LETTER TO MR. HAMILTON FISH ARMSTRONG FROM GEORGE A. CARVER, JR.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01720R000500030028-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 12, 2004
• Sequence Number: 28
• Publication Date: May 26, 1966
• Content Type: LETTER

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STAT
May 26, 1966
m r. Hamilton Fish Armstrong
Editor
FOR El FOREIGN AFFAIRS
58 East 68th Street
New York, New York
Dear Mr. Armstrong:
Thank you very much for your letter of 13 May. I read it and its
attachments with considerable interest and very much appreciate your
attitude on this whole business. I have no objection to your quoting my
comments "in appropriate circumstances" if you wish to do so.
With regard to the criticism voiced by Mr. McDermott of "Viet
Report". I shall send you a blind memorandum on the factual matters
involved as soon as I return from vacation. (Ruth and I are leaving for
the Outer Banks for about ten days to get away from children. suburbia,
and all problems related to Vietnam. I shall be back in the office on
the 6th of June.) In general. if these are the most trenchant criticisms
a hostile reader can make, I feel I am on pretty solid ground.
With regard to refugees. I will pull together the exact statistics,
or at least the best available. I am certain, however. that the 120.000-
odd French Union troops repatriated are not included in the 860. 000
civilian refugee figure. though some of their dependents probably are.
Mr. McDermott misses the point that even if his figures are correct --
which they aren't -- it was still the case that over 700, 000 persons fled
North Vietnam (a country which then had a population of about 12 million)
to avoid living under Ho Chi Minh's regime.
As for paragraph 7 of the Final Declaration, all I can do is cite its
text in its entirety. There can be little dispute over the actual words.
Mr. McDermott and I obviously disagree with regard to the precision of
their meaning. On the regrouped Viet Minh. no one really knows the exact
figure. I have seen totals ranging from around 50, 000 to 120. 000. My
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75.000 figure was an educated guess and not offered as a head count.
As you indicate in your letter. the Communists seem to be playing down
the NLF and hence its officers, Including Huynh Tan Phat, and not too
much in the news. If Mr. McDermott has proof that Phat has been
cod, he has access to information that has not crossed my desk.
Phat certainly was the Secretary- General at the time I wrote my manuscript
in February, He was also referred to as such in a 2 May 1966 broadcast
of the F'ront's "Liberation Radio".
t agree that I made uncritical use of exceptionally unreliable
evidence, and would certainly take issue with the specifications Mr.
McDermott attaches to this general charge. The weapons cache figure
(5.561) was taken from the GVN White Paper and was based on its protests
to the ICC. It is true that the Polish member of the Commission, with
support from the Indians, tried to denigrate the GVN'a claim. It is also
true, however. that the departing Viet Minh cached more weapons than the
GVN ever found. My use of the 3,561 figure was intended as an order of
magnitude illustration, not a definitive count.
As for the quotation which prefaces the article,. I was particularly
careful with this one since I knew it would be attacked. The GVN has used
it to illustrate the same point I was trying to make. The GVN, however,
sourced it to a Moscow interview and identified it as being (initially)
published in the Belgian paper Le Drapeau Rouge. I discovered that this
was not correct. As indicated in my article, the remark was made in Hanoi
(not Moscow) to two correspondents of Unita and first published in Units on
1 July 1959. Since the remark was reported by two Communist correspondents
in a Communist paper and has never been denied by Hanoi. I see no reason to
question Its authenticity.
With regard to my "conspiratorial theory of history". I subscribe to
no such general theory. It is a matter of fact and record that the Communist
movement in Vietnam has engaged in conspiratorial activities from its
inception as a clandestine revolutionary organization. It is also a fact that
of the eleven present members of the North Vietnamese Lao Bong Politburo,
eight are charter members of the Indochinese Communist Party and the
other three joined the party within the first few years of its existence.
ealize that the "intellectually honest diepute" clause is a trifle
prickly. It comes. however, at the end of a paragraph and, for that matter,
at the end of a sentence which stresses the complexity of the Vietnamese
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problem and the falibility of confident assertion on many of its aspects.
Nevertheless, I do believe that the particular points cited in my
concluding three paragraphs are not open to intellectually honest dispute
among those willing to recognize and accept facts as facts.
Your general letter of response to complaining critics strikes
me an admirable. It argues my case much more effectively than I could.
Thank you again not only for your letter but for all the help you
have given me.
With warmest regards.
Yours sincerely,
George A. Carver, Jr.
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