Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
to replace the special mission personnel referred to above. Implementation of the United States aid project for re-training and re-equipping the Civil Guard has begun with the signing of the ICA project agreement with the Vietnamese Government and the despatch of ICA personnel to administer this project in Saigon. In spite of substantial U.S . assistance, economic development though progressing, is below that which is politically desirable."
c. Public Statements
Despite the increasingly pessimistic intelligence, however, and despite the notations in NSC reports of formidable problems in Vietnam, the public statements of Administration spokesmen, through August 1959 presented a generally sanguine picture of U.S. programs there. For example, in November, 1957, Ambassador Durbrow and General Williams appeared before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Operations and reported that Diem's government "had made remarkable progress." However, they did report that "Communists and sect remnants have regrouped and stepped up their terrorist activities in the past, several onths, and the Communists are infiltrating down the sparsely inhabited Meking Valley and are becoming fairly active, particularly in the south. For this reason, [Diem] still has to use considerable number of his armed forces and a large number of his police force to carryon pacification work. Because of the terrorist activities in the fertile Delta area, the peasants, through fear or intimidation, cannot till their fields properly and thus produce more rice and other exports … " The Ambassador stressed that Diem was aware of the problem -- indeed, acutely aware -- but that he was impelled to defer all other considerations to the creation of an environment of security. The Ambassador quoted Diem as follows: "If we don’t have assurances on the security front, what good will it do to build up the economy only to have it destroyed by Communist terrorists?" The Ambassador described Diem as "a devoted, honest, hard-working, Nationalist with a fine understanding of the internal political situation as well as the international political picture, particularly in Asia; but in consideration of his preoccupation of [security] he moves slowly in these fields … [1]
In March 1958 Admiral Felix B. Stump, USN, Commander in Chief, Pacific, appeared before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to testify for the Mutual Security Act of 1958. Admiral stump invited one of his questioners on Vietnam to visit the country on the conviction that "he would be astonished at the improvement that has taken place. It has been beyond what would have been our wildest and most optimistic
- ↑ U.S. Congress, House, Foreign Aid Construction Projects, Committee on Government Operations, 85th Congress, Second Session, (Washington: GPO, 1958), 864-866.
