# An identity card for a resistance league that MACV-SOG made up

A 1971 bilingual identity card in the name of the Sacred Sword of the Patriots League Southern Committee. The FRAME record attributes it to MACV-SOG and describes the League as an organisation that existed only as that unit's creation.

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      SSPL Membership Card (Chứng minh thư), Sacred Sword of the Patriots League Southern Committee

      An identity card for a resistance league that MACV-SOG made up
      A 1971 Vietnamese-English membership card for the Sacred Sword of the Patriots League, a notional group attributed to MACV-SOG. Public domain via Commons.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Astroturfing
      Date1971Made byMACV-SOG, in the name of the notional Sacred Sword of the Patriots League Southern CommitteeMediumDocumentCountryUnited StatesRegimeNixon AdministrationSourceImpersonated Source falsified: fake personas, outlets or documentsSourceWikimedia Commons (MACV-SOG specimen card, after Plaster 2000) , retrieved October 2, 2026SourcePD-USGov per Commons page (17 U.S.C. 105 federal work); Public Domain Mark 1.0 MACV-SOG; Wikimedia Commons.
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  A 1971 bilingual identity card in the name of the Sacred Sword of the Patriots League Southern Committee. The FRAME record attributes it to MACV-SOG and describes the League as an organisation that existed only as that unit's creation.

## What the card says

The card is printed twice over, Vietnamese on top and English below. It carries a serial number, a round seal, a signature block, and the word SECRET struck through at the head. The space for the bearer's secret number is left as a row of dots. The English half reads as follows.

The SSPL Southern Committee Nbr 1109/CMT/NB

IDENTITY CARD

The SSPL Southern Committee Certify: The bearer is a member having the secret number...............grade hardcore military cadre of the SSPL Southern Committee entrusted with the mission to take relations, develop and coordinate activities with diverse secret cells in the whole Southern region. The strict assistance on all aspects from our agencies to him will be warmly welcomed.

Date...............1971

FOR THE SSPL SOUTHERN

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

MEMBER FOR CURRENT AFFAIRS

English half of the card as printed, from the FRAME transcription. The Vietnamese half names the signer as Lê-hùng-Cường; the seal text is illegible. Full record at propagandaarchive.org.

## Who issued it

Not the League. The archive credits MACV-SOG, writing in the name of a notional Sacred Sword of the Patriots League, and files the source as impersonated: a fake persona with a fake document to match. The image is a specimen card on Wikimedia Commons, described there as following Plaster's 2000 account and tagged as a U.S. federal work.

## How to read it

A leaflet argues. A card like this does something else. Seals, a numbered file reference, a rank, and a committee title make an organisation look as if it already has members, offices, and paperwork. FRAME calls the method astroturfing. The card's value lay in being found, believed, and passed on, so that a reader would think an underground movement existed where the record says none did.

This page does not add an account of how the card was used or what it achieved. The archive's record does not give one.

## The liberty question

Deceiving an enemy in wartime is an old practice, and this card was aimed at a war zone, not at Americans. The concern for an American reader is narrower and lasting: the government built a capacity to invent organisations and forge their documents, with no signature anywhere on the product. The same habit of unsigned authorship, turned inward, is what made the FBI's COINTELPRO press operations an injury to self-government. A tool that works abroad does not stay abroad on its own. It needs a rule that keeps it there.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, SSPL Membership Card (Chứng minh thư), Sacred Sword of the Patriots League Southern Committee, 1971. Issuer as recorded: MACV-SOG, in the name of the notional League.

- Wikimedia Commons, MACV-SOG specimen card, after Plaster 2000, retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026. Rights as recorded: PD-USGov (17 U.S.C. 105); Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/sspl-membership-card-1971/