Office of the Historian

258. Action Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (Bundy) to the Under Secretary of State (Katzenbach)1

Washington, December 12, 1968.

SUBJECT

  • Defense Department Request for New Daniel Boone Operational Authority

Discussion:

Daniel Boone is an intelligence collection program, carried on since May 1967, in a strip 20 kilometers wide within the Cambodian border. Reconnaissance teams of two or three Americans and six to nine Vietnamese and/or Montagnards are inserted in this area by helicopter for observation of VC/NVA presence or activities. Assistant Secretary of Defense Warnke has written you (Tab A) proposing the establishment of a new Daniel Boone operational area to be known as Zone Charlie.2

This area constitutes the northern part of the existing Zone Bravo (Map, Tab B).3 You have approved extending the width of Zone Alpha to 30 kilometers. The only other difference between Zones Bravo and Alpha is that targets in the former require specific advance approval from State and Joint Chiefs of Staff. Once a target is approved, however, missions against it may be run at any time subject only to a 48-hour notice of intent to do so. The new DOD proposal would eliminate the requirement of approval, and would in effect extend Zone Alpha as far as Lo Go (subject to a numerical limitation on the number of missions in the new area).

Six of the seven missions conducted in the proposed new zone took place in the first half of October (the seventh was run in late 1967). On one of these, a gunship was shot down, crashing on the Vietnamese side of the border. All but one involved insertions by helicopter, on which there are now no limitations once a target has been approved.

Nevertheless, we agree to forego the authority to approve targets in advance, for 48 hours is normally time enough for us to raise objections to a mission.

We have also incorporated in the letter to Mr. Warnke4 a concession on DODʼs earlier request for authority to take prisoners on Daniel Boone [Page 563] missions. You concurred in our earlier recommendation to refuse this authority. We have now been given further explanations, and have learned that General Wheeler has asked Secretary Clifford to approach the Secretary on this point. In view of the importance which DOD attaches to the matter, we believe this authority can be conceded. So long as prisoners are taken in a manner not likely to lead to contact with other enemy forces, their capture is consistent with the intelligence-gathering objective of the Daniel Boone program.

Recommendation:

That you sign the attached letter to Assistant Secretary Warnke (Tab C).

  1. Source: Department of State, EA/VN Files: Lot 74 D 51, Cross Border. Top Secret; Nodis. Drafted by Bennett and cleared by Godley and Corcoran.↩
  2. Dated December 4, I–36029/68, not attached. (Washington National Records Center, RG 330, OASD/ISA Files: FRC 72 A 1499, Cambodia 000.1, 1968 (381 Cambodia))↩
  3. Not attached.↩
  4. The letter was not attached, but a note on the source text indicates that it was sent on December 13.↩