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Vietnam Public Security
Vietnam did not have a secret police force of the same kind
as Nazi Germany's Gestapo. The PPSF (or PSS at the village
level), a plainclothes internal security organization charged
with handling sensitive security threats, bore the closest
resemblance.
Actually, the secret police function in Vietnam appeared to
be distributed among the Ministry of Interior, the party, PAVN,
and the Paramilitary Force, with the PPSF as the pivotal element.
The PPSF was more a party than a state organization, and
observers believe that its chain of command ran from the district
level through a hierarchy to the Political Bureau Secretariat in
Hanoi. In its reporting responsibilities as an organ of the
party, the PPSF largely bypassed or coordinated only laterally
with the minister of interior, its nominal superior in the
government hierarchy. This organizational arrangement was
instituted in the early 1950s by two top party security figures,
Le Giang and Tran Hieu, at the time the director and deputy
director respectively of what was then the First Directorate for
Security of the Ministry of Public Security. Some observers
believe that the PPSF was in reality an institution of
professional police and trained security agents disguised as
ordinary party administrative cadres.
During the First Indochina War, the PPSF supervised the issue
of travel permits and identification cards, checked on the
movements of marine fishermen, identified strangers in the
villages, and maintained family census and travel records. At one
point it also monitored and reported on public health, apparently
in the belief that North Vietnam was to be subjected to chemical
warfare attacks.
The PPSF assumed new importance in the late 1970s with the
rise of the China threat and the increased prospect of a serious
sabotage and espionage effort by outsiders. In order to cope with
these developments, authorities in 1980 enlarged the hamletvillage -level structure. A nationwide system was instituted, with
a PSS chief and two cadres detailed to every hamlet and a chief
and five cadres assigned to each village. In many instances, they
replaced PASF personnel. At the same time, higher recruitment
standards were established (for education and age), a six-month
training program was introduced, and an effort was made to create
a more professional service with more sophisticated operations.
In 1983 plans for putting the PPSF into uniform were announced,
but in 1987 they had yet to be acted upon.
In the South, the PPSF (or PSS) was more or less under direct
party control. Members wore yellow armbands with a red
inscription, Order and Security Control, to differentiate
them from PAVN security units, whose members wore red armbands
with a yellow inscription, Military Control, and from the
PASF forces, whose red and blue arm bands bore the yellow legend
Order.
The rise of the China threat highlighted certain weaknesses
in the security system related to the proper division of labor
between the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of National
Defense. In 1981 a concerted effort was launched to increase and
improve coordination between the two ministries: they signed two
interministerial directives, one establishing the mechanism for
systematic, joint security work and the other spelling out the
respective duties of each in "the three tasks of maintaining
political security, strengthening social discipline, and insuring
public safety."
Under the new arrangement, there was unified recruiting for
the two services. A recruit could choose the service he would
enter and, in many instances, the province to which he would be
assigned. PAVN made available to the Ministry of Interior some of
its military hardware, including such highly desirable items as
equipment used by special weapons and tactics teams. The Ministry
of Interior relieved the Defense Ministry of its responsibility
for guarding foreign missions in Hanoi and for supplying guards
to the country's prisons. Personnel also were transferred, most
from the Ministry of Interior to PAVN, and a new PAVN unit called
the Police Protection Regiment was formed. Transfers from this
ministry to strengthen PAVN units along the China border were
probably due to the growing China threat, the nature and size of
which was perceived as simply beyond Ministry of Interior
capabilities. Some PASF units were converted into PAVN Border
Defense Command regiments, although their duties, like those of
the Police Protection regiments, were not known in 1987.
Some observers noted that the net effect of the security
reorganization initiated in 1981 was the Ministry of Interior's
improved ability to check on the actions and loyalties of highranking PAVN generals. Others observed that PAVN authority now
extended deeper into the civilian sector. The new arrangement
also highlighted the underlying competition between the Ministry
of Interior and the Ministry of National Defense with respect to
security responsibilities and authority.
One other dimension of security activity was the use of youth
and youth organizations for internal security purposes. Hanoi
appeared to have calculated that young people tended to have
greater loyalty to the existing order than their elders, and that
they represented a vast manpower pool ideally suited to mass
surveillance work. The mass media commonly referred to Vietnam's
three security forces as PAVN, public security, and "fourth
generation" youth (that is, the fourth generation since the
founding of the VCP). The security role of youth was stressed
more in southern Vietnam, where, through an umbrella youth group
called the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), the energies of
the young were harnessed in the name of social improvement. Much
of this activity was economic and related to various nationbuilding programs; some, however, concerned political security,
social order, and safety, areas of activity commonly given the
collective label of "revolutionary action against negativism."
RAM had a large corps of organizations from which to draw. In
the mid-1980s, the total party youth force was about 4.5 million;
this included the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth League (2 million)
and the organizations for those younger in age--the Vanguard
Teenager Organization, the Ho Chi Minh Young Pioneers, and the Ho
Chi Minh Children's Organization (2.5 million). A front
organization called the Vietnam Youth Federation included about
10 million party and nonparty youth.
The most important RAM subgroup was the Ho Chi Minh Assault
Youth Force (usually termed the AYF), the core of an amorphous
organization called the Young Volunteers Force or volunteer
service. The AYF was open to males seventeen to twenty-five years
of age and females seventeen to twenty, who volunteered for two
years' service (the males thus could escape the military draft).
The AYF was organized along quasi-military lines and was assigned
chiefly economic duties, mostly in the rural areas of the South.
Within the AYF were smaller organizations, such as the
Assault Security Team and the Assault Control Team, which had
security assignments. Some teams focused on ordinary crime;
others were engaged in covert surveillance, particularly of other
youth. The most elite of these were the Youth Union Red Flag
teams, which were made up entirely of Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth
League members. (AYF teams, by contrast, were a mix of party and
nonparty youth.) Red Flag teams were entrusted with the most
sensitive assignments given to the young. The high point of AYF
security activity apparently came in the few years immediately
following the 1979 China incursion. After that, vigilance in
security matters tapered off somewhat.
Data as of December 1987
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