Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
build-up, with RLG forces committed elsewhere, and increasing infiltration into Vietnam is reported.
There is an intense psychological attack being waged against Free Vietnam by the Communists. This not only includes an almost constant barrage from powerful Radio Hanoi, which is reportedly relayed from Cambodia and is received as a loud 2nd clear signal in South Vietnam, but also a heavy campaign by on-the-spot agitprop agents. A part of the psychological attack is directed against Americans, particularly against U. S. MAAG personnel, along the lines of the Chinese Communist "hate America" campaign. I did not have the time or means to assess the effect of this psychological attack which has been going on for years.
The big city area of Saigon-Cholon undoubtedly is a target of Communist operations, although I was able to find out little about either the Communist organization or its operations in this city area. U. S. intelligence personnel believed that Vietnamese counter-intelligence organizations were so actively "hustling" so many suspects that the Communists have been unable to institute much of an organization. President Diem believed that the Communists were concentrating their work elsewhere, following the dictum: "first the mountains, then the countryside, and then the city." The attitude of Vietnamese and U. S. officials reminded me of the French and Vietnamese officials in Hanoi in 1953-54, who were so surprised later to discover that a complete, block-by-block clandestine Communist apparatus existed there. Or, of Filipinos and Americans who believed the Huks were in central Luzon in 1950 and were so surprised when an entire Communist politburo was captured in the city of Manila. I believe that the people in Saigon-Cholon have been the target of considerable subversive effort by the Commanists and that it takes an in-place organization, to carry this out.
Communist strength figures are difficult to determine due in part by the different categories of personnel. I was able to get no estimate of the number of Communist political-psychological operators, although the DRV reportedly have trained many for work in the south. Also. the Communist military personnel include regulars who have infiltrated from the north, plus territorial forces and guerrillas who apparently are recruited locally. Colonel Tranh Thien Khiem, who commands the 5th Military Region, broke his estimate of some 7,000 Viet Cong military in his region into 3,320 regulars, 1,170 territorials, and 2,590 guerrillas. When the Vietminh trcops were transferred to the north in 1954-55 under the Geneva Agreement many left families
