Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
- "Such factors as the prevalence of illiteracy, the lack of suitable educational media, and the absence of adequate communications in the outlying areas would render the holding of a truly representative plebiscite of doubtful feasibility. The Communists, by virtue of their superior capability in the field of propaganda, could readily pervert the issue as being a choice between national independence and French Colonial rule. Furthermore, it would be militarily infeasible to prevent widespread intimidation of voters by Communist partisans. While it is obviously impossible to make a dependable forecast as to the outcome of a free election, current intelligence leads the Joint Chiefs to the belief that a settlement based, upon free elections would be attended by almost certain loss of the Associated States to Communist control."
The JCS views, together with their recommendation that the U.S. not associate itself with any settlement that "would fail to provide reasonably adequate assurance of the future political and territorial integrity of Indochina..." were approved by the Secretary of Defense on 23 March.2
- d. The U.S. Proposes United Action
Secretary Dulles on March 29 publicly proposed collective military operations as a future course of action for the "free world" in Indochina. Dulles suggested the organization of a ten-nation collective defense alliance for Southeast Asia.3 Such a coalition was the U.S. Government's preferred alternative to unilateral U.S. intervention, either at Dien Bien Phu, or subsequently in a more general context. With the climax at Dien Bien Phu approaching, the inter-agency debate in Washington had made clear that American intervention there solely with air and naval forces was neither desirable nor feasible, and there was little support for a ground, intervention. United action also was the result of the Eisenhower's Administration's inability to marshal support among Congressional leaders for a unilateral U.S. intervention without participation by the allies. President Eisenhower himself clearly preferred intervention through united action to a purely American undertaking.
The united action proposal, however, was not acceptable either to the British or to the French before the Geneva Conference. The British thought that any military intervention under united action prior to Geneva would impede a political settlement at the Conference and most likely lead to a further expansion of the war, including a
