Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
for at least that period. Furthermore, French cooperation was essential to the success of any U.S. project in Vietnam, and a decision to grant any support for the FEC vould jeopardize French cooperation.66
Although Heath and Collins prevailed and $100 million was allocated to support the FEC during 1955, the French were informed that no further assistance could be expected beyond that time.67 The French responded by making it clear that a drastic reduction of the FEC was in the offing — to a level of 40,000 by the end of 1955, and the Foreign Office emphasized that although this action was based entirely on monetary considerations there was also much sentiment in France for transferring the FEC to North Africa. In Vietnam, it was stated, French troops were serving the interests of the Free World; if the Free World would not pay their costs, then they should be sent to North Africa, where they would be serving the interests of France and the French Union.68
Pressures applied by Diem also influenced the French exodus. Making no secret of his Franco-phobia, Diem asked the French to withdraw the FEC as early as September 1954, and in March 1955 Premier Faure announced that France would withdraw the FEC at the demand of the Vietnamese Government. By October 1955, the FEC had been reduced to 45,000;69 by February 1956 only 15,000 remained;70 and on April 1, 1956 the remnants of the FEC left Saigon, leaving only small Air Force and Navy training missions behind.
With the dissolution of the French dissolution of the French high command on April 23, only the VNA was left to carry out the mission of guarding South Vietnam against aggression from the north, a mission which the French had been expected to perform.
4. The pressures exerted by the Diem Government on the U.S. regarding the Vietnamese National Army were consistently in favor of larger forces than the U.S. was willing to support71 and in the critically formative years of 1954 and 1955 were oriented toward regular forces organized to combat an invasion from the north as well as to provide internal security. Just as Diem had felt the FEC should be deployed along the 17th parallel,72 he believed that the VNA should be manned and organized in such a way as to counter any such invasion, although "from the earliest days senior Vietnamese officers, including General Minh, argued for the creation of an effective grass-roots security organization in the countryside. They knew how the war had been fought and lost. Diem at first had no idea. While the Viet Minh tactics were changing from attrition to annihilation, Diem was abroad. He returned with the opinion that aircraft and naval craft were the essentials and that even infantry were no necessary. Later he developed an attachment to artillery.... By the time he came round to accepting the advice of his own generals, the United States had embarked on its major plans for major reorganization, and the paramilitary forces, which Diem had created in a half-hearted way, were withering on the vine."73
