Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
although Laos was only one of the things that influenced the April 26 effort, while it became the overwhelming element in the May 6 effort. It is worth setting out these influencing factors, specifically:
- 1. The security situation in Vietnam.
- 2. The Administration's special interest in counter-insurgency.
- 3. The apparent futility and divisiveness of the Durbrow (pressure) tactics for dealing with Diem.
- 4. Eventually most important, and substantially narrowing the range of options realistically open to the Administration, the weakness of US policy in Laos, and the consequent strongly felt need for a signal of firm policy in Vietnam.
1. The Security Situation in Vietnam
The VC threat in Vietnam looked worse in April than it had in January. We will see that Gilpatric's report painted a bleak picture. Yet, there is no hint in the record that concern about the immediate situation in Vietnam was a major factor in the decision to formulate a new program.
VC strength was estimated at 3-15^000 in Lansdale's January memorandum; 8–10,000 in a March NIE; 10,000 in an April briefing paper (apparently by Lansdale) immediately preceding -- and recommending -- the Gilpatric Task Force; then 12,000 one week later in the Gilpatric report proper. VC incidents were reported high for April (according to the Task Force report, 650 per month, 4 times higher than January), but an upsurge in activity had long been predicted to coincide with the Vietnamese elections. As would happen in the future, the failure of the VC to prevent the elections was considered a sign of government strength. 2/
On the basis of the Task Force statistics, we could assume that the situation was deteriorating rapidly: taken literally, they indicate an increase in VC strength of 20 percent in about a week; plus the large increase in incidents. But neither cables from the field, nor the Washington files show any sense of a sharply deteriorating situation. And; as we will see, the initial Task Force Report, despite its crisis tone, recommended no increase in military strength for the Vietnamese, only more generous US financial aid to forces already planned under the CIP.
2. The Administration's Special Interest in Counter-insurgency
A more important impetus to the Gilpatric effort than any sense of deterioration in Vietnam seems to have been the Administration's general interest in doing something about counter-insurgency warfare, combined with an interest in finding more informal and more efficient means
