Central Office for South Vietnam
[2] According to PAVN Major General and later dissident Trần Độ, COSVN did, in fact exist and was responsible for organising and directing the Viet Cong and served as overall command.
[3] MACV had imagined COSVN as a physically large, permanent structure due to their ability to carefully coordinate and direct Viet Cong activity entirely.
[5] In fact these two organizations were composed of individuals living in thatched huts in the jungle just like all the guerrillas, and so there was no physical structure of any kind and existed as a highly-mobile headquarter to direct the Viet Cong war effort.
[3] The apparatus of the CO and COSVN had to move around all the time in order to avoid bombing and search and destroy operations conducted by the Americans, and was both physically capable of defending itself and highly mobile to continue to the nature of the war.
[7] The Joint Chiefs of Staff claimed to have located the enemy's headquarters inside Cambodia — what the United States called the Central Office for South Vietnam, or COSVN.
McCain said the United States should destroy it and win the damn war.In 1965, nearly 400 US warplanes attempted to wipe out COSVN in an aerial attack, but had no effect on the elusive shadow command.
[3] Near-daily B-52 raids against its headquarters in Memot, Cambodia failed to kill any of its leadership and insertion of US / RVN Special Forces teams usually wound up dead or returning with heavy casualties, and it was described as "poking a beehive the size of a basketball".
Senior General Nguyễn Chí Thanh, a member of the northern politburo, arrived at COSVN in late 1963 or early 1964 to serve as southern regional political officer and became the dominant figure at the headquarters until his death during a visit to Hanoi in July 1967.
A Time magazine article in 1970 reported that rather than being a jungle Pentagon as often conceived, "COSVN is actually a staff of some 2,400 people who are widely dispersed and highly mobile", traveling between various bunkers and meeting places by bicycle and motorbike.
During the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, the US military was generally not allowed by its civilian commanders to widen the war by attacking the supply routes and sanctuaries in both countries due to their ostensible neutrality.
They quickly seized large portions of the eastern and northeastern parts of the country, isolating and besieging or overrunning a number of Cambodian cities, including Kampong Cham.
[17] Just before the column crossed route 7 heading north, they received word that on April 3 the 9th Division had fought and won in a battle near the city of Krek, Cambodia against ARVN forces.
[18] Years later, Trương would recall that during the escape of the Provisional Revolutionary Government just how "close [South Vietnamese] were to annihilating or capturing the core of the Southern resistance - elite units of our frontline fighters along with the civilian and much of the military leadership.
US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was quoted as saying that the Cambodian invasion to destroy COSVN and other headquarters complexes bought the Americans and South Vietnamese a year.
[20] The "Bamboo Pentagon" was a mythical military headquarters of the Viet Cong, believed by US President Richard Nixon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to exist deep inside the jungles of Cambodia.
