Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
A considerable part of the rationale within the CIP -- including one long annex -- was devoted to justifying the enlarged force level for RVNAF, emphasizing that action must be taken to implement the increase as quickly as possible, since from one to two years would be required to fill the new units. It could be foreseen that those who saw the Viet Cong threat as most important (which was the basic tone of the CIP, and subsequently of the DOD), and who regarded military measures against this threat as most urgent, including measures that would require increased acceptance and cooperation by Diem, would be impatient with "pressure tactics" when they involved delays on "vital" military matters in the hope of winning concessions from Diem in political areas that seemed peripheral or trivial in the context of the communist insurgency.
A factor tipping the scales toward what might be called the Diem/MAAG/DOD priorities in each instance was the coincident, and increasing, need to "reassure" Diem of U.S. support for Vietnam and for him personally, in the light of events that had shaken that assurance (and hence, Diem's willingness to cooperate on less controversial measures) such as, in Diem's eyes, U.S. involvement In the abortive November 1960 coup, U.S. pressures via Durbrow for Political reforms, and, above all, U.S. policy with respect to Laos. This need to reassure Diem was at cross purposes with the use of pressure tactics to influence him and in part conflicted with the U.S. desire to have Diem adopt moves (such as delegating authority to a single military commander, or include oppositionists in his cabinet) that he regarded as directly threatening continuation of his rule.
c. Presidential Action on the CIP
Ten days after President Kennedy's inauguration, on 30 January 1961, a memo from the President to the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense noted that as a result of a meeting on 28 January he had authorized:
" … an increase of expenditure of $28.4 million to expand the Viet-Nam force level by 20,000; and an increase In expenditure of $12.7 million for a program to improve the quality of the Viet-Nam civil guard."[1]
These figures represented the dollar costs of the increases recommended in the CIP. In passing on this authorization from the President in a Joint State-Defense-ICA message, the Department pointed out:
- ↑ The author, Benjamin Bock of the State Department Study: Recent American Policy and Diplomacy Concerning Vietnam 1960-1963, Research Project #630, January 1965, notes that Chalmers V. Wood, the Vietnamese desk officer in the 1961 period, had told him in June 1963 that President Kennedy had personally approved the counterinsurgency Plan.
