Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
- c. U.S. Aid to Indochina
On February 16, 1950, France requested U.S. military and economic assistance in prosecuting the Indochina War.18 The Secretary of Defense in a Memorandum for the President on March 6 stated that:
- "The choice confronting the United States is to support the legal governments in Indochina or to face the extension of Communism over the remainder of the continental area of Southeast Asia and possibly westward..."19
The same month, the State Department dispatched an aid survey mission under R. Allen Griffin to Indochina (and to Burma, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaya). The Griffin Mission proposed (inter alia) aid for the Bao Dai government, since the State of Vietnam was considered:
- " ... not secure against internal subversion, political infiltration, or military aggression.
- "The objective of each program is to assist as much as possible in building strength, and in so doing ... to assure the several peoples that support of their governments and resistance to communist subversion will bring them direct and tangible benefits and well-founded hope for an increase in living standards. Accordingly, the programs are of two main types: (1) technical and material aid to essential services and (2) economic rehabilitation and development, focused primarily on the provision of technical assistance and material aid in developing agricultural and industrial output.... These activities are to be carried on in a way best calculated to demonstrate that the local national governments are able to bring benefits to their own people and thereby build political support, especially among the rural population....
- "The aims of economic assistance to Southeast Asia ... are to reinforce the non-Communist national governments in that region by quickly strengthening and expanding the economic life of the area, improve the conditions under which its people live, and demonstrate concretely the genuine interest of the United States in the welfare of the people of Southeast Asia."20
In a strategic assessment of Southeast Asia in April, 1950, the JCS recommended military assistance for Indochina, provided:
- " ... that United States military aid not be granted unconditionally; rather that it be carefully controlled and that the aid program be integrated with political and economic programs..."21
On May 1, 1950, President Truman approved $10 million for urgently needed military assistance items for Indochina.22 The President's
