Doris Allen, the Analyst Who Saw the Tet Offensive Coming, Dies at 97

Doris Allen, a military intelligence analyst during the Vietnam War whose warnings of impending attacks by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces in early 1968, known as the Tet Offensive, were ignored by her superiors, died June 11 in Oakland, California. She was 97.

Her death at the hospital was confirmed by Amy Stork, director of public affairs for the Army Intelligence Center of Excellence.

Specialist Allen, who enlisted in the U.S. Army Women’s Corps in 1950, volunteered to serve in Vietnam in 1967, hoping to use her intelligence training to save lives. She was the first woman to take the Army’s prisoner of war interrogation course and worked for two years as a strategic intelligence analyst on Latin American affairs at Fort Bragg, NC, now Fort Liberty.

Working at the Army Operations Center in Long Binh, South Vietnam, Specialist Allen developed intelligence in late 1967 that revealed concentrations of at least 50,000 enemy troops, possibly reinforced by Chinese troops, who were preparing to attack targets in South Vietnam. And she pinpointed the exact date the operation would begin: January 31, 1968.

In an interview for the book “A Piece of My Heart: The Stories of 26 American Women Who Served in Vietnam” (1986) by Keith Walker, Specialist Allen recalled writing a report warning that “we should prepare everything because this is what we are facing, this is going to happen and it is going to happen on this day, around this time.”

She said she told an intelligence officer: “We need to get the word out about this. It has to be said.”

But it wasn’t. She pushed someone in the chain of command to take her report seriously, but no one did. On January 30, 1968 — just as she predicted — surprise enemy US and South Vietnamese military leaders with the scale and scope of their attacks.

US and South Vietnamese forces suffered heavy losses early on before repelling the attacks. It was a turning point in the war, further weakening American public support for it.

The Army’s refusal to take Specialist Allen’s analysis seriously suggested to her that she was considered prejudiced, as a black woman who was not an officer. She was one of about 700 women in the corps, known as WACs, who served in intelligence positions during the Vietnam era, and only 10 percent were black.

In 1991, she told Newsday, “My credibility was nothing: a woman – a black woman, at that.”

In 2012, she told an Army publication: “I recently thought of why they didn’t trust me — they didn’t prepare me. They don’t know how to look beyond WACs, black women in military intelligence. I can’t blame them. I don’t feel bitter.”

Lori S. Stewart, a civilian military intelligence historian with the Military Intelligence Center of Excellence, said in an email that Expert Allen’s analysis was not the only one that went unnoticed.

“Both national and field-level organizations believe that an enemy attack could take place around Tet,” she wrote, but “too many reports and conflicting notions have caused the The leader misunderstands the enemy’s intentions.

Of Specialist Allen, Ms. Stewart added, “Like many other intelligence officers in this country, she is a diligent and astute intelligence analyst, doing what she was called to do: assess the intentions and capabilities of the enemy.”

Expert Allen was introduced Inducted into the Military Intelligence Institute of Fame in 2009.

Doris Ilda Allen was born on May 9, 1927 in El Paso to Richard and Stella (Davis) Allen. Her mother is a chef, and her father is a barber.

Mrs. Allen graduated from Tuskegee Institute (now University) in 1949 with a bachelor’s degree in physical education. She taught at a high school in Greenwood, Miss., and joined the Women’s Army Corps the following year.

After basic training, she auditioned for the WAC Band, playing the trumpet. But then she and two other black women were told by the sheriff that “they couldn’t have any black people in the band,” she recalls in “A Piece of My Heart.”

She held many roles over the next dozen years: entertainment expert, organizing shows for soldiers; military newspaper editor for the Army occupation forces in Japan during the Korean War; radio specialist at Camp Stoneman, California, where her commanding officer was her sister, Jewel; public information officer in Japan; and information specialist at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey

In the early 1960s, Specialist Allen studied French at the Defense Language Institute and completed training in prisoner of war interrogation at Fort Holabird, Md. She completed interrogation and intelligence analysis courses at Fort Bragg.

After applying to go to South Vietnam, she arrived in October 1967 on the first of three tours there.

“I wasted so many skills, so much knowledge and training in many different positions around the country that I decided I wanted to make a difference in a position with many activities like Viet Male,” she told Lavender Notesa publication for older LGBTQ+ adults, in 2020.

She left no immediate survivors.

Allen’s expert Tet analysis isn’t the only warning she shouldn’t heed. She advised a colonel not to send a convoy to Song Be, in southern South Vietnam, because an ambush might occur. Five trucks were blown up; Three people were killed and 19 were injured.

But she was listened to when she warned in early 1969 that North Vietnam had placed dozens of 122 mm rockets around the perimeter of the Long Binh operations center, northeast of Saigon, and that they would be used in a big attack. She wrote a memo that led to an air strike that destroyed the missile.

Later that year, Specialist Allen learned that the North Vietnamese were planning to use 83 mm chemical mortars. She wrote a report that saved up to 100 Marines, who had been instructed in her memo to avoid any contact with mortars as they fell in their area; they then exploded. A grateful colonel sent a memorandum suggesting that whoever wrote the report deserved a Meritorious Service Medal.

Specialist Allen did not receive that medal but did earn a Bronze Star with two oak clusters, among other awards. She left South Vietnam in 1970 after seeing a stolen enemy document with her name on a target list.

After serving another 10 years in the Army She retired with the rank of senior officer.

She received her master’s degree in counseling from Ball State University in Indiana in 1977. After completing her military service, she worked with a private investigator, Bruce Haskett, whom she had met while they were working in counterintelligence. She earned her doctorate in clinical psychology from the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California, in 1986 and mentored young psychologists.

“She has an incredible understanding of people and an innate ability to judge people quickly,” Mr. Haskett said in an interview. “She’s the kind of person who can walk into a pit of vipers and have people eaten within 15 minutes.”

Christina Brown Fisher Contribute report.