Office of the Historian

335. Memorandum From the Chairman of the Policy Planning Council (Rostow) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Harriman)1

Washington, December 22, 1961.

SUBJECT

  • Diem’s Fears of a Coup and Command Arrangements

REFERENCE

  • Telegram from Chief of MAAG, Saigon 210957Z2

You will recall discussing with a member of my staff the bearing on the campaign in South Viet-Nam of Diem’s fear of a coup. In brief, Diem is hobbling the ability of the armed forces to fight the Viet Cong in order to minimize the chances of a coup against himself. He does this by a variety of means including interference in the chain of command and tight control of field units.

At the local level, counter-guerrilla operations require an extraordinary degree of tactical initiative if units are to react fast to dangers and to opportunities. This requires more decentralization than Diem allows. At the national level, the Government is unlikely to make progress in bringing the country under its control unless it follows an over-all plan for doing so. This would seem to require, inter alia, unity of command in respect of overall planning and general direction of operations. But a unit commander is unlikely to obey the order of his superiors in the chain of command if he anticipates other and different orders from the Chief of State.

Diem’s practices, intended to guard him against a military coup, thus help create frustrations driving the military to stage one. The vicious circle needs to be broken. It could be broken by a successful coup against Diem, but for us to encourage one would involve grave risks. The alternative is to provide Diem with more personal security.

Diem’s sense of security would be promoted if the capital city area were placed under the protection of units to be hand-picked by Diem himself, with their officers subject only to his direction. We have broached this idea to Cottrell who says Thompson has already suggested this to Diem who likes it, but that our military are [Page 756] horrified. This seems to be a situation, however, in which political considerations are clearly overriding.

  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 751K.00/12-2261. Secret. Drafted by Rice and initialed by Rostow. The source text bears two handwritten notations. One reads: “Shown to & discussed w/Nolting week Jan. 8-12. He says he thinks Diem may, in effect, have such an arrangement, de facto, now. E[dmund] R[ice]” The other reads: “Mr. Rice. Should we get back of this? Walt”.↩
  2. Document 333.↩