751G.00/9–1852: Telegram
The Ambassador at Saigon (Heath) to the Department of State
621. Rptd info Paris 127, Hanoi unn I saw Pres Tam yesterday fol his return from trip to Hanoi which he felt had been very successful. While in Hanoi he completed arrangements with Fr to turn over Hung Yen Sector to Vietnamese troops. He had satisfactorily settled, he thought, certain differences with Binh particularly with regard to the Gamos though he remained unconvinced that the Gamos, even with the reforms introduced, were really a good instrument for pacification of liberated sectors. He said, however, that there had been so much publicity about them that it wld not be politically advisable to replace them immediately. Five Gamo teams wld carry on for few months to come.
He was pleased with the extremely cordial reception given him by the Chinese community of Hanoi which seemed to be more outspokenly anti-Communist, pro-Chinese nationalist and confident of victory over the Communists than he had known them. He surmised that the Chinese businessmen had finally realized there was no place for them in a Communist system and were at last taking a stand.
He said the taking over the Hung Yen and later other sectors would involve additional expenditures for the govt but he wld be able to find the money. He was insisting successfully on better tax collections, and though without increasing rates he wld be able to increase tax reve nues by 30 percent. In the Cholon District collections were increasing at the rate of a million piasters monthly. He had discharged, placed on the inactive list or transferred to less important posts some 60 functionaries known to have been grafting and he expected weed out a great many more. He had not judged it politically wise to publish these dismissals but felt that they were known throughout the population and in official ranks.
He said that while his relations with the Fr were those of mutual esteem and liking he wld have some continuing difficulties in persuading the Fr steadily to abandon their former authority and habits of intervention in matters of internal administration. He was greatly heartened by recent talks with Janot who in effect is Letourneau‘s second in command. Janot understood, he said, the necessity of the Fr increasingly effacing themselves. Gautier, technically second in command, was more a difficult problem for he had the old colonial background and connection. While in the north he had issued orders for the administration to proceed immediately with the election in each village of a council of notables. Once the village councils were formed they wld select delegates to the Provincial Assembly and when the [Page 252] latter were formed they wld in turn elect delegates to the National Assembly. He was respecting the regional system of Vietnam, however, since delegates to the National Assembly from each region wld also serve as members of an advisory council to the Governor of the region.