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Message: <blockquote data-quote="haakon1" data-source="post: 5596857" data-attributes="member: 25619">I'm not familiar with CIA training in the Vietnam era.  It likely depends on the role -- analysts in Saigon, versus Air America pilots, versus province officers.I've got two sources for you:-- Air America (movie).  The CIA officially says this movie is totally wrong and bad.  Unofficially, I met a CIA veteran who told me it was very much in the spirit of what was going on in Laos.-- Slow Burn (book).  This is the memoire of CIA province chief.  Really good about how to do counterinsurgency intelligence.  And no, it doesn't involve water boarding.As for the LRRP's, they became the Rangers in February 1969.  They were originally created as a provisional companies starting early in Vietnam (1965?).  The LRRP doctrine was developed for Western Europe, but adopted for Vietnam.  Some of the LRRP's were Ranger trained (Ranger was a certification at the Ranger School, at Fort Benning, GA if memory serves), but most couldn't get that course (which was filled with officers with pull, not grunts).  MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam) set up a school called MACV-Recondo in Vietnam to train LRRPs.  I was led by Special Forces and it might have included British SAS trainers (or at least experience from the Malaya Emergency and Konfrontasi in Borneo with Indonesia, two examples of successful counterinsurgency campaigns in South East Asia).IIRC, there was generally one LRRP company per division, plus for units like the 173rd Airborne Brigade (an independent brigade, like a mini-division) and sometimes for corps.  (Corp I = DMZ/Marine territory like Hue and Da Nang, Corps II = highlands like Pleiku and Dak To, Corps III = Saigon + Iron Triangle, Corps IV = Mekong delta).In February 1969, the Army formalized the LRRP program, renaming them as lettered companies of the 75th Infantry Regiment (Rangers), rather than as just provisional companies attached to division HQ's.There's a Osprey book about the LRRP's that's quite informative, and if you buy the old RPG "RECON", it's fairly LRRP-centric in its view of Vietnam RPG.</blockquote>

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