Said to have originated by Ngo Dinh Diem, the term “Viet Nam Cong San”, or “Vietnamese Communist”, served as the principle definition of the insurgent force during the American War in Vietnam. Better known as, “Viet Cong”, its brevity served as a “pejorative label” working to “diminish the movement’s considerable popular appeal.” Webster’s Dictionary reinforces this idea by defining it as, “A member of the communist guerilla movement in Vietnam that fought the South Vietnamese government forces 1954-75 with the support of the North Vietnamese army and opposed the South Vietnamese and U.S. forces in the Vietnam War.”

During the Winter Soldier testimony in 1971, dozens of American GI’s spoke of atrocities they and other troops had witnessed and even committed themselves. One GI described, “The way that we distinguished between civilians and VC was VC had weapons, civilians didn’t. Anyone who was dead was VC. If you kill someone, they would say, how do you know he is VC? The general reply would be, he’s dead. And that would be sufficient.”

By 1968, the VC and their personal threat level were being defined by central intelligence centers using the IBM 1401 computer. The IBM super computers compiled various data on each individual and then processed that information into a series of computerized blacklists. Each month results of the program were compiled, VC members and then hamlets were classified as “A-Leaders and party members, B- holders of responsible jobs, C- rank and file members”; for hamlets it was “A-secure, B-contested, or C- controlled by the VC.” With this information, nationwide neutralization quotas were implemented, often requiring the neutralization of as many as 1,800 VC per month. This evaluation system became known as “GIGO”, or “garbage in; garbage out.”