Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
| 1. | Dillon tel. from Paris No. 4287 to Dulles, May 10, 1954 (TOP SECRET). |
| 2. | In forwarding these conditions to the Embassy for transmittal to the French, Dulles noted that a prompt, favorable decision would be premature inasmuch as it might internationalize the war in a way offensive to the British, leaving the French with the difficult choice of internationalization or capitulation. Dulles "eyes only" tel. to Paris NIACT 4023, May 11, 1954 (TOP SECRET). The conditions are also cited in Jean Lacouture and Philippe Devillers, La fin d'une guerre: Indochine 1954 (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1960), pp. 176–77. |
| 3. | Dulles' words are as paraphrased. In a State Department Memorandum of Conversation, May 11, 1954, of a White House conference May 10 attended by the President, Dulles, Wilson, Deputy Defense Secretary Anderson, Radford, Robert Bowie, and Douglas MacArthur II (TOP SECRET). |
| 4. | Dillon "eyes only" from Paris to the Under Secretary (for Dulles) No. 4383, May 14, 1954 (TOP SECRET). |
| 5. | Dillon commented: "I am certain that unless we can find some way to get around this requirement [that the Vietnamese have the option of leaving the French Union], French will never ask for outside assistance." In Ibid.
Dillon proposed that the real objection among Asians to the position of the Associated States rested not on the "purely juridical" problem of the right to leave the Union, but on Indochina's lack of powerful national armies. The Ambassador recommended that American training and equipping of the Vietnamese National Army (VNA), coupled with a French statement of intention to withdraw the Expeditionary Corps after the establishment of peace and a national army, would significantly dampen Asian antagonism to the Bao Dai regime. (Dillon from Paris tel. NIACT 4402 to Dulles, May 17, 1954, TOP SECRET). Why Dillon assumed Asians would significantly change their attitude toward French Indochina when, even with an American takeover of the training and equipping of the NVA, French forces would still be on Vietnamese territory for a lengthy period is not known. |
| 6. | Dulles "eyes only" to Paris (Dillon) tel. NIACT 4094, May 15, 1954 (TOP SECRET). |
| 7. | Dulles "eyes only" to Smith at Geneva tel. TEDUL 75, and to Dillon at Paris No. 4104, May 17, 1954 (TOP SECRET). |
| 8. | FEA memorandum, "Procedural Steps for Intervention in Indochina," undated, (entered, into FE files May 17, 1954) (TOP SECRET). |
| 9. | FEA, Annex on "Studies to be Undertaken Immediately within United States Government," attached to ibid., (TOP SECRET). |
