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Western intelligence cooperation on Vietnam during the early Cold War era

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Western intelligence cooperation on Vietnam

during the early Cold War era

Miriam Matejova & Don Munton

To cite this article: Miriam Matejova & Don Munton (2016) Western intelligence cooperation
on Vietnam during the early Cold War era, Journal of Intelligence History, 15:2, 139-155, DOI:
10.1080/16161262.2016.1145853

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JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE HISTORY, 2016
VOL. 15, NO. 2, 139–155
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/16161262.2016.1145853

Western intelligence cooperation on Vietnam during the

early Cold War era
Miriam Matejovaa and Don Muntonb
a
Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada; bCentre for
International Education and Cooperation, Kwansei Gakuin University, Tokyo, Japan

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

In the aftermath of the 1954 Geneva Conference, Canada, the UK, the Received 5 March 2015
US and other Western allies cooperated in gathering and sharing of Accepted 5 October 2015
human intelligence on and in North Vietnam. The British and Canadian KEYWORDS
foreign ministries played a key role in these efforts. Focusing mainly on French Indochina; Geneva
the activities of these two countries, we explore the Vietnam intelli- Accords; Vietnam;
gence program and discuss some of its implications on a broader International Commission on
Western, multilateral Humint cooperation. While the focus of this article Supervision and Control;
is on efforts in Indochina in the mid-1950s, the pattern of intelligence human intelligence;
cooperation described here continued into early and mid-1960s. International Intelligence
Western intelligence liaison is not limited to the Vietnam case, as Liaison
reflected in the intelligence activities of Western allies in Cuba (the
1960s–1970s), Tehran (1978–1980), Bosnia (the 1990s) and elsewhere.

Introduction
Ongoing revelations by former American intelligence contractor Edward Snowden have
turned a series of spotlights not only on certain activities of the US National Security
Agency but also on signals intelligence (Sigint) cooperation amongst agencies of various
countries.1 On the one hand, the nature of Snowden’s disclosures on specific operations is
unprecedented. On the other hand, the fact of cooperative multinational Sigint arrangements
is hardly news.2 The existence of the ‘UKUSA’ intelligence alliance, known colloquially as the
‘Five Eyes’ (joining the Sigint agencies of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New
Zealand and Canada), is no longer even an ‘official’ secret.3

CONTACT Don Munton [email protected]

1
Greg Weston et al., “Snowden Document Shows Canada Set up Spy Posts for NSA,” CBC News, December 9, 2013,
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/snowden-document-shows-canada-set-up-spy-posts-for-nsa-1.2456886
(accessed March 4, 2014); National Security Agency, “NSA Intelligence Relationship with Canada’s Communications
Security Establishment Canada (CSEC),” Information Paper, April 2013, http://www.cbc.ca/news2/pdf/nsa-canada-april
32013.pdf; Jim Bronskill, “Leaks on Five Eyes Spy Network Are Fuelling ‘Misinformation,’ CSE Commissioner Says,”
Canadian Press, December 9, 2013, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/leaks-on-five-eyes-spy-network-
misinformation-csec-chief-says/article15835425/ (accessed March 4, 2014).
2
The first major treatment of the history and structure of UKUSA was published fully three decades ago. See Jeffrey T.
Richelson and Desmond Ball, Ties that Bind: Intelligence Cooperation between the UKUSA Countries – the United
Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1985). See
also Christopher Andrew, “The Making of the Anglo-American SIGINT Alliance,” in In the Name of Intelligence, eds. H.
Peake and S. Halperin (Washington, DC: NIBC Press, 1994), 95–109.
3
The United States and United Kingdom governments recently took the unprecedented step of jointly releasing
documents on the origins of the UKUSA arrangement and some of its early cooperative efforts (http://www.nsa.
gov/public_info/declass/ukusa.shtml and http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukusa/).
© 2016 Journal of Intelligence History
140 M. MATEJOVA AND D. MUNTON

What is much less well-known is the existence of a longstanding, parallel, multilateral

human intelligence (Humint) alliance. Western countries have for decades cooperated in
the gathering and sharing of intelligence from human sources. Whatever its origins, this
nameless, informal human intelligence alliance operated through the Cold War and
beyond. Specific examples of intensive and/or extensive multilateral Western Humint
cooperation occurred in Cuba during and after the Castro revolution (the 1960s–1970s),
during the Tehran embassy hostage affair (1978–1980) and during the conflict in Bosnia
(the 1990s).4 Another example of Western Humint cooperation, dating to the early
1950s, was a decades-long effort focused on what was then known as French Indochina.
The present article begins to outline the nature of Western intelligence cooperation on
Indochina, a case with its roots both in the realities of the post-World War II demise of French
colonial control in Southeast Asia and in the perceptions and fears of communist expansion
into the region. The base for much of the intelligence activity was the involvement of both
Britain and Canada in the work of the ill-fated International Commission for Supervision and
Control (ICSC) in Vietnam, in the first few years after the 1954 Geneva Conference that gave
birth to the three countries of the former Indochina (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia).
We do not focus on the familiar contours of what is called the American War in Vietnam,
the literature on which occupies not shelves but aisles in libraries. Instead, we examine the
period between the First Vietnam War (1949–54), involving France, and the Second Vietnam
War, involving the full-scale deployment of US troops, after 1964. The background to the
Indochina intelligence collection and sharing effort is, in short, the decade of Indochina’s
transition from French colonial control to intervention by the new American hegemon.
For reasons to be explained, the focus here will be on intelligence collection
efforts by Britain and Canada in Vietnam and on the sharing of intelligence from
that theatre amongst Western allied countries. First, we summarize the nature and
extent of the available evidence on these operations and provide some historical
background. We then focus on the collection of information and on the way in
which it was shared. In conclusion, we explore what the Vietnam intelligence
program tells us about Western Humint cooperation more generally.

A note on sources
The fact the Canadian delegation to the ICSC was engaged in intelligence activities in
Indochina in the 1950s was discussed decades ago by Dalhousie University scholar
James Eayrs.5 His findings were based on a partial set of Canadian documents available
to him in the early 1980s. While Eayrs’ revelations have never been challenged they have
been widely ignored – perhaps curiously.6 No secondary literature has therefore
4
Case studies of this alliance in operation, that involved the U.K and Canada as well as others, include Munton and
Matejova, “Western Intelligence Liaison, the Tehran Hostage Affair and Iran’s Islamic Revolution,” Intelligence and
National Security 27, no 5 (October 2012): 739–60; Munton, “Our Men in Havana: Canadian Foreign Intelligence
Operations in Castro’s Cuba” International Journal 70, no 1 (2015), 23–39; Munton, “International Studies Theory
Meets Intelligence Cooperation: The Case of Canada and Castro’s Cuba,” Intelligence and National Security 24, no 1
(February 2009): 119–38; and Cees Wiebes, Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992–1995 (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2003). The
story of the Tehran intelligence operation was first told by Jean Pelletier and Claude Adams, The Canadian Caper: The
Inside Story of the Daring Rescue of Six American Diplomats Trapped in Tehran (Toronto: Macmillan, 1981).
5
James Eayrs, In Defence of Canada, Indochina: Roots of Complicity (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1983), Chapt. 8.
6
In a 500-page tome, Douglas Ross mentions the intelligence work but once and then only in passing. D. Ross, In the
Interests of Peace: Canada and Vietnam 1954–73 (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 207–8.
 JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE HISTORY 141

developed on these activities. The dearth is to be found not only in studies of British and
Canadian policy but also of scholarly work on the conflicts in Southeast Asia and the
actors involved therein.7
Our research has employed the extensive materials available at the British National
Archives (UKNA) in addition to both previously open and newly released Canadian
documents. Britain was the co-chair, with the Soviet Union, of the Geneva Conference
that created the ICSC, and thus oversaw its work. Britain and Canada are also, of course,
close allies both politically and in terms of intelligence sharing. Given the longstanding
British-Canadian intelligence relationship the flow of information went well beyond
official commission communications, much of it reflected in the UKNA holdings.8

The first Vietnam War and the Geneva Conference

In the aftermath of the World War II, France sought to re-occupy its colony of Indochina, which
had been captured by the Japanese during the war. In 1946, French forces met with resistance
from the Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh. Initially, the conflict was limited to the northern
provinces of Vietnam. After 1949, as the Viet Minh secured support from Communist China,
fighting spread into Laos and Cambodia as well as Vietnam’s southern provinces.9
Possible communist control of Indochina alarmed the Eisenhower administration in
the United States. Worried about a so-called ‘domino effect’ that could lead to commu-
nist control of all of Southeast Asia, Washington began sending military aid to the
French in Indochina. French control nevertheless weakened, especially in the north.
French forces suffered a humiliating defeat in May 1954, at a crucial battle at Dien
Bien Phu, near the Laotian border. The government in Paris, having recognized it could
not win the war with the Viet Minh, agreed to negotiations over the future of Indochina.
Both Moscow and Beijing pressed their North Vietnamese allies to agree to talk. The
negotiations were a welcome opportunity for both communist powers. While the Soviet
Union, among other things, hoped to improve its relations with the West, China wished
to assert its place among the great powers and prevent the looming threat of American
direct military intervention in Vietnam.10 Ho Chi Minh shared such concerns, viewing the
United States as the principal enemy.11
The conference in Geneva, co-chaired by Britain and the USSR, brought the great
powers together to discuss the restoration of peace in Indochina. By July 1954, the
French and the leaders of what became North Vietnam agreed to a cease fire, leading to
what came to be called the Geneva Accords. The Accords were a rather messy lot, and
included three bilateral ceasefire agreements, eight unilateral declarations and the Final
Declaration of the Conference (the latter remained unsigned by any party).12 Taken
7
Pierre Asselin, Hanoi’s Road to the Vietnam War, 1954–1965 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
2013) made use of British, Canadian, French and Vietnamese documents. He notes that some key North Vietnamese
archives remain closed.
8
At the UK National Archives in Kew most documents from the 1960s have long been opened, under the standing
‘30 year rule’. The abundance of Canadian documents in the UKNA collections is itself evidence of international
intelligence liaison.
9
See, for example, Asselin, Hanoi’s Road to the Vietnam War, 12.
10
Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War. The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (New York: Random House,
2012), 332, 403–4.
11
Ibid., 332.
12
Ramesh Thakur, Peacekeeping in Vietnam (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1984), 47.
142 M. MATEJOVA AND D. MUNTON

together, these stand as a striking case of successfully ‘getting to yes’ in a set of

negotiated agreements but failing to provide the necessary basis for successful com-
pliance, for the parties to work together after the negotiations were over.
The Accords recognized the independence of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; they
provided for cease-fires in all three countries and called for a disengagement of forces in
Vietnam. Vietnam was divided along the 17th parallel, a ‘provisional military demarca-
tion line’, intended as temporary. Viet Minh forces were to regroup in the north, to a
new quasi-state (the Democratic Republic of Vietnam or DRVN) created in effect by the
Geneva conference, controlled by Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnam Workers’ Party (VWP).
French forces and others were to regroup south of the 17th parallel, in what became the
State of Vietnam (SOVN), where France and its Vietnamese allies would maintain control,
under the nominal leadership of returned emperor Bao Dai.
The Accords also provided for an exchange of prisoners of war and for voluntary
movement of non-combatants. For a limited period, civilians were to be allowed to
migrate freely across the demilitarized zone at the 17th parallel as they wished. The two
sides were to organize a nationwide election in 1956. The leaders of the DRVN agreed to
the idea of a temporary division only because they believed they would win the planned
elections. The cease fire arrangements, the regrouping of forces and the re-settlement of
civilians were to be supervised by an International Commission for Supervision and
Control in each of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.13
A year before the scheduled elections, Bao Dai’s prime minister, Ngo Dinh Diem,
deposed the emperor and created the Republic of Vietnam. He then proceeded to
ignore the Geneva provisions for elections. The consolidation of his regime and the
introduction of American military aid eventually triggered a Hanoi-supported insurgency
against his government.14 The insurgency eventually escalated into the Second
Indochina War (or what Americans call the Vietnam War).
The ICSC had three members (a chair, India, plus Poland and Canada), charged collec-
tively with overseeing the implementation of the Geneva Accords. In Vietnam, the
Commission’s first tasks were to supervise the disengagement of military forces, the transfer
of authority on both sides of the 17th parallel and the release of prisoners of war – tasks it
accomplished relatively well. It also became responsible for monitoring compliance with the
re-groupment provisions of the Accords and with a ban on introduction of new military
personnel and arms into the region.15 These tasks proved more challenging.
In order to carry out its responsibilities, the ICSC set up a number of committees and
field teams composed of military and political advisers from each of the three member
countries.16 The Commission established 14 fixed teams of military observers. Seven of
these were stationed in each of North and South Vietnam. In addition, the Commission
created two types of mobile teams – those formed as a mobile element of the fixed
teams (roughly 40 teams by 1956) and those that were specially organized and

13
Paul Bridle, Canada and the International Commissions in Indochina, 1954–1972 (Toronto: Canadian Institute of
International Affairs, 1973). Bridle was posted to the ICSC as a Canadian FSO.
14
Richard Shultz Jr., The Secret War against Hanoi (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 76.
15
Eayrs, In Defence of Canada, Indochina, 128–32.
16
The Commission comprised six parts: the Secretariat, Operations Committee, Freedoms Committee, Legal Committee,
Logistics Committee and a set of ad hoc committees. See CANDEL [Canadian delegation], “The International
Commission – Vietnam,” July 1, 1956, file 50,052-A-40, vol. 4637, par. 37, RG 25, Library and Archives Canada
(LAC). Also see Thakur, Peacekeeping in Vietnam, 63, figure 2.
 JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE HISTORY 143

dispatched from the ICSC’s headquarters (totalling approximately 100 teams by 1956).17
The teams were generally asked to report on a weekly basis. In some cases, certain
mobile teams submitted reports on a more frequent basis. However, collecting informa-
tion often proved less than easy, and reports varied in frequency and quality.
The Geneva Accords envisaged an ongoing role for the original conference co-chairs,
the UK and the USSR. They were responsible for approving and releasing the regular
reports of the ICSC. The two co-chairs, along with the other Geneva Conference parties,
were responsible for financing the ICSC, although the three Commission members also
contributed.18 According to the Accords, cases of non-compliance with Commission
recommendations could be referred to the members of the Geneva Conference. The
Accords also provided for minority reports to the co-chairs in the case of disagreements
within the Commission itself. The UK had a historical interest in the region as a Great
Power, albeit a declining one. Thus London played a continuing role in the work of the
ICSC and in regional developments. And thus the UK was also necessarily involved in
Western intelligence cooperation on Vietnam.

ICSC and Western intelligence

The invitation to Canada to fill one of three positions on the new ICSC came toward the
end of the 1954 Geneva talks on Indochina. In August, Canada formally joined Poland
and India on the three commissions. The troika structure of each commission itself
reflected the east-west divide. Implicitly, Poland and Canada were there to represent the
Soviet bloc and the Western allies, respectively. India, a leader of the emerging non-
aligned movement, was chosen to chair each commission.19 However, formally and
rhetorically, all three were assumed to be objective and ‘judicial’.
Canada’s ICSC work necessitated a major commitment of diplomatic as well as
military personnel to a part of the world where Canada had few personnel and no
previously defined interests. While Canada’s commission role was seen as one of the first
post-war cases where the country assumed a new, internationalist orientation, the ICSC
became much more than that. In the words of external affairs minister Lester Pearson,
Canada’s commission work became as ‘onerous as it certainly was unsought.’20
The ICSC’s role certainly proved onerous and may well have been ‘unsought’ but it
was nevertheless not one Canada struggled mightily to avoid. Having been invited and
being inclined to accept, Ottawa sought the advice and potentially the support of its
most important ally.
The United States had been highly sceptical about the Geneva Conference from the
outset and the nature of the Geneva Accords did little to assuage Washington’s fears.
The Eisenhower administration refused to sign the Geneva Accords (as did the SOVN), in
large part because they feared the unification of Vietnam by elections that the
17
CANDEL, “The International Commission – Vietnam,” 1 July 1956, file 50,052-A-40, vol. 4637, par. 37, RG 25,
LAC; CANDEL to External Affairs (EA), “Report on Operations Committee for Week Ending 9 April 1955,” 9 April, 1955,
file 50,052-A-40, vol. 4631, par. 10, RG 25, LAC.
18
See, for example, the documents in FO 371/117155, UKNA and related files on ICSC finances.
19
Thakur, Peacekeeping in Vietnam, 57.
20
Thakur, Peacekeeping in Vietnam, 53. This description of the ICSC role was perhaps a reflection of the man who coined
it. Pearson became prime minister of Canada in the 1960s. A biographer, John English, would later note that the
politically successful Pearson often managed to appear the reluctant warrior.
144 M. MATEJOVA AND D. MUNTON

communists in the North were likely to win. The US had earlier taken on the limited role
of providing military assistance to France for its fight with the Viet Minh, because it
regarded Vietnam as a potential threat to regional stability. It had drawn links between
the North Korean attack on South Korea in June 1950 and the events in Southeast Asia.
Concerns about a domino effect led Washington to create the Southeast Asia Treaty
Organization (SEATO) in the immediate aftermath of the Geneva Conference. SEATO was
intended to help contain the expansion of communism in that region. As such, it was an
obvious parallel to the NATO alliance in Europe.
Canada’s External Affairs was well aware of all this, as it pondered the step of
becoming involved in Vietnam – a country in an area in which Canada had had little
experience and about which it knew little as well. Canadian officials thus could not
simply assume that Washington would welcome Canada’s involvement.
Two days after the conclusion of the Geneva Conference, the Canadian ambassador
in Washington, Arnold Heeney, went to meet with senior State Department officials. He
was undoubtedly acting on the direct instructions of Lester Pearson, the External Affairs
Minister. If Canada were to take on the ICSC job, Heeney told the Americans, Canadian
personnel would be in a position to gather intelligence, which Ottawa could share with
the US government.21 Washington accepted the offer, noting the arrangement could be
to mutual advantage.22 The American view about ICSC membership was ultimately that,
if a supervisory commission was being established, Washington preferred Canada to be
part of it rather than some other countries.
The Canadian offer of intelligence assistance conveyed by Ambassador Heeney was
not entirely altruistic. The Department of External Affairs had for a few years been under
modest pressure from the Washington intelligence community to make a more sub-
stantial contribution to Western efforts, particularly in the area of Humint.23 As key
members of the Department well understood, one was expected to contribute to the
common allied pool if one wanted to continue drawing from it. In short, they under-
stood the reciprocity norm of intelligence liaison, the requirement for a quid pro quo.
One of those officials was Arnold Heeney who had been the under-secretary of state for
external affairs when Canada’s involvement in the UKUSA agreement was being for-
malized a few years before the ICSC was created.
As ambassador, Heeney was forthright in his meeting at the State Department.
External Affairs, he said, would wish to keep the United States Government ‘informed
privately of the course of events.’ He added: ‘This we felt we could do quite properly
without impinging upon our international responsibilities as members of the
Commission.’24 The Canadian government often portrayed those ICSC responsibilities,
as ‘solely supervisory, judicial and mediatory’25 and did so not only in internal commu-
nications but also for public and presentational purposes. Heeney was thus saying
Canada could meet those ‘supervisory, judicial and mediatory’ responsibilities with the
ICSC in Indochina while also meeting newly assumed obligations to the Western alliance

21
Canadian Embassy, Washington to EA, 24 July 1954, “Indo-China Supervisory Commission,” file 50,052–40, vol. 4625,
par. 31, RG 25, LAC.
22
Canadian Embassy, Washington to EA, 24 July 1954.
23
Kurt Jensen, Cautious Beginnings: Canadian Foreign Intelligence, 1939–1951 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008), 154.
24
Canadian Embassy, Washington to EA, 24 July 1954.
25
A.R. Menzies to Chairman, Chiefs of Staff, DND, 15 April, 1957, “General Information – Indochina,” file 50,052-E-40,
vol. 4711, par. 5, RG 25, LAC.
 JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE HISTORY 145

to provide intelligence obtained there. Ottawa got its sought-after blessing and Canada
began both its new international commission role and a new western intelligence role.
Its diplomats and its soldiers would supervise and spy.
What External Affairs may not have fully appreciated was the lack of American intelli-
gence capabilities in Vietnam generally and, in particular, in North Vietnam. Despite their
growing presence in the South, the Americans had relatively few reliable sources of
information on the North. In intelligence jargon, they lacked assets. Limits on travel by
foreigners and a lack of international commerce provided few opportunities to observe
and to recruit informants.26 North Vietnam was for the United States a ‘denied area’27 – a
part of the world the US Central Intelligence Agency had not penetrated and, in the
coming years, could not do so. The CIA repeatedly failed to infiltrate teams of agents into
North Vietnam and to mount there even modestly successful covert operations.28
Canada’s official truce supervision work, in contrast, provided its diplomats and
soldiers in the field with unusual access to key, contested areas of the country and to
key personalities on both sides. Opportunity thus met need. The man who came to be in
charge of the Canadian ICSC operations during the latter 1950s, as acting under-
secretary of state for external affairs, would later acknowledge this unique role.
‘Canadian team members,’ John Holmes said, ‘do provide useful intelligence about an
area in which the Western intelligence net is not well developed.’29
However much the American intelligence community needed its allies’ help in mid-
1954, it needed them even more within months. North Vietnam branded the US as a
prime threat to its security, in accordance with its own ‘reverse’ domino theory. In early
1955, the DRVN government ordered the small American consular office in Hanoi to
cease its diplomatic wireless operations. Washington closed the office completely by the
end of 1955, leaving the US with no base in the North.30

Canadian intelligence collection in Vietnam

Given that Canada’s international intelligence activities are not well established, it would
be useful to define the key term here. There is however no widely accepted definition of
‘intelligence’ and some definitions are decidedly, even unhelpfully, broad. We adopt
here the notion of intelligence as ‘information relevant to a government’s formulation
and implementation of policy to further its national security interests and to deal with
threats from actual or potential adversaries.’31 While this definition is certainly not
narrow, it has a desirable focus. Some readers might still find this definition vague or
overly broad, and might challenge the very idea that diplomats and military personnel
serving with the ICSC were, in fact, collecting and providing ‘intelligence.’ We would
26
Shultz, The Secret War, 16.
27
Ibid., 13.
28
Ibid., 13–8; Kenneth Conboy and Dale Andradé, Spies and Commandos: How America Lost the Secret War in North
Vietnam (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2000). SOVN intelligence agencies could offer the US little help.
They also had few assets in the North. The Diem government in South Vietnam had four intelligence agencies, but all
four had domestic mandates, and all were preoccupied with a multiplicity of threats to the Diem regime (Conboy and
Andradé, Spies and Commandos, 16–7).
29
Holmes, EA to CANDEL Hanoi, 5 August 1957, file 50,052-A-40, vol. 4636, par. 32, RG 25, LAC.
30
Asselin, Hanoi’s Road, 26.
31
Abram Shulsky and Gary Schmitt, Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence (Washington, DC: Brassey’s,
2002), 1.
146 M. MATEJOVA AND D. MUNTON

simply note that the Canadian Department of External Affairs itself and some of those
involved themselves used the term ‘intelligence’ for what they were doing.32
The type of intelligence gathered in Vietnam was mostly human intelligence
(Humint). That intelligence can be further distinguished according to how it was col-
lected and from where or from whom it was collected. The bulk of it took the form of: (1)
reports from the Canadian ICSC mission, focussed on the Commission’s work; (2) official
documents of the Commission itself; (3) first-hand Canadian reports on North Viet and
South Nam, their governments and societies; and (4) reports by ICSC field teams, both
fixed and mobile.33 In terms of the above definition, these various reports collectively
comprised information relevant to government policy that furthered the national secur-
ity interests (of both Canada and Britain), much of it dealing with actual or potential
adversaries. As we shall elaborate below, the specifically Canadian interests served
included furthering the sharing of intelligence amongst members of the Western
alliance and Canada’s role in the sharing. The most prominent perceived threat was
that posed to the West as a whole by the communist bloc.
The material from the Canadian delegation was vast in scope and varied in origin.
External Affairs passed on to London both commission documents and Canadian com-
mentaries on commission deliberations and operations. The Canadians alternatively
provided extracts of ICSC documents or Canadian summaries of committee meetings and
reports.34 They also supplied copies of original fixed and mobile team reports on specific
sites or incidents (many of which ran to 50–100 pages, including individual testimony of
witnesses, victims and plaintiffs), statements made at meetings, and statements and
complaints made to the Commission personnel by governments and conflicting groups.35
External Affairs in addition shared the ICSC delegation’s weekly reports relating to the
Commission and its operations. During the mid-1950s, weekly reports covered the main
issues on the ICSC agenda, including the location and re-groupment of French and Viet
Minh forces, the import and export of war material, prisoners of war and civilian
internees, freedom of movement of civilians, and possible elections.36 Some of the
reports covered the state of play within the ICSC itself, the politics of its work, informa-
tion on the Polish and Indian delegations and the personalities of the delegations,37 and
notes on meetings with national leaders. These were not merely courtesy calls.
While the United Kingdom maintained a consulate-general in Hanoi throughout the
1950s, it was a small office, much smaller than the Canadian ICSC delegation. Both reported
on the political and economic situation in North Vietnam in the mid-1950s. In May 1955, for
example, the British Consulate General (BCG) observed that the food and general economic
situation in the North had notably deteriorated, to the extent that ‘the population was not

32
See, for example, the above comment of John Holmes.
33
As noted below, the UK consulate in Hanoi also provided intelligence, but its tenuous official position in the North
gave it little or no access to political leaders there and limited its access to the countryside in the 1950s. On the
consulate’s role, see Simon Kear, “The British Consulate-General in Hanoi, 1954–73,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 10, no.1
(1999): 215–239.
34
See, for example, EA to the High Commissioner for Canada, London, Washington and Paris, “Summary of Reports
Received during Week Ending March 1, On Activities of International Supervisory Commission in Indochina,” 2 March,
1955, file 50,052–40, vol. 4631, par. 9, RG 25, LAC; EA to Canadian Embassy Paris, “Weekly Reports Concerning
International Supervisory Commissions in Indochina,” 19 May 1955, file 50,052-A-40, vol. 4631, par. 12, RG 25, LAC.
35
For example, the documents in FO 371/117165, UKNA.
36
See, for example, file 50,052-A-40, vol. 4631, par. 11 and 12, RG 25, LAC.
37
CANDEL Hanoi to EA, 3 November, 1956, file 50052-A-40, vol. 4636, par. 29, RG 25, LAC.
 JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE HISTORY 147

giving the regime full support.’38 The validity of these observations would later be con-
firmed when the government of North Vietnam admitted that some regions of the country
experienced famines during the year.39 Part of the North’s food problem was due to fact that
it no longer received as much rice from the south as it had before 1954.
Both the British and the Canadians in Hanoi also reported on the political situation in
the North.40 The Canadian commissioner had a lengthy and informative discussion one
evening in 1954 with General Vo Nguyen Giap who made clear the VWP’s determination
to achieve the unification of Vietnam.41 At another such meeting, with the King and
Queen of Cambodia, their majesties told the commissioners the ICSC was performing
valuable work and assured them they were welcome to stay in the country – a message
that had not been entirely clear to ICSC staff previously.42
The Indian delegations to the ICSC and the government of India shared some observations,
if not full reports, with the British and Canadians. The Indian commissioner, for example, told
the British consul in Hanoi that the VWP’s land reform program showed the ‘indisputably
communist character’ of NVN leaders.43 After his own meeting with leader Ho Chi Minh the
commissioner observed that Ho was ‘patient and tolerant’ and determined to ‘respect the
Geneva accords’ but also determined to ‘resist all attempts by Western Powers to draw him
into their global conflicts.’44 Perhaps reflecting an Indian perspective, the commissioner saw
Ho to be fundamentally nonaligned in his approach. While other Indian officials were willing,
in response to questions from the British and Canadians, to share information and to provide
their views, they usually did not volunteer information of intelligence value.45
The Geneva Accords were more of a military truce than a political roadmap. The ICSC
observed such events as the evacuation of French troops from Hanoi and closely
monitored the North’s compliance with the Geneva provisions on troop re-groupment
as well as the movement of civilians. (On the latter, estimates of the number of civilians
who left the North for the South in the period allowed ranged up to one million, and
many potential émigrés were frustrated or coerced into staying.) Reports from observers
at Haiphong harbour provided useful if limited intelligence on shipping movements.46
The intelligence hunters and gatherers also focused on the key issues of the import of
arms and movements of troops, albeit less successfully than they and their political
masters hoped.47 Suffice it to say here, the ICSC Vietnam sent numerous mobile teams
to investigate complaints about arms shipments and other possible infractions, particu-
larly along the North Vietnamese borders with China, in the north, and Laos, in the west.
The teams were however not often able to obtain much evidence. They regularly reported
that roads had been upgraded and were fully capable of supporting heavy military-type

38
BCG Hanoi to Foreign Office, 3 May 1955, FO 371/117100, UKNA.
39
Asselin, Hanoi’s Road, 24.
40
See, for example, documents in FO 371/112025 and FO 371/112026, UKNA.
41
Asselin, Hanoi’s Road, 14.
42
CANDEL ICSC-Cambodia to EA, 9 April 1955, FO 371/117163, UKNA.
43
Asselin, Hanoi’s Road, 25.
44
Ibid., 27.
45
See, for example, UK Embassy Saigon to UK FO, 9 July, 1956, FO 371/ 123390, UKNA; Stephenson (UK Embassy
Saigon) to Tomlinson (UK FO), 12 May, 1956, FO 371/123390, UKNA.
46
D.A. Camfield, Joint Intelligence Bureau to Under-Secretary of State External Affairs Canada, 21 March 1956, “Ship
movements in Hanoi and Haiphong,” file 50052-A-40, vol. 4634, par. 22, RG 25, LAC.
47
EA to Canadian Commissioner Hanoi, 20 April 1956, on “Arms Import into North Vietnam,” file 50052-A-40, vol. 4634,
par. 23, RG 25, LAC.
148 M. MATEJOVA AND D. MUNTON

traffic. But smoking guns were few and far between. Nor was it easy to find proof that Viet
Minh forces located south of the 17th parallel at the time of the Geneva armistice had not
re-grouped to the North, as required. The Canadians nevertheless reported to some extent
on the re-groupment and on assumed Viet Minh activities in the South.48
The problem however was not what was happening or not happening along the
borders, per se. The problem was that the Commission was generally unable to secure
the cooperation of DRVN officials. The teams themselves were constantly stymied. The
Canadian ICSC delegation became convinced that the Polish delegation and the North
Vietnam authorities were deliberately delaying the teams or providing sufficient warning
of inspections to alert those in charge of local operations, or both.49 The Americans,
never favourable to the ICSC, quickly reached the same conclusion.50
Recent scholarly research tends to support Western suspicions in the 1950s. North
Vietnam was indeed receiving substantial military material as well as technical aid. It was
also supporting communist forces operating in Laos, in the aftermath of the Geneva
Accords. And, despite the fact that the government in Hanoi had ordered most of the
forces loyal to it in the South to regroup to the North, loyal Viet Minh troops, in the tens
of thousands, many of them native southerners, had stayed behind. While there was a
chance of holding elections in the South, the North had reason to want to appear to be
respecting the Geneva Accords. It was only after that hope had been dashed that it
began to loosen the constraints on its supporters in the South and only some years later
that it officially ordered them to resume the armed struggle.51
The Canadian ICSC delegation also noted in late 1954 the presence of guerrilla activity
in North Vietnam.52 The Canadians were likely picking up on the activities of a small group
of ‘stay behind forces’ organized by the American paramilitary expert, Colonel Edward
Lansdale, working secretly out of what was euphemistically called the Saigon Military
Mission (one part of the CIA station in the South). Lansdale himself slipped into North
Vietnam before the Viet Minh took full control of Hanoi in November 1954) and at a time
when the American consulate in Hanoi was still open. There he succeeded in recruiting
volunteers from the nationalist and anti-communist Dai Viet movement that was destined
to lose what had been a strong base in the North.53 It is unclear what the reaction might
have been in Washington to the Canadian report.

Sharing intelligence: with whom and how?

The participants in the regular Vietnam intelligence sharing arrangements in the mid-1950s
were the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Australia and New Zealand. (These
countries were not only those allies most interested in Southeast Asia but also, with the
48
Asselin, Hanoi’s Road, 19; W.A. Monaghan, Joint Intel Bureau, Ottawa to EA, 15 May 1956, noting Despatch no. 6,
30 November 1955, from Canadian Commissioner, Saigon, on “Viet Minh Activities in the South,” file 50052-A-40,
vol. 4635, par. 25, RG25, LAC.
49
A key development in February 1955 was DVRN’s refusal to comply with ICSC rules and procedures for fixed and
mobile team operations (CANDEL Hanoi to EA, DF 1071/116, FO 371/117159, UKNA).
50
See, for example, a US military intelligence paper from early 1955 (“Daily intelligence briefing …” 3 February 1955,
DF1071/49, FO 371/117155, UKNA).
51
Asselin, Hanoi’s Road, 2, 5–6, 12, 18, 28 and passim. On the North’s strategy of compliance, see Asselin, Hanoi’s Road,
3 and 12.
52
Paterson, Foreign Office to Baker, Hanoi, December 1954, DF 1074/147, FO 371/112096, UKNA.
53
Conboy and Andradé, Spies and Commandos, 2–4.
 JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE HISTORY 149

exception of France, the members of the Five Eyes Sigint alliance.) The flows of Western
intelligence among them were multi-directional. Canada uniquely offered material from its
ICSC vantage point. From both the United States and the United Kingdom, Canada initially
requested information in return. The British provided information from its consulate-general
in Hanoi and the Americans shared some of the traffic from their embassy in Saigon. The
ubiquitous norm of what has been called ‘diffuse’ reciprocity applied.
In the United Kingdom, the Foreign Office’s close relationship with the Secret Intelligence
Service (SIS, or MI-6) has led naturally to its management of international intelligence liaison.
In Canada, the absence of a foreign intelligence agency meant responsibility for the ongoing
intelligence sharing arrangements rested with External Affairs. Early in the game,
in December 1954, External Affairs specified the rules to be followed for ICSC-related intelli-
gence sharing arrangements. In a letter sent from the Canadian High Commission to the UK
Foreign Office, it lay down three explicit rules to govern receipt and handling of Canadian-
sourced intelligence.54 (External Affairs likely instructed its intelligence liaison officers (ILOs) at
the other embassies involved (Washington, Paris, Canberra and Wellington) to similarly inform
other recipients of Canadian ICSC intelligence.) Canada House explained it foresaw that
‘difficulties … could arise if our system of distribution of information became known in the
wrong quarters.’ The letter emphasized that, ‘while the Department of External affairs is very
happy to provide this service,’ the department was at the same time ‘most concerned’ that
there should not be any ‘inadvertent disclosure’ […] ‘which might embarrass our
Commissioners.’55 Though Ottawa did not say so, it was undoubtedly concerned about
potential leaks also embarrassing the Government of Canada.56 The three conditions were:

(1) ‘That information and material on the Indo-China Commissions is made available
to our close friends on a strictly confidential basis;’
(2) ‘That when the information on the Commissions’ activities which we provide is
used in any other context, no mention of its Canadian source should be made;’ and
(3) ‘That the utmost care should be taken to ensure that our practice in distributing
this material does not become known to other Governments.’57

Such strictures are not at all unusual. Indeed, they seem often to be taken for granted.
States almost always share intelligence with considerable caution and deliberate deli-
cacy. Intelligence liaison thus always operates with constraints, and often within a set of
rules for the handling of information.58 A primary rule of intelligence is, of course, to

54
Margaret Meagher, Canada High Commission, London to J.G. Tahourdin, Foreign Office, 7 December 1954, F1074/178,
FO 371/112097, UKNA.
55
The references to ‘commissioners’ being embarrassed may, beyond its generic relevance, have been a guarded
reference to the then current Canadian ICSC commissioner in Hanoi, Sherwood Lett. See below for a further
discussion on this point.
56
The letter noted the Commissions’ internal proceedings were classified as secret, and thus clearly implied that
Canada’s practice of sharing ICSC documents with its allies was a violation of the ICSC’s own provisions. The letter
also explicitly noted that Ottawa was particularly concerned its intelligence sharing might became known to the
Indian ICSC delegation. This letter thus refutes one analyst’s claim that intelligence activities in Vietnam by ICSC
members was an accepted practice (Douglas Ross, In the Interests of Peace: Canada and Vietnam, 1954–73 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1984), 207–8).
57
Meagher letter, emphasis added.
58
For one assessment of the disadvantages and potential costs of intelligence liaison, as well as the benefits, see
Munton and Karima Fredj, “Sharing Secrets: A Game Theoretic Analysis of International Intelligence Cooperation,”
International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 26, no 4 (December 2013): 666–92.
150 M. MATEJOVA AND D. MUNTON

maintain secrecy in general. A second is to ensure the sources of intelligence are

protected.59 In the case of international Humint liaison, protecting sources means
protecting the identity of the country or agency that shared the information as well as
protecting the original human source of the information. The Canadian letter’s first two
conditions cover these two rules. What is perhaps more unusual than conditions per se
is to see them specified in a written document.
Another basic, common constraint is that information shared with one party should
not be passed, by that party, to others (in other words, no ‘third party’ distribution). The
final condition in the Canadian letter implies this constraint. Of particular interest here,
however, is that External Affairs is arguably as much if not more concerned about
keeping secret the existence of the ongoing liaison arrangements (the ‘practice’ of
distribution) as about keeping secret any specific pieces of information.
The third-party distribution rule can apply even when the information comes from
another agency of the same government. A person or agency willingly sharing particular
information may be unwilling or unable to provide other information, say, an assess-
ment report, coming from another agency. The constraints are stronger when that
information bears a high-level classification. For example, the State Department was
willing in 1954 to provide Canada with some of the Department’s own classified
material, such as selected US post reports from Indochina and certain departmental
intelligence reports, but it was not willing to give the Canadians intelligence material (in
its possession) that originated with the CIA and other agencies. For such materials, the
State contact suggested, the Canadian Joint Intelligence Bureau in Ottawa should put a
direct request, in writing, to the Agency.60
Even for those engaged in multilateral intelligence liaison, secrets remain. For exam-
ple, actors may want to keep confidential the fact that certain materials of their own
have been given to others. In early 1962, Canada provided to the British Foreign Office
the text of an aide-memoire Ottawa had recently handed to the US, but it did so only
under the strict provision that the British not divulge in their own discussions with
Washington that they themselves had seen the document. ‘In any discussions FO [the
Foreign Office] may have with State [Department] on related matters,’ External Affairs
advised its High Commission in London, ‘we would not RPT not wish them to reveal
their knowledge of approach we have made in [Washington] or to comment specifically
on Canadian views. Please make this clear to FO.’61
These restrictions notwithstanding, the flow of information on Indochina to the UK
and US was regular and it was voluminous.62 The flow began even before Canada took

59
The sharing of open source material (OSINT) is an exception. Agencies are understandably less concerned about
confidentiality if the original source was, for example, a government announcement or newspaper. One such case
among many involved the US embassy distributing a copy of an open letter from Cambodia’s Prince Sihanouk to the
ICSC (EA to CANDEL ICSC, 20 June 1955, “Cambodia – US Military Assistance Agreement,” file 50052-C-40, vol. 4702,
par. 7, RG 25, LAC) and the United Kingdom providing allies with a copy of a Diem government declaration (Memo
for the minister, J.L., 9 April 1956, “ Vietnam,” file 50052-A-40, vol. 4634, par. 23, RG 25, LAC).
60
Canadian Embassy Washington to EA, 27 July 1954, “Information on Indo-China,” file 50052–40, vol. 4625, par. 31, RG
25, LAC.
61
EA to Washington, 24 March 1962, “Vietnam Commission,” file 50052-A-40, vol. 4638, par. 40, RG25, LAC.
62
Even a superficial examination of British files relating to the commissions bears out this generalization. More than a
few of the ICSC-related Foreign Office files (‘sleeves’) at the UK National Archives consist largely or totally of Canadian
reports (for example, FO 371/117154, 371/117157, 371/117162 and 371/112097, UKNA, covering mid- and late 1954,
respectively). We should note that, while our focus in this paper is on the Vietnam operations, the shared material
overall included documents from and reports on all three Commissions.
 JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE HISTORY 151

up its position on the ICSC and while the ICSC was organizing itself.63 The sharing picked
up speed and volume as the ICSC began to establish itself in Indochina in the summer
and fall of 1954.64 It then continued apace through the mid-1950s and on into the early
and mid-1960s.65
Canadian diplomats based in London personally carried material on a weekly basis to
the Foreign Office and Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO). Foreign Office records
note that ‘the Canadians are passing us nearly all of the reports they obtain from their
representatives’ on the Indochina commissions.66 At one point, in early 1955, about six
months into the liaison arrangements, the Foreign Office noticed a decline in the flow of
material from the Canadian ICSC-Vietnam delegation. It sent a discreet inquiry through
its own channels. The UK High Commission in Ottawa checked and reported back that
the Canadians insisted there had been no change in policy on sharing. A key official in
the Canadian ICSC delegation had become ill and there had been delays in the move-
ment of the diplomatic bags out of Vietnam.67 External Affairs was replacing the official
and addressing the transport problem.
Other Canadian liaison officers in Washington took information to the State
Department and to the CIA. Both the British and the Americans undoubtedly passed
at least some if not much of this flow on to other agencies. External Affairs supplied
material not only directly to Washington and London but also to British missions,
including the British High Commission in Ottawa and the UK embassy in Washington,
and to US missions, including the embassy in Saigon. The American contribution to the
common pool was apparently more often intelligence assessments than raw intelli-
gence. The US seems to have kept to itself most of the intelligence it collected in the
South.68
The Canadians approached both the Americans and the British for their intelligence
material. The Canadian ambassador who met with the State Department and offered to
share intelligence had clearly by then begun thinking of what Canada could obtain from
US sources. Arnold Heeney mused in July 1954 that ‘the State Department must have a
good deal of practical local knowledge concerning conditions in [Indochina].’69 He then
wondered, out loud, or at least in a telegram, if they would ‘be willing to let us have
such information as would be helpful for us in establishing our representation out
there?’70 In August 1954, as it was preparing for its ICSC mission, External Affairs made
a general request for British post reports from the region.71 The Foreign Office agreed

63
See various documents, mostly copies of telegrams on the establishment of the supervisory commission in file
50052–40, vol. 4625, par. 31 and 32, RG 25, LAC.
64
External Affairs sent Canadian reports to London from the very first meeting of the ICSC for Laos in August 1954
(Numbered letter #2, August 1954, DF 1074/97, FO 371/112094, UKNA).
65
See, for example, file 50052-A-40, vol. 4638, par. 40, RG 25, LAC; and CANDEL Saigon to EA, 27 January 1962, “Weekly
sitrep – internal security situation – South Vietnam,” file 50052-A-40, vol. 4638, par. 39, RG 25, LAC, citing US briefing
of Canadian officials in Saigon.
66
Paterson, FO to Baker, Hanoi, December 1954, DF 1074/147, FO 371/112096, UKNA.
67
Reddaway, UK High Commission, Ottawa to Anderson, CRO, 18 February 1955, DF1071/87, FO 371/117157, UKNA.
68
See, for example, UK Embassy Washington (Youde) to McCormick, 14 July, 1956, FO 371, 123391, UKNA; Saigon to FO,
6 October, 1954, DO 35/6017, UKNA.
69
Canadian Ambassador to the US to EA, 24 July 1954.
70
Canadian Ambassador to the US to EA, 24 July 1954.
71
UK High Commissioner, Ottawa to Commonwealth Relations Office, 11 August 1954, DF 1074/48, FO 371/112092,
UKNA.
152 M. MATEJOVA AND D. MUNTON

immediately to share these. It also began sharing ‘top secret’ Joint Intelligence
Committee overview assessments of the situations in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.72
Through 1954 and 1955, Britain and Canada also understandably exchanged intelli-
gence with France although apparently substantially less than they shared with the
Americans.73 Canada’s intelligence links with France were normally less close than those
with other English-speaking countries, a pattern also true of the British and Americans.
Less exchange occurred with French authorities after French forces had pulled out of
North Vietnam, in accordance with the Geneva Accords, and even less went to Paris after
the formal French withdrawal from South Vietnam in 1956.
French officials were nevertheless important sources of military intelligence from
North Vietnam, prior to the withdrawal of French forces in 1956. Some of this informa-
tion was handed directly to the Canadian ICSC representatives in Vietnam. And some of
it related to such critical questions, for the Western allies, as military aid from China to
North Vietnam.74 It is virtually certain that Ottawa shared such intelligence with
Washington and highly likely that it played a part in American assessments of the extent
to which the North Vietnamese were violating the Geneva Accords.
Canada also shared Vietnam intelligence with its other UKUSA alliance partners, New
Zealand and Australia, if in lesser amounts.75 Both may have been secondary partners in the
sharing but they were not incidental. Australia had a particularly keen interest in develop-
ments in Indochina and Southeast Asia generally. Ottawa also shared some intelligence with
others, including the government of Belgium and, in specific situations, certain other allies.76
Allied cooperation on intelligence extended well beyond the sharing of raw intelli-
gence and provision of assessments. That cooperation included mutual exchanges and
constructive commentary on each other’s assessments, in some cases comments pro-
vided by those in the field.77

Impact of Western intelligence cooperation

The question of what impact, if any, intelligence has on policy-making is a longstanding
and controversial one. While that question itself is not our focus here, we can offer some
comments that may shed modest light on it.
72
G.E. Crombie to A.R. Menzies, EA, 22 November 1955, file 50052–40, vol. 4627, par. 40, RG 25, LAC, attaching JIC
paper.
73
EA to Canadian Embassy Paris, “Weekly Reports Concerning International Supervisory Commissions in Indochina,”
19 May 1955, file 50052-A-40, vol. 4631, par. 12, RG 25, LAC.
74
Canadian officials in Ottawa attributed to French sources some of the information received by the United States
intelligence community on the illegal import of weapons into North Vietnam (EA to Canadian Commissioner Hanoi,
20 April 1956, file 50052-A-40, vol. 4634, par. 23, RG 25, LAC).
75
An External Affairs letter explicitly authorized the Australian High Commission in Ottawa to pass Canadian material on
to the Australian Joint Intelligence Bureau (A.R. Menzies to the High Commissioner for Australia, 1 August 1956, file
50052-A-40, vol. 4635, par. 28, RG 25, LAC). See also Eayrs, chapt. 8; and Brian Toohey and William Pinwill, Oyster: The
Story of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (Port Melbourne, Victoria: Mandarin Australia, 1990), 86. For
information sharing between Canada and New Zealand, see, for instance, High Commissioner for Canada,
Wellington to EA, “Indo-China: International Supervisory Commission – New Zealand Views,” 22 April 1955, file
50052-A-40, vol. 4631, par. 11, RG 25, LAC.
76
C.P. Hebert, Brussels to Menzies, EA, 16 May 1955, file 50052-A-40, vol. 4631, par. 12, RG25, LAC. See also a request by
Italy for information on Chinese communist troops in Northern Vietnam (The Canadian Ambassador, Rome to
Secretary of State for EA, Ottawa, 15 March 1955, “Indochina – International Supervisory Commission,” file 50052-
A-40, vol. 4631, par. 9, RG25, LAC.).
77
For example, EA to Canadian embassy, Washington, 30 May 1956, “Transmittal of Documents to C.I.A,” file 50052-
A-40, vol. 4635, par. 25, RG 25, LAC.
 JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE HISTORY 153

The key policy actor for the West was, of course, the United States. For Britain, the
role as Geneva Conference co-chair was secondary to its role as an American ally, albeit
an ally that sometimes had a markedly different view than that dominant in Washington.
The British need for intelligence therefore stemmed mostly from opportunities to
influence American policy and secondarily from its concerns with the Geneva Accords
process it had helped to create. The documentary records considered here provide
numerous examples of the Foreign Office applying information from the field to the
making of policy decisions both as co-chair of the Geneva Conference and as Britain, the
Great Power with a desire to play a continuing role in Southeast Asia.78 The details here
must await later treatment.
Officials in both the US and UK also believed they gained from the intelligence
cooperation stemming from Vietnam. Their feedback to the Canadian collectors was
continually positive. It can best be summarized as ‘keep it coming’.
In early 1955, British officials commented that the weekly reports from the Canadian ICSC
delegation were ‘unquestionably of great value.’79 As noted above, the Foreign Office, around
the same time, became concerned enough about a recent drop in the volume of reporting
from Vietnam to make a special inquiry, fearing Ottawa might have decided to collect or share
less. Another indicator is that officials not in the loop asked to be part of the liaison
arrangement.
Similarly, the Canadian ambassador in Washington reported in 1955 that the State
Department very much wanted to keep receiving the regular reports from Hanoi. ‘There
can,’ he said, ‘never be too much information from the State Department’s point of
view.’80 As noted above, the Americans quietly asked the British at one point if UK
sources could supplement what Washington was receiving from Ottawa.81 While intelli-
gence assessments tend not to footnote their sources, some American intelligence
community materials seem to have leaned heavily on sources from inside the ICSC.82
Even the relatively mundane reports on shipping traffic in and out of ports in the North
were deemed worthy to be ‘most useful’.83
Perhaps the most revealing exchange on the importance of intelligence cooperation
arose in 1956, when those involved in and with the ICSC were contemplating its future.
The Canadian government had then spent more than two years collecting and sharing
information on Vietnam. The view of the Americans on the Canadian role was naturally
of interest. Arguably the key discussion Canada’s ambassador in Washington had was
not with diplomatic colleagues in the State Department but rather with Allen Dulles, the
director of the Central Intelligence Agency.84 Dulles was almost certainly not thinking he
was being asked about the diplomatic value to the United States of the ICSC. From the

78
To cite two examples, see documents related to consultations on elections in Vietnam and the case of dealing with
the changing politics of Cambodia circa 1955 (for example, in FO 371/117159, UKNA).
79
Memo, Tomlinson, FO, 2 May 1955, DF1071/193, FO 371/117161, UKNA. See also CRO to UK High Commission,
16 November 54, DF1076/133, FO 371/112095, UKNA.
80
Ambassador, Washington to EA, “Indochina Commission – Weekly Telegraphic Summaries,” 11 May 1955, file 50052-
A-40, vol. 4631, par. 12, RG 25, LAC.
81
Tahoudian to Joy, UK embassy, Washington, 15 November 1954, FO 371/112095, UKNA.
82
“Daily intelligence briefing …” 3 February 1955, DF1071/49, FO 371/117155, UKNA.
83
D.A. Camfield, Joint Intelligence Bureau to Under-Secretary of State External Affairs Canada, 21 March 1956, “Ship
movements in Hanoi and Haiphong,” file 50052-A-40, vol. 4634, par. 22, RG 25, LAC.
84
J. W. Holmes, EA to Arnold Heeney, Canadian embassy Washington, 23 October 1956, file 50052-A-40, vol. 4636, par.
29, RG 25, LAC.
154 M. MATEJOVA AND D. MUNTON

viewpoint of the CIA, he assured the Canadians that he thought it would be useful for
them to stay on the Commission.

Conclusion
In the aftermath of the 1954 Geneva conference, Britain and Canada collected human
intelligence (Humint) on and in North Vietnam. In accordance with the norm of recipro-
city, they exchanged intelligence with each other and with the United States and other
Western allies. While the focus of the present article is on the mid-1950s, the pattern of
multilateral intelligence cooperation described here continued into early and
mid-1960s.85
Both countries had a locational advantage in collecting first-hand information in the
North that the United States lacked. The UK maintained a small consulate in Hanoi. As an
ICSC member, Canada had a delegation to the Supervisory Commission, which was
based in Hanoi in the mid-1950s and had a presence there even after moving its offices
to South Vietnam. Canada’s membership on the ICSC also gave it an institutional
advantage. It had access to meetings and official commission documents, and an inside
view of political developments involving the ICSC, and shared the information thus
obtained.
The intelligence activities were carried out by British diplomats and by Canadian
diplomats in cooperation with Canadian military personnel who were also posted to the
ICSC. Canada’s lack of a dedicated foreign intelligence agency did not prevent the
country from participating actively in the intelligence collection in North Vietnam. As
may often be the case, the foreign ministries in both the UK and Canada played a key
role in the collection as well as liaison efforts.
The Indochina-Vietnam case arguably offers an unusually full picture of early Cold
War era Western cooperation on the collection and sharing of human intelligence. The
case thus provides insights into the informal human intelligence alliance that has
developed among these countries. When a senior External Affairs official told his
colleagues in 1957 they were providing ‘useful intelligence about an area in which the
Western intelligence net is not well developed,’ he could have added that they were not
only collecting intelligence but helping to build such a net.86
Much the same general picture of Western Humint cooperation emerges from some
other cases as well as from the 1950s and 1960s Vietnam work. Western diplomats also
collected intelligence in Cuba during the 1960s, after Fidel Castro came to power, and in
Tehran in late 1979 and early 1980 after supporters of the nascent Iranian Revolution
took control of the American embassy there. The first two of these cases (Vietnam and
Cuba) involved major Cold War issues. The third arguably arose from what might be
described as a post-Cold War-type conflict during the Cold War era.
One recent treatment of Canadian policy on Iran argues forcefully that no Canadian
embassy had ever before conducted espionage for the United States.87 This claim is, of
course, simply false. It ignores evidence on both the Indochina and Cuba cases.
85
See, for example, file 50052-A-40, vol. 4638, par. 38 and 39, RG 25, LAC.
86
John Holmes, EA to CANDEL Hanoi, 5 August 1957, file 50052-A-40, vol. 4636, par. 32, RG 25, LAC.
87
Robert Wright, Our Man in Tehran (Toronto, ON: HarperCollins, 2010), 224 and 318.
 JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE HISTORY 155

The Vietnam case and the more recent cases of intelligence cooperation suggest
some generalizations. We might begin with the fairly obvious premise that when
countries perceive developments in the world as affecting their national security inter-
ests, they will seek the best intelligence they can obtain. Beyond their own sources, and
as deemed necessary and desirable, they will seek intelligence from others they trust. If
the relevant developments are taking place in area where the country in question lacks
good access to obtain intelligence, and where its allies have that access, intelligence
cooperation arrangements are very likely to develop. The search for evidence on further
historical cases might benefit from application and refinement of these generalizations.
The Vietnam, Cuba and Tehran cases also give some insights into how the United
States intelligence community obtains the significant proportion of its overall intelli-
gence that comes not from its own collection efforts but from foreign sources.
Western intelligence on Vietnam may also help settle on-going debates about the
extent to which 1950s developments in Vietnam led to the second modern Vietnam
War, particularly as it may help to provide evidence on the actions of major participants.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes on contributors

Miriam Matejova is a PhD student of Political Science, a Vanier Scholar, a Liu Scholar and a Killam
Laureate at the University of British Columbia. Her research interests are international security and
global environmental politics. Matejova has written and co-authored articles on international
peacebuilding, foreign intelligence, and environmental security.
Don Munton conducts research and writes in the areas of intelligence, security and environmental
policy. He is co-author of The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Concise History (Oxford University Press, 2007,
2011), co-editor of Canadian Foreign Policy (Prentice-Hall, 1992) and of Rethinking National Security:
The Public Dimension (Campus Verlag, 1991), editor of Hazardous Waste Siting and Democratic
Choice (Georgetown, 1996), and author of numerous articles and book chapters.

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