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slackening of disciplined production. Hanoi was forced, time and again, to remind the people that the war was still on and that they had duties. Nobody can say whether we would have succeeded in demoralizing North Vietnamese troops or in driving wedges between the people and the government of North Vietnam; the point is that there was a chance to do so, that this chance might have weakened Hanoi significantly, and that the bombing of North Vietnam deprived us of that chance. It follows that the case should at least have been given a hearing. We had no such hearing in Casablanca, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, or when the decision to bomb North Vietnam was made. This must change if the enormous capabilities of PSYWAR are to come into their own.

NOTES

1. Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper and Row, 1950), p. 696.

2 Lyndon B. Johnson, Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), p. 124 ff.

SIHANOUK'S APPEAL TO THE MONKS OF CAMBODIA*
By the 7TH PSYOP GROUP

Because the success of PSYOP depends heavily on the receptivity of the target audience, a good sense of timing and skill in exploiting an opportunity become important elements in the delivery of a message or appeal.

Peking NCNA International carried a message from Prince Norodom Sihanouk to the Khmer Buddhist monks on September 17th. In his message [one of four] he asked the monks of Cambodia to join him in his struggle to regain his throne.

The gist of his message was designed to impress upon the Buddhist monks their duty to stand on the side of the city poor, the exploited workers, and the peasants rather than with people who "have sold the country to U.S. neo-colonialism." In this regard, he felt that the Lon Nol group did not deserve support from monks because of the manner in which it took over the reigns of government.

In order to oppose this neo-colonialist undertaking of the Americans, [Sihanouk continued,] it is necessary for the people of Asia to reconcile with one another, unite and fight together, regardless of their beliefs and ideology. It is absolutely wrong to distinguish believers from atheists, non-Communist from Communist. For the safety, freedom and independence of our Asian countries, it is necessary for us to create a union and solidarity among all the Asians determined to fight for an Asia free from imperialism and neo-colonialism. It is necessary for us to expose the renegades in Asia and to fight against those who, prompted by ambitions and personal interests, serve the unjustifiable cause of U.S. imperialism.

In the next portion of Sihanouk's message he points out five cases in which people with seemingly good paying jobs and happy families have

*Excerpted and adapted from "Sihanouk's Appeal to the Monks of Cambodia," "Communist Propaganda Highlights: Trends and Analysis," Issue No. 41-70 (9 October 1970), pp. 41-4-41-9.

left their jobs and family to join him. According to Sihanouk these people now have only very modest pay but feel they are working for a good cause. "In one case," Sihanouk said, "those students living abroad who agree to support Lon Nol have received big rewards (some have even been given 300 U.S. dollars each). In Europe, the student members of the National United Front of Kampuchea (NUFK) remain poor. They lack money, and sometimes they have only one meal a day."

Let our monks and Samdech, head of the sect, take pains to ask themselves why all these young and old patriots agree to such sacrifices and such hardships. Let them ask themselves why our citizens of the provinces, young and old, men and women, yesterday in hundreds and today in thousands, agree spontaneously to leave their houses, rice fields, farmland, livestock and carts, etc., in order to join the people's heroes Khieu Samphan Hu Nim, and Hou Youn in the jungle.

In this regard, I would like to state precisely for our Buddhist monks that first, the said Communist states of Eastern Europe have not given their official recognition to the Lon Nol government which was born of the coup of last 18 Mar; secondly, some of these very European Communist states have recognized officially, while others admitted publicly, that Nordom Sihanouk remains the legal head of state of Cambodia; thirdly, the political parties, the people's fronts, and the people of these very countries have officially given their recognition to the NUFK as the only representative of the Khmer people and have time and again and most expressly affirmed their support to our people and their NUFK in our struggle against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys and for national salvation and the liberation of the Khmer motherland; fourthly, the refusal by certain European Communist governments to recognize the RGNUK by no means signifies that they support or like the regime of Lon Nol.

This refusal might be explained by certain interests of their own of these governments. This should lead our Buddhist monks to think over the policies, attitudes, maneuvers, and actions of certain powers in Asia which seem unwilling to see the Asians become complete masters of the destinies of their Asia and of their Asian countries.

Therefore, [said Sihanouk in closing,] if our Buddhist monks and Samdech, head of the sect, like our nation, agree to look these realities straight in the face, I am sure that they will not fail to march on the just roads towards a future which would not be in contradiction to the national ideals of pure patriotism, peoples democracy and genuine freedom.

Comment: Sihanouk broadcast his speeches at a time when the people were about to observe their oldest and most significant Buddhist ceremony, the Festival of the Dead. Offerings of food and garments are made to the monks during the first 15 days of the tenth lunar month. The reasoning behind the broadcast of the speeches at this time is that the monks have a great deal of influence on the people and many of them. probably have not lost all loyalty to Sihanouk. He knows that if he can possibly get the support of the monks at this time, he would also keep the support of a large majority of the people.

The four speeches, employing kaleidoscopic verbosity, suggest that the people come back to the pure and simple life. He appears to be trying to sway the Khmer by explaining that others in seemingly good paying jobs have given up everything to support him, hoping that the monks and their followers might heed the advice and actions of these people and join him. Sihanouk would like the Khmer to think if they do not join him they will be dishonoring the Kingdom of Cambodia and the sacred Buddha.

There are several points of view about Sihanouk and the Buddhists. Some say the Buddhist clergy no longer are charmed by Sihanouk and thus would be unlikely to try to persuade their followers. Others believe that Sihanouk still has a pretty strong hold on the Buddhist clergy and, through them, on the people.

THE FAMOUS "MIG" LEAFLET*

BY CARL BERGER

Subsequent results of messages will not always be predictable; it is therefore incumbent upon the communicator to scrutinize messages carefully and attempt to detect the potential for unintended effects, both positive and negative.

Occasionally, a special leaflet operation will produce important side effects. This was the case with the special offer made by the U.N. Command in April and May 1953, an offer of $50,000 to any Communist pilot who would deliver a MIG jet fighter or other modern Soviet jet to the United Nations forces in Korea. An additional bonus of $50,000 was promised the first pilot to bring in a plane.

The offer was disseminated by airdrops of special leaflets written in Korean, Chinese, and Russian. In addition, the offer was carried in these languages over the U.N. radio network. Both the leaflet and radio media gave detailed flight plans whereby Communist pilots could bring in planes safely under escort by U.N. fighters.

Not until several weeks after the July 1953 Armistice in Korea, did a North Korean jet pilot zoom out of the skies, land at Kimpo airfield near Seoul, and ask for political asylum. The pilot said he had never heard of the jet offer, but since American truthfulness was at stake, the U.S. Air Force paid the pilot the $100,000 reward and the offer was withdrawn. But this was not the whole story. General Mark Clark, U.N. Commander, later reported that the Air Force not only got its $100,000 worth in information from tests on the Russian jet, but the operation had had important military side effects.

According to Clark, the Communists' first reaction to the offer

was to ground all MIGs for eight days. It might have been because of the weather, or because they wanted time to screen out the politically unreliable pilots. Most likely, it was the latter. An eight-day break in MIG operations in Korea was most unusual. ... For whatever reason, the Communist MIG pilots who were permitted to fly after the offer was made were the worst-on their record- of the whole Korean War. They flew far fewer missions in those last ninety days than in the preceding three months, but American Sabrejet pilots shot down twice as many planes. In fact, the Sabres destroyed 165 MIGS against three friendly combat losses a record ratio of 55 to one.i

Conceding that the pilots knew of the offer-and Communist reactions appear to grant that point-here was an instance of a measurably successful psychological operation.

*Excerpts from An Introduction to Wartime Leaflets, Documentary Study No. 1, The American University, Special Operations Research Office, Washington, D.C., 1959, AD 220 821, pp. 74-76.

National Liberation Front" (at any rate, something like that), records Humanité correspondents Wilfred Burchette and Madeleine Riffaud eating and singing with happy peasants. The film is almost completely uninformative and comes close to being embarrassing-Mlle. Riffaud is more than effuse in her desire to kiss and fondle young Vietcong guerrillas. The quality of the print is mercifully poor and a good portion of all this is practically invisible.

*

Although the NLF movies draw unexpectedly large audiences (mostly students) wherever they are shown, their net effect is ambiguous at best. They seldom exploit the motion picture as a particular form of communication, nor do they explore the special qualities that set it off from pamphlets or slide shows. The films do not achieve a sense of the camera's own participation in events, a sense present in the footage of volunteer cameramen for the Spanish Republic (To Die in Madrid). Judged by the standards we apply to works of art, or even against the more vague measure of some kind of immediacy of feeling, the work is crude and conventional. One responds with something of the suspicion Trotsky felt, perhaps unjustly, for the work of the poet Mayakovsky: "[he] shouts too often where one should speak; and so his cry, where cry is needed, sounds inadequate."

THE VIET CONG SLOGAN SLIP*

By the JUSPAO PLANNING STAFF

The slogan slip, containing short and succinct messages and appeals, has, because of its size, the advantage of being covertly distributed in enemy-held areas.

[One] tool in the Viet Cong communication armory is the slogan slip. This is a small slip of paper (some as small as two by three inches) which contains a short message expressing one idea. The most terse, for example, might read, "Down With the U.S.-Lackey Clique." Use of the slogan slip apparently stems from the experiences gained by the Soviet communists who have raised sloganeering to a high pitch. Of course revolutionaries have for generations used the slogan as a rallying cry, particularly among the less educated. For example, Patrick Henry's "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death." Or the Loyalist slogan of the Spanish Civil War: "It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees." Or Lenin's cry: "Land to the Tillers." Or almost anything from Madison Avenue.

One of the primary uses for [the] slogan slip by Viet Cong cadres is to help raise revolutionary consciousness. Villagers are encouraged to draft, produce and distribute slogan slips.

*Excerpts from "The Viet Cong Slogan Slip," JUSPAO Memorandum, February 9, 1966.

A captured Viet Cong directive for example declared that:

The slogan is a form of agitation that concentrates the determination of the masses to struggle, expresses the attitudes and actions of the masses to make revolution, and lowers the prestige and power of the enemy . . . They are of three types: those which praise our policies; those which express hatred especially for enemy crimes; and those which support the binh van proselyting movement.

It went on to say that slogans could be written on paper, on wood panels, carved into tree trunks and also lettered on walls or on large banners to be hung across roads leading into villages. The directive added:

Slogans may be written in the form of poetry, in verses of six or eight words, or in the form of words to popular songs...But all slogans must be written in serious and dignified form and not scrawled. Many slogans now used are disorderly. These must be improved. The masses must be taught to write slogans properly, hang them in public places, and protect them from enemy soldiers during clearing operations.

The directive gave an example of villagers protecting their slogan:

In one village the people wrote slogans on the bark of tree trunks. The enemy soldiers came to the village and saw the slogans on the tree and said, "We think we should cut down these trees with those offending words." The people replied to them: "If the Liberation soldiers had written the slogans on bridges would you blow up the bridges?" The soldiers were forced by this logic to withdraw, without cutting down the trees.

Slogan slips are generally distributed covertly. They are slipped into women's shopping baskets at markets, tossed in parked vehicles in the cities, placed at night in school room desks or simply scattered along paths and walks where they are apt to be found by pedestrians.

A. . . study. . . of 144 slogan slips, collected at random from throughout the country, indicates both the priority of audiences currently maintained by the Viet Cong as well as a general overview of current themes.

As far as language was concerned the vast majority of the slogan slips, about 90 percent, were in Vietnamese, with Montagnard dialects and English following in that order. The largest single target for the slogan slip was the general rural population; fifty percent were omnidirectional. The largest single target was members of ARVN, with Montagnards, youth, specifically rural, civil servants, Americans and Hoa Hao.

More than two thirds of the total number of slogan slips were devoted to two themes: support for the Viet Cong effort and proselyting of military and civil servants; these ranked about 40 percent and 30 percent respectively. Then came anti-U.S. themes of 12 percent (although antiU.S. themes appeared as secondary themes in a majority of the sample), followed by 15 other themes of less than three percent each.

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