HANOI, THE LAO DONG PARTY AND THE INSURGENCY IN SOUTH VIETNAM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01720R000500060014-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 19, 2004
• Sequence Number: 14
• Content Type: SUMMARY

Approved For Release 2004/06/14: CIA-RDP80R01OR000500060014-2
,e Lao Doug Part and the Insurgency in South Vietnam
i. To appreciate the relationship between the Lao Dong Communist
party in Hanoi and the Insurgency in South Vietnamr_-, it is essential to appreciate
the way the Party thinks of its political role and to avoid making the mistake
of thinking that Hanoi's involvement In the southern struggle is a simple
function of the number of ethnic North Vietnamese fighting in South Vietnam.
2. The Lao Doug views itself as the Communist Party of Vies,
not just of North Vietnam, and thinks of the DRV as the "rightful" government
of all. Vietn*' , not just that portion lying north of the 17th Parallel. Four
key members of the Lao Doug's eleven mamber Politburo are ethnic southerners,
including the Party's Secretary-General (Le Duan), the DRV's Premier (Pharr
Van Dong), and the overall politico-military field commander of the war in
the south (General Nguyen Chi Thatch).
3. The 1954 cease-fire agreements negotiated at Geneva effected
a partition that virtually all parties involved thought would only be temporary.
The Lao Dot g's leaders felt cheated of full victory but believed the "southern
half of their country" would soon fall under their control either by elections
or, more likely, through collapse of any viable political structure in the south.
4. One of the provisions of the Geneva Agreements provided for a
"regroupm.ent of forces. " Under this provision the Lao Doug -- which had
absolute control over the Viet Minh movement -- brought to North Vietnam
about 90, 000 ethnic southerners who had fought in or supported the Viet Minh
or were members of Viet Minh families. The Lao long also left behind in
nth Vietnam a covert network of Communist cadre.
5. By the summer of 1956 It was obvious that reunification elections
were not going to be held and South Vietnam, was not going to collapse. The
Lao Doug Central Committee accordingly decided to instigate a campaign of
political subversion in South Vietnam ("illegal struggle") to generate pressures
capable of collapsing the Saigon Government.
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 Approved Per Release 2004/06/14: CIA-RDP80R01 0R000500060014-2
6. Two administrative steps were taken to inaplernent this decision.
First, the stay-behind cadre network was directed to resume political
agitation and organizational activity. Second, the Party Politburo created
an entity known as the "Reunification Department" and put it in charge of
General Nguyen Van Vinh, an alternate member of the Party's Central
Committee and (now) ,& Deputy Chief of Staff of the North Vietnamese Army.
7. General Vish's Reunification Department was given administrative
control over all of the 90, 000-odd 1954 ragroupess, i. e.. the ethnic southerners
who had served with the Viet Minh (and their families) and v. lived in
North Vietnam. These southerners were screened and, in increasing numbers,
selected, indoctrinated, trained and returned to South Vietnam to assist in
building the Communists" southern organization.
8. In May 1959 the Lao Doug's Central Committee decided to move
from "illegal struggle" to intensive armed action -- a war of national liberation,
a decision formally ratified at the Third Congress of the Lao Deng in September
1960. The scale of Communist activity in South Vietnam began to take quantum
jumps soon thereafter, as did the rate of infiltteation.
9. Until late 1963 or early 1964, the infiltrators dispatched from
Vietnam were virtually all ethnic southerners, trained by the Party
and subject to Party discipline. These returnees build the Viet Gong organi-
nation and still run it today. In their organisational and recruiting work they
played on and appealed to genuine local grievances whenever and wherever
they could and many whom they brought into the movement were not Communists,
but the insurgency itself was under absolute Party control from its inception
and remains so today.
10. The organizational structure of the Viet Cong movement is shown
an the attached chart. It is run through the so-called People's Revolutionary
Party, which is simply the name used by the Lao Doug in South Vietnam. Thus,
there is and always has been a direct, vertical Party command line from the
Politburo in Hanoi to the smallest hamlet cell in South Vietnam.
statement of the relationship between Hanoi and the war
south is based on captured documents, defector and prisoner interroga..
s, agent reports and information obtained through various sensitive
ction methods. We believe the total weight of this evidence proves the
above-outlined ease beyond any reasonable doubt.
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