Viet Cong

“ The Viet Cong are increasing the void by taxation, terroristic acts, attacks on Self Defense posts, assassination of village and provincial officials, and simultaneously a systematic development of the Viet Cong political apparatus to fill the void. In view of the above conditions the principal task facing the GVN is restoration of individual security.
Military force, in the form of increased communist insurgency, is clearly the major immediate threat to the stability of Viet-Nam tOday. ”

“ There is little doubt that Diem and his government applied the term Viet Cong somewhat loosely within South Vietnam to mean all persons or groups who resorted to clandestine political activity or armed opposition against his government; and the GVN meant by the term North as well as South Vietnamese communists, who they presumed acted in concert. At the close of the Franco-Viet Minh War in 1954, some 60,000 men were serving in organized Viet Minh units in South Vietnam. For the regroupments to North Vietnam, these units were augmented with large numbers of young recruits ”

“ Overt use of military force against neighboring states is most likely to be undertaken unilaterally by the Viet Cong, but would be most likely a part of an all-out Communist effort to take all of Southeast Asia. ”

“ Developments in South Viet-Nam over the past year indicate a trend that is adverse to the stability and effectiveness of President Diem's government. Beginning in December 1959 and continuing to the present, there has been a mounting increase throughout South Vietnam of Viet Cong terrorist activities and guerrilla warfare. ...
Politically, discontent with the Diem Government has been prevalent for same time among intellectuals and elite circles and has been rising among the peasantry and, to some extent, labor and urban business groups. ”

“ Viet Cong guerrilla units have succeeded in exploiting their natural advantages of surprise, mobility, and initiative. In many of their areas of operations, they have exploited the tendency of the largely passive population to accommodate to their presence and thereby avoid reprisals. ”

“ He believes that increased military activity against the Viet Cong, along with an expansion of the agroville program, will greatly improve internal security. He has been openly contemptuous of the views of oppositionists in Saigon and regards them as uninformed and dupes of the Communists. Diem also has failed to take any major steps against corruption and arbitrary conduct on the part of the Can Lao organization." After this discussion of the political situation, the estimate discussed the Viet Cong pressures as: "aggravating many of the government's problems." ”

“ The Viet Cong guerrillas and propagandists, however, are still waging a grim battle for survival. In addition to an accelerated propaganda campaign, the Communists have been forming 'front' organizations to influence at least portions of all anti-government minorities. Some of these organizations are militant, some political. An example of the former is the 'Vietnamese Peoples' Liberation Movement Forces,' a military unit composed of ex-Cao Dai, ex-Hoa Hao, ex-Binh Xuyen, escaped political prisoners, and Viet Cong cadres. ”

“ Another effect is a growing belief among the peasants that the Viet Cong will always be here as long as North Viet-Nam remains under Communist control and that they must adjust to live with them. (A realization of the long-range nature of the problem among officials responsible for dealing with it could be an advantage. In Malaya it has taken 11 years to reduce the security situation to the minimum, and it is even more difficult to deal with it in a divided country with long exposed frontiers) . ”

“ The Viet Minh activists sought out the inactives, brought them back into the organization, and together they formed the framework of an expanding and increasingly intricate network of intelligence and propaganda. Few spoke of carrying weapons, or using violence before 1959, although many boasted of feats of arms in later years. They felt that they lacked the right conditions to strike militarily before 1959; their mission was preparation. In several instances, the Viet Cong used terror to recruit former Viet Minh for the new movement, threatening them with "treason" and elimination ”

“ Unlike the Philippines or Malaya, the Communists cannot be cordoned off at the country's borders and then dealt with as an internal security problem alone. The borders of Vietnam are long and include some of the most difficult terrain in the world to patro1. It is apparent that many of the Viet Cong infiltrate from Cambodia, particularly from Svayrieng Province. Also, southeastern Laos has a reported Communist build-up, with RLG forces committed elsewhere, and increasing infiltration into Vietnam is reported. ”

“ Since independence, they will probably have been subjected to attempted Communist indoctrination by the Viet Cong, but this too will have had an anti-Government slant. Since 1954, the peasants have been fed on a diet of puerile, and frequently offensive slogans by the Ministry of Information. These serve, if indeed they serve any purpose at all, to make the peasant distrust the Government of Ngo Dinh Diem. The peasants, for all their naivety, are far from foolish and they are not deceived by slogans alleging to be true things which they know, from their own personal experience, to be untrue. ”

“ Close coordination will exist between Self-Defense Corps units and the Civil Guard on the lower levels.96 No concept for defending Free Vietnam could be clearer: the regular army in command of (or in close coordination with) the irregulars who will have the capability to free the army to fill an army role — "to resist armed aggression from without." Unfortunately, however sound this concept may have been — and in view of demonstrated Viet Cong and DRV flexibility it is not clear that the concept was completely unsound — it was never successfully implemented. ”

“ Many Viet Cong units, with no other orders than to take their initial objectives and hold until reinforcements arrived, were wiped out completely. Ironically, these elite cadres were the backbone of the guerrilla infrastructure in the South which the Communists, up to that point, had tried so hard to preserve. In Saigon and Hue, die-hard remnants held out for several weeks but, for the most part, the attacks were crushed within a few days. The general uprising and mass desertions never materialized; on the contrary, the offensive tended to galvanize the South Vietnamese. ”

“ Although most of the Vietnamese peasants are politically apathetic, they also have their grievances against the government. These include the ineptitude and arrogance of many local and provincial officials, the lack of effective protection from Viet Cong demands in many parts of the country, the harshness with which many peasants have been forced to contribute their labor to government programs) and the unsettling economic and social effects of the agroville (government-sponsored settlements) program. ”

“ The strength of these elements is currently estimated at approximately 2000 personnel, a majority of whom are armed. It can be expected that the Viet Cong will make every effort to reinforce these elements prior to and during the initiation of hostilities in order to enhance their capability for the conduct of guerrilla warfare, create internal disorder, and execute sabotage and conduct attacks on pre-selected critical targets within South Vietnam for the primary purpose of impeding or interfering with operations being undertaken by South Vietnam armed forces ... ”

“ By the time President Kennedy came to office in 1961, it was plain that support for the Saigon government among South Vietnam's peasants — 90% of the population — was weak and waning. The Manifesto of the National Liberation Front, published in December 1960, trumpeted the existence of a revolutionary organization which could channel popular discontent into a political program. Increasingly Diem's government proved inept in dealing either through its public administration with the sources of popular discontent, or through its security apparatus with the Viet Cong. ”

“ They were not foot soldiers or cannon fodder (at least not until Hanoi began sending in whole North Vietnamese units in late 1964 or early 1965) . Instead they were disciplined, trained and indoctrinated cadres and technicians. They became the squad leaders, platoon leaders, political officers, staff officers, unit commanders, weapons and communications specialists who built the Viet Cong's military force into what it is today. They also became the village, district, provincial and regional committee chiefs and key committee members who
built the Viet Cong's political apparatus. ”

“ Their elimination has opened the way to the Viet Cong and unintentionally has prepare d the "lay for the enemy, whereas a more realistic and more flexible policy could have amalgamated them all with a view to reinforcing the anti-Communist front.
Today the people want freedom. You should, Mr. President, liberalize the regime, promote democracy, guarantee minimum civil rights, recognize the opposition so as to permit the citizens to express themselves without fear, thus removing grievances and resentments, opposition to which now constitutes for the people their sale reason for existence. ”

“ That these plans miscarried was due in part to the resistance of the farmers they were intended to benefit, reacting sometimes under Viet Cong leadership, sometimes simply out of peasant conservatism. But a principal portion of the blame for failure must be attributed to Diem's inept, overbearing, or corrupt officials, to Diem's own unremitting anti-communist zeal, and to the failure of both he and his American advisers to appreciate the magnitude of the tasks they set for themselves, or the time required to enact meaningful reform. ”

“ If Hanoi applied brakes to eager insurgents in South Vietnam, it did so not from lack of purpose or because of Soviet restraints, but from concern over launching one more premature uprising in the South. Ngo Dinh Diem was entirely correct when he stated that his was a nation at war in early 1959; South Vietnam was at war with both the Viet Cong insurgents and with the DRV, in that the latter then undertook to provide strategic direction and leadership cadres to build systematically a base system in Laos and South Vietnam for subsequent, large-scale guerrilla warfare. ”

“ The Allies launched an aggressive campaign designed to root out the enemy's source of strength--the local guerrilla. Allied battalion- and regimental-sized units screened this effort by seeking out and engaging Viet Cong main forces and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) elements. Smaller Marine and ARVN units went after the isolated guerrilla bands which preyed on the Vietnamese peasants. Thousands of fire team-, squad-, and platoon-sized actions took a heavy toll of the enemy and the Viet Cong were gradually pushed out of the populated areas. ”

“ Rise of the Viet Cong, 1957-1960 The Department of State sponsored an intelligence estimate for the U.S . SEATO Council Renresentatives dated 3 April 1958, entitled "Nature and Extent of the Communist Subversive Threat to the Protocol States of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos." This estimate held that the DRV continued to pose a basic threat to the GVN:
"Although Communist tactics have shifted over the past few years, the real objective -- ultimate Communist control of all Vietnam -- has remained unchanged. ”

“ As indicated our 495 and 538 Diem regime confronted by two separate but related dangers. Danger from demonstrations or coup attempt in Saigon could occur earlier; likely to be predominantly non-communistic in origin but communists can be expect ed to endeavor infiltrate and exploit any such attempt. Even more serious danger is gradual Viet Cong extension of control over countryside which, if current communist progress continues, would mean loss free Viet-Nam to communists. ”

“ If, after failure of clearly anti-Communist coup attempt to bring about changes we are not successful in inducing Diem to make peaceful changes, critics may we ll become frustrated, turn against U.S., seek other means bring about change and might even move toward neutralist position in middle. If Viet Cong guerrilla successes in countryside continue at rate registered during past year, this will also increase frustration of armed forces and population and could provide soil in which neutralism may grow. ”

“ While officials have be en largely unable to identify and put out of commission Viet Cong undercover cadres among the population, they have often arrested people on the basis of rumors or of denunciations by people who harbor only personal grudges. Police powers justified on the basis of the needs of internal security have reportedly been misused to extort money not only from the peasants but from land owners, merchants and professional people in the towns. This misuse of police powers and the kind of broad scale arrests on suspicion are weakening the support of the population for the regime. ”

“ Strength: It is estimated that the Viet Cong in North Vietnam, currently have available approximately 268,000 regular army troops organized into 14 Infantry Divisions, 1 Artillery Division, 1 Anti-aircraft Artillery Groupment, 11 independent Infantry Regiments, 5 Security Regiments, plus comb at support and service support units. In addition, there are para-military forces estimated to number up to approximately 235,000 personnel, which are organized as two separate forces, the Provincial Forces and the Armed Militia ... ”