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17 July 1965: Pham Ngoc Thao was killed in prison in South Vietnam.
From 1962, Thao oversaw the Strategic Hamlet Program, designed to counter the Communists at the level it mattered: the local villages.
Problem: he was an agent of North Vietnam, so he sabotaged the program.
From 1962, Thao oversaw the Strategic Hamlet Program, designed to counter the Communists at the level it mattered: the local villages.
Problem: he was an agent of North Vietnam, so he sabotaged the program.
With the Strategic Hamlet Program, a classic COIN concept, Pham Ngoc Thao was supposed to separate the rural population of RVN from the Communist guerrillas. But Thao, a DRV agent, implemented it in a way that maximally alienated the population, opening space for the Communists.
The failure of South Vietnam's Strategic Hamlet Program (COIN) b/c of the Communist spy Pham Ngoc Thao helped set in motion downfall of Ngo Dinh Diem [one of the worst mistakes of the war] and the turn to more conventional tactics using ever-increasing numbers of US troops. #pt
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