Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
The statistical picture presented above of an insurgent force declining in numbers from 1954 through 1959, and then mushrooming rapidly in 1960 and thereafter, is obviously misleading. What U.S. intelligence focused on in the immediate aftermath of Genva were the remnants of the Viet Minh military force following the regroupment. These, whatever their strength, probably represented only a fraction of the numbers of former Viet Minh in active opposition to the GVN after 1956, and apparently did not reflect the total numbers of armed dissidents from 1957 onward, nor the locally recruited political and logistic apparatus which supported the Viet Cong "armed propaganda teams," or guerrilla bands. The phenomenal growth of the Viet Cong, given the low estimates on infiltration from North Vietnam (some 5,000 through 1960), means either than the DRV cadres were extraordinarily effective in organizing and motivating rural people among whom U.S. intelligence detected little unrest through mid-1960, or that U.S. estimates were low. The latter seems probable.
Much of what the United States knows now about the origins of the insurgency in South Vietnam rests on information it has acquired since 1963, approximately the span of time that an extensive and effective American intelligence apparatus had been functioning in Vietnam. Before then, our intelligence was drawn from a considerably more narrow and less reliable range of sources, chiefly Vietnamese, and could not have supported analysis in depth of insurgent organization and intentions. It is surprising, therefore, that from 1954 to 1960 U.S. intelligence estimates at the national level correctly· and consistently estimated that the threat to GVN internal security was greater than the danger from overt invasion. They pegged the Viet Cong general offensive as beginning in late 1959, with some preparations noted as early as 1957. In general, they were critical of Diem, consistently expressing skepticism that he could thread his way through recognized internal political difficulty. To be sure, the same estimates misjudged the numerical and political strength of the Viet Cong, the extent of popular disaffection, and miscalculated the ability of the GVN to cope with the Viet Cong. But as strategic intelligence, U.S. estimates were remarkably sound.
B. U.S. Policy and Programs, 1954-1960
U.S. national policy statements of the period, in the records of the National Security Council, did not exactly reflect U.S. intelligence in treating insurgency as the GVN's primary threat. U. S. "counterinsurgency" policy--though not so termed until 1960--proceeded from the premise that U.S. national interests required the U.S . to provide political support, economic aid, and military assistance to the GVN to preclude its domination by communists. The policy governing in the immediate aftermath of Geneva was laid out in NSC 5405 and 5429/5 of 1954. On July 11, 1956, the Operations Coordinating Board published a "Progress Report" on the programs directed by these two policy papers, noting among "major problems or areas of difficulty" that:
