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Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
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| both governments. On its part, the U.S. would immediately support the GVN with increased airlift, additional equipment, U.S. personnel, expedited training and equipping of the Civil Guard and increased economic aid. The GVN, however, would nave to initiate the following actions: (1) begin prompt legislative and administrative action to put the nation on a wartime footing to mobilize its resources; (2) give governmental wartime agencies adequate authority to perform their functions effectively; and (3) overhaul the military establishment and command structure to create an effective military organization. "President Kennedy contemplates an immediate strong affirmative reply to satisfactory letter along indicated lines from President Diem, which will simultaneously be made public." Rusk NIACT 619 to Saigon, 15 November 1961 | 400 | |
| 47. | After three days of talks in Saigon, Ambassador Galbraith feels there is scarcely "the slightest practical chance that the administrative and political reforms being pressed upon Diem will result in real change." Gailbraith sees a comparatively well equipped army of a quarter million men facing 15 to 18,000 lightly armed men "…there is no solution that does not involve a change of government…to say there is no alternative (to Diem) is nonsense." Ambassador Gailbraith Memorandum for the President, 20 November 1961 | 406 |
| 48. | "The key and inescapable point then is the ineffectuality (abetted debatably by the unpopularity) of the Diem Government. This is the strategic factor. Nor can anyone accept the statement of those who have been either too long or too little in Asia that it is the inevitable posture of the Asian mandarin. For one thing, it isn't true, but were it so, the only possible conclusion would be that there is no future for mandarins . The communists don't favor them." Gailbraith feels that it is politically naive to expect that Diem will reform either administratively or politically in any effective way. "However, having started on this hopeless game, we have no alternative but to play it out for a minimum time…since there is no chance of success, we must do two things to protect our situation. One is to make clear that our commitment is to results and not to promises…and we can press hardest in the area of Army reform where the needed changes are most specific and most urgent." It follows from Gailbraith's reasoning that the only solution must be to drop Diem, and we should not be alarmed by the Army as an alternative. Gailbraith New Delhi 9941 for President Kennedy, 21 November 1961 | 410 |
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