160. Telegram From the Embassy in Vietnam to the Department of State1
1311. Task Force Viet Nam. President Diem called me in April 16 to discuss question of crop defoliation. He made clear that he is as much in favor of this program as ever and indeed regards its implementation as “one-third of the battle” in the VC controlled areas where he wants to use it. In this conversation, he also showed much greater awareness of the need to employ crop defoliants with discrimination, i.e., in such a way as to avoid destruction of non-VC crops. Diem also emphasized that a prompt decision is necessary if another growing season is not to be missed.
I recalled to Diem that I had previously told him that at the last SecDef meeting in Honolulu2 it had been agreed that Washington would be asked to give us authority here in Saigon to authorize crop [Page 332] defoliation missions on a case by case basis. We had not yet received such authorization but he would appreciate that this was a difficult problem for the US Government.
Diem said that Colonel Trach (Vietnamese head of CDTC) had charge of this matter on Vietnamese side and was making careful study of suitable targets. He proposed that representatives of Colonel Trach and US representatives jointly overfly possible targets, map them and reach joint assessment of their suitability for defoliation. I agreed to put this proposal to my government.
General Harkins and I recommend that we be authorized to participate in joint target assessment with Vietnamese and again request authority to authorize Vietnamese crop defoliation missions on case by case basis.
- Source: Kennedy Library, National Security File; Vietnam Country Series. Secret; Limit Distribution. Repeated to CINCPAC for Polad. Attached to the source text was a memorandum from Bagley to Smith, April 25, noting that Cottrell was preparing a reply to be recommended to the White House.↩
- See Document 124.↩