LETTER TO MR DULLES FROM(Sanitized)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01731R000400370001-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 16, 2002
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: April 21, 1954
• Content Type: LETTER

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How We Helped Ho Chi Minh
By HILAIRE DU BERRIER
The war in Indo-China today is no accident. Plans
were laid in China in 1941; stepped up by American
aid which went for arming the "agrarian reformers."
In ages past, natives shunned the jungles along the
Seam Rap River of Indo-China. Phantom armies,
they said, swept ceaselessly through the forest led
by weeping queens on shadowy elephants.
Today armies are there but they are not phan-
toms of the vanished empire of the Khmers. Crack
divisions composed of some 120,000 men of Ho
Chi Minh's Red rebels have cut Indo-China in
two and are bleeding France white in both men
and money-one-fourth of her officer cadre and
more money than France has received in Marshall
Plan aid in the disheartening years since World
War Two theoretically closed its ledgers. Aid to
France has thus been more than nullified by the
lone struggle in Indo-China.
But there are ghosts in Indo-China-the same
sort of ghosts that haunt the record of America's
part in the fall of the Chinese mainland. For in
Indo-China, too, the background of the Commun-
ists' rise to power follows a grimly familiar
pattern: an American-fostered propaganda line that
the Communists were agrarian reformers; that
their leader Ho Chi Minh was a "good man" despite
his Moscow training; that forces opposing the
Communists were reactionary and not to be listened
to.
Moreover, in Indo-China, American aid initially
armed the very troops the French are fighting
today. Thus, in the horrible topsy-turvy of diplo-
matic blunders we find ourselves paying 80 per
cent of the war cost in Indo-China to combat a
foe we actually encouraged with our help.
A Lulling Tune
The Institute of Pacific Relations was given a
full report on Indo-China as far back as July 1950.
It was, in effect, a Wedemeyer-like report, de-
tailing the Communist build-up and pointing to
future aggressions. The report was rejected in its
entirety.
Instead, I.P.R. and the American public listened
to a more lulling tune. The pace of the "line" on
Indo-China was set in Harper's Magazine in a
series of articles by Harold R. Isaacs. These
articles, in turn, were the by-product of a reporting
trip Isaacs had just completed for Newsweek, to
which he was then contributing as an authority on
the Far East. Isaacs' line was simple and to the
point-the Communist point: Ho Chi Minh was a
patriot, fighting the evil colonialism of the French.
Isaacs' view aroused a number of readers.
Ho, the man Isaacs defended as a sort of local
saint, was educated in the Soviet's Orient Uni-
versity and then, in 1925, sent to Canton as an
assistant to Borodin. In 1931 the British dis-
covered that he was head of the Southeast Asia
Bureau of the Third International, and expelled
him from Hong Kong. At the time Isaacs was in
Shanghai as a newspaperman certainly in a posi-
tion to know what was going on. Yet, in the
Harper's articles he described Ho as a patriot kept
alive by "honesty of purpose and absence of
illusion."
In 1941 (not 1943 as indicated by U.S. reports
of the "tenth anniversary" of Ho's government in
December 1953), Ho's Vietminh Front first emerged
as a shadow government. It was established, not
in Indo-China, but on Chinese soil. The man who
planted its seeds was a southern war lord named
Chang Fa-kwei. It was his hope actually to take
over the rich provinces of Kwangsi, Yunnan, and
Kwantung and, eventually, part if not all of Indo-
China. Ho, then posing as head of an "exile"
government during the Japanese invasion, seemed
a perfect foil. Chang Fa-kwei "recognized" Ho.
His master plan called for Ho, after American
arms had run off the Japanese, to run off the
French. Then Chang could run off Ho ! The plan
benefited only Ho. Chang Fa-kwei is now in Hong
Kong, himself an exile from both Formosa and the
mainland. Gradually, forces he set in motion en-
circle him.
Within three years Ho's "government in exile"
was given full diplomatic status and established
as a going concern in Luchow. Large quantities
of American arms, from that moment on, were
dumped in Ho's eager hands. He was, of course,
supposed to fight the Japanese. There is only one
instance on record of any friction between the
Vietminh and the Japanese during this period.
It was an incident in an isolated village. Eight
Japanese were killed.
The Japanese were well aware of what was going
on; that Ho would pounce on the French as soon
as the Japanese withdrew. So it was to Ho and his
American-equipped forces that the Japanese sur-
rendered their arms when they gave up in North-
ern Indo-China.
After V-J Day American officers ar ivaa
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of our opinion makers and politicians to admit
their past blunders and lack of principle.
In general the American press, too, avoids re-
examining the past in favor of preserving the
illusion that Roosevelt's "unconditional surrender"
policy and the Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam agree-
ments were justified. The danger which results
from this pretense is that the, public can be
persuaded that future agreements with Moscow
and Peiping are both possible and desirable.
It has already been proved that Mr. Dulles
was wrong when he said, following the Berlin Con-
ference, that the Soviet "alternatives to Western
planning" are so repellent that even France would
recognize the necessity of permitting western Ger-
many to rearm. On the contrary, the French are not
only showing less and less inclination to ratify
the European Defense Community treaty. On March
19, after Dr. Adenauer's government had managed
to persuade the Bonn Parliament to amend the Con-
stitution to permit German rearmament for the
defense of Europe, the Allied High Commissioners
intervened at French insistence to delay President
Heuss' signature to the constitutional amendment.
Finally, France was persuaded to withdraw her
veto on condition that Germany should never re-
arm except within the confines of the EDC treaty.
France would never have dared to take such
action were it not for the encouragement given
at Berlin to the French politicians who want peace
at any price in Indo-China, and who, having never
liked the European Defense treaty, would be de-
lighted to sacrifice it for the sake of an entente
with Moscow and Peiping.
As the New York Times said in an editorial
February 25: "The Geneva Conference can become
a trap only if France permits herself to be lured
into abandonment of the European Defense Com-
munity and her own safety in return for a `peace'
in Indo-China that can be broken the next day."
The one thing wrong with this statement is
the word "only." For, as the New York Times'
own Paris correspondent reported on March 21,
U. S. officials have "reluctantly come to the con-
clusion that the French government wants to
preserve the European Defense Community issue
as a bargaining point at Geneva," on the assump-
tion that throwing EDC into the discard will
be "the price exacted for a settlement in Indo-
China."
At Geneva Mr. Dulles will have to contend not
only with the French appeasers. He will also face
the more formidable opposition of the British
empire. Sir Gladwyn Jebb has publicly stated
that the Chinese Communists should be admitted
to the U. N. provided they "purge themselves" of
their aggression in Korea and Indo-China._ Mr.
Lester Pearson, Canada's Minister of External
Affairs, has declared that we ought to take "a
more realistic, less emotional look" at Communist
China, provided she refrains from any "fresh
acts of aggression." And Mr. St. Laurent, the
Canadian Prime Minister, after conferring with
Nehru, announced in Manila in March that Can
ada must sooner or later recognize Communist
China as "the government that the people want."
Meanwhile Adlai Stevenson has been busy preach-
ing the old Lattimore line, as when he said in a
speech at Harvard March 19: "In Asia Commun-
ism has the advantage of the great weight of
the New China's power and attraction."
Betrayal of Asian Allies
The stage is set for our abandonment of the
Chinese Nationalist Government, and in the
course of time, also of Syngman Rhee. The be-
trayal, urged upon us by the British and French,
need not take the obvious form of recognition of
the Peiping government and its admission to the
U. N. What the Communists want now is not de
jure recognition of Peiping but trade with the
Western world for the purpose of preparing them-
selves to attack and destroy us in the future.
They will be well satisfied if we agree to supply
them with the sinews of war even if we remain
outwardly loyal to our old ally, Chiang Kai-shek.
It is all too obvious that Mr. Dulles faces not
only a hard, but a well-nigh impossible task at
Geneva. He cannot at the same time satisfy Brit-
ain and France and the American people and
Congress. The former are clearly ready to let the
Far East go for a few paper promises from Moscow
and Peiping, making it possible for France to
retire gracefully from Indo-China, and for Britain
to resume unrestricted trade with Red China and
the rest of the Soviet empire.
The Secretary of State's speech on March
29 shows that he will make a valiant effort not
to give way to appeasement pressures. But since
the American people are prepared neither to
risk war now before Moscow is ready to attack
us, nor to appease the Communists for the sake
of peace in our time and to please our faint-
hearted allies, there seems no solution for Mr.
Dulles' problem. He may have only himself to
blame for the impossible assignment he is faced
with at Geneva. However, it seemed to me while
in Berlin during the first two weeks of the con-
ference that Dulles, having first adopted a high
moral and also politically realistic position, was
being forced to climb down from it by Washing-
ton as well as by Paris and London. For instance,
according to information given me by two corre-
spondents who attended his highly select small
press conference on Sunday February 7, Dulles
stated he had had a two-hour conversation with
Washington the day before, and went on to say that
he would go along with Bidault on the Far East.
He is clearly slated to be the scapegoat for
America's irresoluteness and for the shortsighted
selfishness of our Western allies.
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Saigon, Hanoi, and Haiphong. A pair of them as-
signed to investigate the situation in Indo-China
got in touch with the French "underground" officer
who had written the report on which they were
acting. The officer was in rags. He had no facilities
to entertain them. He had, after all, just been
through a war. So had Ho's men, but, unlike the
French, they had not suffered. Within twenty-four
hours the American officers were firmly in the
hands of a well-primed and sufficiently heeled group
of English-speaking Communists and former col-
laborators who efficiently set about denouncing the
French and praising Ho-in direct opposition to the
demonstrable facts the French were trying un-
successfully to get the officers to heed.
"Guides" and "Translators"
The efficiency of these "guides" was increased
in ever-widening circles as other American mis-
sions lavished their vitamin tablets and K-rations
on them, while the French remained relatively
impoverished. And, as in China, as soon as the
Americans became committed to any part of the
line being fed by the "progressive natives," they
acquired an unshakable vested interest in all parts
of the line. Before long such an officer as Major
Robert Buckley of the 01S8 wrote off all French
charges against Ho as mere gripes, to be ignored.
George Sheldon, a bitterly anti-French observer
to begin with, worked with OSS in the area, then
returned to Saigon as vice-consul. From that van-
tage he wrote letters, official reports, and articles
(for I.P.R.) supporting Ho's cause against the
French. Another American officer, while French
officers who knew the situation watched amazed and
helpless, donated money to Ho and made a stirring
speech on his behalf.
To keep this American support going, Ho used
a device that had served the Communists well in
China. As if by magic pro-Ho translators always
appeared to grab jobs with American missions. A
bright young man named Li Xuan was an out-
standing example.
In his day-by-day work, Li simply told natives
that American aid would come because of Ho. And
for the Americans he "translated" their replies
to any questions as ringing tributes to Ho. What
either side in the conversation really said was
incidental and unknown. After a while Li acquired
G.I. clothes and went off more and more on his own,
linking American aid and Ho for the benefit of the
impressionable natives. Finally, after ",hitch-hiking"
to Shanghai aboard an American general's plane,
he instigated there a rebellion of Annamite troops
against the French. This time he even posed as an
American officer to whip up the fury. A full report
on his activities was greeted by the thoroughly
buffaloed OSS with the comment: "The French are
beefing again."
And so Li went merrily on. From the garrison-
rousing he went to Fred Hamson, bureau chief of
the Associated Press in Shanghai, and made an
arrangement to work as a "stringer" correspondent
in Indo-China. Back home he affixed A.P. war cor-
respondent badges to his clothes and, besides filing
news to the international wire service, again used
a phony American connection to raise Ho's prestige.
When Hamson tried to stop him he simply dis-
appeared.
Meantime, the barriers against any factual re-
ports from Indo-China grew. A North Dakota-born
OSS employee was summarily dismissed on orders
from Washington after warning -against Ho. The
reason given: that the man was a Canadian!
Back in America things were humming for Ho,
too. When a Vietnam-American Friendship Asso-
ciation held a banquet in New York in 1948 (and
it must be recalled that Vietnam, today, is anti-
thetical to Ho's Vietminh), the pro-Ho OSS Major
Buckley was on hand to provide his learned views.
Harold Isaacs' was busy, too. After leaving News-
week at about the time of the Alger Hiss trial,
he busied himself as a reviewer of books on the
Far East for the New York Herald Tribune. In
April 1950 he turned up as a lecturer at the
American Academy of Political and Social Science
in Philadelphia. On the same dates the meeting
was also addressed by Owen Lattimore. A year
later Isaacs denied knowing Lattimore.
American Fears Tied French Hands
With war finally blazing, of course, the direct-
support phase of the great Ho Chi Minh hoax was
over. Indirection became the only possibility-a
situation again comparable to the one in China.
In the fall of 1953, as more and more signs
pointed to the building up of the present Red
all-out offensive, French officers debated possible
counter-measures. The situation was desperate.
Public opinion at home was against further sacri-
fices in a lone fight for an area in which little
influence or interest would remain to them if they
won it. While they felt they were staving off the
communization of southeast Asia alone, portions
of the American press continued to oppose such
aid as they were receiving with the cry that
America was perpetuating colonialism.
Specialists on the Far East, led by a former
underground leader in Indo~China, hit on an idea.
Commerce in the Associated States of Indo-China
is largely in the hands of Chinese merchants. It
was their war also. A Chinese general of sufficient
stature to command a following in the border
provinces of Yunnan, Kwangsi, and Kwangtung
was enlisted to form an anti-Red Chinese volunteer
army, take over a sector of the front, and start
hacking his way toward Red China. In return for
arms and support he pledged a guerrilla movement
within these provinces that would cut Chinese aid
from Ho Chi Minh and even harry the Vietminh
APRIL 19, 1954 517
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rear. With Ho's defeat, the Chinese might gather
momentum and roll into Red China. Again Amer-
ican fears of bringing Mao Tse-tung openly into
the struggle tied French hands. As in North Korea
in the case of General MacArthur, we committed
the French to ?a struggle without victory.
In Paris a rumor spread at the beginning of
this year that the fighting would cease with
a direct deal between Washington and Moscow.
Whether the idea was inspired by the Communists
to bring about French inertia while their own plans
for reinforcement proceeded, or whether the forth-
coming Geneva conference is a step toward that
end, it is still too early to say.
Letter from Paris
Bidault's Mistake
By R. G. WALDECK
Only a few weeks ago American diplomats in
Europe believed that the Berlin Conference had
convinced the French that no solution for Europe
was to be expected from talking with the Russians,
and that speedy ratification of EDC was the only
alternative. But it came out quite differently. Opti-
mistic observers here note that the conference had
no effect on the French attitude on EDC one way or
the other. Pessimistic ones insist that resistance to
ratification has stiffened since the conference. My
own observations gibe with those of the pessimists.
This much is certain: the efforts made by Wash-
ington and Bonn to get the French to ratify EDC
before the Geneva Conference have failed. The
Parliament feels that there is no use in beginning
the debate on EDC before the Saar question is
settled and close association between the United
States, Britain, and EDC countries is guaranteed.
As for the Saar question, it looked for a moment
as though a settlement was within reach. Dr.
Adenauer, in his eagerness to bring off EDC, "of-
fered up the Saar to Europeanization in a non-
existent Europe," as one sharp-penned German
journalist put it. However, the French suddenly
raised the ante, and talks have been suspended.
Bidault, it is said, wishes to use ratification as a
trump card in Geneva. Premier Laniel, who has
been in power for nine months, wants to beat the
record of M. Queuille, who stayed in power for a
whole year-but the debate over EDC, he fears,
might spoil it all. Also dampening to the govern-
ment's enthusiasm is the growing suspicion that
only a socialist government, headed by Europe-
minded Socialist Guy Mollet, can bring about a vote
for ratification.
It will be, at best, a hard fight. For the French
feel more strongly than they did a year or so ago
that EDC constitutes a long-term adventure of the
first magnitude. Still, in the end, France is likely
to ratify EDC as being the lesser evil. At least
that's what the public opinion polls indicate and
what most friends of the West hope for. "Just let
them end the war in Indo-China," they say, "and
the ratification of EDC will go through like a
breeze."
But will the Geneva Conference end the war?
While in the United States the conference is con-
demned as a "concession" to the French which
might result in a Far Eastern Munich, the French,
too, have their misgivings about the conference. In
fact, with the exception of M. Bidault and his
friends inside and outside of the Cabinet, almost
everyone seems to fear that nothing good can re-
sult from it. Also, a heated debate is raging both
publicly and privately as to whether or not it was
clever of Bidault to insist on this new confrontation
with the Reds.
Bidault, it is well known, founds his hopes for
Geneva on the apparent alacrity with which Molotov
in Berlin jumped at the chance of a conference on
Asia; and on reports that Mao does not get on with
Malenkov, is sorely in need of economic aid such
as only the West can furnish, and is eager to play
his part in the concert of nations. Thus Bidault
believes that Mao would be ready to stop aid to the
Vietminh in exchange for admission to the U.N. and
economic concessions. But, even assuming that
Bidault knows the score, politically minded French-
men realize that only the United States can fur-
nish what Mao covets. And they think it unlikely
that the United States will abandon her resistance
to recognizing Red China just to end the war in
Indo-China. Not that they approve of Washington's
intransigence concerning Mao. His de facto recog-
nition is inevitable in the long run, they say, and
it is unwise to resist unduly the inevitable.
Although the French have cried "wolf" fre-
quently since the Liberation with a view to extract-
ing aid from the United States, it would be a mis-
take, I believe, to take too lightly the fears they
voice at present. The failure of the Geneva Con-
ference to produce peace in Indo-China might well
result in the collapse of the pro-Western conserva-
tive regime in France and its replacement by the
neutralists, who would end the war at any cost and
delay the ratification of EDC indefinitely.
No wonder, then, that quite a few astute French
politicians consider the Geneva Conference as a
trap, designed to swallow up the Atlantic Alliance,
and as a device to delay and kill the European army
plan. They argue that while there might be a
ghost of a chance for peace in direct negotiations
with the exhausted Ho Chi Minh, it was sheer mad-
ness to expect peace from Molotov. Why, they
argue, should Molotov wish to facilitate the ratifi-
cation of EDC by making peace in Indo-China? It
just isn't his way of doing things, they say, and
they fear that Bidault made a fatal mistake in
letting the West in for the conference.
518 THE FREEMAN
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