177. Telegram From the Embassy in Vietnam to the Department of State1
2817. For the President. There was a perceptible feeling of relief in Saigon when General Khanh finally left town last Thursday.2 However, up until the time he was airborne, there were many who felt he would make some last dramatic effort to regain his lost power. I would not write him off now because he is certain to return to local scene at some time in the future, probably choosing a moment of particular awkwardness for the government in being at the time.
Khanh’s departure does not end the problems in the officer corps where there are many seeds for future trouble. General Thi is already maneuvering for Khanh’s position of military strongman, utilizing his apparently solid political and military base as I Corps Commander in the Hue-Danang area. He is not as clever as Khanh but may be able to compete with him as a troublemaker. Fortunately, his ambitions are apparent to most of his military colleagues who have their guard up.
A noteworthy development in the political field has been the upsurge in “peace” talks. Several Buddhist Institute leaders, including Tri Quang and Tam Chau as well as secondary leaders, Ho Giac and Quang Lien, have been publicly quoted in vague and fuzzy statements as favoring an end to the war and the withdrawal of foreign forces. (Tri Quang recently told an Embassy officer close to him that he had been misquoted and explained his views in a way which sounded very close to U.S. policy in South Vietnam.)3 Concurrently, there has been a flurry of “peace” propaganda calculated by groups, some of which have been heard from for the first time. According to the police, some of these groups are Communist front organizations; others apparently are simply parroting Viet Cong propaganda. It is too early to tell what all this amounts to or whether the Buddhist Institute is preparing a new campaign to plague the Quat government and to press Quat into negotiations. The greatest significance discernible for the moment in the flurry of “peace” propaganda is the fact that it has occurred openly in Saigon, rather than in the intrinsic strength of the organizations involved. In any case, in his press conference yesterday, Quat attempted to put “peace” talk, whether of external or internal origin, into perspective. He pointed out that South Vietnam was defending itself against external aggression, [Page 394] that true peace for South Vietnam required an end to this aggression and effective guarantees, and that the Vietnamese Government rejects any international solution which has not received the agreement of that government and of the Vietnamese people.
Viet Cong activity was up somewhat and caused further deterioration in the security situation in the northern portion of II Corps where there are strong indications of the presence of new Viet Cong main force units. General Westmoreland’s headquarters is continuously reviewing the available intelligence and will probably raise the estimated in country Viet Cong main force strength now at 34,000 to something over 40,000. One consequence of this increased Viet Cong strength in II Corps has been to drive nearly 56,000 people into refugee centers in Binh Dinh province, thereby developing an acute refugee problem.
As you know, we have recently made two important departures from former policy in authorizing the use of U.S. aircraft under certain conditions to strike Viet Cong targets in South Vietnam and in deciding to introduce Marine combat units for the defense of the Danang airfield. While I accept the justification for these actions, I am concerned that we not rush in and take over the conduct of the war from the Vietnamese. I think that it would be a political and psychological mistake to change our past position that this is a Vietnamese war in which we are helping in areas where the Vietnamese cannot help themselves. While increased involvement of the U.S. directly in the war in South Vietnam along with the strikes against the North will tend to solve some immediate problems arising from eroding morale and from the shortage of available Vietnamese forces, in the long run we will have the problem of avoiding any sense of the part of the Vietnamese that they thus have less responsibility for maximizing their own war effort.