During my assignment among the mighty at the White House of the 1960s we pacification staffers occasionally received Presidential guidance and directives.
On one such occasion, a Vietnam expert was selected from each arm of government: State, USAID, CIA, Pentagon, etc.
We sequestered at the Agencies’ Vint Hill Farms, and we were tasked to come up with a Dow Jones Index suitable to measure progress in Vietnam.
Correspondent Apple caused this by continually referring to the glass half full. However the President wanted a more precise, less liquid metric. I was the Palace representative for the group.
NSC Rules: No phones. No private automobiles. No external communication of any type. No telling where you are or what your mission. No liquor. Stay at it until you get it right. By order of!!!
We screamed. We verbally sparred. We almost came to blows. Two weeks went by with nothing to report other than sleepless nights and verbal bruising.
For example, we contrived equations such as corn/pig distribution numbers plus body count minus US casualties plus hamlet evaluation survey scores with K as an independent variable to represent all other unidentified variance.
We tried Chi-squared analysis of variance distributions.
We did regression analysis.
Those mathematicians among us had a ball educating us finger-counting word-mongers.
Finally, in desperation, after three weeks of argumentation without positive result, we entreated our CIA senior supervisor to let us return to the world. He relented and got an OK from the Palace to send White House sedans for our pick up and departure.
Just as in the real Vietnam: We tried everything. Nothing worked. So we just gave up and went home!
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