Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Vietnam, Volume I

193. Letter From the Ambassador in Vietnam (Durbrow) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Parsons)¹

Hong Kong, September 6, 1960.

Dear Jeff: I am writing to give you a bit of background on the “flap” we had last week-end caused by the DOD/JCS somewhat panic button telegram which was received by MAAG on September 2.² I have forgotten its number, and I do not know the number of our reply which I approved in draft September 5,³ but I am sure you know what messages I am referring to.

Upon receipt of the DOD message General McGarr and his senior MAAG staff chose to interpret the DOD telegram to be a mandate to give their ideas on how to solve all the security, military, political, economic and psychological problems of Vietnam. MAAG immediately came up with a rather long position paper late on the afternoon of the 2nd. After hearing from General McGarr the tenor of the position paper, I felt obliged to tell him that many of the suggestions made therein ran completely contrary to all the basic policies we have been following for the last three years. I promised, nevertheless, to study the paper and called for another Country Team meeting on the morning of the 4th. After studying the paper and discussing it with the MAAG group, it became quite clear that (1) some of the pent-up military frustrations that we had tried to keep in line were let out of the box with the arrival of the new Chief/MAAG, and (2) on several points General McGarr showed himself to be much more flexible than had General Williams.

In regard to their proposals, you will note from the final MAAG paper⁴ that they suggested a deal which would basically swap an increase of 20,000 additional spaces above the 150,000 agreed force level for their agreement to make MAAG instructors available within the MAAG ceiling to train the Civil Guard, as well as give at least temporarily logistics support to the Civil Guard by temporarily transferring MAP equipment for use in their training and permit the use of some ARVN facilities for this purpose. The reason MAAG says it needs 20,000 more troops is to give it enough leeway to step up ARVN training as well. This is a rather sad commentary on the slowness of the MAAG training during the relatively quiet period 1956–59, when as I pointed out in my letter to you about the flap we had with Williams and Colonel Comstock, only 3 out of the 7 divisions have had full training. As you know, I have felt very strongly that since the Viet Cong have stepped up their activities, that Diem has been thinking more than ever in terms of security and survival with the use of force rather than doing many other fundamental things which we feel are needed to face up to the growing communist campaign among the population. As I point out further on, Diem has been doing a few of the non-military things recently but must do more.

One of the basic problems we face is not more dollar aid but the need to get the GVN to increase its piastre revenues to meet the growing internal costs for the military budget as well as for economic development. Despite the many tens of hours we have discussed the reasons for our balance of payments approach, it became quite clear in the discussions with the MAAG group on September 3 that they still have not yet fully understood the problem we face of creating more piastre revenues without automatically increasing the GVN’s foreign exchange reserves, etc. The rather naive MAAG point of view boils down to this: Diem is in trouble, he is facing approximately 5,000 well-trained communist guerrilla cadre, and, therefore, he needs more aid. If we only give him more dollars, he can more easily build up his forces to face the threat, and by giving him this extra dollar aid we will convince him we are backing him to the hilt. I tried my best, in the short time we had to discuss the matter, to explain to General McGarr some of the facts of life in the dollar–piastre problem. Unfortunately, the General and I had to leave Saigon on the afternoon of the 3rd for a visit to new road projects in central Vietnam with Diem, from which we returned only late on the evening of the 4th. In the meantime, because of the DOD request that a MAAG officer arrive in Washington with the MAAG position paper by the 7th, (General Lampert who will represent MAAG left on the evening of the 4th) we did not have time to work out a more coordinated paper. While I was on the trip with Diem I had the boys work up our telegram giving our basic reaction to the MAAG paper, which I went over carefully before leaving for Hong Kong on the 5th.

Despite their lack of understanding of the dollar–piastre question, I was frankly very gratified to find a completely cooperative and realistic attitude on the part of General McGarr regarding the possibility of using MAAG instructors who are in Vietnam to train the Civil Guard in basic as well as ranger training and that he is willing to urge that red tape be cut in order to make available, on a replacement basis, MAP equipment and materiel for this purpose. With over a third of ARVN engaged in operations it has been obvious for some time that all MAAG training personnel has not been fully occupied, but Williams would not budge an inch, but McGarr has. As you perhaps know, one of the principal reasons why, since June 1959, we have not been able to train the Civil Guard better has been our inability to work out a method within the MAAG ceiling or otherwise within the stipulation of the Geneva Accords, to get instructors for the Civil Guard. We ran into roadblocks set up by Williams, Admiral Felt, ACSI and DOD in general. It was not until a few months ago that ICA was able to work a rather cumbersome system to recruit ten retired officers to come to Saigon to begin the Civil Guard training. They are finally due about September 15. Even with these ten instructors we would have had considerable difficulty in obtaining proper training facilities unless MAAG and ARVN could have made some of their faculties available for this purpose. As I have stated, McGarr’s paper suggests cutting through all of this red tape in order that we may do the one thing that is basically needed in the security force field, train the Civil Guard as fully as practicable in the shortest time so that they may relieve the ARVN of many of its static duties, protect the population after ARVN has pacified an area, and on occasion assist ARVN in operations. In other words, I am firmly convinced that it is not necessary to start now to recruit 20,000 additional troops to increase the force level, when MAAG instructors can immediately start training Civil Guard personnel which have already had considerable training and thus obtain our basic objective sooner and without adding to the over-all cost to the U.S. In this connection you will recall that we pay for about 80% of the ARVN budget but are not obligated to cover troop pay for the Civil Guard, which is already budgeted for by the GVN. We have in our USOM program a considerable amount of support and communications equipment on order for the Civil Guard, and, therefore, what is needed most is intensive training as soon as possible. We may and probably can make some shifts in the USOM appropriations to meet some of the other additional costs for the stepped up Civil Guard training.

We tried in our telegram of the 5th to cover most of these highlights and others, but I thought it might be worthwhile for me to give you a more detailed explanation.

Regarding the other political, economic and psychological problems covered in the MAAG paper, I believe we have made our position quite clear in various telegrams and airgrams in the past month. Our main problem is not to pamper Diem by giving him more security forces with which to beat people into line but to give him sufficient forces, i.e., a fully-trained Civil Guard to handle the security problem, and bring all other pressures on him to take essential steps which will win over the population by other methods than sheer force. As we have reported, Diem, in the past two or three months, has finally started to put into effect many of the non-military steps we have been urging for a long time. Since he seems to be moving in the right direction, I feel very strongly that we should not distract him from these efforts by finally succumbing to his long-expressed desire to have a force level of 170,000. In the first place I don’t think he needs these extra troops if the Civil Guard can be made more effective, and the increase of 20,000 additional troops would not only cost us directly a great deal of money but, as I have already pointed out, we would have to reverse our entire aid policy by bringing in luxury goods to sell for piastres to meet these rather heavy additional expenditures. These goods would not benefit in any way the rural population, only the rich in Saigon. Such a move would let the GVN off the hook by not forcing them to adopt sounder financial measures.

There is no question that Diem’s situation is fairly serious but it is not now desperate, and I do not feel that any crash aid program or pushing the panic button will make the situation better. As far as using additional dollars is concerned, we might be able to use MAP dollars to purchase certain needed anti-guerrilla items such as H–34 helicopters and some electronics equipment, etc., which would be most helpful to Diem in the anti-guerrilla campaign, but more commercial aid would not help except maybe as a last desperate effort. The use of MAP dollars, of course, does not enter into the conversion problem of dollars to piastres. DOD will also have to cut a lot of hidebound red tape to make MAP equipment available to the Civil Guard on a temporary basis.

I am sure that the Department already understands these problems, but I thought it might be worthwhile to give you my basic thoughts on this problem.

With kindest personal regards.

Sincerely yours,

Durby
Elbridge Durbrow

1. Source: Department of State, Vietnam Working Group Files: Lot 66 D 193, 108–VN 1960–Mutual Defense Affairs. Secret; Official–Informal.
2. Document 189.
3. Document 191.
4. Document 190.