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the process is far from complete. Some other figures will illustrate this:
There are ten villages in the area of the Marines; two of these ten village
chiefs live in the Marine compound; sixteen hamlet chiefs live in the
district town for protection. Every hamlet requires one Marine squad,
which is backed up by some popular forces. There is one battalion of
Vietnamese forces in the area, but this never goes out at night. During
the difficulties in Hue and Danang in April and May, the Vietnamese
battalion moved out leaving all their mines behind and many of these mines
were being used against the Marines now. The mining operations of the
Vietcong were extremely subtle and clever. If a Marine patrol followed
the same pattern three times in a row it was certain to be mined. As one
example there was big shade tree under which a Marine patrol had stayed
two afternoons in a row; the third afternoon when it got there seven men
were killed by a mine and three were wounded. They had been told not
to get off the road but the heat had become too much for them. Of the
four district chiefs in the regimental area, the regimental commander
considered two incompetent and two rather good.

The Marines in Hill 55 live in dugouts because they only control an area about a thousand yards in circumference. When I said goodbye to the executive officer who had been there the last time I came, he said nothing worries me any more--I am leaving in three days and I don't think I am going to get out of my bunker.

-6-

We then heliopcoptered back to Danang where I had a meeting
with the Provincial Advisory Team, in fact, with all the Provincial
Advisory Teams of I Corps. The first man to speak was Col. Bronze,
an Air Force officer who has been MACV representative for I Corps.
He said that the cadres were very spotty; they don't stay in the villages
and they had suffered from too rapid expansion. There were three teams
in Quang Nam province: Team 1 suffers from internal quarrelling, lack of
leadership at provincial levels, and insufficient support for projects
they didn't recognize originate. Team II's pacification program came
to a complete halt in the struggle; it has completed only ten to fifteen
classrooms out of fity; and it is already four months behind schedule.
Team III: the effectiveness of its cadres depends on the security; the
cadres in outlying districts either perform security functions or
none at all. Altogether he felt that I Corps had fallen way behind its
pacification schedule, because of the political upheavals in April and May.
He thought well of the combined action teams in which a squad of Marines
was backing up a group of popular forces.

I then discussed the situation with the AID officials from all
the provinces of I Corps. The regional representative stressed the impor-
tance of Vietnamese participation in the project. He insisted that this was
more important than meeting weekly goals, because one of the results of

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setting these unrealistic goals was that the province chiefs picked some-
thing that they knew they could do. Statistics were no proof of ability to
perform. One had to keep in mind that local government was the most
effective agent and had to do the principal job. He was opposed to the
cadre program because he felt that the traditional organs of government
should be strengthened rather than bringing in a group of strangers for
temporary duty.

I then asked a number of questions of the representatives
from the various provinces. The representative from Quang Tri said
that popular and regional forces were being used to guard Route 1 during
operations and were therefore not available to guard the villages. There
was too much of a tendency to oppress, to spend money too fast, and to
press into areas that were not yet secure. He felt that there had been no
increase in the secure areas, though perhaps the secure areas were more
secure. I asked him what percent of the pacified villages were the
villages not affected by the VC pressure. Quang Tri argued that maybe
fifty per cent of those shown as pacified had village officials who were
willing to spend the night in the villages. A comparable figure for
Quang Nam was twenty-five per cent of the so-called secure area, which,
in turn, is only sixty per cent of the total area. Quang Nin--only seventeen
out of 300 hamlets were officially listed as secure and those were a very
dubious MACV criteria. In Quang Nam of the 31 cadre teams, ten certainly

[N]

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did not stay in the villages; three or four were well integrated into villages;
the others were presumably doing their job though it was very difficult to
check. There was a consensus that *corruption* was pervasive.

I then drove to the house of the American Vice-Counsul in Danang
and had a hour with the leaders of the VNQDD, the leading political party
of northern Vietnam noted for its venality and brutality. Its General
Secretary looked like a thug and he was accompanied by his candidate for
the constituent assembly who acted as interpreter and would not even answer
direct questions put to him without referring them to the General-Secretary.
The conversation was not particularly interesting. It was obviously that
the VNQDD member could not care less about what kind of constitution
was drawn. In fact they had no ideas whatever about any particular form
of constitution. Their primary concern was to assure their party a
maximum slice of any future government. They were violently anti-Buddhist
and extremely anti-Communist. They would not even discuss the possibility
of negotiations, saying that the only thing that one could do with the Com-
munists is to destroy them. They expressed some fear that the United
States might get tired of the war and they were the only Vietnamese
that I have met who indicated even a general interest in international
problems by saying that what would happen in Vietnam might ultimately
depend on relations between Russia and China. However, they immediately
went back to discuss their own local situations. I asked them about the

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charges at I heard about VNQDD corruption. They replied that this was true of some other factions; that they were making every effort to prevent it--which is the standard answer of Vietnamese.

I then went to the headquarters of General Lam, Commanding General of I Corps. The last time I had visited there it was the headquarters of General Thi, whose dismissal had triggered the Buddhist crisis. General Lam then was commander of the second division; the second division when I visited in November had been rated by the American advisors as the second worse division in the Vietnamese army, which is not a mean achievement! Nonetheless General Lam received me in lordly fashion and explained with great complexity how he had managed to pacify the Buddhists through a series of measures of such incredible complexity and deviousness that I could not do justice to them if I attempted to repeat them. I was told later by General Walt that at one point General Lam had developed arthritis in his leg, a disease of which he had previously seen no symptom, but which incapacitated him from making decisions. I asked General Lam about his concept of military operations and it consisted of devastating the two southern-most provinces and moving all the population out to deny them to the Vietcong. I told him that in my judgment this would make a terrible impression on American public opinion. I then asked him what he thought of the Marines. He gave the impression that they were auxiliary troops to him and he said that General Walt was learning fast and was beginning to take

CJ

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direction better. It is hard to know whether the Vietnamese really mean this or whether this is a desperate act of bravado to safe their face.

We then motored to the Marine headquarters where I had a room in the VIP section. After dropping my bags there we helioptered over to General Walt's house, which is about five miles away, but it was thought that it would be safer to helicopter than to go on a road. General Walt gave a dinner for me, my State Department escort officer, the Chief of Staff of the Marines, and the Chief of Marine Aviation. Most of the conversation was devoted to the Marine concept of military operations, which differs from the Army's in that it lays much greater stress on rooting out the Viet Cong infrastructure and on civic action. The Army in general makes an effort to find main force units and destroy them and does not use its troops in general on pacification measures. The Marines concentrate on pacification and will go after main force units only if they interfere with their task. The line is not sharp, but there is a different concept. As a concept I would lean toward the Marine operation, because it would give a tangible pawn into our hand for the purpose of negotiation, while the Army concept--if it is interrupted too early--will confront us with nothing tangible achieved, because if a ceasefire should be established the Vietcong may be able to restore their main force units and the Vietcong infrastructure in the villages would be essentially untouched.

I would say this in the abstract, but having seen the progress of the Marines in their pacification mission and the enormous casualties they are suffering, I cannot be sure which is the right procedure.

[4]

25 July 1966

My doubts were reinforced the next morning at breakfast, when two Marine Colonels with whom I was eating told me that the mining was no less in the areas which had been held by the Marines since the beginning than in those newly pacified. When I consider that the whole fifteen miles Marine perimeter is barely/deep and maybe thirty miles long.

The next morning at eight o'clock I called on Bishop Chi, the head of the Catholics in the Danang area.. Bishop Chi is a very worldly man who speaks English, with French and Italian fluently. He suffered from the same single-minded concentration on his local problems as all other Vietnamese, whom I have met. I asked him first about the organization of the Catholic Church in Vietnam. He said technically it was subordinant to the Curia, but in practice he had almost complete freedom of action.- Repeating in effect what every other Vietnamese in charge of an organization, whether it be a ministry or a youth group had also told me. He said that he thought the Buddhist movement was discredited and that the security situation in his area was much better. He would not have dared to sit in his chancery, where we met, six months ago, even though it was located in the Marine headquarters in the Marine airstrip; but at least that area had been secured and he thought more progress would be made. This is another miracle to me. I cannot notice any progress, and if there is progress it is so slight as to be discouraging to me rather than encouraging,

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but it is very rare to find Vietnamese who will make that admission.

Bishop Chi then told me that he was attempting to organize the Catholics in his region to vote for candidates *of his own choice* acceptable to the Catholic Church. He felt that on the whole a good process had started. He was vague about constitutional provisions and said he only hoped the United States would be firm enough to continue the war.

We then drove to the airbase where I was met by a Major Wise, who had been assigned to me as escort officer, to Quin Nhon, the capital of Bin Dhin province. He told me that instead of the twin-engined Beechcraft we were going to take a jet *in Quin Nhon*. Only later in the day did I learn that the Beechcraft with which he had come up from Saigon to fetch me had crashed on landing because it had flown to close to a jet which was landing and had been caught in the jetstream, so that a wing touched the ground and was ripped off. The pilot and passenger were unhurt. In the light of later events it was really remarkable that Major Wise was so calm and I thought it was heroic that he never mentioned to me what he had just experienced.

Quin Nhon is about forty minutes flying time from Danang or a distance of 150 miles. It is located in a rugged stretch of the coastline in a bay surrounded by very high mountains. As we were coming south the air was getting more and more turbulent and as it soon transpired we were flying through the edge of a hurricane, I told the

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I was amazed that pilot that he could take a jet into Quin Nhon since I had been told it was unsuitable for jet aircraft. He told me that everything would be alright because a T-39 could be stopped within 4,000 feet and the landing strip at Quin Nhon was 4,100 feet long. The landing strip was right at the edge of a mountain and my pilot dived over the mountain, was caught in a cross current, dipped a wing, straightened it out at the last moment, and the screeched to a halt at the very last edge of the landing strip with both pilots shaking hands at the tremendous accomplishment. Everything happened so fast that I didn't have time to be scared. The airport was closed as soon as we arrived because the wind was too strong. The airplanes on the ground were weighted down with sandbags and tied down and I was then faced with the problem of being stuck, since the jet could not leave. My escort officer thereupon called Saigon, which dispatched another Beechcraft base to come and get me. But, Operations told me that they would never permit it to land. I then drove through Quin Nhon, which a year ago was a miserable little fishing village and is today the chief supply base for the northern part of the country and has become one huge honky-tonk. The Korean division, an American division, and A Vietnamese division are all billeted close by, and this accounts for the fact that the security situation is Bin Dhin province is probably better than in any other province.

I received a rather long briefing on the security situation which was fairly optimistic. Many roads which were closed eight months

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ago had been opened. For example, it was now possible to travel twenty
kilometers north and sixty kilometers west of Quin Nhon during the day
and at night with an escort. There were plans to clear a mountain range
along the coast of the ~~KXXXIX~~ remaining Main Force units relieving the
pressure on the heavily populated areas. The major reason for the success,
however, was not the pacification program but the heavy concentration of
troops, namely three divisions. Because of this security there were less
complaints in Bin Dhin than anywhere else about the quality of the cadres,
presumably because the cadres could operate in reasonable security.
Nevertheless it was estimated that about fifteen percent of the rice produc-
tion of Bin Dhin went to the Vietcong. In the province just north, all rice
that was not needed to feed the province went to the Vietcong.

I spoke separately with the CIA advisor, an Australian. He
felt that of the area listed as secure perhaps 75% actually was. The
MACV criteria for pacification seemed to him to depend too much on judg-
ment and not really very adequate. Nevertheless he felt that American
advisors had a tendency to become too much spokesmen for their Viet-
namese counterparts and were not thoughtful enough about what they were
doing, But all the whole he was reasonably optimistic too.

I had dinner with General Myer, the commander of the
logistics command who had heard me speak at a War College, but who
was not particularly interesting to me since I am not concerned with

[x]

-5-

logistics, but General Westmoreland had told him to give me a full briefing so I had to suffer through an hour of detailed explanations of how food rations are being transported from Quin Nhon to the highlands--which is no doubt a significant achievement, but does not happen to be at the center of my interests.

At lunch I had a talk with the Commanding General of the Korean Division, a rough, tough officer, who stressed to them the primary problem was one of physical security and not pacification. I asked him whether he thought being Asian he understood the Vietnamese better than the Americans did. He said, yes. I asked him in what way he understood them better. He said, they remind me of the Japanese, which is just about the worse thing a Korean can say about anybody.

I then was taken on a tour of the port installations. In the meantime my aide from Saigon was overhead. It was commanded by a master pilot, which means that he had the right to use his own judgment whether to land or not and could not be stopped by base operations. This, combined with the fact that I have priority 3, which is the equivalent rank of an ambassador or four star general, meant that he landed his plane despite the fact that the wind had increased in intensity since the morning. The pilot said that if I wanted to get to Saigon he was willing to fly me. He had a wife and six children and was no more eager to die than I was. I then asked my two State Department escorts and the Major what

EP

-5a-

After lunch and before the tour of the port, I called on the province chief of Bin Dhin province. Simply in order to get the conversation started I asked him how the struggle movement in April and May had affected him in Quin Nhon. The result was a monologue which lasted an hour and would have lasted longer had I not had two impatient officers eager to show the logistics base. The monologue can only be described as an epic poem of the doublecross. It was recounted in English of *xyx* rhythmic cadences in which the province chief tried to explain to me how he mastered the Buddhists without taking a stand against them. Among the minor complications were *an act* a move by the province chief when the Buddhists started to move their altars into the street, to urge more people to move their altars into the street in order to make sure that all traffic would be blocked. The reasoning of the province chief was that if the traffic was only partially blocked he would have no excuse for moving militarily against it; by making sure traffic was completely blocked he would have a moral right to move. When I asked him whether he did in fact then move he explained a complicated maneuver in which the *strines* had been removed but then in order to save the face of the

he again permitted them to come back on the street between twelve and six so that they could get the order to have them moved back and not lose face to the army. This may or not be true, but it is significant for a number of reasons: (1) if the *Buddhists* had won at any stage of the operations the province chief could now tell an epic of how

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he contributed to their victory; (2) even if his story was not true and the Americans in Bin Dhin told me that much of it was news to them, it shows how the Vietnamese mind works--he was obviously trying to impress me and *he would not have* to tell a story of such absolute *simplicity* in order to impress *any* visiting American is in itself an example of the complexities of the situation.

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they wanted to do and they left it up to me. I therefore decided to fly to Saigon, which was an insane decision. We took off in the face of a 65 mpr wind toward the mountain. As we got airborne we were thrown up into the air and then dropped way down and finally we were thrown up in the air again and just barely cleared the mountain and the pilot said that his children had missed being fatherless by about three feet. Being airborne was only half our problem, however, because we were bounced around in the most incredible fashion, flying practically sideways part of the time. It was so rough that even though we had no oxygen the pilots went up to 12,000 feet, which is rather uncomfortable altitude. About half an hour from Saigon we had passed the edge of the hurricane weather and it was as calm as could be. Another example of the extraordinary changes in Vietnam.

In the evening Lodge was giving a dinner for me, which was one of the reasons why I left I had to get back. He had invited the Dutch Ambassador, the Korean Ambassador, the Italian Ambassador, and senior members of the Embassy staff, including Col. Sam Wilson, the mission coordinator. It was a rather pleasant evening though I was still shaking from my experience. After dinner Col. Wilson who had brought his guitar say some songs and then the aide to Lodge, who had been consul in Hue, took the <u>xxx</u> guitar and sang two songs which he had composed in Hue, which were extraordinarily witty but which were extremely bitter,

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being an amalgam of optimistic reports submitted by Americans and
coupled with newspaper headlines of what actually happened. These songs
hit rather too close to home, so Col. Wilson took the guitar again and
recited a poem which he had written about Vietnam with musical
accompaniment which was very sensitive and indeed very
tender describing typical street scenes and the appearance of the Vietnamese
who are, with all their failings, a people of grace, dignity and very great
intelligence.

26 July 1966

The day started at breakfast with Col. Lo Han the chief of secret police of Vietnam, who is one of Ky's confidants. He made a name for himself by putting down the revolt of the Buddhists. He looks like the archtype of the secret policeman. He has practically no chin, he has a mirthless laugh, when an embarrassing issue is raised he practically doubles over laughing and seems to collapse as if he were made of putty. At the same time he is extremely ruthless and seems to know exactly what he is doing. A rather long memorandum of conversation was dictated by my State Department escort and I will, therefore, not repeat the conversation here.

The thrust of his argument was that he had a list of which candidates he considered patriotic and that he would support them in the forthcoming election. He also invited me to come on an inspection tour of the provinces with him on my next visit to Vietnam. This would be an experience worth attempting.

I then went to the Embassy and had a talk with Harriman's assistant who was on a trip to Vietnam. He told me Harriman was very eager to see me upon my return and that he was very disturbed about the situation in Vietnam. We discussed various State Department appointments--none of them very favorably.

I then had a talk with Frank Ritter, Jr. and Bruce Maynard, who are in charge of the program branch of Ambassador Porter's

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pacification project. Wisner, who is a very impressive young man, told me that one of the chief problems in pacification was the layering and layering of cadres. There were still cadres left from Diem's time and no one knew who was doing what and who was reporting to whom. There was now a big study in progress, something called the Jacobsen Committee, which is to study the actual performance and compare it with what various cadres are supposed to do, but it is very difficult.

I asked what changes in the last eight months had occurred.
WISNER said there had been a major change in the superstructure both of
the American mission and of the Vietnamese government. Pacification
was now in much better hands than before. The Ministry is better off
and the Americans are also better off. On the other hand, it would be
wrong to say that any real progress has been made. For one thing, the
six MACV criteria are extremely elusive. For example, one of them
required the election of a village chief, but did we know whether the election
of a village chief in fact meant that the village was pacified? Indeed, how
did we know if a village chief was elected? The fact that the village said
so did not necessarily prove it. There are some areas such as the Hoa Hoa
which were surely pacified but where the village chief was certainly not
elected. There are other areas heavily infiltrated by Communists where
it is quite possible that the village chief is elected without their being
pacified. Another criterion, the destruction of the Communist infrastructure,
depends entirely on the judgment of the sector advisor who is under great

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pressure to report some progress. One should ask at every step along the way, how does one know and what does it mean. Another criterion is that the hamlet has security and fortifications. This again is meaningless unless you have forces to defend these fortifications and unless the Communist infrastructure is rooted out and not inside the fortifications. These conditions are very rarely met.

Risner said that one of the difficulties with the pacification process is that the various forces have reversed the real priorities. According to the classical theory of anti-subversion, the Vietnamese Army should man an outer perimeter to keep out hostile forces. Within this perimeter regional and popular forces should clean out the guerrilla forces and the cadres should work in the villages. In fact, what happens is that the Vietnamese Army sits in province towns, outside these towns there is a screen of regional and popular forces, and at the very edge of the perimeter--very often in the most insecure areas--are the cadres. No wonder that the cadres are the weak spot in the pacification problem!

Another difficulty is the enormous power of the Corps commanders, which can thwart any progress. Therefore one difficulty is that it is almost impossible to know whether we are building for an advance or whether instead we are simply building weakness on weakness. ? who had served in Algeria, said we are doing infinitely worse than the French in Algeria. The French had cut off any outside infiltration. They had

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smashed the infrastructure in the cities and they were doing very well in defeating the insurrection in the countryside. We were not anywhere near that point. He was discouraged by the cadre program and he felt that serious retraining and remotivation would be necessary. He thought the CIA support of the cadres was poor; they were not geared up for this kind of operation. AID had the weakest personnel of all. At this point Bruce Maynard joined us, but it was already getting late so he could only make a few quick points.

Maynard felt we were doing too many things simply because they were technically feasible not because they were politically desirable. He thought there was a great danger that our aid would swamp the Vietnamese structure. Specifically, he felt that we should keep three principles in mind: (1) wherever possible we should get Vietnamese to do our projects. (2) We should work through Vietnamese systems. (3) We should have a style of how we did it and seek to involve the Vietnamese in the execution of our program. It would be better to spend less time on building classrooms and more on explaining their use. He felt that if we do nothing else than what we have been doing we cannot possibly lick the problem of rural development.

I then had lunch with the Foreign Minister Tran Van Do and Buy Diem. Lunch was at the house of Tran Van Do. The only other person invited was Tom Corcoran, the political consular of the Embassy, in the

-5-

absence of Phil Habib. The conversation repeated things which Buy Diem
adn Tran Van Do had already told me. It was interesting, however, to
watch their relationship. Technically, Tran Van Do is Foreign Minister and
Buy Diem, the sly operator, is supposed to be his Secretary of State. In
fact, Buy Diem is the McBundy of Prime Minister Ky, and this was
perfectly obvious at the lunch. Even though the lunch was in Tran Van
Do's house Buy Diem monopolized the conversation, gave instructions,
and in general made clear who the stronger person was. He then invited
me for dinner Thursday evening in the presence of the Foreign Minister
without extending an invitation to him, which I thought was a rather rude
gesture.

In the afternoon I spent an hour with Lodge, who had received
some absurd cables from Washington regarding the elections, and helped
him to draft a rather stiff reply. It is amazing what a difference in
assessment exists in Saigon and Washington and how different the
Washington approach is to the situation here.

I then had an appointment with the Defense Minister Co, who
is also Deputy Prime Minister. I had met Co already on my first visit
at a dinner at General Westmoreland's. It is interesting that when one
is somewhat know to the Vietnamese that the conversation becomes much
easier than at first. This conversation too has been written up at some
length by my Department of State escort officer and there is not much

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point in repeating it here. Co is an extremely devious man whose been
rumoured to be engaged in a number of plots and whose ambition is
legendary--almost as strong as his corruption when he was II Corps
commander. Nevertheless there is little doubt that this is a man who is
going to be heard from again.

When I returned to the Embassy, Ambassador Porter asked to see me. He had just received a sheaf of telegrams from Washington in the most preemptory language possible ordering him to carry out certain projects in order to affect the election. Washington does not seem to realize that this election is not a vote of confidence in the government, but is for a constituent assembly. Secondly, that these projects, even if they could be carried out before the election, would not make any real difference in the outcome of the election, since there are no identifiable governmental candidates running. Thirdly, given the corruption, confusion, and inefficiency, to harass our key officials with these petty instructions must demoralize them even further. Porter is a most impressive man--quiet, decisive, very much to the point, extremely honorable, the best type of foreign service officer. He told me of some internal problems in the Vietcong which were fascinating but not suitable for detailed taping.

I then went to the house of Heavner, my control officer, who
had invited a group of junior officers to review the situation. They all
agreed that the situation in the countryside had not significantly changed

[Y]

in the last eight months, except perhaps in Bin Dhin province. The reason was that the cadres were really completely incapable of doing the job for which they were designed. Very few of them stayed in the waiting villages at night, most of them were used for some kind of security function, none had the motivation to work under real pressure. The village, district and province administration was utterly corrupt and the Corps Commanders were warlords. They thought that the resources put into the cadres should be put into the existing civil service. In short they presented the same dismal picture with which I had been familiar on the previous trip.

In the evening I spent alone.

I spend the evening alone for the first time since my arrival in Vietnam.

27 July 1966

I had a breakfast meeting with the Dutch charge d'affairs, whom I had met at a dinner party of Lodge's two evenings previously. He has been in Saigon for fifteen months and I wanted to get some impression from me about his view of the situation. As on my last visit, it is striking how little the foreign embassies really know. They are reduced to seeing each other and repeating the gossip which is so prevalent in Vietnam. They cannot really get out into the countryside since Air Vietnam serves only a few of the towns in the country and since no accommodations exist even if they could get to them. The roads, of course, are almost all cut. The Vietnamese government is so overloaded that they have practically no contact with them and therefore they are reduced to seeing opposition politicians which gives them a rather distorted picture. For whatever it is worth, the Dutch ambassador's views were as follows.

He felt the Kgc government was extrémely weak with no kind of popular support. He thought that war weariness was growing and so was Vietnamese xenophobia. It was his impression that a increasing number of Vietnamese would be ready to make peace at almost any price and he therefore expected a renewal of disturbances which could take extremely violent form. He was especially worried that the next set of riots would take an extremely anti-American aspect. Asked what we should do about it, he said that he recommended a deal with China.

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When I asked him why under the conditions he described China should make a deal and what the deal should consist of, he was extremely vague. He thought that the American aid was mostly wasted and that Vietnamese officials were resenting the constant American interference. This may or may not be true, but I simply am in no position to judge. I told him that the next time I came back here I would appreciate it if he assembled some of these Vietnamese sources for me so that I could form my own opinion.

I then went to the Embassy where I had a meeting with the Australian Deputy Chief of Mission, Fernandes, whom I had seen previously. I wanted to get his impression of whether the situation had improved or way in what the situation had changed. He felt that the situation of the country-side was still grim, but nevertheless a definite improvement was noticeable. Specifically he felt that the security in the secure zones was now much better and that slow progress was being made in the contested areas. I asked him about the view of the Australians about American military tactics and efficiency; a point which he had criticized on my last visit. He said that the Australian military were now extremely impressed by the way the Americans were fighting. They also were of the opinion that the VC were getting into increasing difficulty. As for the cadre program, Fernandes thought that it was at best a peripheral enterprise. The crucial question was military security. If military security was achieved, pacification would follow automatically. If military security could not be

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attained, pacification could not act as a substitute. He mentioned the
following priorities: 1) military security; 2) stability of the government;
3) continuity of the government; 4) pacification. He thought that the
elections were reasonably honest considering the problem that no really
perfectly honest elections are likely in any part of Southeast Asia. He
thought it would be unwise for the United States to invest a major part of
its prestige in defining the electoral process. In his view the Ky govern-
ment was the best available. Its base should be broadened gradually, but
one should not be too precipitate. Having weathered the struggle movement
it was now in a stronger position than in a long time.

After my talk with Fernandes I went to the headquarters of the
7th Air Force to receive a briefing on what is called out-of-country opera-
tions., that is Air Force operations in North Vietnam and Laos, particularly
dealing with interdiction of supplies which I cannot put on tape.

Accompanied by my ubiquitous escort officers from the Embassy
and MACV, I helioptered from 7th headquarters to Hau Ngia , the
headquarters of the 25th Infantry Division. Hau Ngia is located thrifty
miles from Saigon along the Cambodian border. It is a rugged territory
of swamps and rice fields which until six months ago was practically 100%
in Vietcong hands. To the north of it is the famous iron triangle and another
thirty miles to the north is the operation of the 1st Division which I have
described last week. The road to Chu Chi, which is actually the location

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of the headquarters, is in the hands of the Vietcong--or at any rate is not
safe. 25th Division headquarters was plunked down six months ago right
in the middle of Vietcong concentration and it took 50 dead and 400
injured to create a perimeter of 10,000 meters or a headquarters area,
which
is five kilometers across. The night before I got there the Vietcong had
launched 300 mortar shells and recoilless rifle shells into the headquarters
area wounding twenty. We landed at the helicopter stripe and I was greeted
by General Weyand, the very impressive divisional commander. They
drove me around the periphery of the headquarters and to a supply
depot for self-help projects where they were distributing donations from
the people of Hawaii to the people of Vietnam.

I then had lunch with General Weyand and his staff. Then General Weyand gave me a briefing. The 25th Division is located in the middle of a heavy Vietcong concentration. To the north are the famous Ho Bo woods and to the north of those is the Iron Triangle. On the east of it the infiltration trails from the Delta into the highlands. The Ho Bo woods has been the base area for two Vietcong regiments and also the headquarters of the Vietcong Saigon command. The 25th Division first operated to clear the Ho Bo or at least to drive the VC regiments back into the iron triangle. They placed two battalions astride the Vietcong infiltration routes and claim to have interrupted those or at least forced them further west. In addition to this program, the 25th Division is engaged in a major pacification

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effort. They located one battalion in the provincial capital and cleared out the Vietcong infrastructure in an area ten kilometers across. Then they conducted two more operations like it in other parts of the province. The results were that intelligence agents gained the confidence that their intelligence would be acted upon, but the provincial chief saw a quick reaction and that intelligence officers became more active. Many mines and cages were being shown to the 25th Division by children and on the whole General Weyand was extremely optimistic. He showed me that some of the major roads had been opened and how the Division was running checkpoints on other roads.

I then helioptered to the provincial capital. We had to fly at an altitude of 3,000 feet in order to avoid sniper fire. The doors of our helicopter were kept open and two machine gunners with flak suits were sitting on either side training their guns toward. When we reached the provincial capital the pilot came down in a spiral which without seat belts we probably would have been thrown out the door. The provincial capital looks like nothing so much as a provincial beleaguered fortress. There are trenches dug all around it, heavy gun emplacements, and it certainly did not appear anything like the picture the Divisional General had painted to me. I met with the provincial team and I asked my usual questions of whether any progress had been made in the last six months. I was told that twelve additional hamelts had been pacified bringing

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the total to eighteen.out of 131. I asked him in which places the population
would feel free from VC reprisals. Everybody agreed that in all but the
four district capitals the VC would be capable of exacting reprisals. There
are been three assassinations in the last three months--all in recently
pacified villages. 40% of the rice production goes to the Vietcong; 100%
of the sugar cane, which is produced in the area, is taxed by the Vietcong.
I asked about the routes which had been shown to me as open. at Division
headquarters. It turned out that Route 1, which is the main route, would
take two villages a day be safe if two vehicles travelled in convoy. It
was not safe at night. None of the other routes could be travelled by any
thing less than a company and then only if they were previously cleared
by mines. The Vietcong had free rein at night practically throughout
the province. There were four rural development teams; only one
of them stayed in the hamlet to which they were assigned and this was the
hamlet backed up against the perimeter of the 25th Division headquarters.
All the cadres were in district towns, except for this one hamlet. One
was afraid even to stay in district towns because it was engaged in constant
fights with Vietnamese soldiers. It was the consensus that the original
APA and teams were much better. the cadres according
to the provincial teams were not accomplishing the job for which they
were sent into the province. Their major motives were (1) to stay out of

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the draft and (2) to receive higher pay. No cadre teamx was deployed
more than fifteen hundred yards either from a district town or Division
headquarters. There was a desertion rate of something like 25%. It was
very difficult to find out whether the cadres were actually doing anything
or what their real desertion rate was. On one occasion when the cadres
were supposed to be paid, the representative was told there were 43 in
the team, but he could find only 30 in one and was told the other 12 were
on leave. One of the provision provincial representatives
said that one hamlet has been completed by the revolutionary development
team. I said how do you know; he said he didn't know; they had simply
reported it to him. The AID official then showed me the Vietcong tax
rate which was being put on rice and it ranged from 16% for the small
plots to 30% on the larger ones. It was the consensus that as long as the
25th Division continued to operate they could make very slight progress,
although they believed a plateau would soon be reached. The major
improvement was that Americans could go with platoons where they used
to hesitate with a company. They did not think that the elections made a
great deal of difference one way or the other or were they a major issue
in the countryside.

In the evening I had dinner with General Lansdale and his
group. He has now been put in charge of relations with the Vietnamese
government on the issue of elections.--an important role, but I have
my doubts about the capability of his team to carry it out. They talk

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as if the American experience could be literally applied to Vietnamese conditions. While I do not know what the right answer is, I am sure that this is not it. They repeated their rather grim assessment of the situation in the provinces, which did not add much to what I already knew.

One of their key members said that he had just visited Bien Hoa province, where I had been last week, and found that the cadres--where they existed at all--were being used to guard bridges and he had yet to find one that was engaged in civil action work.

The evening concluded with General Lansdale playing some tapes of Vietnamese folk songs and of Vietnamese singing American folk songs in Vietnamese.

28 July 1966

I started the day with breakfast with Colonel Wilson in order to summarize some of my impressions and to go over the personnel. Wilson, in effect, repeated what he had already told me two days previously. He did say Lodge deserved high marks for his handling of Ambassador Porter and General Westmoreland. His drawback was his insistence on handling dealings with Ky himself, with the result that there existed no informal channel to find out what Ky was thinking or of testing ideas on Ky without risking American prestige.

I was called for at Colonel Wilson's by John Burke, my splendid escort officer. We visited the Catholic parish of Father Quyen, who had moved with his whole flock from North Vietnam to the south in 1954 and who had been one of the staunchest supporters of President Diem and violently anti-Communist ever since. Recently he had been maneuvering with the Buddhists and he had also opposed the election. Father Quyen happened to be sick but I saw two of his associates. A full report of the conversation exists elsewhere, but a few impressions may be useful. The two curates with whom I spoke had the slyest and slyly clever faces of educated Vietnamese with quick smiles and ingratiatingly obscure eyes. I asked them how one could explain the fact that they had invited Tri Quang to a cocktail party. They said they wanted to build bridges for the Buddhists to bring them over to the nationalist cause. I asked whether it was possible that Tri Quang might be saying the same

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thing about them to bring them over to the neutralist cause. They said it was an old Vietnamese habit; that after they had been defeated by the Chinese they would then accept voluntary vasselage because they recognized the facts of life and of Chinese numerical superiority. Vietnamese Catholics had to accept the fact of Buddhist superiority and the time after a Buddhist defeat was the best time for a conciliatory gesture.

I asked them about the elections. They said they thought elections were premature and that they would prefer a nominated constituent assembly. None of their candidates had been disqualified, but also none of their supporters had really attempted to run. They would look at the constitution on its merits when it appeared.

I then went back to the Embassy where I had a brief talk with Lodge prior to going to call on Prime Minister Ky. Prime Minister Ky received us together with hordes of newsmen, who took pictures for about ten minutes. When we were finally alone I asked Ky how he visualized the future of the political process. Ky made a rather convincing speech to the effect that the election was the first step on the road to democracy; that it therefore was essential that it be honest and fair and that he was giving instructions to his subordinates to that effect. For example, General Vin Loc in II Corps had nominated a large number of military candidates. General Ky had ordered these names to be striken on the technical ground that they had filed too late. I asked him what kind of a

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constitutional system he favored and he said that he leaned toward a presi-
dentail system of the Korean type. I asked him what candidates he saw.
He said that none of the civilians were really qualified, though former
President Hzu might have a chance. In the military, he ran through the
list and said that he himself was too young and wanted to go back to the
Air Force, General Ko had no ambitions, General Chieu was too old--
leaving only General Thieu. Unhappily the drawback of General Thieu
was that he was very much disliked even by Catholics. Ky was trying to
be his campaign manager and trying to make him more popular, though
the things he was saying were hardly conducive to making him more popular.

If Ky's analysis is correct, the result will be that he will have to be
drafted for the presidency, although in my judgment he would have to
count at least with General Co. I asked Ky how he visualized the outcome
of the war. He said he expected a number of offensives before the
Communists would finally admit that they had been defeated. He did not
foreseen a formal end of the war and he did not expect negotiations; rather
he foresaw a stepping back from large organized military activity to
guerrilla activity. Lodge, who was present throughout the interview,
tended to take a very fatherly attitude toward Ky and on the hold to prime
him toward the answers which were expected. Also he tended to get im-
patient when Ky started to get longwinded and after about half an hour got
extremely restless, because he had one specific matter to take up with
Ky involving a projected trip of Mrs. Ky to the United States. We left

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after about 45 minutes.

I then had lunch with Lodge and we just reviewed the situation.

In the afternoon I called on Ambassaddr Porter and we discussed
the problems in rural development. I told him I thought more attention had
to be given to the regular civil service and he agreed. I discussed Buy
Diem's suggestions with him for studies of the civil service and he told
me I should look into it with McGeorge Bundy and then let him know about
it.

At 4:30 Ambassador Lodge and I called on General Thieu,