[dragoon500ly]

During the Vietnam War, the Special Forces and CIA played a variety of "games" on the North Vietnamese...wish I had thought up this one!

The NVN was very effective in uncovering Allied agents, the dark side of this was that the NVN were suspicious of everyone. Soooo, captured North Vietnamese were recruited as apies, even when it was known that few would be very successful. These agents were put through a six-week course, that included a detailed briefing on the (nonextistent) network of agents that they would be joining. The most ambitious angle on this scam was to select some of the agents to parachute into NVN. The rookie agents would be given parachute training and would be taken to an airfield at night, where he would board a large aircraft. On board were the other members of his "team", which, for security reasons, he could not be intorduced to early. Also on board were numerous supply containers to be dropped as well.

Once in the air, the new agent was told that because he had done so well n the early training, he would be given the privilige of being the first man out of the door. When the new spy jumped, he would often make his way straight to the nearest NVN authorities to report his fellow agents who had jumped right behind him.

But no one had jumped after him. As soon as our "hero" had jumped, the other agents had opened some of the containers to reveal blocks of ice that had been attached to parachutes, these would then be thrown out into the night air. Hours later, the parachutes would be found, hung up in trees. Here was clear evidence that the Americans had dropped several agents into the NVN. The NVN would then call out the troops and spend several days searching the jungle for any trace of the spies.

But this wasn't the only part of this scam. The phoney agent would have a transmitter concealed in his gear and well overhead, would be an airplane, tracking the signal. When it was determined that the agent had remained in place for seventy-two hours, then a B-52 strike would be called in to blast the headquarters where the transponder was squawking.

"Dirty Little Secrets of the Vietnam War"