Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
The 1951 Lao Dong document quoted above stipulated that:
"Not only is it our duty to aid the revolutionaries in Cambodia and Laos, but we must a l so aid the revolutionary movements in the other countries of Southeast Asia, countries such as Malaya, Indonesia, Burma, etc." lOll
Since DRV independence in 1954, its foreign policy has op enly supported neutral regimes in Laos and Cambodia, while covertly it has undertaken major politico-military operations in Laos, and supported subversive organizations in Cambodia and Thailand. 1021 It is possible to infer, as ha s P. J . Honey, that the ultimate DRV objective is Vietnamese hegemony over Indochina: quasi-independent, communist governments controlled by the Hanoi leaders through the Lao Dong apparatus. However, it is also possible to interpret the Lao Dong Party tracts as bombast, and DRV extra-territorial operati ons as a necessary part of its thrust toward reunification of Vietnam. It is clear that DRV control of the Laotian Panhandle and the Mu Gia and Keo Nua Passes would be essential to any contemplated large scale infiltration of men and materiel from North to South Vietnam.
D. Links with the Viet Cong
From 1954 on, the DRV possessed four principal ties with insurgents within South Vietnam: the Southern Viet Minh who were regrouped to the North; the "Fatherland Front," the DRV mass political organization devoted in part to maintaining identification with Southerners, and promoting the cause of reunification before the world; some commonality of leaders ; and the Lao Dong Party. Each of these deserve discussion preliminary to analyzing the extent to which these links permitted Hanoi to influence the form and pace of the insurgency in South Vietnam.
1. Southerners in the North. The estimated 130,000 "regroupees" of Geneva in North Vietnam after the evacuations of 1954-1955 included as many as 90 ,000 "soldiers," and possibly half that number of dependents. There were among them possibly 10,000 children, and about the same number of Montagnards. Of this entire group, U.S. intelligence estimates indicate that about 30-35,000 have since returned to South Vietnam. 1031 Regroupees provided virtually all the infiltrators in the period 1959--1964. Thereafter, known infiltration has been almost exclusively by Northerners, which has led U.S. intelligence to conclude that the DRV had by 1964 exhausted its "pool" of trained and able manpower among the regroupees. 10!~1 As of July, 1967, the GVN had only a small fraction of the Southern regroupee infiltrators under its control : 180 POW, and an undetermined (probably very much smaller) number of defectors. 105 / In August, 1966, a DOD contractor published a study based on detailed interrogation of 71 of these
regroupees (56 POW and 15 defectors) plus 9 other NLF rnembers . 106/ Two out of three in the sample were Communist Party members; all regroupees had undergone intensive training in the DRV before being sent south. The earliest trip South by any among the group was 1960, the latest 1964. The survey of their experiences and attitudes affords some insights into the policy and operations of the DRV.
