PSA Files: Lot 55 D 277, Box 9509
The Chargé in Thailand (Turner) to Mr. Robert P. Joyce, Policy Planning Staff
official
informal
Dear Bob: Some comments by me are due anent the mystery of the recent communist coup scare and the general alert put into effect by the Thai Government. Please refer to Deptels 874 Oct. 18,1 973 [Page 1634] Nov 1 etc.2 It’s an extraordinary story, which you may or may not have got from other sources before now. I get the story from a source which I have no reason to doubt, and being what it is I can’t divulge it even to our bird-dogs in the Political Section. Hence some rather confused reporting emanating from this Embassy.
As far as I can judge, the whole business is the result of another concoction of the Taipei rumor-mill. The commie scare story was picked up by our various intelligence agencies in Taipei and forwarded to us for evaluation. One such message went to the Bangkok CAS (operations), who apparently have trouble identifying some of the coded names appearing in the message. Whereupon an assistant in that outfit took it upon himself to consult Mr. Willis Bird in the effort to make the identifications. Mr. Bird, as you may remember, featured somewhat prominently in the June 29th incident as the character who handed over a lot of military equipment to the Police, without any authorization as far as I can determine, and whose status with CAS is ambiguous, to say the least.
Mr. Bird, again without any authorization, takes the message to Phra Pinit, Acting Police Chief in Phao’s absence. Pinit hits the ceiling, rushes over to Pibun, and they decide on a general alarm since the warning emanated from impeccable American intelligence sources! So for several days we had a state of emergency in the city with the Police mobilized and everybody jittery. Pibun had to make some rather lame excuses in the Parliament, and explained that the alarm had been based on an intercepted code message.
The story would be funny if it did not have some serious aspects. I must say I don’t like the serious breach of discipline, and of security, involved in this matter. What kind of an organization is it that allows subordinate officers to pass around highly classified (TopSec to us) messages to odd characters outside of the organization? Why is this man Bird allowed to deal with the Police Chief in such matters? Why was I not informed at once (instead of today, indirectly) of what had happened, so that I could have assessed the situation properly instead of having our Political Section bird-dogs doing handsprings in the effort to unravel the mystery and sending faulty estimates to the Department? Frankly, I don’t like it, and unless there is some better effort at discipline, I’m going to take a stronger hand in the matter. We simply cannot allow these people to upset an already jittery situation, and to cause a loss of confidence in us and in our intelligence among Thai leaders.
I am sending a copy of this letter to Ken Landon.
Sincerely yours,
- Not printed; in telegram 874 to Bangkok, October 18, the Department asked the Embassy to evaluate information emanating from Taipei to the effect that Chinese Communist elements were planning an attempt to overthrow the Thai Government in the latter part of November (792.00/10–1851).↩
- Not printed; in telegram 973 to Bangkok, November 1, the Department transmitted to the Embassy the texts of the messages from Taipei forecasting the imminence of an attempted coup d’état (792.00/10–3151).↩