Israel saved many American lives in Vietnam - Washington Examiner

On a recent trip to Israel, I had an opportunity to visit a Soviet-built Syrian base in the Golan Heights. Amid the stone and concrete fortifications, my guide explained that during the 1967 Six-Day War, many of the Arab armies had panicked and abandoned their posts. They left their Soviet-supplied equipment behind.

Consequently, the Israelis were able to capture the most state-of-the-art Soviet military technology intact — the very same equipment that American soldiers were facing in Vietnam. And Israel was more than happy to share what they had with the United States.

There is a quote that has for years made the rounds in publications dealing with U.S.-Israel relations. It is a quote from former U.S. Air Force intelligence chief Gen. George Keegan, stating that the intelligence the U.S. gains from Israel is greater than what could be procured with "five CIAs."

However, tracing the quote back to its original source, Keegan's remarks to a panel in 1978 and reported on by a young Wolf Blitzer, one finds that Keegan was more specific about what kind of information the U.S. was gaining from Israel: "I could not have procured the intelligence on the Soviet air forces, their combat capabilities, their new weapons, their jamming and their electronics and their SAMs, with five CIAs."

In 1967, Israel captured nine Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missiles, along with their blueprints and operating instructions. In 1969, an Israeli commando team crossed the Suez Canal and captured an intact P-12 radar system used in conjunction with the SA-2s. These systems had wreaked havoc on American air operations for years. In 1960 and 1962, SA-2s shot down American U-2 spy planes over the Soviet Union and Cuba, in addition to hundreds of planes over North Vietnam. Thanks to Israel, the U.S. was finally able to study this equipment, along with various Soviet MIG fighter jets Israel had obtained.

In 1976, Keegan received a special letter of thanks for a piece of intelligence he obtained, which referenced LINEBACKER II — the code name given to the December 1972 bombing campaign against North Vietnam.

"Dear George, Thanks very much for the most interesting preliminary report on the debriefing of your North Vietnamese source concerning LINEBACKER II. I will look forward to receiving the final wrap-up report, which promises to cast some light on a wide range of obscure subjects."

It was signed by the then-Director of Central Intelligence, George H.W. Bush.

Keegan's preliminary report detailed information provided by a defector about what he had learned from senior North Vietnamese officials. It stated that the defector had "learned some of the effects of the B-52 raids mounted by the United States in late December 1972. On more than one occasion, one of the political officers stated that had the raids continued for one more week, a general retreat and cessation of hostilities would have been forced. He emphasized that the degree of destruction of the air defenses and industrial base was too extensive to permit prolonged resistance."

Next to this point, DCI Bush wrote, "INDEED!" (He would later apply this tactic during the first Gulf War.)

The report itself, "Escape From Indochina," gave further explanation into what the defector had learned:

The B-52s were able to jam North Vietnamese radars from as far as 40 miles away, thereby denying firing data to their SAMs and AAA ... Normally, North Vietnamese SAM sites would fire only two SA-2 missiles at a single attacking fighter aircraft; in the case of B-52s, however, they fired 'salvo after salvo.' ... BINH claimed that, after twelve days of these tactics during the strikes of December 1972, the supply of SA-2s was almost depleted at the North Vietnamese SAM units.

In 1965, North Vietnam’s SA-2 hit-per-launch ratio was 1 to 15. In 1972, facing the full SA-2 arsenal, the hit-per-launch ratio was 1 to 50. The ability to jam North Vietnamese SAM radars had to have come from somewhere. Considering Keegan's remarks, specifying the intelligence he obtained from Israel on "the Soviet air forces, their combat capabilities, their new weapons, their jamming and their electronics and their SAMs" — the source of the life-saving information is pretty clear.

Spyridon Mitsotakis is a freelance writer. He holds a degree in history from New York University.

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Israel saved many American lives in Vietnam - Washington Examiner
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