Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
either through open invasion or by infiltrating sufficient troops across the 17th Parallel to insure a successful 'liberation' -- would, jeopardize current Bloc peace policies and risk provoking US intervention. In addition, the Communists may not presently have sufficient strength in South Vietnam quickly to overthrow the Diem government and may therefore estimate that to undertake widespread guerrilla warfare without substantial infiltration from the north might lead not only to the weakening of their exposed organization in the south but also to a drastic loss of public support." (Ibid., p. 6)
However, a July 1956 NIE noted that if substantial infiltration from the DRV were deemed necessary, it possessed the resources:
" … Ninety-five thousand men were evacuated from the south in the first few months following the Armistice. The DRV probably views this group as a possible instrument for subversive activity in South Vietnam and some may have been retrained, reindoctrinated, and perhaps even reinfiltrated." (NIE 63-56, 17 July 1956, p. 6)
By March 1956, Diem had reduced the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao groups to political impotence, and had won a substantial majority in South Vietnam's first national elections: "no openly anti-Diem Deputy was elected… due in part to government manipulation of the election campaign, and in part to a boycott of the elections by most of the opposition parties." (Ibid., p. 7)
The same NIE stated that it was likely that "organized non-communist resistance" would virtually disappear by 1957 and, indeed, that South Vietnam's military and security forces could maintain "the government in power against any potential armed opposition now located south of the 17th parallel," even against communist armed strength in the south estimated at "8,000 - 10,000, with approximately 5,000 organized in skeletal company and battalion sized units which could be expanded through recruitment." (Ibid., 10-11) However, longer-run prospects of the regime still depended on the decision of the North Vietnamese regime whether, and when, to activiate their apparatus in the south and infiltrate "regroupees" from the north.
"In the event of large scale, concerted guerrilla warfare supported by infiltration of men and supplies from the north, relatively large areas of rural Vietnam probably would be lost to government control … " (Ibid., p. 10)
