Huỳnh Văn Cao (26 September 1927 – 26 February 2013) was a Major general in the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN).

In 1965 he was appointed as commander of the General Political Warfare Department which had been established in 1964 under the guidance of a Nationalist Chinese advisory team invited to South Vietnam several years earlier by President Ngo Dinh Diem.

In talks with both Walt and Special Assistant to the COMUSMACV General John F. Freund, Cao revealed that he had no interest in commanding the corps and that other Directory members had coerced him into taking the assignment.

On 17 May Cao flew in a U.S. Marine Corps helicopter to Huế to confer with dissident Generals Nguyễn Chánh Thi and Phan Xuân Nhuận.

Hardly had Cao returned to Da Nang when he encountered more trouble in the person of Colonel Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, chief of the National Police.

Writing to Westmoreland shortly thereafter, Cao asked to be flown to the United States and volunteered to join the U.S. Marine Corps and fight communism "anywhere in the world."