Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
in August, 1960, that:103
"In 1954 the Communist army of North Vietnam could have crossed the seventeenth parallel and walked into Saigon standing up. Today if they tried it, they would have one nasty fight on their hands."
The Army of Vietnam (ARVN) assumed American forms, with divisions, corps headquarters, and general staffs—an "upgrading" which appealed to the Vietnamese military, denied such pretensions under the French. Although the MAAG continued to recognize a requirement for assisting ARVN capabilities against guerrillas and infiltrators, the primary efforts of American and Vietnamese soldiers alike were directed toward improving conventional defense capability through 1960, and ARVN became mechanized, ponderous, road bound, and preoccupied with its supply and staffing functions.104 Indeed, MAAG viewed ARVN "pacification" duties as an obstruction to progress. The internal security of the nation devolved upon two paramilitary forces: the Self-Defense Corps, and the Civil Guard, U.S. aid for both of which comprised an unhappy chapter in the U.S.–GVN relationship. The Self-Defense Corps (SDC) was created in April, 1956, as a village militia, and received U.S. assistance from the MAAG in the form of funds and shoulder arms. Training of the SDC was left to ARVN. The Civil Guard (CG) was established in April 1955, as a paramilitary force which was to operate under the province chiefs. American aid to the CG was provided through a group from Michigan State University under contract to both the U.S. and the GVN. Its organization, equipment, and utilization became a point of controversy almost at once: the Public Administration Division of the Michigan State group conceived of the CG as a rural constabulary, recruited locally, trained and equipped for police operations; Diem preferred a more military organization, heavier in equipment, and organized for sustained combat. In terms of later U.S. concepts of "counterinsurgency," the early judgment of the MSU group was probably correct: a rural constabulary close to the people might have helped Diem meet the early challenges of the insurgency, especially in the field of intelligence. However, with HAAG support, Diem's ideas prevailed, and the CG became a force competitive to ARVN. In actuality both the SDC and the CG were quite ineffective in providing internal security. Their arms, equipment and training were rudimentary. ARVN used its training responsibilities for them as a dumping ground for inept officers. Through them, however, U.S. small arms were channeled into the countryside, there to augment the arsenals of dissidents. And the behavior of these ill-prepared levies probably did little to enhance GVN rapport with the farmers.105
From the outset, the American aid program for South Vietnam was overwhelmingly military. There was doubtless, always a limit to how much economic and other non-military aid the GVN needed, wanted, or could efficiently absorb, but primary emphasis in U.S. aid programs from the outset was placed upon security—with Diem's agreement, as his 1956 letter (supra.) indicates. In the first few years, about 70% of all U.S. aid was for the security establishment.106 About 80% of
