Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
"...In order to contribute to the security of the area pending the further development of national forces for this purpose, the representatives of France indicated that France is prepared to retain forces of its Expeditionary Corps, in agreement with the government concerned, within the limits permitted under the Geneva Agreements, and to an extent to be determined....The channel for French and United States economic aid, budgetary support, and other assistance to each of the Associated States will be direct to that state...."
On 23 October 1954, President Eisenhower, in a letter to Diem, offered "to assist the Government of Vietnam in developing and maintaining a strong, viable state, capable of resisting attempted subversion or aggression through military means."99 Direct U.S. military assistance to Diem began in early 1955. As mentioned above, by spring, 1956, the French military command had been dissolved, and the Expeditionary Corps withdrawn, so that the U.S. thereafter alone bore the principal burdens of assisting the GVN to build its defenses.
- 6. U. S. Aid: MAP
U.S. policy on how RVNAF should develop vacillated accordingly. Initially, we considered that the French forces and the SEATO mantle would suffice for the purposes of shielding the GVN from external aggression, and that as Lt. General John W. ("Iron Mike") O'Daniel, Chief of the Military Assistance Advisory Group, put it in February, 1955:100
"The (Vietnamese) Army will be above all, according to American ideas on the subject, a police force capable of spotting Communist guerrillas and Communist efforts at infiltration."
The withdrawal of the French Expeditionary Corps, however, cast RVNAF in a new role, and demanded they be prepared for conventional combat, capable of staving off an attack from the North until U.S. and SEATO aid could be landed.101 In June, 1956, in the wake of the French withdrawal, General O'Daniel reported to the American Friends of Vietnam that:102
"The Vietnamese Army is now organized into regiments and divisions. In case of an armed attack by the Vietminh from the North, it is capable of effecting enough delay to allow for additional forces to be employed in time to save the country...."
To this threat MAAG turned its attention from 1955 to 1960, with such success that General O'Daniel's successor, Lt. General Samuel T. ("Hanging Sam") Williams could justifiably assert (on the occasion of his retirement
