Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
were not part of MAAG, they had also improved the organization of Vietnamese logistical services and had launched an extensive logistical training program. In addition, TERM relieved MAAG of logistical responsibilities, thus freeing MAAG personnel for training.94 Thereafter, the MAAG training program "gained momentum."95
This momentum was in the direction of training and organizing the VNA so that it would have its proper role in the overall defense of Vietnam as had already been envisioned by the MAAG in 1955:
- (1) The organization and missions of the National Army, Civil Guard and Self-Defense Corps all supplementary in assuring adequate internal security for Free Vietnam. The National Army retains overall responsibility for internal security in accordance with its assigned mission. The development of the Civil Guard and Self-Defense Corps as supplementary internal security agencies will, at nominal cost, provide for increased internal security and simultaneously afford necessary relief of army units or necessary combat training, thus greatly increasing the potential of Free Vietnam to resist armed aggression from without, coordinated with guerrilla and subversive action from within.
- (2) The Civil Guard will be responsible for (a) nationwide civil law enforcement except in those cities having municipal police, (b) supplementing the Army Territorial Regiments in maintain internal security, and (c) serving as an operating agency for the Vietnamese Bureau of Investigation in the collection of anti-subversive intelligence. The Civil Guard will possess the necessary mobility to concentrate against strong subversive actions, supplementing and lending breadth to the Army Territorial Battalions....
- (3) Neither the Army nor the Civil Guard will have the necessary strength, dispersion or familiarity to provide necessary protection for widely scattered and numerous (approximately 6,000) villages against subversive actions of Viet Minh cadres and dissident sect personnel. The Self-Defense Corps, operating with 10-men armed units in each village, would possess these requirements to the degree necessary to ferret out and eliminate existent or potential subversive movements.... The Army and the Self-Defense Corps will have the same command channels.... Close coordination will exist between Self-Defense Corps units and the Civil Guard on the lower levels.96
No concept for defending Free Vietnam could be clearer: the regular army in command of (or in close coordination with) the irregulars who will have the capability to free the army to fill an army role — "to resist armed aggression from without." Unfortunately, however sound this
