An Intelligence Blunder That Sent Raiders to Rescue Prisoners from an Empty Prison
The Son Tay raid was a brilliant tactical success. It wholly accomplished its objective and seized control of the camp within minutes of the raiders’ arrival. The attackers suffered only two injuries: one Green Beret was shot in the leg, while another broke an ankle. There were no prisoners to rescue, however. As it turned out, the entire enterprise had been a huge blunder: the mission had been planned based on outdated information. The POWs had been moved months earlier from Son Tay, which was adjacent to a river that often flooded, to another prison camp.
Within 26 minutes of from when they had landed, the raiders were airborne again, en route back to base. While a tactical success, the mission had clearly been an intelligence failure. There was plenty of egg on the faces of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and other entities that had gathered and shared the information upon which the assault was planned. In the raid’s aftermath, criticism of the faulty intelligence that led to a risky operation to rescue prisoners from a prison camp that held no prisoners, led to an extensive overhaul of American intelligence.
