| Gernilee, People have to keep in mind that our intelligence capabilities in 1950 were not what they are today. No overflights of the DPRK were possible due to political sensitivities and the basic fear that a US recon aircraft would get shot down, ergo becoming the pretext for a "counteroffensive". Many of the spies did not survive long enough to get any useful information, and many of the commando groups were ignored by both ROK and US sources as not trustworthy. SIGINT was good as far as it went -- but NSA history notes they only had two linguists in 1950, so whereas intercept probably wasn't a problem, translation and exploitation would have been non-existent. Most of our SIGINT aircraft at the time were ELINT only, which were looking for radar sets. Alfred Price has a good deal of coverage in his Volume II of the history of US electronic warfare. Add in the failures at FEC headquarters and you have the makings of a big intel miss. We weren't fooled, we really could not "see" it coming. Cookie Sewell AMPS |