Kissinger orders psychological warfare to break North Vietnamese unity

By Constance Bell · August 9, 2026

Communist forces and the general population were targeted to foster war weariness and discouragement, aiming to sever the cohesion between the regime and its people.

June 2, 1970. Henry A. Kissinger, acting as the Assistant to the President for National Security, signed National Security Decision Memorandum 63. The document is brief—barely two pages—but it outlines a systemic attempt to weaponize information against the Vietnamese Communists.

The memorandum directs the formation of an "Ad Hoc PSYOP Committee." This was not a casual gathering of advisors but a high-level coordination cell designed to bring the disparate arms of the American state into a single line of effort. It was to be chaired by a senior representative of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the primary organ for American public diplomacy. The membership list reads like a directory of the Nixon administration's security apparatus: representatives from the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Assistant to the President for National Security.

June 2, 1970

The objective of NSDM 63 was strategic alignment. The committee was tasked with five specific functions: developing a National Psychological Warfare strategy; coordinating the overall effort; providing "thematic guidance"; preparing periodic reports for the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs; and assessing the anticipated psychological impact of Vietnam-related policy options.

The structure ensured a tight loop of accountability. While the committee performed the labor of strategy and assessment, the memorandum is explicit that any decisions covering "major issues in the conduct of our psychological warfare" were to be referred to the President for approval. This was a clear exercise in centralized command, ensuring that the nuances of psychological operations did not drift from the White House's broader geopolitical goals.

"Fairly Traditional" Objectives

The official directive tells us the "what," but the accompanying notes in the Foreign Relations of the United States (State Dept) record provide the "how." On March 17, 1970, an official named Sullivan had proposed this organization to Kissinger to ensure "more effective coordination" of psychological operations. By June 17, a paper had been drafted listing the specific objectives and ground rules for the newly created committee.

On July 6, an official named Holdridge analyzed this paper in a memorandum to Kissinger. Holdridge described the goals as "fairly traditional." In the lexicon of the State Department, "traditional" refers to the established operational playbook of the Cold War: the understanding that a regime's stability relies on the cohesion between its leadership, its administrative organs, and its people. If that cohesion is severed, the regime becomes brittle.

Holdridge’s analysis broke the strategy into three distinct goals. First, the U.S. sought to persuade the North Vietnamese leadership to change its policies. Second, the goal was to increase "internal tensions, doubts, and policies" within the communist structure. Third, the strategy aimed to motivate the Vietnamese people to "question the wisdom of the North Vietnamese Government."

Public Affairs in Saigon

The targets for these operations were as segmented as the goals. The committee focused on four specific tiers: the top Party leadership, the Party apparatus, the North Vietnamese people, and Communist forces in both the north and south. The intended result was a pervasive sense of "war weariness and discouragement" among both the troops and the general population. The strategy specifically sought to drive a wedge between northerners and southerners, fostering "resentment and tension" to break the ideological unity of the enemy.

Despite this drive for centralized control from Washington, NSDM 63 maintained a necessary boundary for field operations. The responsibility for coordination and policy guidance for all psychological and informational programs in South Vietnam remained with the Minister-Counselor for Public Affairs in Saigon. This official operated under the direction of the U.S. Ambassador and the Mission Council.

This division of labor reveals the perennial tension of American diplomacy: the desire for a grand, unified strategy directed from the West Wing, balanced against the granular, often messy realities of the embassy in the field. The Ad Hoc PSYOP Committee provided the "thematic guidance"—the overarching narratives and goals—but the Minister-Counselor in Saigon had to translate those themes into a language and format that could actually penetrate the enemy's defenses.

The record shows a disciplined progression from the initial March proposal to the July analysis. It was not a sudden pivot in policy, but an attempt to apply a professional, coordinated layer of psychological pressure to a conflict that had already become an endurance match.

Kissinger approved the final paper on July 14.