One of Rand’s most significant ARPA-funded projects, and the one that would become its most famous wartime social science work, was the Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Project, which sought to understand support for the the communist insurgency. Two Rand analysts, Joe Zasloff and John Donnell, were sent over to supervise the interviews, which were conducted with captured Vietcong, as well as those who had surrendered under amnesty. The initial analysis of the interviews was rather dismal for the prospects of U.S. intervention in Vietnam. The study produced insights that did not mesh with the
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