Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
U.S. priority in the aftermath was accorded to programs designed to "give democratic elements best chance" through economic assistance and political support for South Vietnam. Elections, as Dulles indicated during the Conference, and as the OCB concurred in August,9 were agreeable to the U.S.; but they were two years away, and the primary task in the interim was seen as "to maintain a friendly non-Communist South Vietnam..."10 The corollary objective (stated by the NSC in August, 1954, and approved by the President) "to prevent a Communist victory through all-Vietnam elections,"11 then did not connote U.S. determination to subvert the Accords; rather, it appears to have meant that U.S. influence would aim at assuring that the communists would not gain an electoral victory through force, deceit, or other undemocratic methods.
(6) The Accords expressly provided for the transfer of individuals desiring to move from one zone to another.
(7) The Accords did seem, at the time, to have basically fulfilled the precondition of providing "effective machinery for international supervision of the agreement." Although the machinery would be the ICC's rather than the UN's, Under Secretary Smith noted that the ICC would have a veto power on important questions, would be composed of one genuine neutral (India) and one pro-Western government (Canada), and would be permitted full freedom of movement into demilitarized zones and frontier and coastal areas. Smith, on 19 July, gave this assessment:
- "Taking everything into consideration, I strongly feel this is satisfactory and much better than we were able to obtain in Korea. French feel, and Eden and I agree, that with such composition built-in veto will work to our advantage. This setup is best French or anybody else could get, and I feel it is within spirit of point 7."12
- d. Smith States U.S. Position on Accords
The final statement by Under Secretary Smith, setting forth the U.S. position on the Accords, provides the only public measure of the U.S. commitment to them. At Smith's urging, Dulles agreed that the U.S. delegation could take note of the Final Declaration as well as of the military agreement. But, Smith was specifically instructed not to take note of paragraph 13 of the Final Declaration. That paragraph aimed at ensuring respect for the armistice accords in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam by declaring the conferees' agreement "to consult one another on any question which may be referred to them by the International Supervisory Commission..." Dulles felt that provision implied:
- "...a multilateral engagement with communists which would be inconsistent with our basic approach and which
