Vietnam: Davis Station

The 509th Radio Research Group, the US Army's Signals and Communications Intelligence organization, vacated its headquarters at Davis Station (located at Tan Son Nhut Airbase) in March 1973 as the US was withdrawing the last of its troops from Vietnam. Ironically, it then became the home for the North Vietnamese delegation to the Joint Military Commission (JMC). The JMC, which included the South Vietnamese, was established as part of the Paris Peace Accords to oversee the so-called "ceasefire." At the NVA's invitation, newsmen attended a press conference at Davis Station, where the NVA complained about the poor living conditions there, saying it was a 'concentration camp,' a claim the men of the 509th Radio Research Group would find laughable. The JMC, like all the institutions and agreements of the Paris Peace Accords, was doomed to failure.