Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
SECRET
Stabilization
- Good public administration should follow the troops, moving immediately into pacified areas. The U.S. Peace Corps can be used dynamically to assist in this, particularly in fields of public health, education, and agriculture. Community development in the democratic tradition can be undertaken by combined teams of U.S. Peace Corps, Vietnamese Civic Action, and Filipino Operation Brotherhood.
- With the agreement of the Vietnamese government, the U.S. should use its "good offices" to bring out all political parties, to help them define party platforms for the national good, to encourage the coalescing into two major political groupings, and to redefine political crimes in realistic objective, rather than subjective terms.
- Communications and transport should be expanded rapidly to knit national unity. Light aircraft capabilities should be improved. Government officials should be induced to get away frequently from their desks in Saigon for more direct actions in the field. The President should be encouraged to hold occasional Cabinet meetings in the provinces, particularly in newly pacified areas.
- The Washington Task Force should send into Vietnam a practical economic team, which should include representatives of U.S. business, to work out with the Vietnamese effective plans to speed up national development, give Vietnam a better tax structure, and establish a sound basis for foreign investment. The numerous U.S. and other economic plans for Vietnam should be re-examined for sound ideas to be incorporated into a firm new plan.
- Viet-Cong prisoners should be rehabilitated along the lines of experiences with Cornmunist prisoners in Greece and in EDCOR in the Philippines. U.S. teams, headed by U.S. military, should ass the Vietnamese in this work.
Unification
- Communist North Vietnam should be subjected immediately to a heavy and sustained psychological campaign; a first step would be to beef up radio broadcast capabilities beamed to the North.
SECRET
