ABCs of American Interrogation Methods
 

By DOUGLAS VALENTINE

Adapted From "Chapter 5: PICS" in The Phoenix Program, Douglas Valentine (NY, Wm Morrow, 1990)
 

"A census, if properly made and exploited, is a basic source of intelligence. It would show, for instance, who is related to whom, an important piece of information in counterinsurgency warfare because insurgent recruiting at the village level is generally based initially on family ties."

As counterinsurgency expert David Galula notes above, a census is an effective way of controlling large numbers of persons. Thus, while CIA paramilitary officers used their covert Census Grievance Program to gather intelligence in Viet Cong controlled villages, CIA police advisers were conducting a census program of their own. Its origins are traced to Robert Thompson, a British counterinsurgency expert the State Department hired in 1961 to advise the US on police operations in South Vietnam. Based on a system he had used in Malaya, Thompson proposed a three-pronged approach that coordinated military, civilian intelligence, and police agencies in a concerted attack on the Viet Cong Infrastructure.

On Thompson's advice, the National Police in 1962 initiated the Family Census program, in which a name list was made and a group photo taken of every family in South Vietnam. The portrait was filed in a police dossier along with each person's political affiliations, fingerprints, income, savings, and other relevant information, such as who owned property or had relatives outside the village, and thus had a legitimate reason to travel. This program was instrumental in identifying persons who could be blackmailed into working in their villages as informers. By 1965 there were 7,453 registered families.

Through the Family Census, the CIA learned the names of Communist cell members in government-controlled villages. Apprehending the cadre that ran the cells was then a matter of arresting all minor suspects and "softening them up" until they informed. The idea was to weaken the insurgency by forcing its political cadres to flee to guerrilla units in the jungle, thus depriving the VCI of its leadership in GVN areas. This was no small success, for, as Nguyen Van Thieu once observed, "Ho Chi Minh values his two cadres in every hamlet more highly than ten military divisions."'

Thompson's method was successful, up to a point, because many VCI were not terrorists but, as Galula writes, "men whose motivations, even if the counterinsurgent disapproves of them, may be perfectly honorable. They do not participate directly, as a rule, in direct terrorism or guerrilla action and, technically, have no blood on their hands."'

Thompson's dragnet technique engendered other problems. Mistakes were made, and innocent people were routinely tortured or subject to extortion by crooked cops. On other occasions VCI double agents prompted CIA "contractors" to arrest people hostile to the insurgency. Recognizing these facts, Thompson suggested that the CIA organize a police special branch of professional interrogators who would not be confused with mercenary contractors. This, in 1964, at Thompson's suggestion, the Police Special Branch was formed plans were made to center it in Province Intelligence Coordinating Committees (PICCs) in South Vietnam's 44 provinces. As one of their main features, the CIA-controlled PICCs were designed to coordinate paramilitary kidnapping and assassination operations with the intelligence operations of the Special Branch.

Also in 1964, as part of the effort to combine police, intelligence and paramilitary programs, the CIA formed paramilitary reaction forces in seven key districts surrounding Saigon. The CIA provided supplies and training, while military intelligence and Special Forces provided personnel. Lists of defectors, criminals, and other potential recruits, as well as targets, came from Special Branch files.

The CIA's "motivational indoctrination training program" was designed by its creator, Frank Scotton, to "develop improved combat skills-increased commitment to close combat-for South Vietnamese. This is not psywar against civilians or VC. This is taking the most highly motivated people, saying they deserted, typing up a contract, and using them in these units. Our problem," Scotton said, "was finding smart Vietnamese and Cambodians who were willing to die."'

The typical recruit was a profit-motivated person Scotton would persuade to desert from Special Forces A camps, which were strung out along South Vietnam's borders. On a portable typewriter he typed a single-page contract, which each recruit signed, acknowledging that although he was listed as a deserter, he was actually employed by the CIA in "a sensitive project" for which he received substantially higher pay than before.

The most valuable quality possessed by defectors, deserters, and criminals serving in "sensitive" CIA projects was their expendability. After signing their contracts, they were taken out for dinner and drinks, then to a brothel, where they were photographed, then blackmailed into joining special reconnaissance teams. Trained in Saigon, outfitted with captured enemy equipment, then given a "one-way ticket to Cambodia," they were sent to locate enemy sanctuaries. When they radioed back their position and that of the sanctuary, the CIA would bomb them along with the target.

Minds capable of such murderous scenes were not averse to exploiting American soldiers who had committed war crimes. Rather than serve time in military stockades in Vietnam or elsewhere, Americans with deviant personalities were likely to volunteer for dangerous and reprehensible jobs for the CIA's Special Operations Group.

About the assassination squads he and the CIA developed, Scotton said, "For us, these programs were all part of the same thing. We did not think of things in terms of little packages." That "thing," of course, was a grand scheme to win the war, at the bottom of which-were the province interrogation centers.

The PICS

John Patrick Muldoon, Picadoon to the people who knew him in Vietnam, was the first director of the CIA's PIC Program in Vietnam. Six feet four inches tall, well over two hundred pounds, Muldoon has a scarlet face and deep voice. A Georgetown University dropout, he joined the Agency in 1958,. He did his first tour in Germany and in 1962 was sent to South Korea. "I worked interrogation in Seoul," Muldoon recalled. "I'd never been involved in interrogation before. Ray Valentine was my boss. There was a joint KCIA-CIA interrogation center in Yon Don Tho, outside Seoul."

Here it is worth pausing to explain that in recruiting cadres for the Korean CIA, the CIA used the same method it used to staff the South Vietnamese Central Intelligence Organization (CIO). As revealed by John Marks in The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, the CIA sent its top psychologist, John Winne, to Seoul to "select the initial cadre," using a CIA-developed psychological assessment test. "I set up an office with two translators," Winne told Marks, "and used a Korean version of the Wechsler." CIA psychologists "gave the tests to 25 to 30 police and military officers," Marks writes, "and wrote up a half-page report on each, listing their strengths and weaknesses. Winne wanted to know about each candidate's ability to follow orders, creativity, lack of personality disorders, motivation-why he wanted out of his current job. It was mostly for the money, especially with the civilians."'

In this way secret police are recruited as CIA assets in every country where the agency operates. In Latin America, Marks writes, "The CIA ... found the assessment process most useful for showing how to train the anti-terrorist section. According to results, these men were shown to have very dependent psychologies and needed strong direction." Direction that came from the CIA. Marks quotes one assessor as saying, "Anytime the Company spent money for training a foreigner, the object was that he would ultimately serve our purposes." CIA officers "were not content simply to work closely with these foreign intelligence agencies; they insisted on penetrating them, and the Personality Assessment System provided a useful aid."'

Following his tour in Korea, Muldoon was assigned to South Vietnam in November 1964. "I was brought down to the National Interrogation Center [NIC] and told, `This is where you're going to work. You're going to advise X number of interrogators. They'll bring you their initial debriefing of the guy they're working on, then you'll give them additional CIA requirements."'

The CIA had different requirements, Muldoon explained, because "the South Vietnamese wanted information they could turn around and use in their battle against the Vietcong in the South.... But we were interested in information about things in the North that the South Vietnamese couldn't care less about. And that's where the American advisers would come in-to tell them, `You gotta ask this, too.'

"We had standard requirements depending on where a guy was from. A lot of VC had been trained in North Vietnam and had come back down as volunteers. They weren't regular North Vietnamese Army. So if a guy came from the North, we wanted to know where he was from, what unit he was with, how they were organized, where they were trained.... If a guy had been up North for any length of time, we wanted to know if he'd traveled on a train. What kind of identification papers did he need? Anything about foreign weapons or foreigners advising them. That sort of thing."

Built in 1964, the National Interrogation Center served as CIO headquarters and was where the CIA coordinated civilian, police, and military intelligence. "It was located down on the Saigon River," Muldoon recalled, "as part of a great big naval compound. On the left was a wing of offices where the American military chief, an Air Force major, was located. In that same wing were the chief of the CIO, his deputy, and the CIA advisers." Muldoon notes that the same CIA interrogators were there until his departure for Thailand in August 1966. There were four interrogators when he arrived and he was the fifth. Three were Air Force enlisted men serving under an Army captain. Muldoon's boss, the CIA chief of the National Interrogation Center (NIC), was Ian "Sammy" Sammers, who worked under the station's senior liaison officer, Sam Hopper, who had supervised construction of the NIC in early 1964.

One year later, according to Muldoon, "There was a conference in Nha Trang in April 1965. They were putting together an interrogation center in an existing building they had taken over, and they asked for help from the NIC. So I was sent up there with the Army captain to look at the place, figure out what kind of staff we needed, and how we were going to train them.. And while we were up there trying to break these guys in, the CIA liaison officer in Nha Trang, Tony Bartolomucci, asked Sammy if they could keep me there for this conference, at which all of our people were going to meet Jack `Red' Stent, who was taking over from Paul Hodges as chief of foreign intelligence. Bartolomucci wanted to show off his new interrogation center to all these big shots.

"The military people from the NIC had done their job," Muldoon continued, "so they left. But I stayed around. Then (CIA officer) Tucker Gougleman and Red showed up for this conference. Tucker was chief of Special Branch field operations, and things were just starting to get off the ground with the PICs. A couple were already under way one in two provinces and Tucker told me, `We're going to build, build, build, and I need someone to oversee the whole operation. I want you to do it.'

"So we had this big conference, and they packed the interrogation center full of prisoners. Bartolomucci wanted to show off with a bunch of prisoners, so he got his police buddies to bring in a bunch of prostitutes and what have you and put them in the cells. I don't think they had one VC in the place. After the conference they all went back to the regular jail, and I went to work for Tucker."

"It's funny," Muldoon reminisces," but me and Tucker used to talk about the PICs. He said something like `John, if we lose this war one day, we could end up in these god-dammed things if we get caught.'

"'Well,' I asked, `what would you do if you were in there?'

"He said he thought he'd kill himself rather than go through interrogation." Then Muldoon laughed. "Tucker wanted to turn the PICs into whorehouses. The interrogation rooms had two-way mirrors.

"Tucker was a hero in the Marine Corps in World War Two," Muldoon added. "He joined the agency right after and worked in Korea, running operations behind the lines. He was in Afghanistan and worked in training, too. He got to Vietnam in 1962 and was base chief in Da Nang running everything that had to do with intelligence and paramilitary operations. When I arrived in Saigon he was in Saigon trying to set up the Province Intelligence Coordination Committees with Jack Barlow, a British guy from MI Six. Barlow had been in Malaya with Robert Thompson, and they were the experts.

PICCs

Forerunner to the Province Interrogation Center program, the Province Intelligence Coordination Committee program was designed to extend CIO operations into the provinces. Each PICC was to serve as the senior intelligence agency within each province and to guide, supervise, and coordinate all military, police, and civilian operations. But the military refused to go along, so the CIA settled on its unilateral Province Interrogation Center Program. And that's when the PICs became the place where the CIA coordinated its paramilitary and intelligence operations at the province level. The Special Branch and CIA officials stationed at the PIC would get informants to tell the CIA who the VCI were, then the CIA would send the assassination squads to kidnap or kill them. This was the one-two punch of the counterinsurgency; the secret interrogation centers and the "counter-terrorists (CTs)." Through the PICs, the CIA learned the identity and structure of the VCI in each province; through the CTs, the CIA eliminated individual VCI members and destroyed their organization.

The problem with the initial PIC was its design, so CIA architects re-designed it. Strictly functional, it minimized cost while maximizing security. Under cover of Pacific Architects and Engineers (PA&E), the CIA's logistics staff hired local Vietnamese contractors to build interrogation centers in each of South Vietnam's 44 provinces. Funds and staff salaries came from the Special Branch budget. After it was built, the CIA bought the interrogation center, then donated it to the National Police, at which point it became a National Police facility under the direction of the Special Branch. Each provincial capital also had a CIA interrogation center, as did each of the four region capitals. The difference was that regional interrogation centers were larger, holding two to three hundred prisoners each. 

According to Muldoon, it was up to the CIA's liaison officer to convince the province chief and his CIO counterpart to find a spot near the provincial capital. Once the interrogation center was built, the liaison officer became its adviser, and Muldoon helped him recruit its staff. Most were built or under construction by the time Muldoon left Vietnam in August 1966, at which point he was transferred to Thailand to build the CIA's huge interrogation center in Udorn.

next page: Inside a PIC