{"id":83625,"date":"2024-06-28T22:33:19","date_gmt":"2024-06-28T22:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/28\/doris-allen-analyst-who-saw-the-tet-offensive-coming-is-dead-at-97\/"},"modified":"2024-06-28T22:33:19","modified_gmt":"2024-06-28T22:33:19","slug":"doris-allen-analyst-who-saw-the-tet-offensive-coming-is-dead-at-97","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/28\/doris-allen-analyst-who-saw-the-tet-offensive-coming-is-dead-at-97\/","title":{"rendered":"Doris Allen, Analyst Who Saw the Tet Offensive Coming, Is Dead at 97"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/06\/28\/multimedia\/28Allen-02-cpfh\/28Allen-02-cpfh-facebookJumbo.jpg?fit=1050,550&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Doris Allen, Analyst Who Saw the Tet Offensive Coming, Is Dead at 97\" title=\"Doris Allen, Analyst Who Saw the Tet Offensive Coming, Is Dead at 97\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Doris Allen, an Army intelligence analyst during the Vietnam War whose warning about the impending attacks in early 1968 by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces that became known as the Tet offensive was ignored by higher-ups, died on June 11 in Oakland, Calif. She was 97.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Her death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Amy Stork, chief of public affairs for the Army Intelligence Center of Excellence. <\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Specialist Allen, who enlisted in the U.S. Army\u2019s Women\u2019s Army Corps in 1950, volunteered to serve in Vietnam in 1967, hoping to use her intelligence training to save lives. She had been the first woman to attend the Army\u2019s prisoner of war interrogation course and worked for two years as the strategic intelligence analyst for Latin American affairs at Fort Bragg, N.C., now Fort Liberty.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Working from the Army Operations Center in Long Binh, South Vietnam, Specialist Allen developed intelligence in late 1967 that detected a buildup of at least 50,000 enemy troops, perhaps reinforced by Chinese soldiers, who were preparing to attack South Vietnamese targets. And she pinpointed when the operation would start: Jan. 31, 1968.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In an interview for the book \u201cA Piece of My Heart: The Stories of 26 American Women Who Served in Vietnam\u201d (1986), by Keith Walker, Specialist Allen recalled writing a report warning that \u201cwe\u2019d better get our stuff together because this is what is facing us, this is going to happen and it\u2019s going to happen on such and such a day, around such and such a time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">She said she told an intelligence officer: \u201cWe need to disseminate this. It\u2019s got to be told.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But it wasn\u2019t. She pushed for someone up the chain of command to take her report seriously, but no one did. On Jan. 30, 1968 \u2014 in line with what she predicted \u2014 <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fpri.org\/article\/2012\/05\/tet-1968-the-turning-point\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">the enemy surprised<\/a> American and South Vietnamese military leaders with the size and scope of their attacks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">U.S. and South Vietnamese forces sustained heavy losses early on before later repelling the attacks. It was a turning point in the war, further undermining American public support for it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Army\u2019s refusal to take Specialist Allen\u2019s analysis seriously suggested to her that she was viewed with prejudice, as a Black woman who was not an officer. She was one of about 700 women in the corps, known as WACs, serving in intelligence positions during the Vietnam era, and only 10 percent were Black.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In 1991, she told Newsday, \u201cMy credibility was like nothing: woman \u2014 Black woman, at that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In 2012, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.army.mil\/article\/86479\/lucki_leads_way_in_march_to_womens_equality\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">she told<\/a> an Army publication: \u201cI just recently came up with the reason they didn\u2019t believe me \u2014 they weren\u2019t prepared for me. They didn\u2019t know how to look beyond the WAC, Black woman in military intelligence. I can\u2019t blame them. I don\u2019t feel bitter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Lori S. Stewart, a civilian military intelligence historian for the Army Intelligence Center of Excellence, said in an email that Specialist Allen\u2019s analysis was not the only one that went unheeded.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cBoth national and theater-level organizations believed an enemy offensive was likely sometime around the Tet holiday,\u201d she wrote, but \u201ctoo many conflicting reports and preconceptions led leaders to misread the enemy\u2019s intentions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Regarding Specialist Allen, Mrs. Stewart added, \u201cLike many other intelligence personnel in country, she was a diligent and observant intelligence analyst doing what she was supposed to do: evaluate the enemy\u2019s intentions and capabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Specialist Allen <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ikn.army.mil\/apps\/MIHOF\/Home\/Members\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">was inducted<\/a> into the Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame in 2009.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Doris Ilda Allen was born on May 9, 1927, in El Paso to Richard and Stella (Davis) Allen. Her mother was a cook, and her father was a barber.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ms. Allen graduated from Tuskegee Institute (now University) in 1949 with a bachelor\u2019s degree in physical education. She taught at a high school in Greenwood, Miss., and enlisted in the Women\u2019s Army Corps the next year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">After basic training, she auditioned for the WAC Band, playing trumpet. But she and two other Black woman were told afterward by a chief warrant officer that \u201cthey couldn\u2019t have any Negroes in the band,\u201d she recalled in \u201cA Piece of My Heart.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">She served in a number of roles over the next dozen or so years: as an entertainment specialist, organizing soldiers shows; the editor of the military newspaper for the Army occupation forces in Japan during the Korean War; a broadcast specialist at Camp Stoneman, Calif., where her commanding officer was her sister, Jewel; a public information officer in Japan; and an information specialist at Fort Monmouth, N.J.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In the early 1960s, Specialist Allen learned French at the Defense Language Institute and completed her training in the prisoner of war interrogation course at Fort Holabird, Md. She completed interrogation and intelligence analyst courses at Fort Bragg.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">After asking to go to South Vietnam, she arrived in October 1967 for the first of her three tours of duty there.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI had so many skills, so much education and training being wasted in various posts around the country that I decided I wanted to make a difference in a high-action post like Vietnam,\u201d <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/lavenderseniors.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Lavender-Notes-January-2020.pdf\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">she told Lavender Notes<\/a>, a publication for older LGBTQ+ adults, in 2020.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">She left no immediate survivors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Specialist Allen\u2019s Tet analysis was not the only warning of hers to go unheeded. She advised a colonel not to send a convoy to Song Be, in southern South Vietnam, because of a possible ambush, which occurred. Five flatbed trucks were blown up; three men were killed and 19 wounded.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But she was listened to when she warned in early 1969 that the North Vietnamese had placed scores of 122-millimeter rockets around the perimeter of the Long Binh operations center, northeast of Saigon, and that they were to be used in a major attack. She wrote a memo that led to an airstrike that destroyed the rockets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Later that year, Specialist Allen learned that the North Vietnamese were planning to use 82-millimeter chemical rounds. She wrote a report that saved as many as 100 Marines, who had been instructed in her memo to avoid any contact with them when they fell in their area; they later exploded. A grateful colonel sent a memo suggesting that whoever had written the report deserved the Legion of Merit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Specialist Allen did not receive that decoration but did earn a Bronze Star with two oak clusters, among many awards. She left South Vietnam in 1970 after seeing a stolen enemy document with her name on a list of targets to kill.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">After serving 10 more years in the Army<span class=\"css-8l6xbc evw5hdy0\">  <\/span>she retired as a chief warrant officer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">By then she had received her master\u2019s degree in counseling from Ball State University in Indiana in 1977. After her military service, she worked with a private investigator, Bruce Haskett, whom she had met when they were in counterintelligence. She earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Wright Institute in Berkeley, Calif., in 1986, and mentored young psychologists.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cShe was incredibly savvy about people and had an innate ability to size people up quickly,\u201d Mr. Haskett said in an interview. \u201cShe was the kind of person who could walk into a pit of vipers and have everybody eating out of her hands in 15 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-798hid etfikam0\">Christina Brown Fisher<!-- --> contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/06\/28\/world\/asia\/doris-allen-dead.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Doris Allen, an Army intelligence analyst during the Vietnam War whose warning about the impending attacks in early 1968 by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces that became known as the Tet offensive was ignored by higher-ups, died on June 11 in Oakland, Calif. She was 97. Her death, in a hospital, was confirmed by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83626,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/06\/28\/multimedia\/28Allen-02-cpfh\/28Allen-02-cpfh-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10993,7185,6731,169,73702,9054,73703],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83625"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83627,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83625\/revisions\/83627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}