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Break in the Chain—Intelligence Ignored: Military Intelligence in Vietnam and Why the Easter Offensive Should Have Turned out Differently
A riveting combination of war memoir and analysis providing “valuable insights” into the role of military intelligence in Vietnam (International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence). For the first two weeks of the Easter Offensive of 1972, the 571st Military Intelligence Detachment provided the only pertinent collateral intelligence available to American forces. Twice daily, the Detachment provided intelligence to the USS Buchanan (DDG-14), US Navy SEALS, and Special Forces units, including tactical and strategic forecasts of enemy movements, information that was otherwise unavailable to U.S. units and advisors in-country. Bob Baker was an intelligence analyst who was there. In the weeks before the offensive, vital agent reports and verbal warnings by the 571st MI Detachment had been ignored by all the major commands; they were only heeded, and then only very reluctantly, once the offensive began. This refusal to listen to the intelligence explains why no Army or USMC organizations were on-call to recover prisoners discovered or U.S. personnel downed behind enemy lines, as in the BAT-21 incident, as the last two Combat Recon Platoons in Vietnam had been disbanded six weeks before the offensive began. The lessons and experiences of Operation Lam Son 719 in the previous year were ignored, especially with regard to the NVA’s tactical use of tanks and artillery. In his memoir, Baker, the only trained military intelligence analyst with the 571st MI Detachment in 1972, reveals these and other heroics and blunders during a key moment in the Vietnam War.
264 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 31, 2021
About the author
W.R. Baker
3 booksW.R. (Bob) Baker graduated first in the first Intelligence (Order of Battle) Analyst class to graduate from Fort Huachuca, Arizona in 1971. He was then the only intelligence analyst assigned to the 571st Military Intelligence Detachment/525th Military Intelligence Group in Da Nang, Vietnam, present at the time of the Easter Offensive of 1972. His further assignments after Vietnam included various positions for a combined total of 8 years with the European Defense Analysis Center/HQ, USEUCOM. He has received the Bronze Star, Defense Meritorious Service, Joint Service and Army Commendation Medals. Bob has authored several articles on the Easter Offensive of 1972, intelligence, and Vietnam.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 1, 2023
This book is supposed to be about the failure of American intelligence during the Easter Offensive, but it is not precisely about that. W.R. Baker, a trained army intelligence analyst, who was assigned to the I Corps of the ARVN during North Vietnam's offensive, promises an analysis of why the Easter Offensive should have turned out differently, and he has both personal experiences and research to draw on. However, his work is also a combination of a personal memoir and rather confusing accounts of the important moments of the offensive, such as the blowing up of Dong Ha bridge and BAT-21.
The narrative is divided into three main sections, and the author dedicates the whole first one to his training, the Army Intelligence School, and arrival in Vietnam. He tells his story with many particulars, which would be great if he had presented his work as a war memoir. However, since the reader is told to expect an analysis of American intelligence gathering and interpretation in 1972, the author's focus on his own life seems unnecessary.
The good analysis is in the second section, in which he depicts how high-ranking American military officials ignored intelligence reports, which clearly pointed to the fact that North Vietnam was planning something big for 1972. There was no alert and no rushing of soldiers and equipment in any given area. The ARVN had no idea what the Communists had in store for them. To make things worse, as Easter approached, the American military and civilian leaders responsible for operations in Vietnam demonstrated surprising nonchalance. When the offensive was launched, MACV commander General Abrams was in Thailand with his wife. Colonel Josh Dorsey, the head of the Marine Corps advisers, was with his wife in the Philippines, and the commander of the MACV advisory team tasked with advising the 3rd ARVN was also there, visiting his wife and children. Many other senior officers were not present or planning not to be. It is to no wonder that the ARVN were caught off-guard by the enemy, and chaos reigned the first several weeks of the Communists' onslaught.
These information, as presented by the author, puts under question the accusations of treason that Colonel Gerald H. Turley raises against General Giai, the commander of the 3rd ARVN division, in his account of the Easter Offensive. Turley speculates that Giai might have travelled to Saigon for a holiday a day before the offensive was launched, leaving the ARVN unsupervised and weakened by an untimely relief operation, because he actually sympathized with the Communists. However, considering that the American military leaders did the same, one can conclude either that they also were agents of North Vietnam or, more likely, that they acted carelessly and so did Giai because if they could, he could too.
The author also corrects a popular wrong belief that during the Easter Offensive, advisers were the only Americans still present in Vietnam. This was actually not so. Army Intelligence continued to perform, and according to him, it performed well. Army advisory teams and Marine Corps advisers also stayed, assisting ARVN divisions and South Vietnam's Marines. However, they were gradually being pulled out and not replaced, which, the author argues, was a bad strategy. At a time when American soldiers were returning to America and all their tasks were becoming the ARVN's, South Vietnam's army needed more guidance from experienced advisers, not less.
After several such informative chapters, though, the author opts to write about the surrender of Camp Carroll, the bridge at Dong Ha, and the rescue of BAT-21, and he does not do a good job. If one is a reader who knows nothing about these episodes from the Easter Offensive, one will be greatly confused by his account. The chapters are way too brief to chronicle what happened in an understandable way, so one may feel overwhelmed by all the abbreviations, divisions, names of officers, and so on. Furthermore, the chapter about BAT-21 is only four pages long, and it is challenging to understand not only what happened, but even who Lieutenant Colonel Iceal E. Hambleton, whom the Air Force was trying to rescue, was. If one is a reader who has some previous knowledge of these episodes, one may wonder what they have to do with the failure of American intelligence during the Easter Offensive because they do not seem to contribute to the author's analysis.
The third section has some helpful chapters. One of them offers information about all intelligence services and technologies, which were used in Vietnam. They are a lot. From the Defense Intelligence Agency to the Air Force Security Service, to ground-based sensors, each played its own important part in the collection of intelligence, which was then misinterpreted or simply disregarded by commanders. In a chapter dedicated to observations and conclusions, the author also underscores that Operation Lam Son 719, the ARVN's ill-fated invasion of Laos in February 1971, should have alerted the Americans to the fact that South Vietnam's army could not hold its own against the enemy without massive American air support. Just like a year later during the Easter Offensive, the Communists managed to be a significant challenge to the ARVN soldiers despite being relentlessly bombed. This was an obvious sign that the ARVN would not survive without the Americans and that Vietnamization was not the success that Saigon wanted it to be. The appendices to Baker's work are also interesting. Among them is a list of reasons, based on quotes by Colonel Bui Tin of North Vietnam's army, why the Americans failed in Vietnam. One of the most interesting ones was that the North knew it had to win over the American media to achieve victory because the media then influenced politicians, who want to be loved and elected, and university professors, who like to see their books sell well. This explains why a number of journalists and academics presented the Communists as the good guys and acquired the support of many in the Protest Movement.
BREAK IN THE CHAIN is not a comprehensive account of American intelligence and its failures during the Easter Offensive, though. As an experienced intelligence analyst, Baker could have written a much more insightful analysis than he did. He draws few conclusions from the large amount of information he presents. This book, while informative, falls short of its potential.
The narrative is divided into three main sections, and the author dedicates the whole first one to his training, the Army Intelligence School, and arrival in Vietnam. He tells his story with many particulars, which would be great if he had presented his work as a war memoir. However, since the reader is told to expect an analysis of American intelligence gathering and interpretation in 1972, the author's focus on his own life seems unnecessary.
The good analysis is in the second section, in which he depicts how high-ranking American military officials ignored intelligence reports, which clearly pointed to the fact that North Vietnam was planning something big for 1972. There was no alert and no rushing of soldiers and equipment in any given area. The ARVN had no idea what the Communists had in store for them. To make things worse, as Easter approached, the American military and civilian leaders responsible for operations in Vietnam demonstrated surprising nonchalance. When the offensive was launched, MACV commander General Abrams was in Thailand with his wife. Colonel Josh Dorsey, the head of the Marine Corps advisers, was with his wife in the Philippines, and the commander of the MACV advisory team tasked with advising the 3rd ARVN was also there, visiting his wife and children. Many other senior officers were not present or planning not to be. It is to no wonder that the ARVN were caught off-guard by the enemy, and chaos reigned the first several weeks of the Communists' onslaught.
These information, as presented by the author, puts under question the accusations of treason that Colonel Gerald H. Turley raises against General Giai, the commander of the 3rd ARVN division, in his account of the Easter Offensive. Turley speculates that Giai might have travelled to Saigon for a holiday a day before the offensive was launched, leaving the ARVN unsupervised and weakened by an untimely relief operation, because he actually sympathized with the Communists. However, considering that the American military leaders did the same, one can conclude either that they also were agents of North Vietnam or, more likely, that they acted carelessly and so did Giai because if they could, he could too.
The author also corrects a popular wrong belief that during the Easter Offensive, advisers were the only Americans still present in Vietnam. This was actually not so. Army Intelligence continued to perform, and according to him, it performed well. Army advisory teams and Marine Corps advisers also stayed, assisting ARVN divisions and South Vietnam's Marines. However, they were gradually being pulled out and not replaced, which, the author argues, was a bad strategy. At a time when American soldiers were returning to America and all their tasks were becoming the ARVN's, South Vietnam's army needed more guidance from experienced advisers, not less.
After several such informative chapters, though, the author opts to write about the surrender of Camp Carroll, the bridge at Dong Ha, and the rescue of BAT-21, and he does not do a good job. If one is a reader who knows nothing about these episodes from the Easter Offensive, one will be greatly confused by his account. The chapters are way too brief to chronicle what happened in an understandable way, so one may feel overwhelmed by all the abbreviations, divisions, names of officers, and so on. Furthermore, the chapter about BAT-21 is only four pages long, and it is challenging to understand not only what happened, but even who Lieutenant Colonel Iceal E. Hambleton, whom the Air Force was trying to rescue, was. If one is a reader who has some previous knowledge of these episodes, one may wonder what they have to do with the failure of American intelligence during the Easter Offensive because they do not seem to contribute to the author's analysis.
The third section has some helpful chapters. One of them offers information about all intelligence services and technologies, which were used in Vietnam. They are a lot. From the Defense Intelligence Agency to the Air Force Security Service, to ground-based sensors, each played its own important part in the collection of intelligence, which was then misinterpreted or simply disregarded by commanders. In a chapter dedicated to observations and conclusions, the author also underscores that Operation Lam Son 719, the ARVN's ill-fated invasion of Laos in February 1971, should have alerted the Americans to the fact that South Vietnam's army could not hold its own against the enemy without massive American air support. Just like a year later during the Easter Offensive, the Communists managed to be a significant challenge to the ARVN soldiers despite being relentlessly bombed. This was an obvious sign that the ARVN would not survive without the Americans and that Vietnamization was not the success that Saigon wanted it to be. The appendices to Baker's work are also interesting. Among them is a list of reasons, based on quotes by Colonel Bui Tin of North Vietnam's army, why the Americans failed in Vietnam. One of the most interesting ones was that the North knew it had to win over the American media to achieve victory because the media then influenced politicians, who want to be loved and elected, and university professors, who like to see their books sell well. This explains why a number of journalists and academics presented the Communists as the good guys and acquired the support of many in the Protest Movement.
BREAK IN THE CHAIN is not a comprehensive account of American intelligence and its failures during the Easter Offensive, though. As an experienced intelligence analyst, Baker could have written a much more insightful analysis than he did. He draws few conclusions from the large amount of information he presents. This book, while informative, falls short of its potential.
April 14, 2022
Once Again, Intelligence Worked; Leaders Failed to Deadly Consequences
Though difficult to read at times, the author provides a tremendous amount of detail in support of his thesis regarding the failure of senior leaders using all the intelligence sources available to them before and during the largest battle of the Viet Nam War! Unfortunately, we still haven't learned the lessons identified once again.
Though difficult to read at times, the author provides a tremendous amount of detail in support of his thesis regarding the failure of senior leaders using all the intelligence sources available to them before and during the largest battle of the Viet Nam War! Unfortunately, we still haven't learned the lessons identified once again.
April 11, 2026
Required reading for anyone studying the Vietnam conflict.
This is the only book that I have read about the Vietnam War that pulls no punches about why we (US military) failed in Vietnam. This book exposes the cover up by our highest official of our failure and the countless lives it cost.
This is the only book that I have read about the Vietnam War that pulls no punches about why we (US military) failed in Vietnam. This book exposes the cover up by our highest official of our failure and the countless lives it cost.
December 25, 2022
Good NVA OOB for Easter Offensive.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews