Following his retirement from the Marines, Forney assumed assignment as the Public Safety Advisor with the U.S. Operations Mission (USOM), Agency for International Development at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, South Vietnam. While in this capacity, he had an opportunity to analyse the situation in the country and relationship between Vietnamese civilians and U.S. military. As an veteran of Haitian campaign, he used his own experiences and proposed that the United States operation in South Vietnam should not be tied in with the MAAG; but rather an effort to be linked with the Civil Guard, the Self-Defense Corps, and the local Militia in the village and boondock level. This would be similar to the Guardia effort in Nicaragua or the Gendarmerie operation in Haiti and Santo Domingo.