On May 1, the Intelligence
Community has published, via Intelligence.gov, a third and final
installment of declassified documents relating to the IC’s role
in the Vietnam War’s Tet Offensive, highlighting material from the Central
Intelligence Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Defense
Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency.
On January 4, 2018, in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War’s Tet Offensive, Director of National Intelligence Daniel R. Coats directed intelligence agencies to review their holdings for historical material of current interest relating to the IC’s role in the Tet Offensive. In addition to the material released today, two previous installments of responsive records were published in July 2018, and January 2019, per DNI Coat’s directive.
Intelligence.gov has
served as the hub for information on the progress of the Tet Offensive document
declassification throughout the release process and provides access to original
records sourced from across the IC, as well as rich digital media that provides
context and insight into these materials as well as the Tet Offensive, more
broadly.
About the Transparency Initiative
Efforts to
declassify historical information of current relevance are rooted in the IC’s
2015 Transparency
Implementation Plan for the Principles of Intelligence
Transparency, published on October 27, 2015. The plan identifies
transparency priorities and translates the principles into concrete, measurable
initiatives.
About the Tet Offensive
The Tet
Offensive was a series of surprise attacks launched by the North Vietnamese
Army and the Viet Cong on January 30, 1968, throughout South Vietnam that
targeted multiple prominent sites, including the Presidential Palace and the
U.S. Embassy in Saigon.
While the attacks initially took the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces by surprise, they eventually recovered to repel the Viet Cong. The dramatic nature of the Tet Offensive began to turn U.S. public opinion against the war and precipitated the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.
Source: ODNI
By Loren Blinde
May 7, 2019
