by Neil Sheehan
Till and Peg Durdin of the N. Y. Times, Hank Lieberman of the N. Y. Times, Homer Bigart of the N. Y. Herald-Tribune, John Mecklin of Life-Time, and John Roderick of Associated Press, have been warm friends of SMM and worked hard to penetrate the fabric of French propaganda and give the U.S. an objective account of events in Vietnam. The group met with us at times to analyze objectives and motives of propaganda known to them, meeting at their own request as U.S. citizens. These mature and responsible news correspondents performed a valuable service for their country. . . .
g. January 1955
The Vietminh long ago had adopted the Chinese Communist thought that the people are the water and the army is the fish. Vietminh relations with the mass of the population during the fighting had been exemplary, with a few exceptions; in contrast, the Vietnamese National Army had been like too many Asian armies, adept at cowing a population into feeding them, providing them with girls. SMM had been working on this problem from the beginning. Since the National Army was the only unit of government with a strong organization throughout the country and with good communications, it was the key to stabilizing the situation quickly on a nation-wide basis. If Army and people could be brought together into a team, the first strong weapon against Communism could be forged.
The Vietminh were aware of this. We later learned that months before the signing of the Geneva Agreement they had been planning for action in the post-Geneva period; the National Army was to be the primary target for subversion efforts, it was given top priority by the Central Committee for operations against its enemy, and about 100 superior cadres were retrained for the operations and placed in the [words illegible] organization for the work, which commenced even before the agreement was signed. We didn’t know it at the time, but this was SMM’s major opponent, in a secret struggle for the National Army. . . .
General O’Daniel was anticipating the culmination of long negotiations to permit U.S. training of the Vietnamese Armed Forces, against some resistance on the part of French groups. In January, negotiations were proceeding so well that General O’Daniel informally organized a combined U.S.-French training mission which eventually became known as the Training Relations & Instruction Mission (TRIM) under his command, but under the overall command of the top French commander, General Paul Ely.
The French had asked for top command of half the divisions in the TRIM staff. Their first priority was for command of the division supervising National Security Action by the Vietnamese, which could be developed into a continuation of strong French control of key elements of both Army and population. In conferences with Ambassador Collins and General O’Daniel, it was decided to transfer Colonel Lansdale from the Ambassador’s staff to TRIM, to head the National Security division. Colonel Lansdale requested authority to coordinate all U.S. civil and military efforts in this National Security work. On 11 January, Ambassador Collins announced the change to the country team, and gave him authority to coordinate this work among all U.S. agencies in Vietnam. . . .
President Diem had continued requesting SMM help with the guard battalion for the Presidential Palace. We made arrangements with President Magsaysay in the Philippines and borrowed his senior aide and military advisor, Col. Napoleon Valeriano, who had a fine combat record against the Communist Huks and also had reorganized the Presidential Guard Battalion for Magsaysay. Valeriano, with three junior officers, arrived in January and went to work on Diem’s guard battalion. Later, selected Vietnamese officers were trained with the Presidential Guards in Manila. An efficient unit gradually emerged. Diem was warmly grateful for this help by Filipinos who also continuously taught our concept of loyalty and freedom.
The patriot we’ve named Trieu Dinh had been working on an almanac for popular sale, particularly in the northern cities and towns we could still reach. Noted Vietnamese astrologers were hired to write predictions about coming disasters to certain Vietminh leaders and undertakings, and to predict unity in the south. The work was carried out under the direction of Lt Phillips, based on our concept of the use of astrology for psywar in Southeast Asia. Copies of the almanac were shipped by air to Haiphong and then smuggled into Vietminh territory.
Dinh also had produced a Thomas Paine type series of essays on Vietnamese patriotism against the Communist Vietminh, under the guidance of Capt. Arundel. These essays were circulated among influential groups in Vietnam, earned front-page editorials in the leading daily newspaper in Saigon. Circulation increased with the publication of these essays. The publisher is known to SMM as The Dragon Lady and is a fine Vietnamese girl who has been the mistress of an anti-American French civilian. Despite anti-American remarks by her boy friend, we had helped her keep her paper from being closed by the government . . . and she found it profitable to heed our advice on the editorial content of her paper.
Arms and equipment for the Binh paramilitary team were being cached in the north in areas still free from the Vietminh. Personnel movements were covered by the flow of refugees. Haiphong was reminiscent of our own pioneer days as it was swamped with people whom it couldn’t shelter. Living space and food were at a premium, nervous tension grew. It was a wild time for our northern team.
First supplies for the Hao paramilitary group started to arrive in Saigon. These shipments and the earlier ones for the Binh group were part of an efficient and effective air smuggling effort by the 581st [word illegible] Wing, U.S. Air Force, to support SMM, with help by CIA and Air Force personnel in both Okinawa and the Philippines. SMM officers frequently did coolie labor in manhandling tons of cargo, at times working throughout the night. . . . All . . . officers pitched in to help, as part of our “blood, sweat and tears”. . . .
By 31 January, all operational equipment of the Binh paramilitary group had been trans-shipped to Haiphong from Saigon, mostly with the help of CAT, and the northern SMM team had it cached in operational sites. Security measures were tightened at the Haiphong airport and plans for bringing in the Hao equipment were changed from the air route to sea. Task Force 98, now 98.7 under command of Captain Frank, again was asked to give a helping hand and did so. . . .
. . . . Major Conein had briefed the members of the Binh paramilitary team and started them infiltrating into the north as individuals. The infiltration was carried out in careful stages over a 30 day period, a successful operation. The Binhs became normal citizens, carrying out every day civil pursuits, on the surface.
We had smuggled into Vietnam about eight and a half tons of supplies for the Hao paramilitary group. They included fourteen agent radios, 300 carbines, 90,000 rounds of carbine ammunition, 50 pistols, 10,000 rounds of pistol ammunition, and 300 pounds of explosives. Two and a half tons were delivered to the Hao agents in Tonkin, while the remainder was cached along the Red River by SMM, with the help of the Navy. . . .
j. April 1955
. . . the Hao paramilitary team had finished its training at the secret training site and been flown by the Air Force to a holding site in the Philippines, where Major Allen and his officers briefed the paramilitary team. In mid-April, they were taken by the Navy to Haiphong, where they were gradually slipped ashore. Meanwhile, arms and other equipment including explosives were being flown into Saigon via our smuggling route, being readied for shipment north by the Navy task force handling refugees. The White team office gradually became an imposing munitions depot. Nightly shootings and bombings in restless Saigon caused us to give them dispersed storage behind thick walls as far as this one big house would permit. SMM personnel guarded the house night and day, for it also contained our major files other than the working file at our Command Post. All files were fixed for instant destruction, automatic weapons and hand grenades distributed to all personnel. It was a strange scene for new personnel just arriving. . . .
Haiphong was taken over by the Vietminh on 16 May. Our Binh and northern Hao teams were in place, completely equipped. It had taken a tremendous amount of hard work to beat the Geneva deadline, to locate, select, exfiltrate, train, infiltrate, equ
ip the men of these two teams and have them in place, ready for actions required against the enemy. It would be a hard task to do openly, but this had to be kept secret from the Vietminh, the International Commission with its suspicious French and Poles and Indians, and even friendly Vietnamese. Movements of personnel and supplies had had to be over thousands of miles. . . .
*The Department of State representative recommends the deletion of paragraphs A and B hereunder as being redundant and included in other documents.
Chapter 2
Origins of the Insurgency in South Vietnam
Other Events of the Period: 1945-1960
April 12, 1945: Roosevelt dies.
May 8, 1945: War in Europe ends.
Aug. 6, 1945: Atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Aug. 14, 1945: Japan surrenders.
Jan. 10, 1946: First U.N. General Assemby opens.
Nov. 2, 1948: Truman elected.
Dec. 7, 1949: Communists complete take-over of China.
June 25, 1950: North Korean troops invade South Korea.
Nov. 1, 1952: First U.S. hydrogen bomb explosion.
Nov. 4, 1952: Eisenhower elected.
March 5, 1953: Stalin dies.
July 27, 1953: Korean war armistice.
Aug. 12, 1953: Soviet Union explodes first H-bomb.
Sept. 8, 1954: SEATO Pact signed.
July 18-23, 1955: Summit meeting, Geneva.
Oct. 23, 1956: Hungarian uprising begins.
Oct. 29, 1956: Suez invasion.
Nov. 6, 1956: Eisenhower re-elected.
Oct. 4, 1957: Soviet Union launches Sputnik I.
July 15, 1958: U.S. Marines in Lebanon.
Jan. 1, 1959: Castro takes power in Cuba.
Sept. 15-27, 1959: Khrushchev visits U.S.
Nov. 8, 1960: Kennedy elected.
Chapter 2
Origins of the Insurgency in South Vietnam
—BY FOX BUTTERFIELD
The secret Pentagon study of the Vietnam war says the United States Government’s official view that the war was imposed on South Vietnam by aggression from Hanoi is “not wholly compelling.”
Successive administrations in Washington, from President John F. Kennedy to President Richard M. Nixon, have used this interpretation of the origins of the war to justify American intervention in Vietnam. But American intelligence estimates during the nineteen-fifties show, the Pentagon account says, that the war began largely as a rebellion in the South against the increasingly oppressive and corrupt regime of Ngo Dinh Diem.
“Most of those who took up arms were South Vietnamese and the causes for which they fought were by no means contrived in North Vietnam,” the Pentagon account says of the years from 1956 to 1959, when the insurgency began.
The study also disputes many critics of American policy in Vietnam who have contended that North Vietnam became involved in the South only after 1965 in response to large-scale American intervention.
“It is equally clear that North Vietnamese Communists operated some form of subordinate apparatus in the South in the years 1954-1960,” the Pentagon study says.
And in 1959, the account continues, Hanoi made a clear decision to assert its control over the growing insurgency and to increase its infiltration of trained cadres from the North. Thereafter, the study says, “Hanoi’s involvement in the developing strife became evident.”
Developments related to the origins of the war that are disclosed by the Pentagon history include the following:
• American officials in Saigon, including those in the embassy, the Central Intelligence Agency and the military command were fully aware of President Diem’s shortcomings. They regularly reported to Washington that he was “authoritarian, inflexible and remote,” that he entrusted power only to his own family and that he had alienated all elements of the population by his oppressive policies.
• From 1954 to 1958 North Vietnam concentrated on its internal development, apparently hoping to achieve reunification either through the elections provided for in the Geneva settlement or through the natural collapse of the weak Diem regime. The Communists left behind a skeletal apparatus in the South when they regrouped to North Vietnam in 1954 after the war with the French ended, but the cadre members were ordered to engage only in “political struggle.”
• In the years before 1959 the Diem regime was nearly successful in wiping out the agents, who felt constrained by their orders not to fight back. Their fear and anger at being caught in this predicament, however, apparently led them to begin the insurgency against Mr. Diem, despite their orders, sometime during 1956-57.
North Vietnam’s leaders formally decided in May, 1959, at the 15th meeting of the Lao Dong (Communist) party’s Central Committee, to take control of the growing insurgency. Captured Vietcong personnel and documents report that as a result of the decision the Ho Chi Minh Trail of supply lines was prepared, southern cadre members who had been taken North were infiltrated back to the South and the tempo of the war suddenly speeded up.
The Pentagon account says that both American intelligence and Vietcong prisoners attributed the Vietcong’s rapid success after 1959 to the Diem regime’s mistakes.
In a report prepared by the Rand Corporation of Santa Monica, Calif., on the interrogation of 23 Vietcong cadre members, one southern member said of the Communists’ success:
“The explanation is not that the cadre were exceptionally gifted but the people they talked to were ready for rebellion. The people were like a mound of straw, ready to be ignited.
“If at that time the Government in the South had been a good one, if it had not been dictatorial, then launching the movement would have been difficult.”
A United States intelligence estimate of August, 1960, on the rapidly deteriorating situation in South Vietnam concluded:
“The indications of increasing dissatisfaction with the Diem government have probably encouraged the Hanoi regime to take stronger action at this time.”
To emphasize how the Diem regime’s oppressive and corrupt policies helped prepare the way for the insurgency in South Vietnam, the Pentagon study devotes a lengthy section to Mr. Diem’s rule—as Premier from 1954 until late 1955 and then as President until he was overthrown in 1963.
When Mr. Diem took office in 1954, the account notes, it seemed for a while that he “did accomplish miracles,” as his supporters contended.
To the surprise of most observers, he put down the Binh Xuyen gangster sect in Saigon and the Cao Dai and the Hoa Hao, armed sects in the countryside. He created a stable government and a loyal army where there had been only chaos. And he won diplomatic recognition for South Vietnam from many foreign governments.
But from the beginning, the account says, President Diem’s personality and political concepts tended to decrease his Government’s effectiveness.
The product of a family that was both zealously Roman Catholic and a member of the traditional Mandarin ruling class, Mr. Diem was authoritarian, moralistic, inflexible, bureaucratic and suspicious. His mentality is described in the account as like that of a “Spanish Inquisitor.”
His political machine was a “rigidly organized, overcentralized family oligarchy.” He trusted only his family members, particularly his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, who had organized the semi-secret Can Lao party.
An American intelligence estimate of May, 1959, described the situation as follows:
“President Diem continues to be the undisputed ruler of South Vietnam; all important and many minor decisions are referred to him.
“Although he professes to believe in representative government and democracy, Diem is convinced that the Vietnamese are not ready for such a political system and that he must rule with a firm hand, at least so long as national security is threatened.
“He also believes that the country cannot afford a political opposition which could obstruct or dilute the Government’s efforts to establish a strong rule. He remains a somewhat austere and remote figure to most Vietnamese and has not
generated widespread popular enthusiasm.
“Diem’s regime reflects his ideas. A facade of representative government is maintained, but the Government is in fact essentially authoritarian.
“The legislative powers of the National Assembly are strictly circumscribed; the judiciary is undeveloped and subordinate to the executive; and the members of the executive branch are little more than the personal agents of Diem.
“No organized opposition, loyal or otherwise, is tolerated, and critics of the regime are often repressed.”
To make matters worse, according to the account, Mr. Diem’s programs designed to increase security in the countryside were carried out so badly that they “drove a wedge not between the insurgents and the farmers, but between the farmers and the Government, and eventuated in less rather than more security.”
The Civic Action program, designed to help the Government in Saigon establish communication with the peasants, went astray when President Diem used northern refugees and Catholics almost exclusively to go into the villages. To the peasants these Civic Action team members were outsiders.