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Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
| DATE | EVENT OR DOCUMENT | DESCRIPTION |
| Special Forces, militia teachers, etc." would he needed to support a "counter-guerrilla war in Vietnam." Rostow does not mention combat units. | ||
| 9 June 1961 | Diem Letter to Kennedy | Here, in response to Vice President Johnson's request that he outline military needs, Diem did request US troops explicitly for training RVNAF "officers and technical specialists" -- not entire divisions. He proposed ARVN be increased from 170,000 to 270,000 to "counter the ominous threat of communist domination" -- a threat he documented by inflated infiltration figures and words about the "perilous" situation created by the Laos solution. To train these 100,000 new ARVN troops Diem asked for "considerable expansion" of the MAAG in the form of "selected elements of the American Armed Forces." |
| Mid-June to July 1961 | The Staley Mission | A team headed by Eugene Staley (Stanford Research Institute) was to work with Vietnamese officials in an effort to resolve the continuing problem of how Vietnam was to finance its own war effort (deficit financing, inflation, the commodity import program, piaster/dollar exchange rates, all presented difficulties). But the Staley group became the vehicle for force level discussions and economic issues were treated rather perfunctorily. The group "does not consider itself competent to make specific recommendations as to desired force levels" but adopted two alternative levels for "economic planning purposes": 200,000 if the insurgency in Vietnam remains at present levels, if Laos does not fall; 270,000 if the Vietcong significantly increase the insurgency and if the communists win de facto control of Laos. |
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TOP SECRET – Sensitive
