Soviet Union considered it, in effect, its sacred duty to support these people.

We look at Laos, we look at Vietnam, we look at Cuba and numbers of other areas, and we see that he is making good on what he has said. So a quick examination of the record has an impact in itself. Secondly, in terms of cold war educaton to improve the capacity of our military leaders to handle their responsibilities-and I still focus on the responsibility to motivate and inspire and instill a fighting spirit into their troops-there is no substitute for dealing with facts and case histories which are pretty well available. And I think we sometimes make a mistake in our cold war educational processes when we climb to too high a level of abstraction and deal with Kant and Hegel and Marx and Lenin and a lot of intellectual endeavors in this area which lead to very little in terms of understanding on the part of the common man whom we are trying to reach.

So I think this is an area for increased endeavor in our cold war educational system, to include the kind of instruction that might be given in our military service schools and colleges, that would enable a company commander to talk facts to his troops, the kind of facts that they could visualize and apply to themselves, their own lives, their own envioronment, and see what the threat is in terms of what it means to them.

We tend to be at times too professional about these problems, and they lose a little of their bite and a little of their sting when we get up to those levels.

DESCRIPTION OF COURSES GIVEN AT FORT BRAGG

Senator THURMOND. Colonel, I understand that you were director of instruction of the special warfare school at Fort Bragg.

Colonel WILSON. Yes, sir.

Senator THURMOND. Without going into details, would you give us the highlights of military instruction in the areas of Communist propaganda, subversion, agitation and para-military operations?

Colonel WILSON. At Fort Bragg, sir, we had three separate coursesa 6 weeks' course in psychology operations, a 6 weeks' course in special forces operations, and a new 6 weeks' course which I wrote prior to departing from Bragg, in what we call counter-insurgency operations.

Psychological operations is a term which we use to apply to those psychological warfare activities in time of war, or just straight psychological activities in time of peace, that are designed to convey an image and obtain a response from a given target audience.

This is a refined and somewhat shifted version of our World War II type psychological warfare doctrine.

Our Special Forces operations focus around the finest soldier in the world, if I may make that statement, the Special Forces soldier, who is a leader, an instructor, an individual who goes out into primitive areas and lives with the indigenous elements, and with his hands and his acts and his gestures conveys a message to those people, so that he can influence them to work with him in a common cause.

The counter insurgency operations, that particular course is designed to meet the very problem that Mr. Khrushchev promised us on

January 6 of last year. This is just a fair summary, sir, without going into a lot of detail.

VARIED ASPECTS OF MILITARY PREPAREDNESS

Senator THURMOND. Colonel, how is it, that the services are geared, trained and equipped almost exclusively for conventional and quasihot war operations, while it seems so evident from events around us that we have an enemy who is fighting us with everything he has, except by an obvious massed military attack?

Is it that military efforts are not intended to cope with the magnitude, immediacy and nature of this nonshooting conflict for the domination of a free world, or is it felt that the uniformed services cannot or should not take a decisive role in it, or are they waiting for a direct order and guidance to take their part?

Colonel WILSON. The answer to this one consists of several elements, I believe, sir.

In my personal opinion, we are faced with a situation where we must be prepared for three exigencies an all-out nuclear conflict, a limited war of the Korean variety, and what we are facing today. When we shift to become stronger in one area, the Communists tend to place their emphasis on the area in which they consider us to be the most vulnerable.

I think the evidence today would be fairly clear that concerted effort is being made, and it is part of my business, sir, to work in this area-concerted effort is being made to reorient those elements of our forces which are fitted, either by special training and missions, such as special forces, or those additional elements which, as an inherent part of their training programs, have a capability in this area, to reorient them to this new area of threat. You will find in the Department of Defense a lot of midnight oil being burned in this particular

area.

We are aware of the fact that this has become an area in which we were more vulnerable than we would like to be. But I would like to assure you, sir, that very significant measures are being taken to shift our forces to meet this kind of threat.

EXAMPLE OF COMMUNIST PARAMILITARY DOCTRINE

Senator THURMOND. In instruction of United States unconventional warfare specialists did you become familiar with the writings of Mao Tse-tung and other Communist guerrilla leaders dealing with Communist paramilitary organization?

Colonel WILSON. Yes, sir; I did.

Senator THURMOND. Could you give us some examples of the more outstanding teachings of Communist paramilitary doctrine?

Colonel WILSON. I would like to focus on one primary example, sir, which I believe is most germane to our present discussion, and what it implies.

Mao Tse-tung said that the people are the water and the guerrilla is the fish. And he went on, to paraphrase him, to say that if the people, the water, would accept the guerrilla, the fish could swim and achieve his end.

This, in effect, presents us with the problem that all commanders may not have fully recognized to date, in that in this form of warfare in a tactical sense, our system of objectives has changed. We are no longer talking about terrain features. We are not even placing primary emphasis on the destruction of the individual guerrilla. The situation which we face in these various strife-torn countries today, such as Laos and Vietnam, is a situation where the primary objective for the guerrilla, for the insurgent, the Communist-inspired individuals, is the population, the people.

So we have in crystal-clear fashion a war for the minds of men, more so than we have had it before.

The reason that this is important is illustrated by Mao Tse-tung's remark that the people must support the guerrilla, or the insurgent, if he is to succeed or if he is to survive, let alone succeed.

If we, sir, in turn neglect this very obvious lesson and concentrate on hardware in this area, and solely on the development of tactics and techniques which will allow us to track down this guerrilla, or this insurgent, and destroy him, we are focused at an objective at a lower level, and he has us licked before we start.

We, too, must recognize that it is the minds of men that we must focus upon, and using our basic documents, on which we stand-and the reason that I am in uniform-you can pull out all of the Communist theology and all of the Communist hieroglyphics and esoteric nonsense you like, and one man, with a thorough knowledge of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and knowing what they mean, is more than a match, if he knows how to translate back to my earlier point-in factual, common terms that a simple individual can understand.

I have wandered a little in this remark, but the opening was just too much there, sir-not to express this particular point.

QUESTION OF WHAT CAN BE DONE TO WIN THE WAR FOR THE

MINDS OF MEN

Senator STENNIS. Pardon me. You are in the Army, are you not? Colonel WILSON. That is correct, sir.

Senator STENNIS. Do you think that the men that are responsible for running the Army, from the Chief of Staff on down-and I do not want to embarrass you in passing on them-realize the importance of what you have just said? Do they see it that way? If they do, are they doing anything about it?

Colonel WILSON. Sir, I have never backed away from a question in my life.

Senator STENNIS. I do not want to put you on the spot. But it seems to me that everybody knows what you have said generally anyone that is in a responsible position and has thought this thing through-now, the question is what are they doing about it? It is not just a matter of saying what the situation is. But we want to know what is being done, or where the defects are. I do not want to put you in opposition to your superiors.

Colonel WILSON. I recognize this. I would like to cover a couple of quick points, if I may.

We have had in Laos for some considerable time, actually since the fall of 1959, a number of special forces soldiers. You may have learned

this from General Heintges in his testimony. These soldiers-there was a deliberate decision to put these people in this position-these soldiers are perhaps the best indoctrinated, uniformed representatives that we have. And as I indicated earlier, with their actions, as well as with their words, they have had considerable impact on these people. There have been numerous instances of the special forces medics coming into an isolated village and doing such things as pulling 152 teeth between sundown and sunup, delivering babies; one sergeant getting a bed sheet and stringing it to a square frame, and showing movies, and Laotians coming, three or four thousand, from a number of kilometers around to watch it.

There was the sergeant who sat on the doorstep of his hut and each night taught numbers of small Laotian kids how to sing "Dixie."

So I would submit that whereas we would like to see more of this, there are some positive steps, not only just today, but in the last several years that have been in process along these lines, and everybody involved is quite proud of it.

Now, we would like to see more, and I think we will see more. What we are focused on here is a new dimension in human conflict-if you will-where the soldier can play a constructive role. We now call this civic action, or military civic action.

The soldier is fighting only part of the time. The rest of the time he is either training or waiting to fight. When you have a group of these soldiers together, they represent a very potent force of manpower. When they get outside building bridges and roads and schools and so on-these are the kinds of things they are doing in certain areas, and getting geared up to do this is the kind of thing that has impact, this is an example, this is a positive contribution. I apologize for being so lengthy in my answer.

Senator STENNIS. Go ahead. My question was what could the Joint Chiefs or the Chief of Staff of the Army do to bring about a better situation to win the cold war, or this situation you have described. Now, you have already described, and we have had an abundance of evidence on the lack of sufficient personnel that are trained to a high enough level.

Now, what else could they do as you see it-something we can consider and recommend, say, to the Congress or to the services.

I thought maybe you had something in mind.

I do not understand why you did not prepare a paper, or a statement, that would put your thinking more in focus.

Colonel WILSON. Well, I was not sure we were going to get into this particular area. My first point here, sir, was that those things which I described to you are the direct results of decisions made and instructions issued by those people you were questioning me about. So that takes it to a certain level. Beyond that, there may be more which can be done. This involves some decisionmaking.

Senator STENNIS. Excuse me. Unless you have a one-, two-, three-, or four-point recommendation. I do not want to take Senator Thurmond's time. We will just return to the Senator's questioning, and I will question you some more when he is through.

Colonel WILSON. Yes, sir.

Senator THURMOND. You go right ahead, Senator.

Senator STENNIS. No, that's all right. You go ahead, Senator. I will question him some when you are through.

ARMY COUNTERINSURGENCY OPERATIONS

Senator THURMOND. Colonel, you are in charge of the counterinsurgency operations of the Department of Defense.

Colonel WILSON. I am a staff assistant in this area, sir.

Senator THURMOND. Can you give us the highlights of that operation?

Colonel WILSON. In effect, I think I covered that, sir. I would be happy to answer any further questions.

KNOWLEDGE AND TRAINING OF HIGH RANKING OFFICERS IN
UNCONVENTIONAL ASPECTS OF WAR

Senator THURMOND. I gather that the job you are holding now, and much of the teaching of the special forces is new or revised in United States military thinking. Do you feel that higher ranking officers have a sufficiently thorough knowledge of the unconventional nature of the Communist enemy to support your type of activity?

Colonel WILSON. Earlier, sir, this was a problem-this was a problem. Considerable reorientation was involved, briefings, papers. We had here, sir, the military equivalent of a cultural lag. I think we have come a long, long way and most of the people in positions of responsibility see clearly that this is the major problem area, and emphasis is gradually building in this area from the Office of the President himself right on down to special forces of a detachment at Fort Bragg, N.C. We are making progress. Things are picking up. I am an optimist in this area.

Fourteen to sixteen hours a day every day could not be spent as lightheartedly if I did not feel we were getting places. I do feel

we are.

Senator THURMOND. Now, isn't part of our problem, Colonel Wilson, the fact that we have won conventional military battles with some success? Many of our leading military personalities are the product of victories won with conventional military battles-victories won with conventional weapons against a conventional enemy. Some of our leaders in the military, and I include you in this group, are sufficiently versed in the nature of the Communist enemy to see the broader threat we face. It is entirely new, unconventional psychological and paramilitary threat. The Sino-Soviet empire has a world girdling apparatus for aggression working against us and the free world, in every corner of the globe. Their weapons are subversion, propaganda, infiltration, gentle or brutal persuasion, depending on what suits their needs. How do you propose to educate conventional military leaders so that we may see the totality of the threat facing this Nation?

Colonel WILSON. A number of steps are taking place in this area at this moment, Senator. I would be most pleased to go into them. They are easy to detail. Unfortunately for our present purposes they are classified.

Senator THURMOND. Well, you can

Colonel WILSON. I would be happy to apprise you in any fashion that is appropriate.

Senator THURMOND. Hold off on that question, then, until we get into executive session.

Colonel WILSON. Yes, sir.