Samuel V Wilson

Director of US Defence Intelligence Agency who brought fresh thinking to warfare

Samuel V Wilson, a former Army lieutenant general and director of the US Defence Intelligence Agency who developed counterinsurgency practices that became widely used during the Vietnam War, died on 10 June at his home in Rice, Virginia. He was 93.

His wife, Susi Wilson, said the cause was lung cancer.

Wilson, who fought in the jungles of Burma during the Second World War and worked in intelligence in Germany and Russia at the height of the Cold War, combined the savvy of a spymaster with the grit of a combat veteran.

In 1959 he became director of the Army Special Forces Schoolin North Carolina. He helped develop a programme of instruction for counterinsurgency operations that has evolved into a multi-pronged US strategy known as COIN.

COIN calls for deep cultural understanding of the country where fighting is taking place, encourages political rather than military means to subdue an insurgency and seeks a unity of effort between military and civilian forces.

In 1966, Wilson took control of military and civilian forces in rural Long An province in South Vietnam and began applying those principles there. Villagers in the province, he found, felt forgotten by what they saw as the inept, corrupt South Vietnamese government, and often harboured Viet Cong guerrillas.

He imposed restrictive rules of engagement to reduce violence and emphasised cooperation and communication between South Vietnamese and US forces, in part to help create a stable, effective local government.his approach came to fruition in an operation to recapture the village of Long Huu, which had served as a Viet Cong base since 1963.

After Vietnam, Wilson was a defence attaché at the US Embassy in Moscow, supervisor of military attachés at 85 embassies and deputy director of the CIA under George Bush. In 1976, he became the third director of the Defence Intelligence Agency. In 1977 he helped create Delta Force, an Army unit devoted to counterterrorism and hostagerescue operations. He retired from the Army that year and became a professor at Hampden-sydney College in Virginia. He retired in 2000.

Samuel Vaughan Wilson was born on 23 September 1923 in Rice to Jasper and Helen, who owned a farm. He joined the National Guard as a bugler at 16 and developed his counterinsurgency approach in the Second World War as a reconnaissance platoon leader in a voluntary jungle warfare force known as Merrill’s Marauders, after its leader, Brig. Gen. Frank Merrill.

In 1945, he married Brenda Downing, who died in 1987. He wed Virginia Howton, who goes by Susi, in 1989. In addition to Susi he is survived by sons Samuel Jr, Jackson and David; daughter Susan; stepson William; stepdaughter, Frances and grandchildren. © New York Times 2017. Distributed by NYT Syndication Service