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No Rebuttal. That was indeed the case at last week's hearing; no Administration witness showed up to rebut the testimony of ex-CIA Officer Samuel A. Adams, an analyst of Viet Cong strength for the agency in 1965-67. He charged that the CIA conspired with the military and other U.S. intelligence agencies to hide the Communists' true military strength from the American public in 1967 for political reasons and ended up misjudging the potential scope and ferocity of the Tet assault. Adams said that while U.S. officials were claiming that Communist forces in South Viet Nam totaled about 300,000, the actual figure was about twice as high.
According to Pike, the intelligence community's "mania for secrecy" was also partly responsible for the Yom Kippur War catching the U.S. by surprise in 1973. He said that U.S. intelligence agencies refused to let Pentagon and State Department officials see intercepted communications between the Soviets and Egyptians that "should have alerted us that a war was about to break out."