Most folks have never heard of TAREX.
It’s about time to change that
TAREX continues to be employed in today’s Army. TAREX units are deployed on an as needed basis and many of the references identify this with a “When Augmented” classification. The existence of the units are not widely known among our own units but are well known in the international intelligence community. In Vietnam the small TAREX units were loosely formed and often created on an almost ad hoc basis of men who had language skills and a foundation in current intelligence material. Our TAREX teams were generally only two men. I only knew a few of them
Here are a few ASA TAREX links and information about some operations.
http://www.users.nac.net/herzo63/story2.html
and just for the fun of it… even the Russians knew about the ASA and TAREX (Of course they had their own versions). Lets take a trip to Russia…
http://www.agentura.ru/library/vocabulair/angl/
In a document that resides at
http://www.ccc.de:8080/mirrors/jya.com/nsa-40k.htm
"…. NSA has a section called TAREX (Target Exploitation). TAREX people occasionally travel through the Soviet bloc and bring back photos of antennas, communication installations and their location. They also collect open source science publications from the USSR, East Germany and China. In Germany, where there were 5000 NSA attached personnel working, there were only ten TAREX people each in Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich. I guess there were more in Vietnam, where they moved in at once whenever a VC centre was raided. They’d grab the radio equipment, operating manuals, or codes. There would be about 50 to 60 TAREX people in each of Phu Bai, Saigon and Da Nang, the three NSA centres."
The ASA was the NSA arm in Vietnam and around the world.
And some other stuff mostly referencing TAREX…
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/inscom/mission.htm
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm34-37/Ch7.htm
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm34-37/Ch6.htm
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm34-37_97/2-chap.htm
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/army/
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm34-37/Gloss.htm
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm34-37/Ch8.htm
http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/inac97.html
http://infomanage.com/international/intelligence/spy_cases/intell.html