Working from lists of "cruel tyrants and reactionary elements" previously developed by Vietcong intelligence officers, many people were to be rounded up following the initial hours of the attack.

These included Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) soldiers, civil servants, political party members, local religious leaders, schoolteachers, American civilians, and other international people.

In a 3500-page document issued on 26 January 1968, by the Trị-Thiên-Huế Political Directorate, the political cadres were given specific instructions:[14]: 28  "Operating in close support of the regular military and guerrilla elements, the political cadre were to: destroy and disorganize the Republic of Viet Nam's (RVN's) administrative machinery 'from province and district levels to the city wards, streets, and wharves;' motivate the people of Huế to take up arms, pursue the enemy, seize power, and establish a revolutionary government; motivate (recruit) local citizens for military and 'security' forces... transportation and supply activities, and to serve wounded soldiers...;" "pursue to the end (and) punish spies, reactionaries, and 'tyrants' and 'maintain order and security in the city.'"

[14]: 32 In June 1968, the American 1st Cavalry troops captured PAVN documents that included a directive written two days before the battle began.

It included these instructions: "For the purpose of a lengthy occupation of Huế, we should immediately liberate the rural areas and annihilate the wicked GVN administrative personnel.

"[14]: 113 On 1 February, the provincial administration, having taken control of Huế, issued a directive that ordered the troops, in part, "To wipe out all puppet administrative organs of the puppet Thiệu-Kỳ (President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, Vice President Nguyễn Cao Kỳ) clique at all levels in the province, city and town down to every single hamlet.

"[15]: 195 Foreign Service Officer Douglas Pike wrote that according to Vietcong documents captured during and after the siege, members of the provincial administration were to be taken out of the city, held, and punished for their "crimes against the Vietnamese people".

[14]: 33 Ordinary civil servants who worked for "the Saigon enemy" out of necessity but did not oppose the communists were destined for reeducation and later employment.

Douglas Pike noted "It is probable that the Commissar intended that their prisoners should be reeducated and returned, but with the turnover, matters passed from his control."

Upon telling the troops that he was Deputy Mayor of Huế and was set to retire in one year (1969), he was ordered to report to a camp for reeducation and to pack clothing and food sufficient for 10 days.

Pham Van Tuong, a part-time janitor for the Huế government information office who made it on the Vietcong list of "reactionaries" for working there, was hiding with his family as it hunted for him.

Manhard recounted that during the PAVN's withdrawal from Huế, they summarily executed anyone in their custody who resisted being taken out of the city or who was too old, young, or frail to make the journey to the camp.

[13][22] Captured in the home of Vietnamese friends, Stephen Miller of the U.S. Information Service was bound and shot in a field behind a Catholic seminary.

"[15]: 131  A 44-year-old bricklayer, Mr. Nguyen Ty, was "seized on February 2, 1968.... His body was found on March 1st; his hands were tied, and he had a bullet wound through his neck which had come out through the mouth.

[25] In another case, ...a squad with a death order entered the home of a prominent community leader and shot him, his wife, his married son and daughter-in-law, his young unmarried daughter, a male and female servant and their baby.

[26]An eyewitness, Nguyen Tan Chau, recounted how he was captured by communist troops and marched south with 29 other prisoners bound together, in three groups of ten.

[18]: 57 Captured Vietcong documents boasted that they "eliminated" thousands of enemy and "annihilated members of various reactionary political parties, henchmen, and wicked tyrants" in Huế.

[13] The translation of an official Vietnamese campaign study of the Tet Offensive in Thừa Thiên–Huế Province released by the communists recognized that Vietcong cadres "hunted down and captured tyrants and Republic of Vietnam military and government personnel" and that "many nests of reactionaries [...] were killed."

[28][29] When Trương Như Tảng was appointed as Vietcong justice minister soon after Huế, he understood it to be a critical position because the massacre had "left us with a special need to address fears among the Southern people that a revolutionary victory would bring with it a bloodbath or reign of terror.

According to Trạng, "discipline in Huế was seriously inadequate" and "fanatic young soldiers had indiscriminately shot people, and angry local citizens who supported the revolution had on various occasions taken justice into their own hands...."[30] The massacre was "one of those terrible spontaneous tragedies that inevitably accompany war.

"[18]: 54  On 14 February, the Thừa Thiên-Huế People's Revolutionary Committee issued a statement that read in part, Concerned over the country's survival and their own fate, on 31 January 1968, the Thừa Thiên-Huế people rose up holding weapons in their hands, smashed the puppet ruling apparatus from the provincial to the village and hamlet levels, and completely liberated the rural areas and the city of Huế.

"Enormous victory: We annihilated more than 3,000 tyrannical puppet army and government administrative personnel, including the Deputy Province Chief of Thừa Thiên.

"[15]: 191  On 27 April 1969, Radio Hanoi criticized authorities in Huế and South Vietnam: In order to cover up their cruel acts, the puppet administration in Huế recently played the farce of setting up a so-called committee for the search for burial sites of the hooligan lackeys who had owed blood debts to the Tri-Thien-Huế compatriots and who were annihilated by the Southern Armed Forces and people in early Mau Than spring.

[15]: 191–192 A cadre diary captured by 1st Cavalry Division troops contained an entry that read: The entire puppet administrative system from hamlet to province was destroyed or disintegrated.

We motivated our cadre, soldiers, and the civilian population through the use of the slogans, 'Tri-Thien fights for Tri-Thien and for the entire nation,' and 'Heroically and resolutely conduct attacks and uprisings.

[13] In Bùi Tín's 2002 memoir, From Enemy to Friend: a North Vietnamese perspective on the war, the former PAVN Colonel acknowledged that executions of civilians had occurred in Huế.

In an interview he stated, "Yeah, there was a total of 710 persons killed in the Huế area, from my research, not as many as five thousand, six thousand, or whatever the Americans claimed at that time, and not as few as four hundred as people like some of the people in the peace movement here claim...."[39] The Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci reported, "In the last few days the Vietcong lost their heads and did nothing but make reprisals, kill, punish".

[38] Some reports alleged that South Vietnamese "revenge squads" had also been at work in the aftermath of the battle to search out and execute citizens supporting the communist occupation.

Novelist James Jones, in a New York Times article wrote, "Whatever else they accomplished, the Huế massacres effectively turned the bulk of the South Vietnamese against the Northern Communists.

[13] Today, the massacre remains unrecognized and entirely ignored in the Vietnamese communist government's War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City.