Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume I, Vietnam, 1964

10. Telegram From the Embassy in Vietnam to the Department of State¹

Saigon, January 10, 1964—6 p.m.

1290. A two-hour meeting with Generals Minh, Don, Kim, PriMin Tho, Ministers Quang and Lam, parts of which are being reported in separate telegrams.² I had prepared some questions in French so that we could all concentrate conversation on the same subject. I read these questions aloud as follows:³

“I. Aim:”

“Is this the aim? That: in the seven key provinces the government’s writ runs day and night; the ordinary person can sleep throughout the night without fear; government officials need only minimum police protection; and that the seven provinces become a ‘show case’ end as secure as Saigon is now.”

“II. How to achieve it?”

“What orders have been issued by the central government to reach above objective? For example, is the Long An Province Chief getting one set of orders? And is he getting enough people to help him? Is there a pacification directive? If a pacification directive is in existence, what are its provisions as regards:”

A. Political

B. Military

“III. What is being done under A (Political)?”

• “1. How is it that the VC guerrillas put up such a tough and relentless fight without helicopters? Obviously because they believe in something; the Communists have conveyed to these men clear picture of a program which they think will make life better. We have not. They are also well organized politically; we are not.”
• “2. What, therefore, are we doing to enunciate a political program in terms people can understand, which will at a very minimum remove age-old inequities and the grievances which these have caused and which will also make honest promises of constructive improvement for the future—a doctrine which can be applied meticulously from the grassroots up, in which deeds will be matching words and which can be communicated effectively and repeatedly to the people?”
• “3. Will there be an active national information program, using the extensive communications apparatus now available to contrast your program with that of Communism?”
• “4. Such a program must go hand in hand with the military security measures considered under B because when the military achieve security, the people will then be in a position to make a choice. Now they are in no position to choose anything because they are terrified and can only think of survival. What then are we doing to see to it that when they are in a position to make a choice, they choose our side rather than the other? For it is when they choose our side that they will have destroyed the infrastructure of the VC—and we are much more interested in destroying the infrastructure, the very base of the VC, than we are in killing individual VC.”
• “5. Should not such a program assure them:”
  • of our interest in their security,
  • improve their facilities for education,
  • reform the system of land ownership (so as to at least be competitive with VC)
  • abolish favoritism,
  • eliminate exorbitant taxation and forced labor (where labor is not for manifest benefit of people performing it),
  • improve health,
  • protect people from extortionists?
• “6. In your speech to the Council of Notables⁴ you spoke in general terms of a domestic program. Why not amplify this, with specific illustrations named in paragraph 5?”
• “6. [7.] We are advised that the GVN has increased troop strength in Long An but that the VC have simply shifted from military to political tactics and are defeating us politically. This is the old Mao Tse-tung maxim “fight, fight, talk, talk”. We are, therefore, as yet essentially no better off in Long An than we were. We are at present overwhelmingly outclassed politically because there is literally no Vietnamese corps of junior governmental/political workers to carry out directives of the GVN. Province Chief, although excellent, cannot possibly cover all the strategic hamlets. At present of 219 strategic hamlets in the province the government controls 20, and 40 have been completely abandoned.”
• “8. Can war be won without there being the rough equivalent of a nation-wide precinct organization so that ultimately every family in Vietnam will be known to a precinct worker? In the case of Long An this means eventually three teams of eight men each for each of six districts—a total of 144 men. I understand that this would cover the entire population of the province. These men must be competent, enthusiastic, and well trained. Eventually and ideally they should be local men, but this is not possible in Long An at present. The men that are sent in should look for promising local men and turn responsibility over to them.”
• “9. Must not these men sleep in the hamlets? That is the first and most important commandment, for this makes clear as nothing else can that the government is truly interested in the security of the people. Then, in addition to [garble] for local talent, these men should systematically maintain contact with each hamlet, counter the Viet Cong propaganda, and explain the new MRC and its program for the country. This means MRC must have a program which is truly competitive with Communism. On such a program item no. 1 must be security which will never be believable unless MRC workers sleep in the hamlet.”
• “10. Can you not recruit an elite group here in Saigon to work in Long An, said men to be withdrawn as soon as they have built a local corps, for the purpose of training others for other provinces? Should not an intensive program of schooling be started to build up a corps like this for all of the other 42 provinces in Vietnam?”
• “11. Should not these men actively promote General Minh’s program for the nation? They certainly should not be sent into the provinces unless there is something for them to do. They could be kept busy initially, carrying out the local program which is now going on, involving cement, well drilling, insecticides, pesticides, roofing and building of schools.”
• “12. The above is not the old civic action program. This old program was for propaganda, whereas what we here suggest is for performance. The old program aimed to keep a certain group in power whereas this program aims to give Vietnam a political organization which can compete with the political organization of the Viet Cong.”

  1. When I finished reading, PriMin Tho said that there was much in the paper which was good, but that there were some things that could not be done now. On the matter of taxes and rents, they were planning to cancel all the repayments due from farmers to owners over the next 12 years, which would amount to 500 million piastres.

  2. General Minh said that they had already reduced taxes from 40 per cent to 20 per cent on houses and on farms used for habitation.

  3. When I commented that I was following events in Vietnam very closely, and had not heard of this, General Don replied “That is why we have changed the Information Minister”.

  4. General Minh continued that they were suppressing the taxes paid by Vietnamese students abroad. This would entail a 75 million piastre loss.

  5. They agreed on the importance of public support for the government and felt that public support for them was improving. General Kim said that during last Sunday’s⁵ clear and hold operations in Long An by the airborne battalion, information was given to them by peasants on the location of 50 fresh VC corpses. They had actual photographs of the corpses which they showed me and which evidently were not decomposed at all.

  6. General Minh felt they were getting really well organized on the elimination of the key VC in each village. General Kim said this kind of thing was much better done locally, and not by bringing in people from Saigon.

  7. General Minh felt that, referring to my number III, para 1, the Vietnamese people were really not actuated much by having a clear picture of a program. If, he said, I were to go into California and divide it all up into 3-acre lots and give it away, the people to whom I gave it would be pleased, but this was not a question of ideology so much as a question of banditry.

  8. I agreed that there was a lot of banditry in it, but that ideology was also involved. He agreed and said that he had made a declaration of a domestic program in his speech of Jan 2.

  9. When I applauded his speech, but pointed out that it was largely generalities, he said that he as the Chief of State had to deal in generalities and that it was up to Tho to give the details.

  10. When I said that a Chief of State would make more of an impression if he dealt in things that were concrete, he finally agreed and said that on February 13, he was making a statement on amnesty and for giving land owners the purchase price for their 3 hectares which they had bought under the Diem regime.

  11. On the question of building a sort of political machine, he pointed out that they were creating a “Council of Notables” in each village which, in all but 10 percent of the villages in Vietnam, would consist of local people. They would be the ones to expound the program, know the people, and to serve as a link between the people and the government.

  12. General Kim, with obvious agreement from the rest, spoke of the great helpfulness of USIS, notably in the tracts which they made available to province officials. But he did hope that all USIS activities would be done “hand in hand” with the province people, and General Kim volunteered to give advice to USIS personnel himself. He commented that the Long An Province Chief had decided not to use the atrocity photographs which USIS had provided during the Diem regime.

  13. I then raised the question of intensifying the Chieu Hoi program.⁶ General Kim said that it had some definite value but that too much could never be expected from it. The people who “fight against us” are, broadly speaking, in 3 categories—(1) the hard-core Communists whom no Chieu Hoi program can reach; (2) the nationalists who are against French, Japanese, and American “imperialism”, many of whom are already under Communist influence; (3) those who joined the VC because they were pursued by the Diem police because of the Buddhist troubles, or something similar.

  Note: The VC Chief who kept the American, Krause, a prisoner for 5–1/2 months, had become a VC because the Diem police had killed his father, beaten his mother to death, and had made it clear he had no future whatever if he stayed in Saigon. End of note.

  14. General Kim said it was obvious that only limited results could be obtained from the Chieu Hoi program and nothing whatever with regard to categories 1 and 2. The important thing, he said, with evident agreement by all present, was to “keep what we have” and make it impossible for the VC to recruit any more.

  15. On the matter of night operations, he said these were going on and that the Long An Province Chief had reported that in November there were 30 night operations and in December more than 200.

  16. Many were not used to fighting at night and Kim was looking for new tactics and planned to consult General Harkins and General York. For example, carbines were not much use at night, and perhaps shotguns would be better.

  17. On the matter of rewards to encourage night fighting, it was largely a question of money with which to buy information. In Long An there was 20,000 piastres a month allotted for this purpose, which was not very much. He would like to see money taken away from “useless projects” so that they could do more of this.

  18. I said I hoped he would give me a list of “useless projects”, because no one would like to suppress them more than I would.

  19. In response to another question of mine, he said that firm and constant pressure was being exercised by the government, that now they had a real wartime general staff, a real command situation and not a peacetime style of organization such as they had before. They are prepared to “cut off a man’s head” for unsatisfactory performance and had already done so. In fact, he cited a case of a Colonel Dao who had had two SDC executed for looting.

  20. He gave me the new list of the 7 provinces in which they were concentrating their efforts and asked whether this was satisfactory to us: Long An, Binh Duong, Hau Nghia, Dinh Tuong, Hien Hoa, Tay Ninh and Kien Tuong.

Comment: In their own way, these men are obviously trying to put out a program and create a sort of political organization to serve as a link between them and the people. They are obviously not as concerned with ideology as I am. Their Council of Notables in each village is obviously not what I had in mind. I still think my emphasis is about right, but I also recognize that they know this country much better than I do. These men are obviously intelligent, very hard working, and are giving this whole effort everything they’ve got. Believe we should work with these Councils of Notables as the best thing available.

Lodge

1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, POL 23 VIET. Secret; Limdis. A note on another copy of this telegram reads as follows: “MAC: This is worth your looking at. Lodge may be a little fuzzy, but there is at least a sense of give and take. Mike Forrestal.” (Johnson Library, National Security File, Vietnam Country File, Vol. II, Cables)
2. Reference is to telegrams 1287 and 1288 from Saigon, both January 10, 5 p.m. In telegram 1287, Lodge reported that after the 2-hour meeting with the Generals, General Kim told him that the 11 points which Lodge had made to Minh on January I (see footnote 14, Document 8) were already being implemented by the government with the exception of point 8, early revitalization of the amnesty program, which was still under study. (Department of State, Central Files, POL 27 VIET S) In telegram 1288, Lodge reported that Generals Kim and Minh spoke of “the extreme undesirability” of U.S. advisers going into the districts and villages because they would seem “more imperialistic than the French” and their presence would substantiate Viet Cong charges that the government was a U.S. “lackey.” Minh was also unimpressed with Vietnamese who worked directly for the United States, since they were viewed by the people in the same way “as the Vietnamese who worked for the Japanese during the war.” Generals Minh and Don complained of special U.S. support for the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao who they believed were trying to play the United States off against South Vietnam. Finally the Generals asked the United States to stop supporting financially a Vietnamese student group which they maintained was involved in anti-French demonstrations. (Ibid., POL 23 VIET S)
3. The paper from which Lodge read is in the Massachusetts Historical Society, Lodge II Papers, Box 123, Vietnam.
4. A summary of and extract from the speech, which the Embassy characterized as commendable “for its anti-Communist and anti-neutralist tone and for its sincere tribute to democratic values,” is in telegram 1246 from Saigon, January 2. (Department of State, Central Files. POL 15 VIET S)
5. January 5.
6. The Vietnamese Government’s amnesty program which aimed at resuming Viet Cong to government control. See Foreign Relations, 1961–1963, vol. III, p. 229.