Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
4. Rise of the Viet Cong, 1957-1960 The Department of State sponsored an intelligence estimate for the U.S . SEATO Council Renresentatives dated 3 April 1958, entitled "Nature and Extent of the Communist Subversive Threat to the Protocol States of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos." This estimate held that the DRV continued to pose a basic threat to the GVN:
"Although Communist tactics have shifted over the past few years, the real objective -- ultimate Communist control of all Vietnam -- has remained unchanged. Overt aggression, employed by the Communists prior to the Geneva Agreements and ceasefire, has been at least temporarily put aside in favor of demands for 'peaceful reunification,' more in accord with the general Soviet line of peaceful co-existence. The Communist peaceful pose however has not brought any relaxation in the build-up of DRV military strength or repressive Communist control over the population in North Vietnam. Moreover, support and assistance provided by the DRV for Communist subversive activities in South Vietnam (as well as in Laos and to a lesser extent Cambodia and Thailand) has not been reduced … "
"… The continuation of the Communist program to infiltrate and support subversive cadres in South Vietnam is the clearest indication of the unchanged nature of their objective in Vietnam and the threat which this constitutes for the GVN. The strongly anti-Communist policy of the GVN has forced the Communists to operate underground rather than through legal parties or front groups. Little concrete information is available concerning the organization and leadership of the Communist subversive apparatus in South Vietnam. At the time of the armistice, a considerable number of armed and trained Communist military personnel were left behind in South Vietnam, organized into a basic structure of a hierarchy of Administrative and Resistance Committees. Effective security measures carried out by the Diem government have reduced these armed Communist cadres to an estimated 1100-1400. The remaining cadres probably retain a roughly similar organizational pattern, although they have reduced their unit size and reportedly have changed their structure at the lowest level to make it more difficult for the GVN to penetrate the network.
"Alongside the guerrilla nucleus (and undoubtedly with some duplication of personnel), the Communists have maintained and sought to expand their political network in South Vietnam. The latter organization probably encompasses a considerably larger number than the armed cadres, which, operating underground, are more difficult to identify or assess …
