“There is no Army Security Agency (ASA) in Vietnam.” That’s what the recruiters told every enlisted man from the Second Platoon of the 101st Radio Research Company (RRC) in order to convince him to enlist for four years to do something the recruiters could not reveal. Many of the men of the Second Platoon, though, spent two or even three years in sunny South Vietnam. The truth is that ASA’s presence in Vietnam was classified, and they were there under a cover name – Radio Research. ASA arrived in Vietnam four years before the Marines first landed. In fact, on May 13, 1961, the 3rd Radio Research Unit (RRU), an ASA unit, was the first US military to be deployed to Vietnam as a unit. They wore civilian clothes and carried civilian passports. Their orders said that any injury or death was to be reported as a training accident occurring in the Philippines. When ASA personnel were assigned to Vietnam, they removed their A S A shoulder patch and replaced their Military Intelligence brass with Signal Corps brass. According to military.wikia.org, “Many A S A personnel remained in Vietnam after the 1973 pullout of US Army combat forces and remained present until the Fall of Saigon in 1975.” Tony Carstensen and Larry Marty, both Snake Platoon members, went back to Saigon on a four-man COMSEC mission in 1973.
President Lyndon Johnson referred to Spec 4 James T. “Tom” Davis as the first American serviceman to give his life for his country in Vietnam. Actually, his was the first American combat death in Vietnam. Others had been killed before him, by terrorist activity. Tom Davis, who was killed in battle with a Viet Cong (VC) unit on December 22, 1961, was a member of the 3rd RRU and was the first A S A person killed in Vietnam. Others would follow, even though there was “no ASA in Vietnam.”
Tom Davis’s death exposed the vulnerability of Radio Direction Finding (RDF) personnel operating on the ground in the jungle. Several months later, the concept of Aerial RDF was employed. RDF personnel would soon be operating from a small, single engine, slow moving, propeller-driven plan called a ‘Beaver.’ This approach, however, bore its own inherent risks.
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