Born in Ha Dong province near Hanoi, he was one of the most secret and important architects of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam’s (DRV) early military intelligence apparatus. He studied at the École pratique industrielle in Hanoi. As a youngster in Hanoi, he witnessed the nationalist outpouring surrounding the death of Phan Chu Trinh in 1925. He drifted leftwards in the late 1920s, joining a communist-oriented youth group in 1929. Though trained as a mechanic, he became actively involved in journalism and radical politics during the Popular Front period. In 1938, Truong Chinh and Dao Duy Ky introduced him into the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP). In September 1939, with the end of this liberal period, the French police arrested him and shipped him off to Son La prison. In June 1941, the French deported him to a jail in Madagascar with seven other communists, including Le Gian, Hoang Huu Nam, and Hoang Dinh Giong.
Following the overthrow of the Vichy regime there in 1942, these political prisoners, including Tran Hieu, regained their freedom but were blocked from returning to Vietnam because of the Japanese occupation of Indochina. In 1943, however, Gaullist authorities allowed the British Intelligence Service MI6 to recruit these Vietnamese men. Tran Hieu, Hoang Huu Nam, and Hoang Dinh Giong agreed that this was the only way for them to return to Vietnam and justified their actions in light of the wider communist approved anti-fascist struggle. In 1944, the British trained Tran Hieu in New Delhi in intelligence, radio, and cipher operations before parachuting him in March 1945 to a village near Hanoi. From there, he provided intelligence on the Japanese to the Allies and went to work to help the ICP take power. With the help of Tran Quoc Hoan, the deputy Party secretary of the Tonkin regional committee, Tran Hieu was provided with access to a radio in order to communicate with the Allies in Calcutta, administer radio communications for the Tonkin committee with the ICP central committee to the north, and teach a class on military reconnaissance operations for the Tonkin committee. This he did.
With the birth of the DRV in September 1945, he put his clandestine communist experience, prison contacts, and recently acquired modern intelligence knowledge to work for the nationalist cause. When the government created the Bureau of Security Forces for Northern Vietnam (So Liem Phong Bac Bo) in late 1945, he seconded Le Gian as deputy director. He remained deputy director when this bureau was replaced in February 1946 by the Public Security Department (Cong An Vu). In this capacity, he played a pivotal role in combating non-communist nationalist efforts to contest communist power in 1946. Tran Hieu headed up the Ministry of Defense and High Command’s intelligence bureau (Cuc Tinh Bao) between 1947 and 1948. In early 1948, the DRV officially named him Director of the Intelligence Department of the Vietnamese National Army’s High Command. This department was disbanded in April 1950. Tran Hieu became the Deputy Director of Vietnam Public Security Directorate and served concurrently as Chief of the Public Security Directorate’s Intelligence Buerau. In July 1951, a strategic intelligence agency for the party and the government emerged, called the Liaison Department, directly subordinate to the Prime Minister’s office. Tran Hieu was director of this powerful department. In June 1967, the Liaison Department merged with the General Staff’s Military Intelligence Department to create the Intelligence Department, the Party, and army’s overall strategic intelligence agency. Tran Hieu, the man who got his intelligence start with the help of the allies, was in charge. See also DEUXIÈME BUREAU; H122; MAURICE BELLEUX; PUBLIC SECURITY SERVICES; SERVICE DE DOCUMENTATION EXTÉRIEURE ET DE CONTRE-ESPIONNAGE.