‘MINDS THEN HEARTS:’ U.S. POLITICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE DURING THE KOREAN WAR DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Mark R. Jacobson, B.A., M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2005 Dissertation Committee: Approved By Professor Allan R. Millett, Adviser Professor David Stebenne __________________________ Professor Daniel Kuehl Adviser History Graduate Program ABSTRACT Minds then Hearts examines the U.S. military’s resistance and hostility towards psychological warfare and examines how this affected the weapon’s use during the Korean War. The conventional military rejected psychological warfare as “paper bullets” that had no place in a military focused on lethal means – blast, heat, and fragmentation, to defeat its enemies. In particular this study will examine how the inability to demonstrate conclusively the effects of psychological warfare operations added to uncertainty and skepticism over the weapon’s potential and actual impact on the battlefield. Additionally, the study explores how operational deficiencies such as a lack of resources and poor integration with combat arms created obstacles hampering the successful employment of psychological warfare against Chinese and North Korean forces. The study will also compare the Army’s efforts to use the weapon with those of the Air Force that, at times, considered strategic bombing as synonymous with psychological warfare. Further, the Chinese and Russian use of atrocity propaganda, especially the forced confessions of waging biological warfare by American prisoners, will be examined in order to demonstrate how these efforts impacted on the American military’s view of their own psychological warfare campaigns. The study ii acknowledges and describes the difficulties involved in evaluating the effectiveness of psychological warfare operations in general and during the Korean War. Minds then Hearts concludes that the most important obstacle to effective psywar operations was the failure of Army officers in the field to understand the potential of psychological warfare and thus, fail to integrate it properly into their combat operations. Many combat commanders saw psywar solely as an instrument designed simply to induce surrender. Psywar personnel, eager to demonstrate their worth did little to dispel this limited view. The inability of the psywar proponents to consistently provide demonstrable and tangible indicators of success meant that when forced to choose between leaflets, loudspeakers and firepower, operational leaders chose firepower. The result was that psywar proved successful only in a limited tactical sense but never created the type of operational or strategic victories sought by the weapon’s proponents. iii Dedicated to my parents iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A friend once told me that completing a dissertation simply requires “patience, time, and discipline.” Finding myself lacking in all three of these areas has forced me to rely on my colleagues, family, and friends during this long quest. I owe them all thanks as well as apologies for the postponed events, missed activities, and, at times, a less than optimal attitude. I am sad at all I missed over the years while keeping one eye on this project at all times – it has been costly in many ways. That said there are some individuals whom deserve specific recognition. I can not overstate the thanks that I owe to my adviser and Dissertation Chair, Allan R. Millett, for his patience, guidance, training, support, and faith in my abilities. In addition, I want to thank my Committee Members, Daniel Kuehl and David Stebenne for their timely and helpful comments and advice, as well as Al Paddock for his mentorship and research / hiking companionship while exploring the previously “hidden” papers of Major General Robert A. McClure. I am grateful to Joe Guilmartin, Williamson Murray, and Mark Grimsley who each had their role in pushing me and prodding me into increasingly more rigorous study and analysis. Sincere thanks are also given to those graduates of The Ohio State University who gave me encouragement v and friendship and contributed to my intellectual growth during my years in Columbus: Verb Washington, Ty Seidule, Alex Lassner, Jay Young, Steve Stein, Nick Steneck, and especially Kelly Jordan. I would also like to extend my appreciation to Ms. Joby Abernathy at the Department of History for helping me to deftly handle the range of administrative hurdles I encountered on road to completion. Last, but by no means least, of my Ohio State colleagues, I would like to thank Ms. Beth Russell, not just for her unconditional assistance over many years in times of need but for her friendship as well. I am grateful to Jon Shy, Tom Collier and Gerald Linderman of the University of Michigan for setting me on the path to graduate school and for providing the final review panel for my dissertation prior to my defense. I wish to thank the McClure family for their hospitality while reviewing the McClure papers in lovely Butte Creek Canyon, California and the Truman Library, The Air Force Historical Research Agency, and The Ohio State University’s Department of History for their travel grants in support of my research. I am especially indebted to Dr. Jeffery Clarke and Dr. Andrew Birtle of the U.S. Army Center of Military History for their generosity with a CMH Dissertation Fellowship and owe a special thanks to Richard Herrmann, director of the Mershon Center, for bringing me on board as a Visiting Scholar this past year so that I could complete this dissertation. Further I wish to express my appreciation to the various staff members at a number of archives that helped me through the maze of government documents while at the National Archives, the Center of Military History, and the U.S. Army Military vi History Institute. A special thanks to Tim Nenninger and Richard Stewart who continued to help me on both my dissertation and various Pentagon issues when the special expertise of trained historians was required. My professional experiences shaped this dissertation as much as my work in the classroom and archival discoveries. Thus my colleagues at the Pentagon deserve special recognition for their professional tutelage and camaraderie. A special thanks to those who pushed me to exceed expectations; Bob Andrews, Brigadier General (ret.) David Armstrong, COL Bill Odom, COL Tony Fortune, my colleagues at the J-3 Special Operations Division, and COL Chris Perkins, Christine Wormuth, David Radcliffe, Alisa Stack O’Connor, and Mike Johnson, who each taught me by example what it means to be a professional in service of the nation. My thanks as well to Mackenzie Eaglen for her continued friendship Julianne Smith for her support; Javed Ali for 28 years of friendship and continued writing instruction, and to Roger Cressey for his mentorship and showing me how to serve your country. To Sarah Schafer, I thank you for both your friendship and your inspiration. I also owe a very special thanks and debt to Jim Ludes, not only for helping to anchor the “psywar dinner group” that devised the strategy to defeat Al Qaeda, but for his advice, experience, friendship, and wise counsel that made the difference. Finally and most importantly, I would like to thank my sister and parents for their own patience, time, discipline, and flexibility while dealing with me these many years. I could not have made it this far without them. vii VITA October 31, 1968………………………..Born – Chicago, Illinois 1990……………………………………..B.A. History, University of Michigan 1991……………………………………..M.A. Department of War Studies King’s College, London, United Kingdom 1994-1998………………………………Graduate Associate, The Ohio State University 1998…………………………………….M.A. History, The Ohio State University 1998 – 2000…………………………….Presidential Management Intern Office of the Secretary of Defense 2000 – 2003…………………………….Foreign Affairs Specialist Office of the Secretary of Defense 2003 – 2004……………………………Visiting Scholar, The Mershon Center The Ohio State University PUBLICATIONS 1. Mark R. Jacobson, “War in the Information Age: International Law, Self-Defense, and the Problem of ‘Non-Armed’ Attacks,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Volume 21, Number 3 (September 1998), 1-23. 2. Mark R. Jacobson, "Tactical PSYOP Support to Task Force Eagle," in Lessons from Bosnia: The IFOR Experience, ed. Larry Wentz (Washington: National Defense Univ. Press, 1998), 189-224 viii FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: History ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract……………………………………………………………………………….ii Dedication……………………………………………………………………………..iv Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………..v Vita…………………………………………………………………………………..viii List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………xi Chapters: 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………….1 2. Psywar in the U.S. Military Prior to the Korean War……………………………...18 3. Organizing for Psywar and the Strategic Campaign……………………………….54 4. Tactical Psywar…………………………………………………………………….93 5. Accepting and Selling Psywar……………………………………………………..118 6. U.S. Air Force and Psywar in Korea……………………………………………….155 7. Communist Psywar: The Bacteriological Warfare Allegations…………………..187 8. Conclusions: The Effectiveness of Psywar During the Korean War……………..231 Appendix A: Summaries of Selected FEC Psywar Operations and Plans…………..257 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………262 x LIST OF FIGURES Figure 8.1 Percentage of the total number of prisoners taken as a function of time…256 xi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Hello my G.I. friends. Good Morning. This is your regular morning broadcast courtesy of the Chinese Peoples Volunteer Army. G.I. friends, this is the dawn of the ten-hundredth and twentieth day of the forgotten war; what your politicians choose to call a police action, a minor affair, which has already caused you more casualties than your war of independence. G.I. friends, you want peace. We want peace. We too are young; we too have to leave our homes to fight on foreign soil. Why? Show your stubborn generals haggling at Panmunjom that you will no longer fight for a line on the map. Show them that you want peace just as we want peace. Lay down your arms and we will be glad to lay down ours.