Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group

It started with my grandfather.

My grandfather was in MACV SOG.

He's spoken to a couple of people on interviews.

And what that is, is it's kind of the start of a lot of these special operations and special warfare community that we know today.

MACV SOG was created through the CIA.

to do train advise and assist and if you're in a community that does train advise and assist you're probably wearing some kind of special operations tab or some special operations badges but this all started with a plan that that stemmed into what is known as an organization that i got to work for later I won't say the organization's name because it's still shrouded in a little bit of secrecy, and there's still a little bit of mystery there, and I'm not going to ruin it like Joe did whenever he introduced the SEAL Team 6 to the rest of the world after the...

But anyways, that aside, my grandfather was a mountain of a man.

He moved to California after he retired from the military and he ran with some motorcycle gangs and tried to continue with the legacy that I'm about to speak of now, but...

you ever heard of

Mac V. Sog?

I have heard of that, remind me though.

John Struckemeyer.

Mac V. Sog was the Green Berets that were basically operating in Laos and Cambodia, waging a shadow war against the Vietnamese the entire time.

Like, the most dangerous fucking combat you could imagine.

Super insane attrition rate.

But the idea that this kind of thing could be carried out under conditions of peace is just like abominable to, abominable to them.

And, um, interestingly, it's lumped in with the Phoenix program, which obviously did, wh- which obviously was like an, you know, a, um, a, a MACV SOG operation.

And MACV SOG was, was very adjacent to CIA in those days.

Um, it was a MACV SOG and, and US civilian intelligence operation.

Um, you know, they, they constituted, you know, direct action, um, targeting of discrete personages who constituted the NLF infrastructure.

You know, because you're fighting a non-state actor, obviously the Human beings are the infrastructure of your ops, okay? But, you know, people discussed it, uh, during obviously the, the, the, uh, the, the Gates Committee hearings that kind of gilded the CIA, and people talk about it today, um, like, oh, this, what, what horrible overreach.

It is.

I'll, I'll tell you r- right now, uh, everything I did, the, a common thread, 'cause you and I were talking about MACV-SOG earlier.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly.

They were the two groups.

I was in 11th Group in North Carolina, and once again, cool thing about it, bunch of MACV-SOG vets, just Vietnam vets.

So, you know, here I'm as a kid, and, uh, just being around those types was inspiring enough, but then, yes, go to, go to the selection process immediately to the Q course after that, and, uh, honor graduate.

Among them were a small number of special operators running missions across the fence in a secret war into Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam.

the men of MACV SOG.

Despite the innocuous name of Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group, the organization and its members conducted some of the most audacious operations of the Vietnam War.

SOG was a highly classified multi-service U.S. task force established on January 24, 1964, to operate beyond the official boundaries of the conflict.

Their mission was to execute an intensified program of harassment, diversion, political pressure, capture of prisoners, physical destruction, acquisition of intelligence, generation of propaganda, and diversion of resources against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, DRV, North Vietnam.

Missions were undertaken by small teams, typically consisting of two Army Special Forces soldiers and six indigenous Montagnard tribesmen.

In 1968, every MACV SOG operator was wounded, many of them more than once.

Close to 50% were killed.

As I, as I made the point before in a different context, the CIA really lost its cachet in the '60s and subsequently with the Gates hearings.

And it, it wasn't just that people were morally outraged by things like the Phoenix program, which they put squarely on the shoulders of CIA when really kind of responsibility, if you wanna look at it that way, if you view this as a grave evil- Kind of rested equally with Army intelligence, MACV SOG, the Pentagon itself.

But, you know, one of the reasons it's misplaced and people act like CIA is kind of the seat of deep state power, it's really not.

And it was really, really loathed by a lot of very hawkish cold warriors.

Initial team of 16, then later 400.

And then MACSOG, Military Assistance Command Special Operations Group, 80,000 plus indigenous forces there.

So that's the right way to go.

And I salute that.

And so then I worked for the CIA for two years training case officers to better integrate with JSOC units.

Because it was really the first time since Vietnam that they were actually co-located, running operations like they did MACV SOG and some of the other programs in Vietnam.

And it was really interesting because I got this master's level education about what a case officer actually does, what a paramilitary case officer does.

And I was just like, oh, my God.