoners, physical destruction, acquisition of intelligence, generation

of propaganda, and diversion of resources, against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

These operations (OPLAN 34-Alpha) were conducted in an effort to convince North Vietnam to cease its sponsorship of the Viet Cong (VC) insurgency in South Vietnam. Similar operations had been under the purview of the CIA, which placed agent teams in North Vietnam through covert airdrops, reconnaissance missions, and over-the-beach insertions. Under pressure from Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, the program, along with other agency paramilitary activities, was transferred to military control following the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba.

Following the transition, SOG's first commander, Colonel Clyde Russell, had difficulty creating an organization to fulfill his mission since, at the time, United States Special Forces were unprepared doctrinally or organizationally to carry it out.b At this point the Special Forces' mission was to conduct guerrilla operations behind enemy lines in the event of an invasion by conventional forces, not conducting agent, maritime, or psychological operations. Russell expected to take over a fully functional organization and assumed that the CIA (which would maintain a representative on SOG's staff and contribute personnel to the organization) would see the military through any teething troubles. His expectations and assumptions were incorrect. The contribution of the South Vietnamese came in the form of SOG's counterpart organization (which used a plethora of titles, and was finally called the Strategic Technical Directorate [STD]).

Gulf of Tonkin Incident

On the night of 30–31 July 1964, four SOG vessels shelled two islands, Hon Me and Hon Ngu, off the coast of North Vietnam. It was the first time SOG vessels had attacked North Vietnamese shore facilities by shelling from the sea. The next afternoon, the destroyer USS Maddox began an electronic intelligence-gathering mission along the coast, in the Gulf of Tonkin. On the afternoon of 2 August, three P 4-class torpedo boats of the Vietnam People's Navy came out from Hon Me and attacked the Maddox. The American vessel was undamaged, and the U.S. claimed that one of the attacking vessels had been sunk and that the others were damaged by U.S. carrier-based aircraft. On the night of 3–4 August, three SOG vessels shelled targets on the mainland of North Vietnam. On the night of 4 August, after being joined by the destroyer USS Turner Joy, Maddox reported to Washington that both ships were under attack by unknown vessels, assumed to be North Vietnamese.

This second reported attack led President Lyndon B. Johnson to launch Operation Pierce Arrow, an aerial attack against North Vietnamese targets on 5 August. Johnson also went to the United States Congress that day and requested the passage of the Southeast Asia Resolution (better known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution), asking for the unprecedented authority to conduct military actions in Southeast Asia without a declaration of war.

Johnson's announcement of the incidents involving the destroyers did not mention that SOG vessels had been conducting operations in the same area as the Maddox immediately before, and during, that cruise; nor did it mention that, on 1 and 2 August, Laotian aircraft, flown by Thai pilots, carried out bombing raids in North Vietnam itself, or that a SOG agent team had been inserted into the same relative area and been detected by the North Vietnamese. Hanoi, which may have assumed that all of these actions signaled a coordinated military escalation against them, decided to respond in what it claimed as its territorial waters.c Thus, the three P-4s were ordered to attack the Maddox. The second incident, in which Maddox and Turner Joy were claimed to be attacked, never took place.

The last aspect of SOG's original missions consisted of psychological operations conducted against North Vietnam. The unit's naval arm picked up northern fishermen during searches of coastal vessels and detained them on Cu Lao Cham Island off Da Nang, South Vietnam (the fishermen were told that they were, in fact, still within their homeland). The South Vietnamese crews and personnel on the island posed as members of a fictional dissident northern communist group known as the Sacred Sword of the Patriots League (SSPL), which opposed the takeover of the Hanoi regime by politicians who supported the People's Republic of China (PRC). The kidnapped fishermen were well fed and treated, but they were also subtly interrogated and indoctrinated in the message of the SSPL. After a two-week stay, the fishermen were returned to northern waters.

Shining Brass

On 21 September 1965, the Pentagon authorized MACV-SOG to begin cross-border operations in Laos in areas contiguous to South Vietnam's western border. MACV had sought authority for the launching of such missions (Operation Shining Brass) since 1964 in an attempt to put boots on the ground in a reconnaissance role to observe, first hand, the enemy logistical system known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail (the Truong Son Road to the North Vietnamese). MACV, through the Seventh Air Force, had begun carrying out a strategic bombardment of the logistical system in southern Laos in April (Operation Steel Tiger) and had received authorization to launch an all-Vietnamese recon effort (Operation Leaping Lena) that had proven to be a disaster. U.S. troops were necessary and SOG was given the green light.

On 18 October 1965, MACV-SOG conducted its first cross-border mission against target D-1, a suspected truck terminus on Laotian Route 165, 15 miles (24 km) inside Laos. The team consisted of two U.S. Special Forces soldiers and four South Vietnamese. The mission was deemed a success with 88 bombing sorties flown against the terminus resulting in multiple secondary explosions, but also resulted in SOG's first casualty, Special Forces Captain Larry Thorne in a helicopter crash. William H. Sullivan, U.S. Ambassador to Laos, was determined that he would remain in control over decisions and operations that took place within the supposedly neutral kingdom.

The Laotian Civil War that raged intermittently between the communist Pathet Lao (supported by People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) troops) and the Royal Lao armed forces (supported by the CIA-backed Hmong army of General Vang Pao and USAF aircraft) compelled both sides to maintain as low a profile as possible. Hanoi was interested in Laos due only to the necessity of keeping its supply corridor to the south open. The U.S. was involved for the opposite reason. Both routinely operated inside Laos, but both also managed to keep their operations out of sight due to Lao's supposed neutrality pursuant to the 1962 International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos.

Ambassador Sullivan had the task of juggling the bolstering of the inept Lao government and military, the CIA and its clandestine army, the USAF and its bombing campaign, and now the incursions of the U.S.-led reconnaissance teams of SOG. His limitations on SOG's operations (depth of penetration, choice of targets, length of operations) led to immediate and continuous enmity between the embassy in Vientiane and the commander and troops of SOG, who promptly labelled Sullivan the "Field Marshal." The ambassador responded in kind.

Daniel Boone

During 1966 and 1967, it became obvious to MACV that the North Vietnamese were using neutral Cambodia as a part of their logistical system, funneling men and supplies to the southernmost seat of battle. Unknown was the extent of that use. The answer shocked intelligence analysts. Prince Norodom Sihanouk, trying to balance the threats facing his nation, had allowed Hanoi to set up a presence in Cambodia. Although the extension of Laotian Highway 110 into Cambodia in the tri-border region was an improvement to its logistical system, North Vietnam was now unloading communist-flagged transports in the port of Sihanoukville and trucking the cargo to its base areas on the eastern border.

Beginning in 1966, SOG conducted prisoner snatch missions of PAVN soldiers behind enemy lines along the Hồ Chí Minh Trail. No matter the team's primary mission, capturing enemy soldiers always remained the team's secondary mission when the opportunity presented itself due to valuable intelligence gained related to PAVN troop movements, size, and base locations. Teams also received rewards including free R&R trips to Taiwan or Thailand aboard a SOG C-130 Blackbird, a $100 bonus for each American, and a new Seiko watch and cash to each indigenous member. Recon teams succeeded in capturing 12 enemy soldiers in Laos during that year.

In October, 1966, efforts were made to place wiretaps in NVA base camps using specialized CIA taps with rubber coating placed over the wire to avoid detection. The first successful wiretap was conducted by RT Colorado, led by Sgt. Ted Braden, near the western end of the DMZ. During this same mission, RT Arizona was completely wiped out when they were inserted directly on top of an entrenched NVA unit. Despite this loss and others incurred as wiretapping efforts continued, the wiretaps placed by SOG members provided an invaluable intelligence source.

In April 1967, MACV-SOG was ordered to commence Operation Daniel Boone, a cross-border recon effort in Cambodia. Both SOG and the 5th Special Forces Group had been preparing for just such an eventuality. The 5th SF had gone so far as to create Projects B-56 Sigma and B-50 Omega, units based on SOG's Shining Brass organization, which had been conducting in-country recon efforts on behalf of the field forces, awaiting authorization to begin the Cambodian operations. A turf war broke out between the 5th and SOG over missions and manpower. The Joint Chiefs decided in favor of MACV-SOG, since it had already successfully conducted covert cross-border operations. Operational control of Sigma and Omega was eventually handed over to SOG.

Black year – 1968

For MACV and SOG, 1968 was a black year. The year saw the Tet Offensive, the largest PAVN/Viet Cong offensive thus far in the conflict, and the collapse of SOG's northern operations. Although the Tet Offensive was contained and rolled back, and significant casualties were inflicted upon the enemy, the mood of the American people and government had turned irrevocably against an open-ended commitment by the United States. For most of the year MACV-SOG's operations centered around in-country missions in support of field forces. Since the enemy had to come out from his cover and launched conventional operations, the U.S. and South Vietnam lost no opportunity in engaging them. General Westmoreland, encouraged by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, requested 200,000 more troops, under the stipulation that they would be used to conduct cross-border operations to pursue the foe. This was the logical military move at this point in the conflict, but it was already too late. In 1968, SOG recon teams conducted hundreds of missions gathering valuable intelligence but suffered 79 SF troops killed in action or missing. MACV-SOG captured three PAVN soldiers from Cambodia and one from Laos.

President Johnson sought a way out of the commitment that he had originally escalated. Politically, this was late in coming, but Washington had finally awakened to its predicament. Johnson attempted to get Hanoi to reopen peace negotiations and the carrot he offered was the cessation of all U.S. operations against North Vietnam north of the 20th parallel. Hanoi had only sought an end to the air campaign against the north (Operation Rolling Thunder), but Johnson went one further by calling a halt to all northern operations, both overt and covert. This order effectively ended MACV-SOG's agent team, propaganda, and aerial operations.

In reality, for MACV-SOG, the point was moot. Suspicions abounded within the organization that Operation Timberwork had been penetrated by North Vietnamese dich van agents. Intelligence returns from the northern agent teams had been disappointing and more than three-quarters of the agents inserted had been captured either during or not long after their insertion. The fact that SOG had followed the CIA's failed formula for three years was not considered a contributing factor. The unit was more concerned over Washington's continuous rejection of one of the original goals of the operation: the formation of a resistance movement by potential dissident elements in North Vietnam. Washington's stated goal in the conflict was a free and viable South Vietnam, not the overthrow of the Hanoi regime. The conundrum was what would happen had the program succeeded. The best possible outcome would have been a repeat of the ill-fated Hungarian revolution of 1956, crushed by the Soviet Union, and about which the U.S. could do nothing.

Commando Hunt

With the deflation of its northern operations (although the JCS demanded that SOG retain the capability of reinitiating them), SOG concentrated its efforts on supporting Commando Hunt, the Seventh/Thirteenth Air Force's anti-infiltration campaign in Laos. By 1969 the Ground Studies Group was running its operations from C&Cs at Da Nang for operations in southeastern Laos and at Ban Me Thuot for its Cambodian operations. That year they were joined by a new C&C at Kontum, for operations launched into the triborder region of the Prairie Fire and the northern area of Daniel Boone, which was renamed Salem House that year. Each of the C&Cs was now fielding battalion-size forces, and the number of missions rose proportionately.

Command and Control North (CCN) at Da Nang, commanded by a lieutenant colonel, used 60 recon teams and two exploitation battalions (four companies of three platoons). Command and Control Central (CCC) at Kontum, also commanded by a lieutenant colonel, used 30 teams and one exploitation battalion. During 1969 404 recon missions and 48 exploitation force operations were conducted in Laos. To give an example of the cost of such operations, during the year 20 Americans were killed, 199 wounded, and nine went missing in the Prairie Fire area. Casualties among the Special Commando Units (SCUs – pronounced Sues), as the indigenous mercenaries were titled, were: 57 killed, 270 wounded, and 31 missing. Command and Control South (CCS) at Ban Me Thuot, also commanded by a lieutenant colonel, consisted of 30 teams and an exploitation battalion. Since the use of exploitation forces was forbidden in Cambodia, these troops were utilized in securing launch sites, providing installation security, and conducting in-country missions. During the year, 454 reconnaissance operations were conducted in Cambodia.

The teams were ferried into action by RVNAF H-34 Kingbees and assorted U.S. Army aviation units in the Prairie Fire area, and by the USAF helicopters of the 20th SOS in the Salem House area. By the end of 1969, SOG was authorized 394 U.S. personnel, but it is useful to compare those numbers to the actual strengths of the operational elements. There were 1,041 Army, 476 USAF, 17 USMC and seven CIA personnel assigned to those units. They were supported by 3,068 SCUs, and 5,402 South Vietnamese and third-country civilian employees, leading to a total of 10,210 military personnel and civilians either assigned to or working for MACV-SOG.

The mission of the Ground Studies Group was to support the sensor-driven Operation Commando Hunt, which saw the rapid expansion of the bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This was made possible by the close-out of Rolling Thunder, which freed up hundreds of aircraft for interdiction missions. Intelligence for the campaign was supplied by both the recon teams of MACV-SOG and by the strings of air-dropped electronic sensors of Operation Igloo White (the successor to Muscle Shoals), controlled from Nakhon Phanom. 1969 saw the apogee of the bombing campaign, when 433,000 tons of bombs were dropped on Laos. SOG supported the effort with ground reconnaissance, sensor emplacement, wiretap, and bomb damage assessment missions. The cessation of the bombing of the north also freed the North Vietnamese to reinforce their anti-aircraft defenses of the trail system and aircraft losses rose proportionately.

Laos and Cambodia

Since his election in 1968, President Richard M. Nixon had been seeking a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam War. In 1970, he saw an opportunity to buy time for the Saigon government during Vietnamization, the phased withdrawal of U.S. troops that began in the previous year. He also sought to convince Hanoi that he meant business. That opportunity was provided by the overthrow of Cambodia's Prince Sihanouk by the pro-American General Lon Nol.

Nixon had escalated U.S. involvement in Cambodia by authorizing the secret Operation Menu bombings and by the time of Sihanouk's ouster, the program had been in operation for 14 months. Lon Nol promptly ordered North Vietnamese personnel out of the country. North Vietnam responded with an invasion of the country launched at the explicit request of the Khmer Rouge following negotiations with Nuon Chea. Nixon then authorized a series of incursions by U.S. and South Vietnamese ground forces that began on 30 April. With intelligence on communist Base Areas in eastern Cambodia gleaned from MACV-SOG, huge stockpiles of PAVN arms, ammunition, and supplies were overrun and captured. In May, Operation Freedom Deal, a continuous aerial campaign against the PAVN/Viet Cong and the Khmer Rouge was initiated. SOG recon teams in Cambodia now had all the air support that they needed.

As a result of U.S. political reaction, on 29 December the Cooper-Church Amendment was passed by Congress, prohibiting participation by U.S. ground forces in any future operations in either Cambodia or Laos. U.S. participation in Cambodian operations (which were already being turned over to all-Vietnamese teams) ended on 1 July 1970 and the same stipulation was to apply in Laos no later than 8 February 1971 (the only qualifications to the restrictions, in both operational areas, were in case of either POW rescue missions or aircraft crash site inspections). Although unknown to the U.S. public, many MACV-SOG veterans participated in Operation Ivory Coast, the Son Tay POW camp raid carried out in North Vietnam on 21 November 1970. The deputy commander of the joint rescue force was Colonel Arthur "Bull" Simons, who had created SOG's cross-border effort in 1965.

By 1971 the U.S. was steadily withdrawing from Southeast Asia. As a test of Vietnamization, Washington decided to allow the South Vietnamese to launch Operation Lam Son 719, the long-sought incursion into Laos whose aim would be the cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail. MACV and the South Vietnamese had been planning just such an operation as far back as August 1964, but the concept was continuously turned down due to the fallout that would have been incurred by the invasion of supposedly "neutral" Laos. The Laotian government (supported by Ambassador Sullivan and the State Department) was adamantly opposed to such an operation. On 8 February, 16,000 (later 20,000) South Vietnamese troops, backed by U.S. helicopter and air support, rolled into Laos along Route 9 and headed for the PAVN logistical hub at Tchepone. Unlike the Cambodian incursion, however, the North Vietnamese stood and fought, gradually mustering 60,000 troops. By 25 March, the South Vietnamese forces retreated. Ironically, MACV-SOG's role in the operation was only peripheral. Recon teams conducted diversionary operations prior to the invasion and helped cover the South Vietnamese withdrawal, but they were otherwise forbidden from participation in the very operation that both MACV-SOG and MACV had come to consider its raison d'etre.

Withdrawal

The American withdrawal from South Vietnam began to directly affect SOG in 1971. By early 1972 U.S. military personnel were forbidden from conducting operations in either Laos or Cambodia, its teams of mercenary SCUs continued those operations (in the newly renamed Phu Dung/Prairie Fire and Thot Not/Salem House areas). The organization did, however, maintain its strength in U.S. personnel, who continued to conduct in-country missions. It was also continuously tasked by the JCS with maintaining forces in readiness to once again take up northern operations if called upon to do so.

The Easter Offensive, launched by the PAVN on 30 March 1972, made cross-border operations irrelevant. As with Tet, all of MACV-SOG/STD's efforts were concentrated on in-country missions to support the Field Forces.

In late March 1971, when the 5th Special Force Group was redeployed to the U.S., the Command and Control elements were renamed Task Force Advisory Elements (TF1AE, TF2AE and TF3AE). They originally consisted of 244 U.S. and 780 indigenous personnel each, but they were quickly drawn down by the elimination of the exploitation forces. For SOG, Vietnamization was finally nigh. On 1 May 1972, the unit was reduced in strength and renamed the Strategic Technical Directorate Assistance Team 158 (STDAT-158). The Ground Studies Group was disestablished and replaced by the Liaison Service Advisory Detachments. SOG's air elements stood down for redeployment, the JPRC was turned over to MACV and redesignated the Joint Casualty Resolution Center, while the psychological operations personnel and installations were turned over to either the STD or JUSPAO. The final casualty of SOG ground operations occurred on 11 October 1971 when Sergeant First Class Audley D. Mills was killed when a booby-trap he was trying to disarm detonated.

The function of STDAT-158 was to assist the STD in a complete takeover of SOG's operations. The operational elements had already been absorbed and were expanded by the inclusion of troops from the now-disbanded South Vietnamese Special Forces. The task of the American personnel was to provide technical support (in logistics, communications, etc.) and advice to the STD. This the unit did until its disbandment on 12 March 1973. The South Vietnamese Joint General Staff, strapped for cash and equipment in the final stand-down period, never used the STD in a strategic reconnaissance role. Instead, the STD's units were launched on in-country missions until the dissolution of their parent organization in March 1973.

Recognition

The U.S. military (and MACV-SOG personnel) kept tight security over knowledge of the unit's operations and existence until the early 1980s. Although there had been some small leaks by the media during the conflict, they were usually erroneous and easily dismissed. More specific was the release of documents dealing with the early days of the operation in the Pentagon Papers and by the testimony of ex-SOG personnel during congressional investigations into the bombing campaigns in Laos and Cambodia in the early 1970s. Historians interested in the unit's activities had to wait until the early 1990s, when MACV-SOG's Annexes to the annual MACV Command Histories and a Pentagon documentation study of the organization were declassified for the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs' hearings on the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue.

One early source of information (if one read between the lines) were the citations issued for the award of the Medal of Honor to MACV-SOG personnel (although they were never recognized as such). One USAF helicopter pilot, two U.S. Navy SEALs, one U.S. Army medic, and nine Green Berets earned the nation's highest award on SOG operations:

Staff Sergeant Roy P. Benavidez (who had to wait until he received his award from President Ronald Reagan)

Staff Sergeant Jon Cavaiani

First Lieutenant James P. Fleming (USAF 20th Special Operations Squadron)

First Lieutenant Loren D. Hagen (posthumous), CCN/TF1AE

Sergeant First Class Robert L. Howard (awarded on his third separate recommendation)

Specialist 5 John J. Kedenburg (posthumous)

Staff Sergeant Franklin D. Miller (5th Special Forces Group)

Lieutenant Thomas R. Norris (Navy SEAL)

Technology

McGuire rig

Fulton surface-to-air recovery system

In popular culture

In Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now, Captain Willard is assigned to SOG and then sent after Colonel Kurtz who has taken his Montagnard force into Cambodia.

The Studies and Observations Group makes an appearance in the 2010 Activision first-person shooter video game Call of Duty: Black Ops, being an element in the story line as well as a playable multiplayer faction. MACV-SOG also appears in the sequel Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War in single-player story campaign.

On the TV series Tour of Duty, the third season sees the main characters reassigned to SOG in order to conduct covert operations in Vietnam and in Cambodia.

In the tabletop role-playing game Fall of DELTA GREEN, the eponymous organization employs Studies and Observations Group operatives and assets for their own operations. The game also suggests that MACV-SOG might have been inspired by DELTA GREEN, as both organizations have similar principles: combining operatives from various military and civilian agencies for covert operations, Top Secret classification and plausible deniability.

The Studies and Observations Group is the namesake and primary focus of the DLC SOG: Prairie Fire made for the military simulator video game Arma 3. SOG: Prairie Fire was released in 2021 and had direct advisement from MACV-SOG veterans.