NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 TOP SECRET – Sensitive
"Operation Dang Tien"(Let's go) In Binh Dinh Province with a goal of 328 strategic hamlets In Its first year; and "Operation Phuong Hoang" (Royal Phoenix) in Quang Nai Province with a goal of 125 strategic hamlets by the end of 1962.
D. At Last -- A National Plan
The GVN drew all of the partialistic programs together in its August 1962 national priority plan, mentioned earlier. The nation was divided into four priority zones (Map 3). First priority was assigned to the eleven provinces around Saigon. This included essentially the area of the Thompson Delta plan plus the original area of "Operation Sunrise" plus Gia Dinh Province (Map 4). Priorities within each zone were further specified. Within the zone of first national priority, for example, the provinces of Vinh Long, Long An, and Phuoc Try were assigned the highest priority; Binh Duong -- where operations were already in progress -- was given priority three (Map 5). Dy the end of the summer of 1962 GVN claimed that 3,225 of the planned 11,3l6 hamlets had already been completed and that over 33 percent of the nation's total population was already living in completed hamlets (See Table 1).
October 1962, when Diem made the Strategic Hamlet Program the avowed focus of his counterinsurgent campaign, marks the second watershed in the development and implementation of the program. The first such watershed had been the consensus, on the potential value of such a program, which had been developed at the end of 1961 and early 1962. There would be no others until the program died with Diem.
E. Effect on U.S. Perceptions
The effect of the GVN's concentration on strategic hamlets was to make U.S. assessments focus on several sub-aspects of the problem. Attention tended to be directed toward how well hamlets were being fortified and whether or not the implementation phase was well managed; i.e., whether peasants were paid for their labor, reimbursed for their losses, and given adequate opportunity to attend their crops. Conversely, attention was directed away from the difficult-to-assess question of whether the follow-up actions to hamlet security were taking place -- the actions which would convert the peasantry from apathy (if not opposition) to identification with their central government.
This focusing on details which diverted attention from the ultimate objective took the form of reports, primarily statistical, which set forth the construction rate for strategic hamlets, the incident rate of VC activities, and the geographical areas in which GVN control was and was not in the ascendancy. These "specifics" were coupled to generalized assessments which almost invariably pointed to shortcomings in GVN's execution of the program. The shortcomings, however, were treated as problems in efficient management and operational organization; the ineluctability of increased control (or security) leading somehow to popular identification
