Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
d. MAAG recommended that the present unnecessary duplication of the high level personnel in Corps and Military Region Headquarters be eliminated or corrected.
" … As explained previously, this concept envisions the organization and detailing of specialized ARVN units as 'anti-guerrilla guerrillas' employing improved guerrilla tactics against the VC guerrilla. They could well dress in guerrilla type clothing and would take the field in their assigned areas within the divisional zones for a period of one to six months, operating in the swamps, mountains and jungles as does their quarry - the guerrilla. These hunter-killer teams must be strongly disciplined, well indoctrinated, highly motivated, and imbued with the spirit of the offensive - and they must be offensively trained and led. They must have the will and determination to close with and destroy the VC.
"Our objective must be to find, fix, fight and finish the enemy! No half measures ,vill do. Time is our most precious commodity and the urgency of the situation requires that we use every second gainfully. This leaves no place for complacency on your part - or a business-as-usual attitude. MAAG cannot afford the luxury of an eight hour day or a five day week - neither can RVNAF. History will not wait."
General McGarr's impress was on the Counterinsurgency Plan (CIP), which reached Washington in January 1961, just before John F. Kennedy took office.
b. Content of the CIP
The CIP consisted of a basic directive and three annexes dealing with RVNAF force increases, concept of operations, and logistics, respectively. It incorporated one major point of difference between Ambassador Durbrow and General McGarr -- the RVNAF force increases (Despatch 276):
Ambassador Durbrow:
I maintain reservations concerning the proposal to increase the force level up to 20,000 additional RVNAF troops, purely to meet the threat in Viet-Nam and still believe more calculated risks should be taken by using more of the forces in being to meet the immediate and serious guerrilla terrorist threat. I recognize, however, that additional well-trained forces in being in this area are probably now justified from purely U.S. interest point of view in order to meet growing bloc threat SEA represented by Soviet airlift in Laos.
