Archimedes Patti

During his career in China and Southeast Asia, Patti met Hồ Chí Minh, the leader of the Việt Minh and future leader and national hero of North Vietnam.[2] In later interviews Patti explained that his mission in Vietnam was to establish an intelligence network but not to assist the French in any way as they attempted to re-gain control over their former colony, a policy choice he believed to be linked to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's belief in the self-determination of all peoples.[5]

Archimedes, did, from a distance, help organize, train and equip the fledgling Vietnamese forces Ho was uniting and marshaling against the Japanese, which in the future would be known as the People's Army of Vietnam, and worked closely with Ho Chi Minh and, indeed, commented on his early drafts of a Vietnamese constitution.[2]

In my opinion the Vietnam War was a great waste. There was no need for it to happen in the first place. At all. None whatsoever. During all the years of the Vietnam War no one ever approached me to find out what had happened in 1945 or in '44. In all the years that I spent in The Pentagon, Department of State in the White House, never was I approached by anyone in authority. However, I did prepare a large number, and I mean about, oh, well over fifteen position papers on our position in Vietnam. But I never knew what happened to them. Those things just disappeared, they just went down the dry well.

— From an interview with Archimedes Patti in 1981[5]

Patti stated that when he arrived in Kunming in March 1945, the French colonials were either unwilling or unable to assist him in establishing an American intelligence network in Indochina and he therefore turned to "the only source [available]", the Việt Minh.

Patti was introduced to Ho Chi Minh by Colonel Austin Glass, the OSS expert in Indochina. Patti met Ho Chi Minh on the Indochina-China border at the end of April 1945, and he agreed to provide intelligence to the allies provided that he could have "a line of communication with the allies."[5]

Patti later helped coordinate some small attacks against the Japanese Imperial Army using a small group of operatives known as the OSS Deer Team under the command of Major Allison K. Thomas, who worked directly with Ho Chi Minh during the August, 1945.[6]

On August 22, 1945, Patti arrived in Hanoi on a mercy mission with OSS agent Carleton B. Swift, and a French government official, Jean Sainteny.[7] His mission primarily was to assist in the repatriation of allied prisoners of war as the U.S. government feared reprisals against them by the Japanese following the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and, secondly, to gather intelligence.[5]

Patti met with Ho Chi Minh on August 26, 1945, over lunch at his residence in Hanoi and several days later Ho Chi Minh read a draft of the Vietnamese Proclamation of Independence to him and Patti offered several corrections on what he perceived to be a near exact copy of the American Declaration of Independence.[5]

Indeed, Ho Chi Minh had requested an actual copy of the American Declaration of Independence from Col Austin Glass. Soon afterwards, on September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh declared independence and some hours later Patti had dinner with him. In the fall of 1945 French Colonial forces had returned to Indochina on U.S. manned Liberty ships.[5]

Patti left Hanoi at the end of September 1945, following French allegations that the Americans had been fomenting a revolution there.[7]