NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 TOP SECRET – Sensitive
Secretary McNamara played an important role in disposing of still another issue in dispute -- that of where to begin. In mid-December 1961, after President Kennedy had decided to adopt essentially all of General Taylor's November recommendations except the introduction of major U.S. forces into Vietnam, Secretary McNamara met in Honolulu with the U.S. principals in Vietnam to discuss future plans. A central question was that of what could be done in the short term future. The Secretary of Defense made it clear that RVN had "number one priority." 52/ McNamara urged concentration on one province: "I'll guarantee it" [the money and equipment] provided you have a plan based on one province. Take one place, sweep it and hold it in a plan." 53/ Or, put another way, let us demonstrate that in some place, in some way, we can achieve demonstrable gains.
General McGarr, immediately upon his return to Saigon, wrote to Secretary Thuan and passed on this proposal:
I would like to suggest that you may wish to set aside one specific area, say a province, and use it as a "test area," in establishing this type "pacification infrastructure." My thinking is that all the various elements of this anti-VC groundwork be designated immediately by your government and trained as a team or teams for the actual reoccupation and holding of the designated communist infiltrated area when it has been cleared by RVMF military action. 54/
Such teams would embrace, McGarr suggested, police, intelligence, financial, psychological, agricultural, medical, civic action, and civil political functions. 55/
IV. THE ADVISORS "SELL" DIEM (OR VICE-VERSA)
A. Where to Begin?
GVN did indeed have a province in mind. It was not a Delta province, however. Nor was it a province relatively secure from VC infiltration. Quite to the contrary, Binh Duong Province, extending north and northwest of Saigon, had been heavily infiltrated. Its main communications axis (National Highway 13, extending northward from Saigon into Cambodia) sliced directly between War Zone D and War Zone C. The province was crossed by important routes of communications, liaison, and supply between two insurgen redoubts. Hardly the logical place to begin, one might say, but "logic" was being driven by events and desires more than by abstract reasoning.
One desire was the widely held wish to do something concrete and productive as a symbol of U.S. determination and GVN vitality. Another desire was GVN's wish to commit the Americans to support of Diem's government on terms which would be in fact acceptable to that government and would -- equally important -- appear to be U.S. support for GVN-initiated actions. If one were Vietnamese one might reason that Binh Duong was an
