U.S. PLANS PROLONGED ROLE IN VIETNAM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01601R000900040001-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 156
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 7, 2000
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: December 20, 1972
• Content Type: NSPR

 Approved For Release 2001/07/27 :'T-01601R000
18 Dec 1972
Fr r M. LMETC)za PIS
he Caret >+ 3, 02 c r on
No doubt some kind. of simulated cease-fire will b;
patched up in Vietnam, and probably before the end
of the year; failure to achieve anything would be too em.
barrassing for the Administration. It will be a militar,
stand-still without a political foundation or, in propel
bureaucratese, infrastructure. So it is quite natural that.
in an adaptation of Clausewitz's famous saying, it wily
be war carried on by other means. A recent report from
Saigon by George McArthur, headlined in the Los Angele.
Times: "Vietnam Future: U. S. Planners Thinking Big,"
gives a printout of the future.
McArthur leads off his dispatch with the not very
surprising news that, while the negotiations proceed bc-
fits and starts in Paris, U. S. bureaucrats in Saigon "arc
confidently using the time to blue-print empires in South;
Vietnam." Some of them have acquired villas there; they
find the climate congenial, and would like to stay on,
enjoying the good life to which they have grown accus-
tomed. It is impossible to get any accurate estimate
of how many U. S.' civilians are hanging out in South
Vietnam with some kind of official connection with
the American Embassy, or the armed forces, or intelli-
gence, or whatever. else in the way of "programs" may
be under way. And if that is impossible, how can any-
one estimate what number of bodies will be required
to carry on a simulated peace? The only thin- certain
is that proliferation is under way; the bureaucrats are
"thinking big." "No single person or headquarters,"
writes McArthur, "seems to be running the show. Things
are just growing, strangely enough, in a somewhat
microscopic replay of the great buildup of 1965." Of
course, microscopic can turn into macroscopic. The
planners, at first stunned by Kissinger's forecast that
"peace" was close at hand, are regaining their vigor and
redoubling their efforts. They intend to stay on.
Clothes may not make the man, but they can make
him look different, and -by all indications such transfor-
mations will be taking place on a large scale. It takes
only a few minutes and some pieces of paper to change
a colonel in uniform into a civilian bureaucrat in color-
ful sport shirt and slacks. Or he may be nominally a
civilian already, a Central Intelligence Agency type, striv-
ing to win the hearts and minds of the people. In ad-
dition to CIA, AID, CORDS and other organizations
whose full names are rarely used, the United States now
has four consulates in South Vietnam. McArthur pre-
' diets that these peace-loving, offices, complete with mili-
tary attaches, State Department political ofncers, CIA
operatives, et at., will be installed permanently 'at Can
gress may want to be in at the finish. Constitutionally,
this is no simple matter. Since we do not recognize North
Vietnam, except for the purposes of killing and bombing,,
an agreement with Hanoi would not be a treaty and the
Senate would have nothing to say about it. But we do
recognize South Vietnam, so if they sign, wouldn't that
constitute a treaty? Some lawyers think so, but it is a safe
bet that President Nixon will not. As Commander in Chief
he can order a cease-fire at his pleasure.
Sen. J. William Fulbright thinks an agreement to end
the war should be submitted to the Senate for its scru-
tiny. But the Senate wants a cease-fire and will doubt-
less be reluctant to appear to be meddling in the inter-
minable negotiations. All the same, the time will come
when the Senate must insist on -a say. "I would assume,"
Senator Fulbright observes, "any agreement would in-
volve obligations to spend several billions of dollars, a
commitment that should be submitted to the' Congress."
And. further, "with these secret agreements, we find so
often that they. have obligations on our treasury or to
send troops abroad, so it seems only fair that Congress.
have a chance to examine them." If Congress hopes to
maintain some degree of control over what happens in
Vietnam after a cease-fire, it should note what is happen-
ing there now. The bureaucrats are "thinking big" and
will no doubt set programs in motion without initial
Congressional approval, and then, as in the past, gamble
that they can induce the Senate and House to continue
and even expand them. So the time for vigilance is now.
J
Tho, Nha Trang, Bien Hoa and Da Nang-"by coinci-.
deuce" the present locations of headquarters for the four
Army corps of the million-man South Vietnamese Army.
Four consulates may be thought a reasonable number,
since in France, with 50 million Frenchmen and hordes
of U.S. tourists, we have five consulates in all.
There is ' also a legal side to this orgy of preparation
for "peageF;' ~~ c bti~ i1 fiMffP80-016018000900040001-1
tically n"otl"i ng to say about e start o t ue war, on-
 Approved For Release 2001/07/27: CIA-RDP80-01601R0009000
LOS ANGELES TIMES
13 DEC 1972
uildup in Vietnarn
President Nixon has reduced the .American mili-
tary forces in Vietnam from almost 600,000 in the
first months of his Presidency to 25,200. The num-
ber now is frozen pending clarification of where the
Paris peace talks are going. But the remaining
:.troops are organized for withdrawal on a 57-day
-schedule to conform with the 60-day limit written
into the nine-point peace plan tentatively agreed on
. =two months ago.
At the same time, the United States is quietly and
-slowly building up its civilian forces in South Viet-
nam, actively recruiting additional personnel, re-
portedly authorizing the transfer of some soldiers
to civilian status, alerting Indochina experts now in
other posts that they soon may be sent, to Vietnam.
Unofficial estimates indicate that a civilian force of
as many as 10,000 Americans is being prepared for
Vietnam.
There is no official explanation because, official-
ly, there is only a denial of such a buildup. But it is
clear from some of the categories being recruited
.that the new band of Americans in mufti will be
doing in the future some of the things that Ameri-
cans in uniform are doing now, including such
-tasks as operating computers for the Saigon milita-
ry command, advising troops in action, repairing,
servicing and perhaps flying combat and transport
aircraft, and assisting with espionage and sabo-
1age.
To put it bluntly, there is evidence that the
'American government has no intention of ending
American involvement. in Indochina, that it is only
working to convert the involvement to the form
that prevailed before the massive buildup and di-
-sect battlefield role of 1965 and 1966.
If this is the intention, it is time for Mr. Nixon to
be very clear about it. It must be explained. It must
-be debated. The ultimate decision must represent
the will of Congress, a national consensus.
As matters now stand, we know of no good rea-
_
son to justify the buildup.
Of course, it can be argued that there are not
enough skilled Vietnamese to operate the sophisti-
cated weapons and instruments of war that were
given.them by the United States. But the point is
that peace, not war, is to be' waged now.
Of course, it can be argued that President Nguy-
en Van Thicu will be weaker without the Ameri-
cans, more vulnerable to overthrow, and it can be
anticipated that there will be cheating on a cease-
fire, and perhaps no absolute peace for years and
years. But it is no more reasonable to propose a
prolongation of the American commitment than to
advocate the right of Hanoi to recruit advisers
from Moscow and Peking.
Aid there must be, aid both to the north and the
south, a reconstruction of Vietnam, regardless of
ideology and political commitment, but not aid that
is a screen to preserve American influence and pro-
long Amnrican commitment.
It is not in the American interest to talk, as
American officials now are talking, of enlarging
the number of U.S. consulates in South Vietnam
and placing them just where U.S. Army corps
headquarters have been operating. It is a travesty
to suggest that the military attache in the U.S. Em-
bassy requires "hundreds" on his staff. There is no
logic to recruiting a 100-man team of Americans to
monitor the cease-fire unless the United States
would be looking for an excuse to reenter the hos-
tilities. It is folly,to leave even a suspicion that the
reconstruction contractors may be operatives of
the CIA.
Mr. Nixon sought office in 1968 and reelection in
1972 on a commitment to get out of Vietnam. That
is what the American people understand is being
arranged in Paris. That is what the American peo-
ple have shown so clearly that they want.
They want to get out'not'just because they are
weary of the war, not just because they now recog-
nize the madness of the war. They want to got out
because they now know that this Js not and never
was their business. It is not for the Americans, it is
for the Vietnamese to decide the future of Viet-
nam-the Vietnamese by themselves, not through
the-mask of a new and clandestine army of Ameri-
cans.
Approved For Release 2001/07/27 : CIA-RDP80-01601 R000900040001-1
 Approved For Release 2001/07/27 : CIA7_ 4 R0009000
By Joan P. R\ocne
Ever since the Supreme Court held
that the relationship between a reporter
and his sources was not privileged (that
is, protected from scrutiny on the model
of the lawyer-client connection), there
has been a great deal of discussion
abort curbs on freedom of the press.
This controversy was intensified when
the Supreme Court held that a Harvard
assistant professor, Samuel Popkin, had
to answer a grand jury's questions on
the Pentagon Papers or go to jail for
contempt. A handcuffed Ponkin was
seen en route to prison. (Ile was sub-
sequently freed.)
There are two aspects of this problem,
one of which has been almost entirely
overloo'.ked. Understandably, emphasis
has been placed on the moral obligation
of a, newsman to protect - a confidential
source. (Or, in Popkin's case, on the
duty of a?scholar to safeguard his infor-
mants.) But very little has been said
about the inherent dangers - to journal-
ism as to schola.rshio - of using unveri-
fiable sources.
Let us look first at the legal issue,
which is historically simple. In the
American majoritarian tradition there
were no inherently privileged relation-
ships. Indeed, the very foundation of a
democratic order is that every citizen is
a cop, that laws are enforced by the citi-
zenry not by the police. This ma or-
itarianism, which somewhat resembled
vigilantism, would only tolerate privi-
leged relationships if they received stat-
utory approval. Given the role of law-
yers in politics, the first privilege to re-
ceive general acceptance was- that be-
tween lawyer and client.
Contrary to supposition, the doctor-pa-
tient and minister-parishioner relation-
ships have largely rested on custom, not
statute. Indeed, a case can be made that
to privide special privilege to the priest
or minister would violate the separation
of church and state. In practice it is
hard to conceive of a grand jury throw-
ing a priest in jail for protecting the se-
crets of the confessional. Ilo.vever, not
more than a year or so ago in New York
a psychiatrist was forced to testify, the
state courts holding (correctly) that only
a. statue could?provide immunity.
The answer to the press' (and Dr.
Popktn's) problem then (as the Supreme
Court pointed out) is an act of Congress
stipulating immunity for the reporter or
the scholar. In the meantime reporters
or professors who choose to protect their
sources just have to take certain risks,
and in the process thank God they are
not dealing with British judges, who
really throw the contempt power around.
But what about the other side of this
matter the growing use of unverifiable
"confidential sources"? Of course, jour-
nalists have done this routinely for
years.
It is a practice I try to avoid because,
-having been one, I are suspicious of the
motives of "high White House sources,"
who are normally trying to play the
press like a salmon. Iio;':ever, with-the
advent of "instant history," we now find
who're volumes which at crucial evhl ?n-
tial points rests on a "confidential
source." Or worse perhaps, on no cried
source wtiatsoever.
Imagine my interest when, in llerbert
Para' is "Eisenhower and the A,tnct-i-
Can Crusades," I learned, that "one of
Dulles' closest confi(lants" had revealed
that Ngo Dinh Diem was "discoverer!"
by the CIA and "rammed" into office in
1954 by John Foster Dulles. Later we
are told that during President'. Eisen-
hower's 1955 heart attack. Dulles was
the "quarterback," that "nothing was
done without. his approval." This is in-
teresting because 1) it sounds like Dul-
les' view of his own role, and 2) it is in
contradiction to what others have said.
Good, let's find out - check footnote
"Confidential source." Thanks a lot.
Parrnet, however, is a small-time op-
erator when it comes to "conficdential
sources." David Halberstam has just
turned out a 6G.5-page book on the Ken-
nedy-Johnson era in which a number of
people are quoted in extraordinary fash-
ion, and even more non-people (a ":John-
son aide," a "Kennedy confidant," etc.)
turn up saying the strangest (hat siag-
ularly useful from Ilalberstam's vicw,v-
point) things. There is not a single foot-
note in the book! I suppose if you can't
heat 'em, join 'em: Did I ever tell you
how Jack Kennedy told me never to-be-
lieve anything ken Galbraith said?
Approved For Release 2001/07/27 : CIA-RDP80-01601 R000900040001-1
 Lk
RAMPARTS STATINTL
Approved For Release 2001/07/27:
0
% A1A 1N90L
Q'I 11, 11 ull!
tho victor marchetti story
by fames Otis
"I'm a scoutmaster"
Marchetti. lie is, in fact,
scoutmaster.
says Victor
more than a
Until 1969 he was executive assis-
tant to the deputy director of Central
Intelligence, Admiral Rufus Taylor.
More recently, he has beer' the subject
of a legal case which could crack open
the darkest recesses of America's clan-
destine government. "I am the kind
of a guy who manages Little League
teams," he goes on. "Well, my scouts
and ball players began to grow up on
me and they became draft age. They
let their hair grow; they changed. Now
I know these were good boys, and
they started to get to me. They began
saying, 'I'm not going to go and get
shot in Vietnam, because it's an unjust
war.' " Doubts, gnawing doubts about
Vietnam and the CIA's role in foreign
affairs. Ile -says that he saw himself
becoming a lifer, an intelligence bu-
reaucrat., and he "didn't want to play
the game any longer." After 14 years
as a spy for America, Marchetti quit.
That was 1969. Now, in August,
1972, in Washington, D. C., he sat in a
Chinese restaurant . known as a place
frequented by CIA agents. Far from
the taciturn and glamorous killer, Mar-
chetti looked stolidly middle class, of
conservative mien and talkative
manner. As he spoke, lie furtively
sized up the occupants of the other
tables and mentally chronicled the
M Fs?.i ?PF
if I was at the Agency. I was going to
dinner parties ... we'd sit around and
talk. In fact, I saw as much of Agency
people as I did when I was working."
But somewhere along the line he
got the notion that he wanted to blow
the whistle on the CIA: "I would go
down to a shopping center and walk
around. For the first time in 15 years,
I began to look at a check-out clerk as
a human being, instead of a check-out
clerk. I got interested in people and
my ideas about the Agency became
firmer and sharj)er, and I began to
written book with his literary agent,
publishers, or wife. It is an injunction
of unprecedented scope-never before
has the government gone to court to
prevent former employees from speak-
ing or writing. At the heart of the case
lies a basic conflict between the First
Amendment guarantees of free speech
and the government's interest in keep-
ing a lid on its various clandestine--and
often illegal-activities. Provoked by
the wave of "whistle-blowing" atten-
dant on Daniel Ellsberg's release of the
Pentagon Papers, the conflict arises
because of official activity which of-
fends the moral sensibilities of rather
ordinary, and very loyal, public ser-
vants like Victor Marchetti. If the Su-
preme Court backs Marclietti's right to
talk, it could open a floodgate for a
torrent of revelations about the ne-
farious activities of American spy
agencies. If it upholds the CIA', it
could cut down on the trickle of infor-
mation which currently keeps the In-
visible Government on its guard.
Aside . from the broader implica-
tions of the case, the CIA has good
reason to fear what Marchetti himself
might reveal about his erstwhile em-
ployers. He is unquestionably the
highest-ranking intelligence official to
threaten exposure of the Agency's
more questionable endeavors. Ile
knows where the skeletons are hidden.
Indeed, Marchetti is given credit for
developing the surveillance techniques
which led the CIA to discover Russian
missiles in Cuba and thereby provoked-
the 1962 Missile Crisis.
As Marchetti tells the story, "After
I was with the Agency for five or six
years, 1 was assigned to the Cuban
problem. This was exciting and per-
sonally very satisfying because another
fellow and I evolved a strange analyti-
cal working tool which we called
crateology. With it we were able to
identify the merchant ships that were
arms carriers.. Over a period of time,
since the Soviets were very methodi-
1 we began to learn which crate
O ~QaWd a SAM 2 and which crate
1Uarchc1li: Blowing the whistle
focus on precisely what was bothering
nie."
Victor Marchetti decided to write a
book. While the process of writing can
be a solitary and private experience, he
could scarcely expect to scribble away,
merrily exposing his former em-
ployers, without it coming to their
horrified . attention. True, the CIA's
record has been afflicted with tragi-
comic vicissitudes, but it can pre-
sumably keep tabs on its own.
Within weeks of his book outline
being shown to various New York
publishers, the CIA obtained a copy
through a source within the industry.
It immediately sought, and received, a
court injunction against any further
revelation of the book'.s contents. The
comings and going of all patrons, pre-
sumably out of Habit. Did he think the
interview was being bugged? "It's not
beyond them," he replied, his face a
mixture of edginess and resignations
It had not always been like this. He
had left the agency on the best of
terms, his boss assuring Win that he
"had a Aip1ottecbFnorOR 1Gase"2O0
the first year I was away, it was just as
from even c iscussing ie as t t
 A profile of Maj. Gen. EdM6riT"artsdalo, the original "Ugly American
is a gray, unassuming man whose validity of their arguments, a
As he walks his poodle along effacement.' Some of his friends ure of literary immortality
Vkfil-
.
the shaded street near his split- sug_est that he has lost much of liam J. Lederer and Eugene lour-'
level Alexandria home, Maj. Gen. his verve since his wife's death dick portrayed him in The Ugly
Edward Geary Lansdale resembles last spring, and he himself con- American as Col. Edwin Barnum
any number of retired officers cedes that her passing has left Hillendale, whose sweet harmon-
pasturing in the Washington sub- him lonely and dispirited. Except ica purportedly stimulated rural
urbs. He is still lean and erect de- for occasional evenings with old Filipinos to oppose Communism.
spite his 64 years, and, like so cronies, many of them Asia voter- Graham Greene, on the other
many military. pensioners, he ans like himself, he leads a rather hand, depicted him in The Quiet
finds life somewhat tame after his secluded existence. American as.-Alden Pyle, the naive
adventurous career. Other friends point out that he
in contrast to the.superan U.S. official who believed that he
But ls who ? repe r c- is weary after years of battling could mobilize Vietnamese peas-
mutated colonels
the - bureaucrats who oppose his un- ants to resist the Communists by
battles dinner table, Lan
were le high conventional ideas, and Lansdale instilling them with the precepts'
dale's c order. . experiences l or he was times of f high a past a himself substantiates that view of Town Hall democracy.
with bitter humor when he says Although the old soldier has
dynamic, influential and often that "''the knives going in don't faded away, the debate lingers
controversial figure who single- seem to hurt anymore." Yet, as lie
handedty managed foreign gov- speaks, it is clear that he still on. Just as Lederer and Burdick
ernrnents and whose behind- approvingly quote their hero ro as
the-scenes counsel helped to burns with a hard flame that is saying that "if you use the right
nearly religious in fervor. His reli- ke you can maneuver any U.S. policy and practice at y, y Y Rer-
critical junctures . in recent his- gion, he explains, is not formal. it son or nation any way you want,"
is his faith that the United States
t? s? Lansdale 's disciples still con-
In the Philippines during the could world have successfully played tend that the United States could
early 1950s, for example, Lansdale policeman by propagating have attained its objectives in Vi-
its political philosophy.
virtually directed the campaign At the core of l ansdale's doc- etnam by developing psycholo gi-
against the Communist-led 1-luks trine is the conviction that Corn- cal warfare methods more effica-
in his capacity as special adviser munist guerrillas can be defeated cious than those employed by the
to Ramon Magsaysay, then that Communists. This view, which
country's defense secretary. In in brushfire wars by "winning the became popular during the Ken-
count not long after, he effec- hearts and minds" of people. In nedy Administration, is best artic-
tively kept South Vietnamese Vietnam, according to this thesis, ulated in the articles of Lansdale 's
President Ngo Dinh Diem in of- the United States should have close friend, Robert Shaplen, the
fice by conspiring to crush his do- exported American democratic New Yorker correspondent in Sai-
rnestic foes while . persuading prlnci plchinlong with sounds, moWne gon, who has long asserted that
Washington to support him.. y ~' the United States and its South Vi-
Later, as the Vietnam war esca- couldn't afford to? be just against etnamese proteges could have
the Communists, Lansdale has beat the Communists by
lated,Lansdale was instrumental in
written. "We had to be for some- preempting the revolution. And
convincing President Eisenhower
n
and Kennedy that the United thiL :sdale's ro osals often ro- just as Graham Greene indirectly
States and its Vietnamese clients ked the fu of Establishment reproved Lansdale by declaring
could defeat the he Vietcong by rely- vo ~' that Vietnamese "don't want our
ing on counterinsurgency tchni- strategists, some powerful white skins around telling them
ques. Some of these techniques, enough to block his, advance- what they want," so his present-
as disclosed in the secret Ponta- rnent. He has also been derided day critics claim that he never ae-
on Papers, have revealed him to as a dreamer whose perception of
e considerably less savory than reality same was, time, though, he, At Washing on n PostrsAs the an ' 1 corre-
thepublic public image of him as an ide- spired a coterie of disciples who spondent and the author of Mao
alist. regarded him as nearly infallible. and China: From Revolution to
Little oA toeVx~Y c teh,'t 2104/Qi ante C 1> RDP80y#1s16AAt2D00900040001-evolution.
characterrr ansc a e ' several years ago in two cele-
apparentinhispresent rnannor. He brated novels that, whatever the Conti :u~0.
f
yil " ], C; J I _J` G_~~`, F4, .71 1 a-, File] OJ
C
37
PARAD
?'ASHING1O,'i MOL
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 I. F. Stone
The pending cease-fire agreement, as so
far disclosed by Hanoi and Washington,
is like a delicate watch., intricately
fabricated to make sure it won't work.
ST TI~T~ NEW YQiii REVIE'/2 OF BOOKS
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No agreement ever had so many in-
genious provisions calculated to keep it
from succeeding. If by chance one
spring doesn't break down, there is
another in reserve that almost surely
will, and if by some unforeseen mishap
that one also should work, there is still
another which will certainly go blooey
sooner or later.
The fragility of the agreement to
end the second Indochinese war is put
in better focus if one compares-it with
the cease-fire which ended the first, at
'Geneva in 1954. The only signed
document that emerged from the
Geneva conference was a cease-fire
agreement between the military com-
mands on both sides. It was accom-
panied by a . final declaration which
nobody signed and to which the
United States and the separate state
the French, had created in the south
objected; then as now the puppet was
more obdurate than the master.
The first Indochinese war ended, as
the second seems to be doing, with a
cease-fire but no political settlement.
The prime defect, the "conceptual"
flaw, to borrow a favorite word of
Kissinger's, lay in the effort to end a
profoundly political struggle without a
political settlement. A cease-fire then,
.as now, left the political problem
unresolved and thus led inevitably to a
resumption of the conflict. It will be a
miracle if the new cease-fire does not
breed another, a third, Indochinese
war.
A political solution was left to
inah"ana and "free elections." But the
-Geneva cease-fire agreement, dis-
appointing as its results proved to be,
was far more precise in its promise of
free elections than is the new cease-
f- if - a firm ft ite.-tiny. 1956-for
all persons who, having in any
way contributed- to the political
and armed struggle between the
two parties, have been arrested for
that reason and have been kept in
detention by either party during
the period of hostilities. I -
The new cease-fire agreement gives him
far more power than he would have
had under the proposals he and Nixon
made jointly in January. Under Point 3
of those proposals, there was to have
been "a free and democratic presi-
dential [my italics] election" in South
Vietnam within six months. One
month before the election, Thieu and
Nobody knows how many thousands his vice president were to resign. The
of political prisoners are in Thicu's president of the senate was to head a
jails. The most famous is.Truong Dinh caretaker government which would "as-.
Dzu, the peace candidate who came in sumo administrative responsibilities ex-
second in the 1967 presidential elec- .cept for those pertaining to the elec-
tion, the first and only contested one. Lions" (my italics).
rhieu's most notorious instrument for
these round-ups was Operation Phoe-
nix, which the CIA ran for him. A
Saigon Ministry of Information pam-
phlet, Vietnam 1967-71: Toward Peace
and Prosperity, boasts that Operation
Phoenix killed 40,994 militants and
activists during those years.2 These are
the opposition's civilian troops, 'the
Administrative responsibility for the
election, according to those Nixon-
hieu terms, was to be taken out of
the hands of the. Saigon regime and
put in those of a specially created
electoral commission "organized and
run by an independent body repre-
senting all political forces in South
Vietnam which will assume its re-
cadres without which organizational sponsibilities on-the date of the agree-
effort in any free election would be. ment."3
crippled. Arrests have been ii'tehsified
in preparation for a cease-fire.
The fate of the political prisoners
figured prominently in the peace nego-
tiations. The seven-point - program put
forward by the other side in July of
last year called for the dismantling of
Thieu's concentration. camps and the
release of all political prisoners. The
eight-point proposal put forward by
Washington and Saigon last January
left their fate in doubt. It called for
the simultaneous release of all POWs
and "innocent civilians captured
throughout Indochina." The ambiguous
phrasing seemed designed to exclude
po!iti.cals since these were neither "cap-
.tured" nor, in'the eyes of the Thieu
regime, "innocent."
January indicated that the electoral
commission would be free from the
inhibitions of the Thieu constitution,
under which communist and neutralist
candidates can be declared ineligible.
According to those proposals, "All
political forces in South Vietnam can
participate in the election and present
candidates."
How much weaker is the setup
under the new cease-fire agreement.`
There is no provision for Thicu's
resignation .before the election. The
existing government is no longer ex-
cluded from responsibility in holding
the elections; no clear line is drawn
between what the Thieu government
can do and what an electoral commis-
The new cease-fire terms do_ not sion will do: what happens if the latter"
bother with such ambiguity. Dr. Kissin- is reduced to observing the irrcgu-
ger in his press conference of October larities of the former? Thieu will
26 seemed to take satisfaction in continue to be in control of the army
the fact that the return of US and the police, and there is no way to
POWs "is not conditional on the keep him from using them to harass
disposition of Vietnamese prisoners in the o
osition and herd the voters.
pp
Vietnamese jails." Their future, he instead of an electoral commission,
the new agreement would set up a
tripartite Council of National Recon-
ciliation and Concord for much the
ternees"; Appr'4?edge!:FStrt l@rdlaea2O01 7V1~eCgALFgD1P'BO-01601 R000900040001-1
political prisoners liy defining civilian This is only one of the many built-in
internees as vetoes by which Thieu can block free
LL-4 VU 1!-41.16? ~t'"v.-.__ -"'-? --' .
of the elections was "to bring about namese parties," i.e., between Thieu
the unification of Vietnam'.'; provided and the PRG. So the politicals will
for the release within thirty days not stay in jail until Thieu agrees to let
only of POWs but of "civilian in- then' out. This may. easily coincide
coji
 PARIS, LE NOUVEL OBSERVATELTi
27 Nov - 3.Dec 1972
Approved For Release 2001/07/27 : CIA-RDP80-01601R0009000400
T S.TATI NTL
Michel R. Lamberti e Catherine Lam our ont fait le tour-du monde pour
remonter tortes les filieres qui menent aux vrais patro/ls de la drogue
e Si nous tie venous pas a bout de
ce fleau, c'est lui qui vicndra a
,out de noes ', s'exclamait. le
17 juin 1971, le president Nixon devant
des dizaines de millions de telespectateurs.
Les Etats-Unis ont, en effet, le triste pri-
vilcge de compter le plus grand nombre
d'heroinomanes du monde : plus d'un
demi-million actuellement, dont trois cent
mifle pour ]a scule ville de New York.
Plus de 50 % des crimes perpetres dans
ies grandes villes sont directement lies a la
drogue : on tue pour se procurer ('argent
necessaire a 1'achat d'une. dose d'heroine.
Lc phenomene nest pas seulement ameri-
Cain : tons les pays europeens voicnt croitre
a une vitesse vertigineuse le nombre de
leurs heroinomanes. En France, of ]a pe-
netration de Ia drogue n'a etc sensible qu'a
partir de 1968, on en compte deja vingt
mille. Et le ministere de la Sante estime.
que le pays pourrait compter cent mille
heroinomanes en 1976.
Coaaer fe , smartie
La drogue n'est plus un simple pro-
bleme de police. Partant du Principe dvi-
dent, expose dernierentent a tin journaliste
americain de c U.S. News and World
Report par l'ancicn directeur des Doua-
nes americaines, Myles J. Ambrose, et scion
lequel c on tie pent pas devenir toxico-
inane si l'on ne trouve pas de stupe-
fiants a,, Washington a decide de remon-
-er a la source, c'est-a-dire a la produc-
tion' meme,, de l'opium, dont 1'heroine est
on derive.
Couper ]a source d'approvisionnement
des trafiquants, c'est intervenir dans les
affaires des pays producteurs : de poli-
cic're, la lutte contre la toxicomanie est
devenue politique. Se posant une fois de
plus en c gendarmes du monde k mais,
.cette fois, pour une c'ause dont personne
ne songs a discuter le bien-fonde, ies Etats-
Unis se sont lances dans une croisade que
d'aucuns jugent d'avance vouec a 1'echec.
On produit, en effet, chaque annec, dans
le monde, assez d'opium pour approvision-
ncr Ies cinq cent mule heroinornanes ame-
ricains pendant cinquante ans : deux a
trots mille tonnes, dont In moitie seule-
ment est destinee a l'industrie pharmaccu-
tique. Le reste passe stir le marchc entre
les mains des trafiquants qui approvision-
nent les fumeurs d'opium et les heroino-
manes.
L.es trafiquants peuvent se fournir a deux
sources differentes r
A 1) Les pays dans'lesquels la culture du
pavot est legate et contr6lee par dEtat,
mais oit une partic de la recolte, echappe
aux autorites ad.ninistratives.
0 2) Les pays dans lesquels ]a culture
du pavot est en Principe interdite, mais
qui n'ont pas ]es moyens materiels et poli-
tiques - ?ou le desir - de faire respecter
cette loi.
La Turquie, troisiente producteur mon-
dial, cntrait dans la premiere categoric.
Jusqu'a cc clue le gouvernement d'Ankara
decide de proscrire la , culture du pavot
sur tout le territoire turc a partir de 1972,
25 % de la production d'opium etait de-
tournec vers le marchc clandcstiii. alors
qu'clle aurait du, en Principe, titre entiere-
ment achctee par dEtat. Cc pays n'est pas
le :soul a connaitre pareil problems, une
enqucte effectuee par le service strategi-
quc des renseignements du Bureau des-Nar-
coti.ques americain (B.N.D.D.) dounait,
pour 1971, les chiffres suivants. :
Production Production
(1) ecoulee ecoulee
sur sur
le march6 le marchc
Iicite clandestin
Turquie .
....
150 35 a 50
Inde .......... 1
200 250 .
Pakistan ........
6 175-200
Iran . ..........
150 ?
U.R.S.S. .
......
115 7
Republique
laire de
popu-
Chine
100 ?
Yougoslavie .... 0,83 1,7
Japon ' ...
5 -
Triangle
(Thailande -
d'or
Sir-
nmanie -
Laos)
750
Afghanistan .... 100-150
Mexique 5-15
tt) En tonnes.
Contrairement a ce que l'on pourrait
penser, les c fuites > ne sont pas propor-
tionnelles a l'importance de ]a production
licite ni a Celle des superficies cultivees
en pavot. Elles dependent du plus o
moins grand sous-developpement admini:
tratif du pays concerne et de la capacil
des autorites locales a exercer un contr6l
effectif sur les paysans,. au moment dr
recoltes.
Pourtant, mcme des controles rigor
reux ne suffisent pas a evitcr les detour
nements, compte tenu de la difference di
prix pratiques sur le marchc officiel et st
le marchc clandestin. L'exemple de l'lnc
le prouve, ou, en depit d'un systeme c
contr6le gouvernemental cite en' exemp
par toutes les instances internationales, l
fuites s'elevent a 18 % de la productic
totale. La Yougoslavie laisserait cchappi
pros de 70 % de sa production. Le Paki
tan, enfin, qui nroduit 1e clement six toi
nes d'opiurn, contribuerait pour pres e
deux cents tonnes a l'approvisionnemc
des trafiquants.
Le p.; uvot pfvric t t
Dans une deuxieme categoric dc pa}
]a production de l'opium est Ails',ale.
n'existe evidemment aucun orvanisn
d'Etat charge dc contr6ler une productic
qui, en Principe, n'existe pas. Clandestin
la recolte d'opium est entierement ecoul
sur le marchc parallele.Selon le B.N.D. ces pays contribueraient pour huit cent ci
quante a mille tonnes a l'approvisionn
ment du trafic.
D'autres regions, stir lesquelles on
possede absolument aucune informatic
produisent de ('opium en quantitc apps
ciable : le Nepal et, probablement, la Sys
et le Kurdistan irakien. On sis;nale' au
1'apparition de champs de pavots en Ar rique du Sud. Contrairement a ce que I'
a souvent affirme, la culture du pavot
requiert pas de conditions geographiq ou climatiques exceptionnelles. Elle reciar
seulement une main-d'oeuvre abondantc
bon marchc car ]a recolte demande bea
coup de soins et de minutic.
Nombre de pays qui ne sont pas c
producteurs traditionnels d'opium poc
raient, s'ils le voulaient, se mettre a cuiti%
du pavot.. C'est le cas toui recent du
pon. La production d'opium a, de cc f.
tendance it croitre en fonction de la i
mande et pourrait encore augmenter con
derablement. Des indices nombreux m.
Approved For Release 2001/07/27 CIA-RDP80-01601 R000900040001-1
 STATI NTL
Approved For Release 2001/07T2T,,IEii='8T0-""1i01R000
1 Fufure:
Anan U,.S. Planners
Thinking Big
`. ?Civiiian Advisers, Rising;
Bureaucrats See Country.
Taking on' American Tone
BY GEORGE McARTIIUR
TIrnef Statf writer
SAIGON-While cease-fire ne-
gotiations proceed with questiona-
ble progress in Paris and elsewhere,
the U.S. bureaucrats of Saigon are
confidently"using the time to blue-
print future empires in South Viet-
ham.
As of. now, their vision is unset-
tling.
Although past American expcr
fences in Laos and Cambodia can
hardly be called successful, the plan-
ners are casually using those coun-
tries as partial models for the Viet-
nam' blueprints.. -
President Nixon's senior
wordsmith, H e r b e r t G. Klein,
has denied plans to station "either
civilian or military advisers" with
South Vietnam's army after a cease-
fire. He was treading a semantic
tightrope, according to all the
evidence in Vietnam. itself.
The American military population
has at least temporarily levelled off
at about 27,000 men. But the overall
U.S. presence in South Vietnam
once gain has started to slowly
'grow. Civilian technicians have ar-
rived in sit;tlificant numbers and ci-
vilian contractors are stepping up
operations in dozens of areas like
training, maintenance and supply.
lmpossible to Get Estimate
At this moment it? is impossible to
?get an accurate estimate of the num-
ber of U.S. civilians in South Viet-
nam with some kind of official con-
lnection with the U.S. Embassy, mili-
l,ary, intelligence or others.
No single person or heaclquartct?s
fieems to be running the show.
Things are just growing, strangely
enough, in a somewhat microscopic
replay of the great buildup of 1963.
No one seems to expect this civilian
~f
1,f'1 "7Z
(.~ : Ir
minibuildup to get out of hand. But
;nobody has yet said "stop."
Part of the problem is that. Wash-
ington has not stepped in to provide
answers to some specific bureau-
cratic questions.
With Saigon's military warehouses
bulging with liquor, PX goods and
other supplies for some 30,000 men,
the supply officials naturally want
to know "how long?." and, more sup-
plies are en route by ship already.
Planners Regain Vigor
Meanwhile, the planners, who
were stunned by the mid-October
revelation that a cease-fire was near,
have regained their vigor. Having
been frozen out of earlier planning
by the secrecy of the talks, they are
redoubling their efforts.
1 "Plans are proliferating prodi-
'giously," admitted one staff colonel,
who retained a sense of. humor and
perspective despite a tiring and un=ending round of 'committee meet-
n
nb
S
The plans, partial plans, contin-
gency plans and perhaps some wish-
ful dreaming on paper now provide
for a South Vietnam with a pro-
nounced American govermental
cast. While many of the new experts
or technicians (or advisers) will be
wearing civilian sportshirts, the sus-
picion is strong that underneath
they will have dogtags, or at least
retirement papers. And, 'the civili-
ans already here, including many /
Central Intelligence Agen
cy types, will simply
change titles and continue
what they are doing, and
possibly do more.
One'staff officer, already
sporting civilian clothes
much of the time, admits
that the biggest change in
his office will be the remo-
val of some awards and
military knickknacks, in-
cluding a mounted enemy.
AK47 rifle, which would
not fit his "new" identity..
'He also admits that he
.could get different orders
tomorrow, and he halfway
expect8 them,
"To tell you the truth,"
one colonel admitted, "ho-
body can make flat state
ments around.he4?e.".:
The new plans seem in
some measure to be an
outgrowth of this military
insecurity.
When in doubt plan for
cvcrything,!`. joked an en-
listed clerk soon to depart
In the initial days 'fo]-
lowing Washingtoir's an..
nouncement that it had
agreed to a GO-day evacua-
tion. period following 'a
cease-fire, the -U.S. com-
mand was mainly con-
cerned with the crash pro-.
gram to bring in aircraft,
guns and priority military
equipment.
Planning Activities
As the negotiations be-
came more and more ex-
tended, so did the plan-
ning activities at the U.S.
-
Embassy and M ACV
Military Assistance Com- i
inand Vietnam. Recom-
mendations began to load
the coded radio circuits
back to Washington.
In more or less finished
form, a dozen or more ma-
jor plans now exist.
The first is a troop with-
drawal scheduIe, with
evacuation starting the
day after a cease-fire is
signed and extending until
about D-plus-57,'when the
last evacuation' flight will
depart Tan on phut Air-
port (probably to be fol-
Iowed-on the runway by a
.jet landing with mail for
the U.S. military attache's
office).
. Other plans cover setting
up various military at-
tache offices and speci-
fying the troop numbers
needed, the setting up of
`.finance teams (as required
-by U.S. law) to cheek on
Vietnamese use of fn.'liYa-
ry equipment, provisions
to provide military infor-
mation to international su-
pervisory teams and a new
cloak for an agency known
as CORDS-Civil Opera-
tions and Rural Develop-
ment Support.
The CORDS agency is a
scheduled casualty since it
is now largely manned by
military officers and is di-
rectly under the U.S. mili-
tary command. ' As the
chief "civilian" agency for
pacification, CORDS .al-
ways has included many
young State Departnient
officers, although it has
been directed by either a
CIA man or a retired mili-
tary officer.
Approved For Release 2001}MOr?CIA-RDP80-O1601R000900040001-1
STATINTL
J
 STATINTL
STATINTL THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
- Approved For Release 20Q16A -I(Pt -R
Bloodbaths,
.or allegations?
To the Editor:
In his zeal to reassure him-
self and his readers of the
soundness of past literature
on North Vietnam, John S.
Carroll ("After we get out,
will there be a bloodbath in
South Vietnam?", Oct. 15)
violated the first rule of
honest argumentation, which
is to represent with reason-
able accuracy the text which
you wish to refute. Having
chosen my "revisionist" cri-
tique of past and present alle-
gations ? of a "bloodbath" in
North Vietnam as his target,
Carroll manages nevertheless
to avoid reference - with a
single exception--to any of
the specific evidence which
I have offered in the two
publications which he cites.
I object, of course, to his
taking out ,of context my re-
mark that I no longer wish to
rest my case against Nixon's
bloodbath allegations on the
International Control Commis-
sion reports alone, and using
it to conclude that "at least
one of the principal assump-
tions on which the revisionist
history rests is not even be-
lieved by its own author." I
made the remark: in the con-
text of a long, fully docu-
mented study of the North
Vietnamese land reform
which I was then completing.
As I explained to him at that
time, in comparison with the
evidence I had found of a
general distortion of the
North Vietnamese land-reform
cjlmpaign in both primary and
secondary sources available
to Americans, the I.C.C. re-
ports simply receded in
Importance;
As a matter of fact, I did
not and do not "acknowledge
that the original I.C.C. ap- with my study of the land re- loci is that the Communists
proach is weak." Carroll has form. He cites all the usual did not use the word in ques-
completely misrepresented the sources alleging a "blood- tion to mean "execution."
f d , And if Carroll had bothered
nature of the evidence to be bath" in the North (Buttinger
o
essary, therefore, to repeat
it here: From April, 1955, to
February, 1961, during which
time the Diem Government
was actively pressing charges
of Vietminh violations of the
Geneva Agreement with the
I.C.C., the French Government
and Diem submitted only 43
complaints of political re-
prisals in the North alleging
these works do not stand up contexts which ? make this
under careful analysis. An en- clear beyond any doubt.
chapter of my 60-page sal Finally, his flippant dismis-
tire study is devoted, for exam- of the documentary evi-
ple, to an analysis of how dente used in 'my study
Bernard Fall systematically indicates that Mr. Carroll is
misunderstood the socio- simply unfamiliar with sc3ioie
economic background of the arship on Communist affairs.
land reform in arguing that Most of the documents which
it was economically unjusti- I cite, primarily the party
were
l D
a total of 56 incidents of re- fied. But Carroll repeats Fall's
prisal. However, of the first argument that there were no
12-complaints, three were in- "real" landlords as though it
vestigated and it was found lucre unchallenged.
that there was in fact no I have also documented
damage to life or property how Hoang Van Chi's sup-
to the alleged victims. And of posedly "authoritative" ac-
the 18 cases of reprisal by count has been the primary
D.R.V.N. alleged to have oc-
I source for virtually every
newspaper N Jan an,
intended to communicate with
an audience of party members
and general public in. North
Vietnam what the general
political line and specific pol-
icies of the party were during
the land-reform period. These
are precisely the documents
with which any serious
scholar would begin in a
F
ll
d
b
t
t
th
l
d
ncl n
g
a
y o
),
u
u
s
e
an
re or m cam-
of the land reform campaign v
there is . no mention in paign. Moreover, the D.1;.V.N.
--only one involved alleged Carroll's article of this history of the land reform,
loss of life, dependence. . which is based on official pol-
Even more important, dur- But most important, Carroll icy directives and statistical-
ing this same period of time, ignores the evidence that surveys of the land-reform
the population of the North, 1 oang Van Chi's account was period, is in no way incon-
which submitteti m
th
any
ou-
sands of personal petitions to
fixed and mobile teams of the
E.C.C. complaining of viola-
tions of their freedom of
movement, submitted only 41
petitions complaining of po-
litical reprisals. This evidence
thus has nothing to do with
the D.R.V.N. land-reform law
or the I.C.C.'s inability to in-
vestigate airfields. As much
as Mr. Carroll and others
i would like to believe that
mass reprisals were carried
i out against former French
and puppet Government per-
sonnel. the evidence indicates
that the worst thing to befall
the former civil servants, sol-
diers and policemen of the
French regime in Vietnam
was that they were shamed
into accepting the same low
salary that Vietminh cadres
Il
oang van Lm s --loose" D. Gareth Porter,
received. (See Duong Chau,
"The Seventeenth Parallel," translation of Vo Nguyen Research Associate 1.R.EJL,
Saigon, 1958, p. ? 147.) The Giap's statement by citing Cornell University
former resistance fighters in the opinions of unnamed ex- Ithaca, N. Y.
South Vietnam did not fare perts that the Communists
so well during the same normally used the terms in
period question as euphemisms for
terror and execution. But re-
I am eve
. d
n more
.sap-
nointed that Mr_ Carroll diet gardless of the opinions of
written for the explicit pur- sistent with these earlier
pose of advancing a propa- documents.
ganda campaign against the As for the estimate of E.0O
D.R.V.N. behind which were. to 2,500 executions during the
the U.S. and the South land reform, which I have
Vietnamese Governments: the suggested on the basis of the
repeated instances in which available data, it is entirely
Chi fabricated evidence where consistent, as I point out in
none existed for a policy of the study, with statistics on
massive executions of inno- death sentences in several
cent people; Chi's close rela- provinces in the North dur-
tionship with the U.S. and ing the land reform-statis-
Saigon propaganda organs tics published by the South
and the C.I.A., all of whom vVietnamese Government.
funded and promoted his Readers of The Times
writings; the significant Magazine who wish to pur-
change between 1958 and sue the subject further may
1964 versions of his charge order. copies of my study,
of "landlord quotas"; and his "The Myth of the Bloodbath:
lack of qualifications to write North Vietnam's Land le-
from personal experience form Reconsidered," from the
about. the party's policy on International Relations of
land reform. E
t A
i
t}
t
ll
C
as
s
a
rojec
,
orne
Carroll attempts to defend University.
C Gilt:,.:::- .I
an "1ArQ V1P6F1Khleg 2 (37/2t7neir.IA4MEB 6il6Mb66W6( l8Clb
Control Co i fission reports- . Van Chi) without even ac- numerous usages o the word
evidence to which he never knowledging that the meth-
specifically refers. It is nec- 1
 1 5 NOV 1072
Approved For Release 2001/07/27 CIA- 601 R000
%RPA L
Blare' In 1.3.J.
"Public Safety Advisors," recruited primarily from the F131,
Th
ese
the CIA and military police units, work closely with the National
Police Directorate and Internal Security Bureau in Saigon. the
National Police "Special Branch" (political police), and ssi[h
Operation phoenix personnel assigned to the hundreds of provincial
and district "interrogation centers" where political suspects are
routinely beaten and tortured before being shipped to Con- Son
prison island.
"These acts isory activities are accompanied by lavish subsidies and
grants of police materiel, sshich have turned the South Vietnamese
aratus into one of the largest and most heasily anted
a
li
pp
po
ce
t E N 1 f (f' QL1 paramilitary forces in the world. Under Diem, the National Police
force numbered only 19.(X)0 men-a number which at that time \\ its
By Michael T. blare considered sufficient to justify pinning the label of it "police stage"
Under the terms of the peace settlement announced by the on the Saigon gosernnnent.
Democratic Republic of Vietnam and presidential advisor Henry Since 1902, hosseser. the IU.S. has financed a sixfold increase in
Kissinger on Oct. 26. all U.S. military personnel are to be svith`drawn NP strength-to 114,000 men on Jan. 1, 1972. U.S. support of the NP
from South Vietnam within 60 days of the signing of the agreente'nt. under the AID program antcttmted to 585 million between 1961 and
Although many, provisions of the treaty require clarification, the 1971 and additional millions of dollars were provided by the
impression one gets from reading the published text is that the Department of Defense tender Vietnam at appropriations. '} he
entire U.S. warntaking machinery shill be remOsed from Indochina. cost of the Phoenix program, estimated at 5732 million, is totally
It is for this reason that documents recently acquired by the borne by the CIA.
Guardian on the U.S. "Public Safety" program are cause for special It is clear, from the documents made available to the Guardian.
concern. that U.S. aid to the Saigon police apparatus may syell increase in
These documents, the Agency for International Development's future years, if the battle shifts to a political struggle between Thicu
(AID's) "Program and Project Presentation to the Congress" for and his ninny opponents. In the preface to the Fiscal Year (17Y)
fiscal 1972 and 1973, indicate that `4ashington would like to 1'972 AID presentation. it was stated that:
;maintain an elaborate police-support apparatus in Vietnam for' "As one aspect of Vietnamization, the Vietnamese National
some time to conic. Police are called upon to carry a progressively greater bat
This apparatus. supervised by AID's Office of Puihlic Safety in the must share with the Vietnamese armed forces the burden of
St;tte Department. is administered as part of the foreign aid countering insurgency and provide for daily peace and order--tot
program and thus is not identified as a military program. Neser- only in the cities, but throughout the countryside. It is planned to
theless, the Public Safety program is directly tied to the war effort, increase police strength from about 100,000 at present to I2l.(X 0
and is considered a major part of Operation Phoenix-the CIA's during Fiscal 1972 to allosN assumption of a greater burden in the
effort to destroy the political structure of the National Liberation future. The U.S. plans to make commensurate assistance as ailable.-
Front (in Pentagon parlance. the "Viet Cong Infrastructure," or Specifically, AID listed these -activity targets" for the Public
VCI). Safety program in FY 1972:
According to the AID documents, which the Vietnamese are no "Provision of commodity and advisory support for a police force
doubt aware of. the purpose of the program is to assist "the Viet- of 122,000 men by the end of FY 1972, increasing the cap: biiity of
namese National Police (NI') to maintain law and order and local the police to neutralize the Viet Cong infrastructure in coordination
security in pacified areas, combat smaller VC elements and deny with other Government of Vietnam security agencies (under
resources to the enemy." An added function is to help Saigon Operation Phoenix); assisting the National Identity Registration
dictator Nguyen Van Thieu consolidate his control of urban areas Program (NIRP) to register more than I2.0(X),0(X) persons 15 years
by suppressing dissent and crushing all opposition to the Saigon of age and over by the end of 1971: continuing to provide basic ,:uul
regime. specialized training for approximately 20,0(X) police amnuailly;
"The development of an effective National Police and the in- hrosiding technical assistance to the police detention sy tem.
stitutionalization of law enforcement," AID reports, "are important ineludinY, the planning and supersision of the construction 01 '34 jail
elements in pacification and long-term national development." facilities during 1`}71 : and helping to achiese a major increase in the
Launched in 1955 number of police presently working at the s illage les el."
The Public Safety program in South Vietnam was launched in The Fiscal 1973 program sets the same oserall objeetises. but
19,55, when 33 American police instructors arrived in Saigon under calls for a Nast increase in the number of NP officers assigned to the
the cover of the Michigan State University Group (MSUG) to train sillage police posts-front 11,000 in 1972 to 31,000 by the end of
Ngo Dinh Dient's palace guard and secret police in modern 1973.
counterinsurgency techniques. To finance this ntassise effort during the FY 1971-1973 period,
In 1902? the program ssas expanded under President Kennedy's All) asked Congress for an approprinttion of $17.9 million, of which
orders, and administrative responsibility shifted to the U.S. 513.6 million would pay the salaries of the nearly 200 Public Safety
Operations Mission. In 1967, as the pace of the U.S. war effort was A(Isisors. $3.3 million would go for conunodities (11) systems.
accelerated. Public Safety, operations were placed tinder Pentagon radios, patrol cars, tear gas, etc.), and $013.(X10 ssould he used for
jurisdiction through the Civil Operations and Re\olutionarv training several hundred Saigon police officers in the U.S. and other
Development Support program (CORDS). ."third countries."
'i he resident U .S. police staff seas enlarged \Nith'eaclt of these
the Puistratisgchaut Us, l in?jn) with uy, sc fj I7 nten in f~
the Public ie It 1CxIAT a ) 80-016018000900040001-1
190 in 1972. C0 t "t;. d
 BAL1TIL10R IIE7S AMERICAN
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ay Tliat'Will Ne~r ~ottie
Question: Do you think there'll be a day
for anti-Thieu former generals, colonels and '
officials. It is a mark of his potential power
that he has not been forced into oblivion, as has
ne-time premier Nguyen Cao Ky.
The rule of Big Minh, as he is called, lasted
only from Nov. 1, 1963, to Jan. 30, 1969. He was
pushed out by Maj. Gen. Nguyen Khanh. Be
retired to Thailand to raise orchids, but sur-
faced again in Saigon several years ago and
briefly opposed Thieu's election last year! He
dropped out before Election Day with an an-
nouncement that the election was rigged. Since
when the U.S. is not bugged by somebody
named Nguyen, or Duong?
Answwer: Ngo.
Retired Maj. Gen. Ihuong Van Minh, the CIA
puppet who overthrew the South Vietnamese
government of President Ngo Dinh Diem nine
years ago, has cone out against the Kissinger
"peace is at hand" plan. Ile says a ceasefire at
this time, when the fighting is spread all over
the country in small pockets, would be
impoossible to police by neutral forces and the
U.N. Better to have the estimated 150,000 North
Vietnam invaders retire to large regrouping
areas, where they can be more easily watched.
President Nguyen Van Thicu won't budge until
his'-land is completely clear of his enemies
from the North.
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 Approved For Release 2001/07/27: CIA-RDP80-01601R0009000 O. R+_ATL
QUINCY, MASS.
PATRIOT LEDGER
NOV 4 1972,
E 65,785
NO . SECRET WAR
An Associated Press report yes- the "secret wars" in Laos an
terday from Saigon that the United Cambodia.
States is planning to keep a mill- Nobody in the U.S. government,
tary advisory group of American of course, is going to confirm that
civilians in South Vietnam after CIA or er agents will remain
regular military forces are with- behind to do what they can secret-
drawn is disturbing? ly to prevent Communist takeovers
The report quoted military in Indochina. Obviously a number
sources as saying that the ad- , of American civilian officials will
visers would be employed by ci- stay in Laos, Cambodia and South
vilian firms under contract either Vietnam in. various capacities.
to the Defense or State Depart The New York Times reported
ments. this week, for example, "In convey-
Whether such activities would sations in recent days with Prime,
be covered by a Vietnam peace Minister Souvanna Phouma of
-agreement or excluded frond them Laos and others, Nixon has
remains conjectural. There is as stressed that he would seek to con-
yet no signed peace agreement? tinue American economic and other
The. U.S. is insisting upon reach- assistance to Laos, Cambodia, and
ing certain mutual understandings South Vietnam because he believed
concerning the basic accord that is it was important to maintain non-
being worked out. Communist governments in South-
' The implication of this report is east Asia.
quite clear --- the continuation of It would be all too tempting to
American clandestine operations use "civilian" aid officials, for ex-
in Vietnam after the uniformed ample, for covert operations. It
-egulars are withdrawn, the kind would be naive to suggest that
operations being. conducted in the United States have no intelli-
gence agents in Indochina after a
peace agreement. But the U.S.
should not shift its involvement
in Vietnam from an open war to
,an underground war waged by
agents under- cover.
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 Approved For Release 2001/07/27
LIFE
LETTERS,
,r rmaom AND nje CIA
by Flora Lewis
THE POLITICS OF HEROIN IN SOUTH-
EAST ASIA
by Alfred W. McCoy
Harper & Row, $ 10.95
One fact is beyond dispute: heroin
.is flooding into the United States in
sufficient quantities to support an
ever growing number of addicts. Esti-
mates about the drug traffic are unre-
liable, but trends are painfully clear
in mounting deaths, young zombies
stumbling through city streets., crime
to the point of civic terror. There are
? said to be some 560,000 addicts in
America now, twice the number esti-
mated two years a.go and ten times
the level of 1960.
Another fact goes unchallenged:
suddenly, in 1970, high-grade pure
white heroin, which Americans prefer
to the less refined drug more nor-
mally consumed by Asians, appeared
in plentiful and cheap supply wher-
ever there were GI's in Vietnam. The
epidemic was a vast eruption. It took
the withdrawal of the troops to douse
it, for the fearful flow could not be
staunched.
Beyond those facts, the sordid story
of drug trafficking has been a shad-
owy, elusive mixture of controversial
elements. It was obvious that there
must be corruption involved. It was
obvious that there must be politics in-
volved, if only because the traffic con-
tinues to flourish on such a scale de-
spite the energetic pronouncements
of powerful governments. It takes a
map of the whole world to trace the
drug net.
Since the United States suddenly
became aware of the sinister dimen-
sions of the plague and President
Nixon bravely declared war on drugs
(unlike the persistently undeclared
war in Indochina), it has been cus-
tomarvv for U.S. officials to pinpoint
the poppy fields of Turkey and the
clandestine laboratories of Marseille
as the source of most of the American
curse. Nobody denied that the bulk of
the world's illicit opium (some say 70
percent, some say 50 to 60 percent) is
grown in Southeast Asia and partic-
ularly in the "golden triangle" of
mountains where Burma, Thailand,
and Laos meet. But the U.S. govern-
ment insisted, and continues to insist
in the 111-page report on the world
opium trade published in August,
that. this supplies natives and seldom
enters American veins.
Not so, says Alfred W. McCoy,
who spent some two years studying
the trade. And further, it is certain to
become less and less so as measures
which the United States demanded in
Turkey and France take effect in
blocking the old production and
smuggling patterns. This is of crucial
importance for two reasons. One is
that firm establishment of an Asian
pattern to America means that the
crackdown in Turkey and France will
be next to futile so far as availability
of heroin in the United States is con-
cerned. The second is that focusing
attention on Southeast Asia would
bring Americans to understand that
the "war on drugs" is inextricably in-
volved with the Indochina war, and
has to be fought on the same battle-
ground from which President Nixon
assured us he was disengaging "with
honor."
. McCoy, a twenty-seven-year-old
Yale graduate student, worked with
immense diligence and considerable
courage-for the opium trade isdan-
gerous business and the combination
of opium, politics, and-war can be
murderous-to document the facts of
the Asian pattern.
A good deal of it has been common
gossip in tawdry bars of Saigon, Vien-
tiane, and Bangkok for years. But the
gossip mills of Indochina are a long
way from the streets of Harlem and
the high schools of Westchester
County. The general knowledge that
the rumors reflected is a long way
from precise, confirmed detail. So the
Asian pattern had .never come
through clearly in the United States.
Now, in his book The Politics of
Heroin in Southeast Asia, McCoy has
set it down. To show how it devel-
oped, he had to backtrack. The use of
opiates in the United States has a
long history. It wasn't until after
World War I that widespread oppro-
brium, added to growing understand-
ing of the dangers, turned the trade
into an underworld monopoly. But
World War II disrupted the supply
routes. Unable to get drugs, Ameri-
can addicts were forced to quit the
hard way. The market diminished,
and, with a modicum of enforcement
effort and international cooperation,
might have been wiped out.
A single U.S. official act, McCoy
believes, turned that chance around
and enabled the creation of a world-
wide octopus of evil almost beyond
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 DAILY WORLD
ele sTg,-200 %07/27-:- CIA-A[-(1 R000900
By GENE TOURNOUR and TIM WHEELER '
} 1\LJ1f 1\llt.ll, 'JS_V. Va a ?~.......u?.. v.. r.+.. .......
..:ration to'sign a Vietnam peace agreement mounted vis-
ibly today even as the. original Oct. 31 deadline passed in
Paris without the initialing of a treaty.
In New York and Washington, peace activists warned of Nixon pre-
election trickery and the possible abandonment of the agreement.after
Election Day.
"The next week is the most im-
portant of the war," Cora Weiss
told several hundred anti-war
activists who crowded into Hunter
College Assembly Hall last night.
The meeting was held on strategy
.to thwart President Nixon's man-
euvers to sabotage accords
reached on Oct. 8 with the repre-
sentatives of the Vietnamese
people.
"If Nixon is not forced to sign
the nine-point peace accord in the
week before the election, then he
has four more years to sabotage
peace and keep up the killing, Mrs.
Weiss warned;
Seven-day drive
The vigil was scheduled to con-
tinue until 6 p.m. tonight which is
midnight Paris time, the end of
the day on which the U.S. had
committed itself to signing the
nine-point peace accord.
In other parts of the country
similar demands are being ex-
pressed that the American people
prevent Nixon from sabotaging
the chance for peace.
Congressman Parren Mitchell
(D-Md.) in a statement to the
Baltimore Afro-American, now
on the newsstands, declared, "If
reports from North Vietnam are
correct, then every person in
this country ought to be apply-
ing pressure on the White House
to achieve at long last an end to
a futile, wasteful war which we
could not win.
'Thieu must go'
"If indeed President Thieu
stands as the only opposition. to
peace in Vietnam then he must go.
'His administration has been cor-
abandoned after Nov. 7. "Is it a trick or is it a treaty?"
"Our job in the next seven days shouted the marchers to passers-
is to put the U.S. on record in sup- by as they made their way to the
port of the peace agreement vigil site..
reached in principle on Oct. 8."
Mrs. Weiss and David Dellinger,
a leader of the Peoples Coalition
for Peace and Justice, called on
the audience, many of whom were
veteran peace workers, to help
mobilize the city for what they
termed "the supreme test of the
peace movement."
Telegram forms circulated
During the meeting, telegram
forms were circulated that car-
ried the message: "If this is not
an election maneuver, sign the
agreement now." For 25 cents the.
message will be sent to Nixon im-
mediately, the audience was told.
At the- meeting's conclusion at
Reporting on her meeting in 10 p.m., 400 participants, despite
Paris Friday with representatives near-freezing temperatures, mar-
from North and South Vietnam, ched to Nixon campaign head-
Mrs. Weiss said, "It is up to the quarters at Madison Ave. and 53
U.S. peace movement whether or St., and began a vigil in support
not Nixon manages to turn this of the immediate signing of the
chance for peace into just another peace agreement.
election maneuver which can be 'Trick or treaty?'
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cari~il2t1ed
1
 Approved For Release 2001/07/27 : CIA-RDP80-01601R0009000400
SAN FRAIACISCO, CAI,.
EXAM IlY 1+R
E - 204,749
EXAMINER & CHRONICLE
S -- 640,004
0CT2619 `i
Bob Cotes n,e
D.ie Subsidies
If the truth were known -. and that's a pret;,5 prepos-
terous thought in these times ----- we may' have offered
President Nguyen Van Thieu a considerable fortune to.
get lost.
There is precedent. To clear the path for President
Diem we must leave underwritten some or all of Pao
Dai's departure from Vietnam and his subsequent posh
life oft the French Riviera. Before President Kennedy
imeluetantly okayed the CCi A's scheme to unseat Diem, we
offered to send Madam 7iiu and her husband. Diem's,
brother, on a long visit to Paris, all expenses paid, to get
(Diem was incensed. In what must have been the best
interview he 'gave before his murder, he said to Bill
Hearst,, Frank Conniff and this reporter, "How would
President Kennedy feel if I suggested that lie send his
brother Robert and Robert's wife away?")
The U.S. taxpayer was tapped, without his knowledge,
for our buildup of Diem.'s successor, Big Minh, and money
paid to him and the nine other military officers who took
over the Saigon government, among them one Col. Nguyen
Van. Thieii. When Big Minh fled or was pushed to Bang-
kok, where he lived the life of a country gentleman. and
orchid fancier, we unquestionawity supported him.. If Thicu
acts out alive, good old Sam The Man will be picking up
his tabs. Maybe for life.
The bills for the Vietnam war will'still be coming in
for a long time. As President, LBJ pledged that when the
war ended the U.S. would spend a billion dollars rehabili-
tating both the North and the South, We'll spend a lot
more than that, putting back what we bombed away. and
for the ' relief_ of victims on both sides of the DMZ. As for
the pensions of the men who served there. and the pay-,
ment:s to the families of those Americans who died, they
will Iast well into the 21st Century.
You have to be terribly rich to make war, or engi-
neer coups d'etat.
RE 11II11ItlEll ALL THOSE.. nice things the British did
for the gang of American tourists who were stranded at
Gatwick Airport, London, when their U.S. charter plane
company went bust? Happened a couple months ago.The
Americans, 1.22 of them, were a pathetic group. Most of
them were broke at this sorry ending of a nice cheap
vacation. For three days and nights they lived in a cor-
ner of the terminal. Their beds were hard seats or the
floor. '
They were fed by an office of Social Security at near-
by Crawley at a cost of about $750. British travelers,
touched by their plight, gave them money to make phone
calls to their relatives in America, brought drinks, diap-
ers and whatnot. A delegation of the strandees called on
the U.S. Embassy and asked for help but were told that
there are no funds earmarked to cope with a situation of
this type. '
Wimpy International, the firm thai, introduced the
hamburger to Britain, put up the money to fly them
home. Their fourth and final night in England was a
comfortable one, thanks to Grand Metropolitan Hotels,
which put them up and picked up all their bills.
Many of the Americans were tear-streaked with grat-
itude as they boarded their British Caledonian Airways
jet for the trip to New York. They swore that they would
return the money that had been spent on them by the
Social Security Department.
That was two months ago. So far, the office at Craw-
ley has received a total repayment of $27.50.
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 STATINTL
Approved For Release 2001/07/27 ,&g,1MMC 01R0009000400
_-2.4 OCT 1972
In the Absence of Facts, Saigonese
Intoxicate ' '
Selves ?n Rumor
SAIGON, Oct. 23-"Every- not, as commonly thought, ounce the concept of coali?
one is intoxicated by ru- involved Vietcong. Rather, - / -tion government, yet accord-
Mors," a Vietnamese ob- commandos of the U.S. Cell- v ing to the rumors this may,
server said a few hours be tral Intelligence Ageucy come about. At. the .same
fore Presidential adviser were said to be spearhead-
Henry Kissinger left Saigon ing the attacks, hoping to time, warnings of a possible
Vietcong attack on Saigon
for Washington Monday. force Thieu into submission
Indeed, even if Kissinger's at the negotiating table by are still being made.
Six-day visit to Saigon pro- showing him that his mili- Some people have reacted.
duced no known outcome, it tary situation is untenable. by buying provisions in case
has generated a remarkable of attack. Others take serf
quantity of rumors, covering Complexity ;breeds Rumors ously the idea of a cease-
every conceivable turn of The complexity of the ne- fire, and depending on their
the talks. gotiating points has helped point - of view are either
Even in quieter times, Sai- to produce so many rumors. cheered by the1 prospect. of '
on Even which thrives Observers, who include ?gov- an end to the fighting or de-
gon rumors. a arcc . city More often n ernment officials, intelli- pressed by the possibility
Bence experts, politicians, that Communists will be in
joyed than believed, they journalists and cab drivers, the next government. Most,
provide a balance to the had a chance to contemplate go about their business as
bland and sometimes too ob- _ the vagaries of cease-fire, usual.
viously facile announce- For people intimately in-
ments of the government. tripartite government, con- .-
By Jacques Leslie According to one, the recent
Los Angeles Times fighting around Saigon has ners around the 'city de
.
y
But during the last few, stttutional amendments, the volved in. Kissinger s .,vtisit
days tl.le,rumors became ob- makeup of neutralist fac -to Saigon, the six days awei-e
sessional, a psychological re tiaras and predictions by var-
a tense, exhausting tithe.
ious astrologers.
lease. Here was a time, the Halfway through his visit,
rumor-makers seemed to Near the end of the six-
day period, . journalists one journalist who was
think, which when ch the has fate
been n a at seemed to have given up being tempted by juicy r-u-
war for decades was being ? asking for the latest rumors. mors but had no hard 'evi-
determined, yet no one AMeanwhile,they found them- deuce of any kind and found
selves constantly being , himself waiting for any bffi-
knew for sure the substance
decided to asked to explain what was cial word said, ,This is very
The
of the talks
as photographs and plaques, seemed to be who had met
had been removed from his with whom, and for how
living quarters, long. This information was
Rumors had both Kissin- given out by the U.S. ein!
ger and Thicu "winning" the brassy. Just to make sure, a
talks, while just what either few reporters , stood with
had won was another contin- binoculars . on the route
ual topic of discussion. his- from the embassy to the
singer also was frequently presidential palace to check
suspected of having taken official cars as they passed
off for a brief, secret trip to by
Hanoi. As a result, Ameri- All this has had an odd im-
can embassy officials were pct on Saigon residents.
often questioned on the They do not have much ac-
exact time they had last c.c,ss to news, particularly
seen the elusive negotiator. with local newspapers sonie-
Rur aors r1 ne~l~ T -2001 /'d 2mlkzigt J DP$Ui04$01 R000900040001-1
Q~ fib press code. Government ra-
dio and television and ban-
deny in doubt, another was rewarded with oa free
rumor circulated: All his glass of cognac. -
personal mementoes, such - The only certain facts
?-"'??` -1 --- ?-?- When one journalist sat On Monday a small elec-
Rumors Spread down in a Saigon restaurant trical fire broke out in the
A few weeks ago, a rumor for a late dinner, lie was Saigon bureau of a French
spread that the wife of - apologetically approached news agency. A reporter snw
South Vietnamese President by the manager, a French- - it and yelled, "Stop tliefii?e!
Nguyen Van Thieu had left man, who said, "Excuse me. Stop the fire!" Those words
Saigon for Paris with 27 We arc- told nothing. Can also mean "cease-fire"-'in
pieces of luggage. Now, with you tell its what is happen- French. The people around
the talks under way and ing?" The journalist passed hint got very excited, -for iiot
Tliicu's hold on the presi- on what he had heard and haying seen the blaze, tiie?y
thought lie had a scoop. -r,
 W
#VATIUAL GUARDIAN
STATINTL
Approved For Release 2001/07/27 CIA [~c+~~, 9'P'80-~7~ ti"16~v1 914
By Richard E. Ward
A congressional subcommittee has
Charged the Pentagon with failure to
investigate charges of war crimes
carried'out under the U.S.-sponsored
Phoenix program in South Vietnam.
The criticism of the Pentagon was
made in a report by the House of .
Representatives Foreign Operations
and Government Information sub-
committee, which noted that many of
the so-called "Vietcong" killed under
the Phoenix "pacification" program
were innocent civilians. The report
also expressed reservations about
U.S. support for a program that
"allegedly included torture, rr,urder
and inhumane treatment of South
.Vietnamese civilians." -
The report, not approved for public
release by the parent Government
Operations Committee, was sum-
marized in an Oct. 3 UPI dispatch.
According to the news agency, the
Department of Defense refused to
,investigate the charges when they
were brought to the attention of high
officials.
Public release of the cautiously
worded subcommittee report has
apparently been delayed because
members of the full committee are
less than enthusiastic about con-
fronting the issue of U.S. war crimes.
In July 1971 at the time of hearings
that constituted the basis for the
report, two subcommittee members,
Rep. Ogden R. Reid (D-N.Y.) and Rep.
Paul McCloskey (R-Calif.) charged
outright that the Phoenix program
had. been. responsible for "in-
discriminate killings" and the illegal
imprisonment of thousands in South
-Vietnam.
In September of this year, during a
hearing before the Senate Refugee
subcommittee, a top Defense
Department official described the:
Phoenix. program as an intelligence
operation. Ile was challenged by Sen.
Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) in a
surprisingly sharp interchange.
Kennedy asked how the more than
20,000 "Vietcong" were killed and the
witness insisted that the deaths oc-
curred during "military" operations.
"Intelligence operation'?
During the 1971 `hearings the
anti-U.S. resistance in South Vietnam
The program had access to secre
-CIA funds as well as large ap
propriations from the U.S. military an
economic assistance programs.STATINTL
Assassination teams of mercenaries
and U.S. agents who compiled lists of
persons to be assassinated were
secretly, funded.
These aspects of the Phoenix
program were revealed in testimony
before the same House subcommittee
in August 1971 by K. Barton Osborn,
who served as an intelligence agent
assigned to provide information to the
Marines and who also worked for the
CIA Phoenix program. Based in
Danang, Osborn supervised agent
House subcommittee heard testimony
from William E. Colby who headed the
"pacification" effort from mid-1968 to
mid-1971. Colby stated that under the
Phoenix program 20,587 members of
the "Vietcong" infrastructure" were
killed from 1968 through May 1971.
Colby, who had been a top CIA of-
ficial before serving in Saigon on
assignment from the White House,
insisted that the Phoenix program was
"entirely a South Vietnamese
operation," although he conceded it
had been originated by the CIA.
Colby tried to portray the U.S. role
as primarily an "advisory" one, but he
also admitted that U.S. personnel
participated in the naming of suspects
and the capture of prisoners. Ad-
mitting "occasional" abuses-the
assassination of civilians-had oc-
curred, Colby stated that "we put a
stop tothis nonsense" in collaboration
with the Saigon authorities.
With a facade of candor, Colby's
testimony actually was riddled with
lies about the Phoenix program, which
was initiated under President
Johnson and expanded by the Nixon
administration. Essentially,' the
Phoenix. program attempted to
identify and then assassinate cadres
of the National Liberation Front, the
political leaders on a local level of the
networks for 15 months beginning in
1967.
Osborn contradicted Colby's
disclaimers of direct U.S. respon-
sibility for the Phoenix program and
made it clear that U.S. personnel
participated in murders and tortures.
He said U.S. "advisors" were really
directing the program.
Osborn also described atrocities he
witnessed, including seeing Viet-
namese pushed from helicopters, a
practice known as "airborne in-
terrogations." He also described how
Marine intelligence offi:ers held a
Vietnamese woman prisoner in a small
cage at their headquarters and
starved her to death, refusing to give
her either food or water.
These and other examples given by
Osborn provide only a small glimpse of
the war crimes committed by the U.S.
in South Vietnam. The atrocities were
an intrinsic part of the Phoenix
program directed by the highest U.S.
authorities on White. [louse orders.
Obviously the Defense Department is
not going to investigate these war
crimes.
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 Iq9Tr*li.1r ' STATINTL
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Why No Peace?
The men most responsible for the continuing carnage
in Indochina are Nixon, Kissinger and Nguyen Van Thieu,
whose role is explored in a just issued 108-page pamphlet,
"Aid to Thieu," by Le Anh Tu and Marilyn McNabb
of the American Friends Service Committee, 112 South
16 Street, Philadelphia 19102. Backed by 273 references
and notes, the pamphlet is a calm account of tyranny,
oppression and mass murder, carried on with vast
amounts of American money, military aid and the partici-
pation of the CIA. The last paragraph of the text reads:
The demand that the U.S. cease its aid to Thieu
is reasonable from the point of view of Vietnamese
who want peace and national independence. It is im-
perative from the point of view of Americans who
want to bring this country's expensive and bloody
adventure in Indochina to an end.
The Nixon Administration locked itself into an alliance
with Thieu at a time when that seemed the only alterna-
tive to military defeat. With his four "no's," Thicu is
now the principal obstacle to a negotiated peace. Getting
rid of him is the problem of Nixon and Kissinger. If they
persist in keeping Thicu in power no other conclusion can
be drawn than that they are determined to win the war
militarily, regardless of the moral and material conse-
quences, to the American and Indochinese people.
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 STATINTL
Approved For Release 2001/07/27 p~~f9g1601R0009000
OCT '1972
By JOTIN PITT &IAN
If the outlawing of strategic
bombing is not on the agenda
of forthcoming conferences on
disarmament, it should be. The
experience of the United States
aerial warfare in Indochina con-
firms the experience of the Ko-
rean War and the Second World
War that strategic bombing is
essentially a means of terror
and genocide. and that its effect
on the military outcome of a
conflict is minor.
During seven and a half years
of bombing Indochina, the U.S.
Air Force dropped three and a
half times more tons of bombs
than were dropped by all the
Allied Powers in all the thea-
ters of the Second World War.
Yet. a military victory for the
United States and its Saigon pup-
pet regime is not in sight, while
Saigon is now threatened with
encirclement.
In both Korea and Indochina
the U.S. Air Force has had full
command of the air. Neither the
North Koreans nor the Indochi-
nese have been able successfully
to challenge the U.S. control of
their air space. although North
Vietnam's defenses have become
formidable.
In both cases. the U.S. Air
Force slaughtered thousands of
civilians, mainly children. wo-
men and the elderly. In Indo-
china the extensive use of na-
palm, poisonous chemical defo-
liants. and anti-personnel bombs
produced biocidal results. that
is. the extermination of all living
things.
Military analysts draw a dis-
tinction between strategic bomb-
ing and the use of air power as
an auxiliary arm of the army
and navy. The distinction is
pointed up by the contrast be-
tween the U.S. and British use
of air power and that of the So-
viet armed forces in World War
If.
Military historians note that
the Red Army never employed
strategic bombing. but used its
cG m Y,.4
~?u,-7 ii ti: ~d
air power for purposes of aerial
reconnaissance and as a form of
artillery supporting the troops.
On the other hand, the English
and Americans cold-b!oodedly
dropped tons of bombs on heavily
populated cities. as in the case
of Dresden. to terrify the people.
drive the workers out of their
homes. and hopefully bring about
a reduction in the nazi arms
production.
Yet. except for the distorters
of the war's history who falsely
claim that the U.S.-British alli-
ance Ivor the war in Europe. it
is generally known that the nazi
war machine was smashed on
the Eastern Front. And although
the nazis also employed strate-
gic bombing with genocidal ef-
fects against the Soviet Union.
they went down to defeat before
the onrushing might of the Red
Army.
Strategic bombing fails to dis-
criminate between civilian and
military personnel and installa-
tions. hospitals. churches, schools
and the homes of workers and
peasants are wantonly destroy-
ed. Civilians who survive are
driven in flight to refugee cen-
ters. Some eight million or more
Indochinese have now been herd-
ed into such centers or pacifica-
tion zones, where they are sub-
jected to CIA supervision and
control byThieu's police.
What is more. strategic bomb-
ing has been used mainly by
highly industrialized imperialist
powers against underdeveloped
small peoples seeking independ-
ence from colonialism and neo-
colonialism. Nowadays the Por-
tuguese colonialists are using
strategic bombing. along with
napalm. phosphorous bombs. de-
foliants and antipersonnel bombs
pc,lected in Indochina and pass-
ed on via NATO. Their victims
are the peoples of Mozambique.
Angola and Guinea-Bissau who
are seeking to throw off the
yoke of colonialism.
Who knows what small "Third
World" country, striving to
strike off chains of imperialism.
will be the next victim of an
imperialist bombing attack? Will
it be South Yemen, Chile, So-
malia, Burma. Syria, Peru?
Clearly, it is in the interest of
the national liberation movements
of "Third World" countries that
the bombing of strategic bomb-
ing should become part of the
struggle for disarmament.
To claim, as the Maoists (10,
that "Third World" peoples have
no interest in disarmament. is to
speak nonsense. In view of, the
growing poverty gap between the
developing countries and the de-
veloped industrial countries. what
"Third World" country will be
able to construct effective air
defenses against bombing raids
of which the United States. Bri-
tain. France and even South Afri-
ca are capable?
There should be no illusions
concerning the scruples--now or
as along as imperialism domi-
nates U.S. society-of the gene-
rals and politicians responsible
for the destruction of life in In-
dochina. Typical of Nixon was
his hypocritical call for an in-
ternational treaty against terror-
ism at the very moment of his
escalation of the f3-52 strategic
bombing raids against Vietnam.
Approved For Release 2001/07/27 : CIA-RDP80-01601 R000900040001-1
 Sirik Marak; In Tam; ailing Lon Nol:
Letter from Washington.
evert more so. Born in what is now
South Vietnam, he is remembered for
his anti-French and pro-Japanese posi-
tion; his anti-monarchy stand; his co-
operation with the Vietminh; his long
exile in Saigon; and his connections
with the CIA. Although he is currently
Prime Minister, it is not clear whether
he is working for the Lon Nol-Lon Non
combination o.r simply using it for his
own ends. Apparently he has the back-
ing of a group of Pltnom Penh republi-
cans and intellectuals who would rather
have an accommodation with the Khmer
Rouge than see Norodom Sihanouk
back in Cambodia; this group has been
encouraged by Soviet promises that, in
the event. of a settlement, Moscow will
see to it that North Vietnamese and
NLF forces withdraw and that Sihanouk
does not return to the country.
Sirik Matak's position is much clear-
er. Considered an agile politician and a
capable administrator in Cambodian
terms., he has the backing of business in-
terests and some sectors of the military
as well as that of the Americans, the
Japanese and the French. Because he is
a member of the Sisowath branch of the
royal family, the republicans suspect
him of royalist leanings - if not for
war from an armchair in Phnom Penh.
But since he has no political or clan
backing, he would have to fall in with
one of the other contenders for political
power. All Chliloe has little to recom-
mend him; an adviser to Lon Nol, he
served Sihanouk in several cabinets.
Should he be chosen as vice-president,
the post would be deprived of every ves-
tige of power.
SOUTH VIETNAM
Strangling the ICC
By Benjamin Cherry . .41 Saigon: "We are ready for a ceasefire
[but] to secure against the communists
taking advantage of such a ceasefire,
there must be conditions and the most
important is the setting up of an inter-
national control committee." On the
day President Nguyen Van Thieu made
this remark in a speech to government
officials, professors and students at Sai-
gon University's Faculty of Medicine
last week, the last members of the In-
dian delegation to the existing Interna-
tional Control Commission were leaving
Sihanouk, then for himself. Saigon for their new headquarters -
This leaves In Tani and Au Ch.liloe. In Hanoi.
Tam, a former genera], has considerable Friction between the Indian delega-
popular support - especially in the tion and the South Vietnamese Govern-
countryside - because he is a simple rnent came to a head in January when
ly apolitical ~~$~ r s i m li ~,`~~7,q w i v raised its diplomatic mission
exited, Son ;rg, 1'~;. ids position e em 2 `WT (he p by Bins cad o'f c~ c~ lie 9 'f fa'fib to embassy level, while declin .
THE FAR EASTI;IiIN ECONOMIC l' 'VIEW
STATINTL 7 Oct 1.972
Approved For Release 2001/07/27 : -RpP80-01601 R0009000
By Edith Lenart
Paris: President Richard Nixon wrote a
personal letter to his Cambodian coun-
terpart, Lon Nol, shortly after last
month's National Assembly elections,
asking the Marshal to nominate a vice-
president and to include Opposition
.members in the new government. !';drat
had already disturbed the White House
was the fact that Lon Nol had not
bothered to take a running mate: the
Cambodian Constitution invests much
power in the president, and Lon Nol is a
.very sick man. The Americans were dis-
turbed further when Sirik Matak and In
Tam - leaders of the Republican and
Democratic parties respectively - decid-
ed to boycott the poll because they con-
sidered the electoral law unconstitu-
tional.
If President Nixon's demand for a
multi-party government upset the Lon
Nol-Lon Non duo's plan to consolidate
their position, his request for a vice-pre-
sident doubtless gave them splitting
headaches. Apart from Nixon's need to
see a more efficient and representative
govermnent in Phnom Penh, his demand
for a vice-presidential nominee may in-
dicate a desire to prepare Cambodia for
the possibility of a negotiated settle-
ment to the Indochina War.
Tile choice of a vice-president and im-
portant Cabinet figures involves per-
sonal, clan and party interests: who can
be useful, who can be trusted and who
can be manipulated. There would ap-
pear to be four candidates for the vice-
presidency: Son Ngoc Thanh, Sirik
Matak, In Tani and Au Chliloe.
If the political scene in fundamental-
Continu.edl.
 N.AfiON
7: CI &80=t7~;01 R0009,0
STATI NTL
I:^ RE Jr. CGO
Mr. Cook, a long-tune contributor to The Natioii, is the
author of many books, including the recently published The
Nightmare Decade: The Life and Times of Senator Joe
McCarthy. (Randorm House).
T
The. most damning document to come out of the war in,
Vietnam has now struggled into the light in this, election
year' It was indeed a struggle: the disclosures were,
squelched for years by the highest arms of the American
bureaucracy; the pith of the message was ignored by the
Senate.subcommittee, headed by Abraham Ribicofl, which
exposed the PX scandals; the revelations were verified by
one of Life's top journalists-and pushed aside in favor
of the incident on the bridge at Chappaquiddick; the truth
set forth was . too much for major American publishing
houses, and in the end was published in Great Britain,
-coming to the American market on the rebound through
the David McKay Company.
This bombshell is The Greedy War, 'a 2.78-page book
written by the British journalist James Hamilton-Paterson
and detailing the Vietnamese experiences of Cornelius
Hawkridge, a dedicated anti-Communist who spent seveal
and a half horrible years* in Russian and Hungarian prison
camps before' escaping to the United States. I Iawkridgc
and Hamilton-Paterson call the war greedy and. the con-
tents of this book fully justify the epithet. Hawkridge
? was born in Transylvania, the son of a Hungarian mother
and a British father, a. colonel in the Hungarian police
force-, His passionate hatred of communism and the Rus-
sians led him into.protcsts and guerrilla actions-and into
those long years in prison. He came to America believing
all the dogmas of the cold war and eager to aid as a
security ofliper in what he considered a holy crusade.
Paterson writes describing II wkriZf e s MscovericS. "Won-
dering What limits there Were he asked a Vietnamese
sfallholder whether he could buy a tank, Tanks are a bit
difficult right now,' this man admitted, but how about
sonic armored personnel carriers? Or helicopters, of, course.
Or how about a heavy-duty truck?"
What the hell goes on?, Iawkridge thought. And lie
rushed to' tell American authorities what he had ..found.
They were' bland, uninterested. Washington, in its holy
crusade delusion, had concluded agreements with the
South Vietnamese. that tied the hands of any security
agent who tried to put an end to the national, pastime--
wholesale looting. Two provisions were critical: trucks
could be driven only by South Vietnamese drivers; and
only 'South Vietnamese police could make arrests. Even
if an A.nierican security agent like Ilawk idge trapped
hijackers, in the act, lie was forbidden to lay' a finger on
tJiem; he had to call in the South Vietnamese police. And
when they arrived, they simply collaborated in the looting.
Here, in capsule form, are some of the.things Hawk
ridge learned and some of his experiences:
South Vietnam all 'but sank into the sea under the
weight of the tons of black-and-white television sets,
radios, spin, driers, untaxed diamonds and oilier com-
modities produced by a society of conspicuous consump-
tion and shipped off to Vietnam to win. what must . be
one of the most curious wars in history.
.port of Qui Nhon was clogged with shipping, a
fleet that spread out to the horizon, Some of the. ships
waited for months to unload; meanwhile. small boats plied
out to them in the night and' sometimes in the clay; and
so, when they finally reached a pier, some 60 per cent of
their cargoes had vanished.
?jTlie United States shipped enough cement into South
Vietnam to pave the entire nation, but there was a chronic
shortage of cement to extend airfield runways and erect
facilities.. And the Vietcong always had a 'superabundance
with which to build their individual bomb shelters.
T,011 one occasion a truck containing several hundred
TV sets was hijacked, tracked down in Tu Due and turned
.over to the South Vietnamese police. I-Hawkridge went to
reclaim this U.S. property, but was told he would haveto'
get a Vietnamese driver to take the truck away. By the
time he hind found a driver, the truck had been stripped
of its contents right in the police compound. -
One night Hawkridge was following a hijacked truck,
.mystified because the Vietnamese were ripping open pac'i,-
ages in disgust and tossing them into ditches at the roarl,-
side. Hawkridge, kept stopping and picking up the
pael:ages. They were a consignment of aircraft parts for
fighter squadrons at Bien I-Ioa. When Hawkridge arrived
at the air base, lie was hailed almost as a savior because
,several jets had been. grounded for lack of spare parts.
?Another time, l-Iawkridge chard a hijacked truck
right into a compound belonging to the South Vietnamese
Security Police. The panicked driver sped across the com-
pound,'forgetting there Was a river on the other side, and
braked to a halt at the last second with the front wheels
00I11 tS1.lLO
Approved For Release 2001/07/27: CIA-RDP80-01601 R000900040001 -1
The Dominican upheaval in 1965, in which IIawkriclge
could not find the Communists President Lyndon B. John.-
son assured us we were opposing, was the first disillusion-
ment. Then came Vietnam. Haw.kri.dgc's first day in the
field there in 1966 was a shocker. Ile had. his nose rubbed
immediately in the stinking squalor of the refugee camps
of Qu.i, Nhon. More than 2,000 refugees 'Were living in pa-
per shacks built largely of discarded American packing
cases. Three contaminated Wells provided the only drinking
water. ']'here were no sanitary facilities. "The inmates
defecated between the rows of paper homes and the slow'
seep of ordure crept up the pulp walls." Hawkridgc asked
a priest what had happened to all the USAID. "Stolen,"
the priest said simply. "It's taken by the ~Iietnamese Gov-
ernnient.'?
Hawkridge soon discovered that virtually everything
was being stolen. Only the smallest trickle of supplies
and war, materiel being shipped to Vietnam in such
prodigious, mullillillion-dollar amounts ever reached their
intended destinations. The Qui N'11011 marketplace, an' area
of a good-sized block next to the refugee camp, was
stocked with "C-rations, K-rations, drink, clothing, guns,
cannons, shells,. cases of grenades, television sets, washing
machines the mounds seemed limitless." So Hamilton-
 itAt~P/!RTS SS
NN~THD009
----- --- Approved For Release 2001/07/27 ~&Alk&AT0Aq~TT 16~0'IK
UL
a]so bur Iied the paddy and the pcoplc
:c
thereb
Technically, ROl~ indicates their Ira thereby made public what the Amer- houses. They burned the cow pens and
place of origin--the republic of Ko- n government has known for at least
six years. The 1966 document is re- the animals inside too. Cows are ccr-
rea (South Korea); But the Amer-
"
lainly not VC]
(ff)
ront a reugee scans utter the term as if it were plete with these stories of barbarity
Ror The introduction to the document
which Americans have }earned t
k "
h ow
d
h
o
an
, ,
as t
ough it referred to
"
their, physical conditioning and the take in and ignore: notes that no effort has been made Co
o "When they came to the VC-con- ascertain the veracity of the statements
state of their sensibilities: as soldiers made by the interviewees." And AFS
they are brutal, licentious and they get trolled areas . . . they raped?the women
results. Militarily, they are trusted by in those areas. There' were times they quotes former RAND analyst Melvin
billed the women after they had raped Gurtov as saying that the report was
the American high command, Nvliic}r-- a draft circulated for comments . , .
in the current fighting --has assigned them. I heard just recently women
were raped and killed. The people were as opposed to a published study." It
them the responsibility of keeping the would be a mistake to surmise, how-
vital An Khe Pass open and preventing so frightened of the Korean troops,
~' they didn't dart to stay in their hoiltes ever, that this report outlines the full
South `ietnant from being split in half.. ? extcnt.of the U.S.
go'rernmcnl's infor.-
Some 37,000 of these troops are but moved away." (from a 'National'
Liberation Front deserter) station about South horcan murders
presently engaged in South Vietnam. NJ:
Referred to pretentiously as "allies,"
their involvement is said to. arise from
ideological commitment to the cause
of freedom, national self-interest, or
some other self-serving platitude. In
fact, they are latter-day Samurai, hired
guns of the Orient, who have sold their
services to Washington' for the dtira-
lion.
To' be specific, the normal salary of
'a ROK army private is $1.60 a month.
But if-?that private elects to serve in
Vietnam, he can earn 23 times that
amount, or $37.50 a month. In one
day, he earns almost as much as he
would have made in a whole month
had he remained in his homeland--
courtesy, to be sure, of the American
taxpayer. The middleman of this op-
eration is the government of South
Korea, which receives a kickback of
well over $300 million per year for C-1
service.
Such - "allies" are to mercenaries
what a "protective reaction raid" is to
an unprovoked strike and what an "in-
cursion" is to ? an invasion-namely,
the same thing.
For. some lime now, persistent' re-
ports have linked these mercenary Ko-
reaus to brutalities in. Vietnam which
would make Rusty Calley, blush. In
'June, the Alternative Feature Service
(AFS) of Berkeley, California released
a heretofore secret study by.the RAND
-
see why the Koreans should kill 1113
HE AMERICAN SOLDIERS who work by Janes Otis children. 'Kids of two, three, or even
With them in'Victnam speak re- five nr sev-en von- x--'f n'f V(`
.1--, "' - U ,' '?J111V1,11I11GS.
- - -- "".
'
"`... only 50 villagers still lagged
behind. Most of them were women,
children and elderly people. The Ko-
rean soldiers rounded there up in one
place. The people thought that they
were to be evacuated to the GVN-con
trollcd areas by helicopters. . . . The
Koreans suddenly pointed their guns at
the crowd and opened fire. Only two
babies of two and three survived. They
crawled on their mothers' bellies."
(front a refugee)
o ". when the Korean troops
came, they called all the old women
4 nd children down in the trenches to
,come up. Then these people were told
to sit in circles. Afterward, the Ko-
rean troops, machine-gunned them."
(front an NLF prisoner)
o "Everybody agreed that the Ko-
reans were barbarous., They went on'
operations without interpreters going
along. They killed at random without
distinguishing between the ? rights and
wrongs. Some people said it. was be-
cause the VC mixed themselves with
the villagers, and thus the Koreans
couldn't help. making a mistake. I don't
think their reasoning was right. I don't
iIt retn.rm. On the contrary, Amer-
ican officials have received at least
three other major reports on the sub-
ject.
On January-10, 1970, A. Terry Ram-
bo, a graduate student at the Univer-
sity of. Hawaii, told the New 'York
Trines that he had reported the exten-
sive killing of.civilians by South Ko-
rean troops to U.S. Army officers in
Vietnam in 1966, but the information
had been suppressed. Rambo and two
colleagues, Jerry M. Tinker and John
D. Lenoir, were researchers for Hu-
man Sciences Research (11SR), Inc.,
McLean, Virginia, on a refugee inter-
view - project for' the Pentagon's Ad-
vanced Research Projects Agency.
Rambo took the atrocity information
to American officials in Vietnam. He
briefed a "group of ranking American
officers in Saigon about the report."
The result: Rambo was "ordered by a
general officer of the MACV [Military
Assistance Command, Vietnam] staff'
to cease; investigating the Koreans-
and no mention of it was to be made
in our reports."
' The Rambo team
ports, one without atrocity informa-
tion, one with it. This was done, ac-
cording to Tinker, because they "knew
that if our report contained anything
about murders it would be classified
Corporatio+~ppe10t ted Forney?Qy2001/07/27
GIA-RDP80-01601 R000900040001-1 .
cnougb-"Mention of Korean Troop
?Oflti ued
 STATINTL
Approved For Release 2001/0, r eQIA f -01601 R000900040
September 1972
`l'1-i1a 7LD WORLD WAR TWO C-46 hounceca But he rnanaged.to drop clown afrr
mountains on each side. The G-46 vwas'a'ncient, but its skin had been polished
Thut
arrested by his police. In the old imperial city of
Hue, nearly 300 students were rounded up in one
single night and taken Heaven knows where. in
Saigon, a :tilling atmosphere prevails in all eleven
districts. Police Chief Trang Si Tan is flinging
himself about. At police headquarters, all detention
rooms are filled to capacity and in the torture
chambers near the Zoo, the lights are on all night.
The Saigon government needs 200 billion piastres
to rebuild its badly-battered army. Little is left of
American aid, and so slogans are put out for " self-
reliance " and " Vietnar nization. A hundred new
taxes are decreed. Business slumps. It becomes ever
harder tp earn one's bowl of rice.
The nights are still. The streets are empty. A
storm is brewing. In the workers' quarters at Khanh
Iloi and Lo Sicu, the children are singing
To stand on our own fret
And have enough to eat
Let's topple Thieu
And knock down his whole gang.
Saigon under Thieu in 1972 is just like Saigon
under Diem in 1963, say many- people. The same
chaos and tension, the same stifling, unbearable
atmosphere.
There is one difference, though : anti-Americanism,
i.e. the disgust at, scorn for, hatred of and opposi-
tion to the Americans, has become even more open
and widespread.
Over the last five or six years of contact with
GI civilization, " the Saigonese have come to
realize more fully than ever that nothing can be
more precious than the spiritual values of one's
own nation. Material wealth unaccompanied by a
spirit of independence and self-respect only leads to
moral ruin. Many school and college students, who
formerly liked, believed in, and admired the Amer-
icans, now turn against them and enthusiastically
join movements with such slogans as : " Let's go
back to our nation's roots " and " Let's speak to
our compatriots' and listen to them." They want to
cause the stream of the people's strength to gush
forth even more strongly and to immerse themselves
in it.
Here is what a patriotic woman teacher said in
the course of a recent meeting : " How fortunate
that after such a long occupation by US troops our
follow-countrymen still stick to their national baba
silk garments, relish their milk-apples and
mangoes, love their fragrant rice and sweet folk
melodies... How fortunate that neither American
miniskirts, Californian rice, nor GI music have
succeeded in catching their fancy."
n
is beyond r tricve. I is
which has K(J 4r~gor l16`~tled4W1 /a?1 : CIA-RDP80-01601 R000900040001-1
 When, following the Jail of Quaug Iri to the liber- io p.m. Sirens start howling, announcing the
troop , Thieu hp~ to here tr to I roo ra remain
up '-'P89 . 00-4 !
up his trrAM4~ie~at~rUl ~0 i~lcuCl~E
u1 trio streets. Nil nary uu crvr ran po,ua, stalk
tea-houses naturally turned to this topic. People said about. The US embassy is a windowless fortre-;.
to each other : "Nixon is asking for more can- The MACV head uartc?rs is in a bustle. The USAI D
nonfodder, and Thieu has of course' to comply. Now building is astir. The " Independence Palace " looks
is the time for him to repay his debt to the Amer- strangely isolated, as the night descends on Saigon.
ican President. Over the past few years, the Gfs
,
have died by the hundred of thousands for Thieu to T,:c men living in those headquarters, building
remain in the Independence Palace. Now, it is the
turn of Thieu's soldiers to die for Nixon to remain
in the White House." What a penetrating remark !
It hits the nail on the head : many American and
Saigon soldiers have indeed paid with their lives
for the consolidation of two wobbly presidential
seats on either side of the Pacific!
SOS calls keep coming from Saigon generals in
Tri Thien, in the Central Highlands, in An Lou,
Binh Dinh and other places. They are so busy fight-
ing for their lives that they have to put a tempo-
rary halt to their wheeling and dealing. The whole
of that social stratum, which we shall call the
military-contprador?, brcreaucralic clique and which
1talitt~ft ..alt`.Ilte- infamous members of the Khaki
Party, has been thrown into confusion and hetivitd-
erment: For years, they have drawn comfort and
support from American mrnfc,- and troops. Now,
dollars are coming only in driblets and Ill.-Illy GIs
have left. The backbone of that clique is now made
up of the 13 ptippet regular divisions. But seven
or eight vertebrae. of that backbone have alreariv
been smashed. The pillars of the Khaki Party turn
their anxious look to the Independence Palace,
Thicu's residence. They know that if Thieu goes,
nothing can save the lfhrki Party, which has neither
popular roots nor following, from immediate
collapse.
In the sweltering days of this summer, neither
Thieu nor his henchmen. seem to have nn:h confi-
dence left in each other and in their American and
Vietnauacse friends. In early May, T'hieo's wife
again set out on trips to Italy and Switzerland and
the generals began accelerating the flow of their
money transfers to Hongkong and France. At the
booking office of Air Viet Nally at No. i if,, Nguyen
Iluc street,- wives and children of VI Ps are :t1~t PB"ih641 RQO t 4m8Ot~ry step Diem was ad-
how to behave for the Vietminh take- vised by Lansdale who, at one pathetic
they are sometimes referred to as un-
reliable in the communist struggle.
[While] priests in the refugee villages hold
no formal government posts they aie gen-
erally the real rulers of their villages and
serve as contacts with district and pro-
 STATINTL
SR:
SATUFDAY RLV WI
STATINTL April i9712-
Release 2001
/071 7
CIA-RDP8Q-01601 800990
1
^
Gfi 9 t to at a meeting o t e rest ent s over o the Hanoi. region in early
Book Review Editor: ROCIHELLE ciRsm on January 29, 1954. property, money reform, and a three-
Why is this important? Because if day holiday of workers
STATINTL upon takeover.
"
t
d L
1
T
IN TIIE MIDST OF WARS:
An American's Mission
to Southeast Asia
by I'sciward Geary Lansdale
Harper & Row, 386 pp., $12.50
is, therefore, relatively brief, the period
it Covets in the Philippines and Viet-
nam is genuinely important.
There is only one difficulty with In
the Midst of Wars: from the cover to
the final page it is permeated with lies.
That Harper & Row finds it possible
to foist such a package of untruths on
the public-and for $12.50!-several
months after the emergence of the
Pentagon Papers, and years after the
publication of other authoritative
studies, exhibits contempt for a public
trying to understand the realities of
our engagement in Vietnam.
The lie on the jacket describes Lans-
dale merely as an OSS veteran who
spent the years after World War II as a
"career officer in the U.S. Air Force."
In the text Lansdale never offers any
explicit evidence to the contrary. In-
deed, on page 378-the last of the text-
he states that at the very lime Diem
was being murdered in Saigon, "I had
been retired from the Air Force."
For all I know Lansdale drew his pay
from the Air Force and, as the photo-
graphs in his book attest, he certainly
where, between 1951 and 1956, he stuck
close to Ngo Dinh Diem during Diem's
first, shaky years when Washington
couldn't make up its mind whore to
lap as the American alternative to Ho
Chi Alinh. Lansdale's support insured
Diem as the final choice for Our Man
in Saigon. While the book's time span
gel ~ is one \\or
., itsc a
e uses r e-
he day following the distribution of
peatcdly it is "help"-anfl he uses it these leaflets, refugee registration
personally, simulating a Lone Ranger- tripled."
like urge to offer spontaneous assist-
ance. Thus, the first clay he ever saw ,he refugees-Catholics, many of
Diem, ". . . the thought occurred to whom had collaborated with the
me that perhaps he needed help.... I French-were settled in the South, in
voiced this to Ambassador Heath.... communities that, according to Lans-
Heath told me to go ahead." The in- dale, were designed to "sandwich"
formal atmosphere continues when Northerners and Southerners "in a
Lansdale, upon actually meeting Diem, cultural melting pot that hopefully
immortalizes him as "the alert and would give each equal opportunity."
eldest of the seven dwarfs deciding Robert Scigliano, who at this time
t' With the exception of the Pentagon what to do about Snow White." was advising the CIA-infiltrated Michi-
Papers, Edward Geary Lansdale's Further desires to serve inform Lans- gar State University team on how to
memoir could have been the most vale- dale's concern for the "masses of "help" Diem, saw more than a melting
able eyewitness account of the inter- people living in North Vietnam who pot:
nationalizing of the Indochinese war, would want to ... move out before the
Lansdale, a "legendary figure even in communists took over," These unfortu- Northerners, practically all of whom are
his own book, furnished the model for nxtes, too, required "help." Splitting refugees, [have] preeinpted many of the
the Ugly American who, from 1950 his "small team" of Americans in two, choice posts in the Diem government....
through 1953, "helped" Magsaysay put Lansdale saw to it that "One half, [The] Diem regime has assumed the as.
down the Iluk revolution in the Philip- under Major Conein, engaged i(n poet of a carpet bag gol'el'IlI en( in its
J
nines. Ile then proceeded to Vietnam refugee work in the North." dispu?alistsroportion of Northerners and Cen-
ant ' C
h
~~~?~~ " "-La iaeas on now to wage psychological Diem's success against the various
live of the Central Intelligence Agency; warfare to "some nationalists." The sects, Cao Dai, Iloa Hao, and Binh
on page 244 of the Department of De- Pentagon Papers, however, reveal that Xuyen. (At every step Diem was ad-
fense edition of the Pentagon Papers, the CIA "engineered a black psywar wised b L d 1 h
I
ut us at
ohcism.... The
"Major" Lucien Concin, who was to Southern people do not seem to share the
play the major role the CIA had in the
murder of Diem in 1963, is identified in
the secret CIA report included by the
Times and Beacon editions of the
.Pentagon Papers (see SR, Jan. 1, 1972)
as an agent "assigned to MAAG [Mili-
tary Assistance Advisory Group] for
cover purposes." The secret report
refers to Conein's refugee "help" as
one of his "cover duties." His real job:
"responsibility for developing a para-
military organization in the North, to
be in position when the Vietminh took
over ... the group was to be trained
and supported by the U.S. as patriotic
Vietnamese." Conein's "helpful" teams
also attempted to sabotage Hanoi's
largest printing establishment and
wreck the local bus company. At the
beginning of 1955, still in Hanoi, the
CIA's Concin infiltrated more agents
into the North. They "became normal
citizens, carrying out everyday civil
pursuits, on the surface." Aggression
from the North, anyone?
Lansdale expresses particular pleas-
ure with the refugee movement to
the South. These people "ought to be
provided with a way of making a fresh
start in the free South.... [Vietnam]
was going to need the vigorous par-
ticipation of every citizen to make a
success of the noncommunist part of
the new nation before the proposed
plebiscite was held in 1956." Lansdale
modest ly claims tha t he "passed along"
anticommunist vehemence of their North.
em n and Central compatriots, by tvliom
they are sometimes referred to as urr?
reliable in the communist strvt'?gle, ,
[While] priests in the refugee villages hold
no formal government posts they are gen?
orally the real rulers of their villages and
serve as contacts with district and pro.
vincial officials.
Graham Greene, a devout Catholic,
observed in 1955 after a visit to Viet.
nam, "It is Catholicism which has
helped to ruin the government of Mr,
Diem, for his genuine piety has been
exploited by his American advisers
until the Church is in danger of sharing
the unpopularity of the United States."
Wherever one turns in Lansdale the
accounts are likely to be lies. He re-
ports how Filipinos, old comrades
from the anti-Huk wars, decided to
"help" the struggling Free South. The
spontaneity of this pan-Asian gesture
warms the heart-until one learns from
Lansdale's own secret report to Presi-
dent Kennedy that here, too, the CIA
had stage-managed the whole business.
The Eastern Construction Company
turns out to be a CIA-controlled
"mechanism to permit the deployment
of Filipino personnel in other Asian
countries for unconventional opera-
tions.... Philippine Armed Forces and
other governmental personnel were
'sheep-dipped' and sent abroad."
ausdale, two other men, and Allen y ans a e w o, at one pathetic
Dulles are identife strike in Hanoi: leaflets signed by the moment even holds the weeping Chief
Approved oF~*`8920[4{0#1 7 -i>? q}44MPM0~1i?Os1 000810g[,QQiQ'Lti~ arms.) Everything de-
how to behave for the Vietminh take- 1
 Approved For Release 2001/07/27yiA% %01f ff
STATINTL APRIL 1972
a review by Taylor Branch
d The
i
Two fathers of the Vietnam War
published their memoirs in March.*
General Edward Lansdale's In the
Midst of ,'Wars and General Maxwell
Taylor's Swords and Plowshares re-
cord the statements of defense for
men wlio& symbolize the two doctrines
that combined to produce American
counter-guerrilla strategy in Southeast
Asia. More importantly, Lansdale and
Taylor represent two distinct schools
of war supporters-those who saw
Vietnam as a crusade and those who
saw it as a burden.
Lansdale is America's first expert in
counter-guerrilla warfare-the legend-
ary figure who achieved fame in the
fifties by teaching our cold warriors
that the only way to defeat Asian
revolutionaries,, the guerrilla fish in a
sea of popular support, was to learn
how to paddle around a little
ourselves. Mixing modern "psywar"
(psychological warfare) techniques
with James Bond derring-do and the
kind of cultural savvy that later was
coveted by exponents of foreign wars
and foreign aid alike, Lansdale mana-
ged to position himself for exploits
and lever-pulling in palaces and rice
paddies, Asia's smoke-filled rooms.
Lansdale's knowledge of the players
and the bystanders-the French, the
Americans, the local warlords who
were beset with kaleidoscopic person-
al intrigue-helped him contour
Diem's strategy to fit both interna-
tional politics and contending Viet-
namese jealousies.. Lansdale became
mysterious and controversial--two
*In the Midst of Wars. Edward Geary
Lansdale. Harper & Row, $12.50. Swords
and Plowshares. Maxwell D. Taylor. Norton,
$10.
Taylor Branch is an editor of The Washing-
ton Monthly.
can an
novels, The Quiet Amer
Ugly American, are modeled on his
doings. He helped move American
military strategy from the conven-
tional concerns of how you position
your armored divisions, tanks, artil-
lery, and nuclear weapons, to more
political questions like where you put
your psywar leaflets, why you need
pacification teams, and how to - win
the hearts and minds of the people. As
a counter-guerrilla man long before
the fashion, Lansdale contributed
about half the ideas that led to
Vietnam.
General Taylor symbolizes another
idea, flexible response, which, floating
On a common sea of anticommunism
with Lansdale's doctrines, helped
direct troop ships across the Pacific.
At the apparent end of a long,
successful military career that began
at West Point under Superintendent
Douglas MacArthur,Taylor found him-
balanced budget so badly that they
persuaded Ike to stick with a bargain-
basement nuclear strategy.
Secretary George Humphrey wan
Taylor retired from the Army in
1959 to write The Uncertain Trumpet
and thereby take his case for flexible
response to the public, where it way
well-received because most people
were chilled by so much talk about
the bomb during the Eisenhower
Administration. A powerful fear that
nuclear vertigo might draw our leaden
toward the button was activated
especially among liberals, and its nerv(
endings remained exposed until aftc:
the Goldwater-Johnson race in 1964
When President Kennedy and hip
dandies came to Washington in 1961
they regarded Maxwell Taylor as
cultural and strategic ally. Alread}
alarmed at Khrushchev's speech pro
claiming an open season for wars o:
national liberation, the President per
suaded the general to become Iii!
military counselor (when Taylo:
turned down the top post at the CIA
to help the Administration enshrinf
flexible response as official dogma an(
to apply this wisdom in trouble spot:
like Southeast Asia. Lansdale wa
already in Washington, working or
Vietnam, and the Pentagon Paper
record that by July, 1961, 1Lansdalh
self a very dissatisfied Army Chief of presented Taylor with a long, classi
Staff from 1955 until 1959. 'He fied report "in response to your desir+
dissented from the Eisenhower-Dulles for early information on unconven
strategy of massive retaliation (which tional warfare resources in Southeas
essentially promised to nuke the Asia." The two vials were bein;
communists if they made a move poured together, and the Kenned,
anywhere) because he considered it Administration bought both flexibli
unlikely that the Russians would response and counter-guerrilla warfar,
believe our threat to blow up the in a logically compatible package
world if they seized the post office in symbolized by the Green Berets.
Nairobi. Of course, Taylor also had Against the background, of th
bureaucratic reasons to oppose the Eisenhower years, the thoughts of thi
Eisenhower nuclear strategy: the Air two generals appear quite harmonious
Force was getting missiles, the Navy rising to the top of the nc%
was in line for nuclear subs,'while the administration, but the memoirs sho'
Army was getting little but budget that their personalities were sharps cuts. His development of the flexible different. While Taylor is a reserve
response posture paralleled a.series of pragmatist, Lansdale is a true believe
frustrated battles for more Army a gunb ho cold-war missionary, a ma
funds, which Taylor implies were lost of action, whose writing calls fc
because conservatives like Treasury frequent crescendos of the nation
~012t1' 2j20d
Approved For Release 2001/07/27 : CIA-RDP80-01601 R000900040001-1
 STATINTL
Approved For Release 2001/07/27 :180-01601R000900
g a luover-m-1 o
argi.n
.. P ..
Reviewed by
non, Riaen,uour
In 1969 the reviewer wrote
a, letter to the Secretary of
Defense and other highly
placed persons that led to
the revelations of the lily Lai
massacre and all that fol-
lowed. lie is now a student
at Arizona State ? University
and writes for New Tintes,
an underground newspaper.
It came as a bitter shock
to most Americans when the
COVER-UP. By Seymour M. Hersh.
(Random House, 305 pp., 55,95)
Army was reacting, accord- to protect their fellow offi-
ing to Hersh, to charges of a cers-even those they've
never met,
whitewash. The public was Beyond these revelations,
promised full access to the however, lies the deeper
Peers discoveries after the question of command re-
military trials, barring the sponsibility, not only for My
usual "national security" Lai but for all the undiscov-
rovision The ered-publicly at least-
catch-all
p
.?nation's young began filling trials are now over except massacres and atrocities of
;the streets in protest against
the Vietnam war, leveling
charges against our own
government and military
that had traditionally been
reserved for only our vilest
adversaries. They were
charges few Americans
for Calley's appeal, but the the war. Inmphcit in the han-
Pentagon still refuses to re- dling of the My Lai affair by
lease the report. the administration and the
The reason, Hersh says, is Pentagon is the assumption
that the massacre was all
that the investigation of the atypical incident, a kind of
whitewash, is itself a cover- horrible aberration caused
up. by a freakish and compli-
?Hersh shows the Peers cated combination of factors
could accept.
group collecting detailed ev. that could never be re-
But in n November, 1969, ,,
n ~n_ adence of a second massacre peated.
tr..-.-h
a
nalist who specializes in cov-
ering the military, rocked
the nation and the world
with a series of articles ex-
posed what became known
as the My Lai massacre. The
series won Hersh the Pu-
litzer Prize and later be-
came a probingly thorough
book. Although most people
refused to believe it, it
began to look as if the worst
charges made by the anti-
war groups were true.
Now Hersh is back with a
second book based on My
other company from Task the atrocity syndrome was
Force Baker, Charlie Com- widespread throughout the
pany's parent unit, but Gen. Ame1-ical Division, at least,
Peers denied any knowledge and that the military poli
of it at a press conference cies then in effect. policies
announcing the investiga- designed in the highest mili-
tion's results. tary echelons made them
*He shows Lt. Calley sent- inevitable. In the chapters
enced to life imprisonment Hersh devotes to the sub-
(later reduced to 20 years) ject, one is struck by the
while his two commanding identical line that issues
generals are let off the hook from a variety of witnesses
by a fellow general in a deal from numerous echelons:
.that smacks of the "old boy" "Kill, kill, kill". If they are
syndrome-even t h o it g h to be believed, the official
each accuses the other of ul- emphasis was on body count
timate responsibility and and little else
There is
.
Lai. It is potentially more both their testimonies are hardly any conclusion left to
explosive than the story of full of holes and hedging. draw except that as far as
th
it
lf
i
i
e massacre
se
ra
s
ng
, *He shows wholesale de-
serious questions that cut to struction and alteration of
the core of the military as records by privates through
?-an institution and laying generals.
open to question the integ- : *He shows the CIA's shad-
ri'ty of our top military and 'oavy hand in operation and
civilian leaders as well as the the part' a CIA agent played
American brand of justice, in planning the My Lai op.
ration.
"Cover-up" Is based on *He shows a-loose, unoffi-
28,000 pates of testimony cial but fiercely loyal alli-
and documents gathered by ance of field grade officers
the Army's investigation of willing to break all the rules
the My Lai affair by a much
ballyhooed blue-ribbon panel.
named after its chief, Lt.
Gen. William R. Peers, plus
Hersh's own extensive inves-
tigations. The purpose of
the Peers inquiry was to dis-
cover what happened at My
Lai, why it happened and
a .. as z 1 ~! ssa.cre
CBooks -
the brass was concerned,
what really mattered was
not who was killed, but how
many.
In Hersh's final analysis It
becomes clear that not only
was My Lai inevitable, but
so was its cover-up and the
cover-up's cover-up. Perhaps
the most disturbing issue he
raises is that what made it
all so inevitable is integral
to the United States Army
today. And that raises some
questions.
Hersh threads the story of
My Lai and its sister massa-
cre at My Khe, their investi-
gation and the double cov-
er-up, into a broad tapestry
tightly stitched together with
the most damning evidence
of all-the testimony of the
men who participated at
every level and every stage
of the whole sordid affair.
Years from now, when schol-
ars attempt to understand
the Vietnam phenomenon,
"Cover-Up" is the one book to
which they will all turn.
And they will ask them
selves, I suppose, why the
vital questions raised by
Hersh about an institution
as powerful in and impor-
tant to America as its army
were allowed to go unan-
swered-as they surely will
in a nation that has had the
war up to here.
how it coulA ?leFor Release 2001/07/27 : CIA-RDP80-01601 R000900040001-1
long - undiscovered. The'.
 'to command of the air force
which he held before becoming
premier seven years ago. Be-.
sides, Thieu seems disinclined
to give Ky any position of au-
thority-not surprisingly, since
Ky threatened in September to
"destroy him and all his
clique."
Ky is not so easily written
more determination and, at 43,? ary urea-1 Yic U UU+ i---,? is an attempt by the An Quang
he is younger. He can wait for The first is primarily corn- Buddhists to purge Communist
the next presidential elections posed of union members led sympathizers from their own
in 1975, when Thieu will be by Tran Quoc Buu. He has had sy m r ks especially their student
constitutionally unable to seek strong American support since vements. After denying
another term. the days when the U.S. Centralernment accusations that
Intelligence Agency financed~h ov they often served communist
Way Charter Reads the creation of anti-
b d purposes, the church leaders
Or at least that is the way
the Constitution reads at the
moment. But that Anierican-
inspired limitation may prove
no more realistic for Vietnam
than other ideas copied from
the U.S. Constitution and later
abandoned, like an independ-
ent judiciary.
Few observers would want
to predict as far ahead as 1975.
But if Thieu is still running
the same kind of government
then, it seems likely that he
might decide to emulate Presi-.
dent Chung Hee Park of South
Korea. A few years ago Park
found himself so indispensable
that he had to force through
his parliament a change in the
American-inspired two-term
limitation.
Thicu works from behind a
screen of Oriental aloofness.
Ile tours the country exten-
sively to meet with local offi-
cials, who form the basis of
his political power, but he does
not try to establish a popular
image with the masses.
He has made little effort to
explain his policies. The presi-
dential palace provides almost
no information to the Vietnam-
ese press about what it is
doing. More than just a retic-
ence, there seems to be an
absolute hostility toward the
American press.
Parties Too Fractious
STATINTL
"No one has the right,
through ill-considered acts, to
go counter" to the constitu-.
be coming back to the idea tion, Huyen said. Thieu's pro-
that organized political sup-' posal to let the Communists
port can have a value beyond contest elections would violate
his use of local officials and the anti-Communist provisions
army officers to rally popular of the Constitution.
backing and turn out voters. Cautiously Quiei
The three parties that show The opposition groups which
signs of coalescing behind had voiced desires for peace
Thieu are the Workers' and have been cautiously quiet.
Peasants' party, the Progres-
and the Revolution- The most interesting devel
?o,?to ...
Communist unions a roa . now seemed concerned about
The second party unites pro- this.
fessional ?rnen and civil serv- Their supreme patriarch re-
ants. Its highly respected lead- cently accused both the Saigon
er, Prof. Nguyan Van Bong, and Hanoi governments as
was assassinated in Novem- "merely acting as puppets for
her, weakening the party. foreign powers." This even-
The third, part of the old Dal handed condemnation was a
Viet semi-se c r e t political change from attacking Thieu
movement, is led by a former while being polite to the Com-
minister of the interior, Ha munists.
Thuc Ky.
Position Strengthened
Thieu gave these parties
some help of dubious legality
in August's elections to the
lower house of parliament,
and they strengthened their
position. Now, he might be
looking toward next year's
lower house elections.
If a constitutional amend-
ment is to be passed allowing
a third term, . Thieu would
need more parliamentary sup=
port than he now has. I
The president is still pre-
senting a stoutly anti-
Communist determination to
the world., But he has gained
politically - and weakened his
critics - by offering in Janu-
ary to resign and fight presi-
dential elections against the
Communists.
This helped Thieu to capture
much of the credit for favor-
ing peace which had been held
by various opposition groups.
s
t
could bring to Minh the call to Thieu dickered in 1969 with a
a n. After a six
caused concer
national leadership that he the idea of uniting seven politi- week silence, the president of
wants. cal parties behind his pro- the upper house of parliament,
The other man whom Thieu grams. But they proved too Sen. Nguyen Van Huyen, who
maneuvered out of the presi- fractious. By early 1970 he was would run the country tempo-
dential race, former Vice denouncing all politicians as rarily under Thieu's plan to
President Nguyen Cao Ky, would-be leaders without any resign for new elections, ex-
plays tennis and talks with his followers.- ressed warded d i s a r e e-
military cronpproved For Rd1easdBQDAtp7U27e: QI9A- O0 01601 R000400040001-1
Now outranked by a former signs that the president might
subordinate, he cannot return
WASHINGTON STn_,
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geu IS) NMI :Drop r FOLIOS
Po' it c a I C a Cflm to Vetrnin
By HENRY S. BRADSIIER
Star Staff Writer
SAIGON - In the half-year
since South Vietnam's presi-
dential elections ended with a
whimper instead of a bang,
this country has been political-
ly more quiet than at any time
in recent years.
The quietness is a sign of
President Nguyen Van Thieu's
political mastery, of the de-
moralization of his opponents,
and of preparations for a pos-
sible eventual political contest
with the Communists.
And it might also be taken
as a sign of the narrow focus
of Vietnamese politics on a
small handful of people, with
the bulk of the population
knowing little about them and
caring less-in the normal
way of underdeveloped coun-
tries with strongman tradi-
tions.
In the offices and villas of
.those persons who consider
themselves Saigon politicians,
there is some desultory discus-
sion these (lays of new politi-
cal alliances. Thieu might
once again be interested in
gathering the support of some
politicians, instead of spurning
them all.
The An Quang pagoda group
of Buddhists is busy cleaning
house, the student movement
is hardly visible, and war vet-
erans are being taken care of
fairly well. These are the
groups that have caused the
most political turmoil in re-
cent years, but not now.
Few Pay Attention
Retired Gen. Duong Van
Minh, the self-appointed savior
of Vietnam from both Thieu
and communism, has issued a
few statements since deciding
in August not to fight a losing
presidential e l e c t i o n cam-
paign.
Not many people pay atten-
tion. Vietnamese politicians,
journalists and other observ-
ers find it hard to imagine any
 Approved For Release 2001/07
fr 77; ,f# "2P80-01601
CIA A., gent
Blarhed for
My Lai Error
WASJJINCTWK zip ---
Author Seymour M. Ilersh
said an agent for the Cen-
tral Intelligence Agency
misled the planners of the
1968 attack on My Lai by
telling' them they would'.
find a Viet Cong battalion.
there. The agent denied it.
The assault units met
only old men, women and
children in the South Viet-
namese v ill a g e. Many
were 'killed by the Ameri-
can troops.
Hersh, who won a Pul-
1tzer 'Prize' for breaking
the My Lai story, identi-
fied the agent in. A new
book as Robert B. Rams-
dell, now a private inves-
tigator in.Orlarido, Fla;
"Ramsdell refused to
speak, specifically about.
the information he provid-
ed Task Force Barker be-
fore the My Lai 4 opera-
tion, but acknowledged
that his intelligence un-
doubtedly was a factor in
the planning for the mis-
sion," Hersh wrote in
"Cover-Up," published
Sunday by Random
House.
. Denies Charges
In a telephone interview,
Ramsdell denied Hersh's
allegations and said that
although he was working
for the CIA in the My Lai
area at the time of the kill-
ings, he had notiong to do
with intelligence reports
to the Americans.
Of his role in the 'CIA,
Rat isdell said, "MV func-
tion eras with the Viet-
namese. I had very little to
do with the Americans."
He said that information
gathered by the South
Vietnamese was at 'times
relayed to U.S. troops, but
added that he doubted
those: reports could have
become the basis for the
m i s 1 eading information
fed to planners of the My
Lai assault.
Viet Cuing Sought
In the , 'y Lal courts-
martial of Lt. William 1-,,,
Calley Jr. a n d others,
there was testimony that
the attack was made in the
belief the village was the
home ? of the 48th Viet
Cong.Battalion, -which pre-
viously had inflicted hea-
vy damage to American
units.
The source of that belief
was alluded to only as "in-
telligence reports."
'Ilersh said: The link
between Ramsdell and the
poor intelligence for the
March 16 operation was
never explored by the
Peers panel (the exhaus-
tive Army investigation
headed by Lt. Gen. Wil-
liam R. Peers). For one
thing, none of the high-
ranking officers on it had
any reason to suspect that
Ramsdell was poorly in-
formed about Vietnam."
Ramsdell was sent into
Quang Ngai Province, on'
Feb. 1-40, days before My
Lai-to run ',the_ clandes-
tine Operation Phoenix,
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 4i'ASITIITGT014 POST
Approved For Release 2001/07/27: 'fAV 1 01R00090
-Arorurui the N;fflon
CIA in Mylai
Author Seymour M. Hersh
says an agent for the Ccn-
tral Intelligence Agency mis-
led the planners of the ill-
starred 19(38 attack on My-
lai by telling them they
would find a Vietcong bat-
talion there. The agent de-
nies it.
The assault units met only
old men, women and chil-
dren in the South Vietnam
ese tillage.' Many were
killed by the American
troops.
Hersh identifies the agent
in a new book as Robert B.
Ramsdell, now a private in-
vestigator in Orlando, Fla.
Ramsdell denied liersh's al-
legations and said that al-
though he was working for
the CIA in the Tdylai area
at the time of the killings,
he had nothing to do with in-
telligence reports to the
Amercans. .
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 26 MAR 77
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STATINTL
By RICHARD CRITCIIFIELD
Star Staff Writer
IN TILE MIDST OF WARS. By Maj. Gen. Edward Geary
Lansdale. Harper & Row. 336 pages. $12.50.
When Edward Lansdale returned to an almost-defeated
Vietnam in the fall of 1965, he was already a fabled figure, the
legendary Asian hand who had been the mentor of the Philip-
pines' great anti-guerrilla fighter, Roman Magsaysay, as well
as Ngo Dinh Diem's first American political-military adviser
in the mid-1950s,
Although he was then 58, he still had an air of youthful
Idealism; with his haggard good looks and brown hair only
tinged with gray, he mi ht have stepped out of the pages of
Eric Ambler or Ian flaming. One saw at once why he had
inspired major characters in both "The Ugly American," by
William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick, and Graham
Greene's classic on the Indochina war, "The Quiet American."
BOOKS
In "The Ugly American," Lansdale was barely disguised
as Colonel Edwin D. Hi]landale, a haromonica-playing good
guy who "loves to be with people, any kind of people." In a
frankly admiring sketch, the authors wrote, "In 1952 Colonel
Hillandale was sent to Manila as liaison officer to something
or other. In a short time the Philippines fascinated him. He
.ate his meals in little Filipino restaurants . he even.
,attended the University in his spare hours to study Tagalog
The counsellor up at the American Embassy always
spoke of him as 'that crazy bastard.' But within six months
the crazy bastard was eating breakfast with Magsaysay and
he soon became Magsaysay's unofficial adviser."
BUT THERE was another way of interpreting Lansdale
and Greene turned it into literature in his bitterly brilliant
"The Quiet American." The novel is a despairing portrayal of
a young idealistic CIA operative who blunders tragically
through the intrigue, treachery and confusion of Vietnamese
'politics. Innocent and well-meaning, but naive, the American
leaves a trail of blood and suffering in his wake.
Greene's young American was sent to Indochina in the
early 1950s to help create air indigenous political force that
could resist a Communist takeover when the French pulled
out. In May, 1954, John Foster .Dulles dispatched Lansdale to
Saigon with secret orders to see if anything could be salvaged
from the fall of Dien Bien Phu. Lansdale became Diem's
adviser at the time the Vietnamese leader was defying the
Geneva agreements, which both he and the United States
refused to sign, resettling almost a million refugees from the
Communist north: and beginning to make South Vietnam a
nation.
' 1965, It was rather like Ctireene's quiet American coming back
to Saigon in 1935, it was rather like Greene's quiet American
coming to life again. Oddly, the Vietnamese started calling
Lansdale "the phoenix" after one of their household gods.
What would he do?
"What does a man do," Lansdale told us at the time,
"when he returns to a country, 10 years later, with great
stress on its social and political structure, great suffering,'
great pain. I have no great plan. One's got to move in with
tremendous gentleness; these people have been divided and
hurt and a lot of clumsiness could divide and hurt them more.
But there isn't much time. They need rule of law, consent of
the governed in how they are governed and a life in which kids
have some hope of tomorrow. I feel the Vietnamese are in
their last quarter. This is the ninth inning and we either do it
now or not at all."
He was brimming with plans for sweeping land reform,
rural electrification, bringing back all the able administrators
purged for serving Diem, restoring Confucian ethics, putting
strict restraints on American artillery and air strikes.
But he was quickly stripped or any real authority. On Jan.
21, 1965, Philip Habib, now ambassador to South Korea who
ran the embassy's political ection, sent Lansdale a memoran-
dum, reportedly signed by Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge,
forbidding him further contact with the Vietnamese leaders.
Lansdale the phoenix. Perhaps the Vietnamese should have
remembered a line of Greene's in "The Quiet American: ".
" . but nothing nowadays Is fabulous and nothing rises
from its ashes."
"IN THE MIDST of Wars" Is his own discreet account of
the years in Asia from 1950 to 1956, the brilliantly successful
four he spent helping to defeat the Huks and elect Magsaysay
president in the Philippines, the less successful two in Viet-
nam assisting Diem to unite the feudal religious sects, defeat
the,gangster army which ruled Saigon and begin a pacification
effort against the budding Vietcong insurgency.
It is an invaluable historical document and an exciting
adventure story, and like the author himself, rugged, humor-
ous, compassionate, baffling, naive and a little infuriating. In
the book's anti-climactical final paragraph, Lansdale briefly
notes he returned to Vietnam again from 1965 to 1968, closing
his book with the cryptic sentence, "But that's another story,
quiet. different from the experiences described in this book?"
Why another story? From his personal viewpoint, of
course, he went back as a civilian in an enormous, disarrayed
American mission torn by interagency rivalry in a war
already going badly, and he was never allowed to come up to
bat. But would his approach have worked if he had?
The book's final chapter is devoted to Lansdale's belief
that Irregular war is not just another aspect in the art of
fighting but is a complex primarily political struggle for
political ends.
"Fundamentally," he writes, "the people of a country are
the main feature on a' battleground of Communist choosing
In the novel, the Lansdale figure, after becoming involved since the ensuing struggle becomes one between the Commu-
in a terrorist explosion in Saigon - an incident that actually nists and the government over which side will have the
took gnlacR gt ffiWfsoa, d bRD@,1}~gi @0 #v1r side wins that allegiance
the Col wen , s a e eftne ac o Sanaon in ~v~" e c un ry ... not er words, a country's strength
 STATINTL WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD
Approved For Release 2001/07/27: CIA-RDP8Q91MMROQM040001
STATINTL
war
CC tUf~rAft
ndu %.w W
In the Midst of Wars
An American's Mission
to Southeast Asia.
By Edward Geary Lansdale.
Harper & Row. Illustrated. 386'pp. $12.50
Reviewed by SHERWOOD DICKERMAN
. To' Graham Greene's jaundiced British eye, he was a
inodel for Pyle, the naively dangerous "Quiet American."
Burdick and Lederer took an approving, American view
of him as Colonel Ilillandalc of The Ugly American. In
.Jean Larteguy's Yellow Fever, he was Colonel Teryman,,
astute, somewhat sinister and, of course, anti-French.
Now Major General Edward Geary Lansdale has finally
written his own book about himself. In the Midst of Wars
covers the six years from 1950 through 1956 when Lans-
dale, in the Philippines first and then in South Vietnam,
ivas Washington's leading agitprop agent for American-
style democracy and 'against ainst communism. An Air Force
ntelligence officer well connected with the Central In-
elligence Agency, Lansdale was a cold war condottiere.
Sherwood Dickerman spent five years in Southeast Asia
as a foreign correspondent. -
Madame Nhu, Dam, Lansdale, 1956
.'elected:president despite. the op
,Filipino political establishment. In South Vietnam, lie did
his best to perform the same role in a more difficult situa-
tion with Ngo Dinh Diem.
Throughout, Lansdale promoted his belief that deinoc-
racy on the American model was exportable, desirable,
and an effective method of countering Communist "peo-
ple's wars." In his view, the theories of Washington, Jeffer-
son, and Lincoln were both morally and tactically superior
to those of Lenin and Mao Tse-tung, and his evangelism
was unabashed:
In sharing our-ideology while snaking others strong
enough to embrace and hold it for their own, the Ameri-
can people strive toward a millennium when the world
will be free and wars will be past.
The Washington officials to whom Lansdale addressed this
message were, he notes, "not too happy" over it. In the
sadder and wiser America of tie 1970s, perhaps most
Americans would not be happy ',:ith Lansdale's sense, of
global commitment to democratic panaceas. (Yet. the
Lansdale spirit is not so dated as it may sound, it survives,
perhaps in more sophisticated forms, among able and in-
telligent men at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, and else.
where.)
In trying. to realize his ideal, Lansdale was 'ingenious
and ruthless. Ile was an early student of Maoist military
theory and psychological warfare. "Dirty tricks beget dirty
tricks," he writes, and the premise is that the other side
played dirty first. Thus he writes approvingly of a Filipino
psywar squad that drained the blood of an ambushed Huk
through punctures in his neck to terrify the man's com-
rades of a vampire. Lansdale also recalls his success in
causing a mass work stoppage in Hanoi at the time of the
Communist takeover there-through distribution of phony
leaflets proclaiming a' one-week victory holiday.
He does not tell all, however, which is probably one
reason why the book by Lansdale reads less melodramat-
ically than the ones about him. Through the Pentagon
Papers, it is known that Lansdale's American agents in
Hanoi also sabotaged the city's bus fleet at that time to
embarrass the Vietminh and that American-trained Viet-
namese guerrillas, the "Hao" and "Binh" teams, were in-
filtrated into `Haiphong under his direction for anti-Com-
munist underground activity. It may not be surprising for
a retired career officer to omit such secret and sensitive
material, but in Lansdale's case there are grounds for sus-
pecting that lie may have omitted more than he put in. His
protests about exaggerated news reports of his activity in
Vietnam sometimes have a hollow tone.
Certainly Lansdale's 386-page book is no comprehensive
record of the U.S. involvement in either the Philippines or
Vietnam during this period. Neither are there any major
historical revelations. What does emerge strongly is the
personal philosophy and style of America's best-known
`.`nation-builder" in Southeast Asia at a time when the
nation-building concept was generally accepted and ap-
who became possibly the -most influential single American plauded. Anecdotes, alternate with moralizations. Out of
in Southeast Asia and certainly the most controversial. As these, Lansdale appt-ars as idealistic and courageous (he
the close friq,A,~z/,c ~ve~~.(gg egg a A_ p$g p ~ t 6e. rlkid for assassination in
helped to eat t is om,nums uk a all
dale he lap re elli o i , am a and argon a warmly sentimental man to.
'in the 'Philippines and to get the idealistic lllagsaysay ward Asian friends,. and a quick-study improviser and
 Approved For Release 2001/07L27i. lAgTP80-01601 R0009000400
D
Daily World Combined Services
American B-52 heavy bombers yesterday made their heaviest attacks in two weeks
against the northern provinces of South Vietnam. In Saigon, more evidence of political
skulduggery emerged, in the case of a Saigon puppet general fired by puppet President
Nguyen Van Thieu at the beginning of the week on the "recommendation" of U.S.
adviser John Paul Vann
.
Gen. Le Ngoc Trien, command-
er of the Saigon puppet 22nd In-.
fantry Division, was relieved of
his command on Monday by Thieu
at what was described as a "high-
level" military conference at
Nha Trang, 190 miles northeast
of Saigon.
Nha Trang was formerly U.S.
Special Forces headquarters in
South Vietnam and is also a center
of U.S. Central Intelligence Agen-
cy operations. Vann, the U.S.
adviser - not otherwise described
recommended that Gen. Trien ?Police. se be wa
eca
s -r
;
're
u
f
n't Thieu declared, according to .
from
a b a
se
of nerves and
ra
within the context of U.S. domes-
tic politics.
Thieu's remarks appeared on
Tuesday in two Saigon news-
papers: Tin Song, which is financ-
ed by his own private secretary,
Hoang Due Nha, and the news-
paper Chinh Luan, which was de-
scribed by United Press Inter-
national as having a "special
relationship" with the (Saigon
puppet) presidential palace. Chinh
Luan is also known to be in the
good graces of the Saigon National
The Central Highlands region
of South Vietnam has been a cen-
ter of fierce struggle against the
Japanese, the French colonial-
ists, the Saigon puppets and their
U.S. masters.
In the 1946-54 war against the
French, the Central Highlands
were regarded by the French com-
mand as a center of Viet Minh
strength; among the French lower
ranks, being posted to the Central
Highlands was regarded as the
equivalent of a death sentence:
In the 1954 Geneva discussions,
the Vietnamese patriots argued
that the Central Highlands should
leiku e
io
n achieve final success. To help their control. but agreed to the
of the Central Highlands
g
of the province Binh Dinh. bring about Nixon's defeat, North region temporarily being assigned
Tied to U.S. elections Vietnamese must try to demon- to the French zone until scheduled
What made tl U.S.-inspired strate the failure of Vietnamiza- elections were held in 1956. The
me by adieu significant was d tion by inflicting a crushing mili- elections were never held.
Lary defeat." Heavy fighting was reported
ov Thieu on Monday tied in the
defense of the vital Central High- lie asserted that the "Commu- raging yesterday in the Central
lands region to Nixon's reelection nist thrust" would be aimed at Highlands and the adjoining
goal. Thieu asserted that "the , Gen. Trien's area, and thus Trien Binh inh coastal province. Seven
Communists" would try to defeat was being fired. separate B-52 air strikes were
Nixon by gaining military victor- called in a single, 450-square-mile
13' It was not until yesterday that area in the region, while in other
les in the Central Highlands and' U.S. newsmen dug up the fact areas, U.S. fighter-bombers
thus disproving Nixon's "Viet- that Thieu's action and the reas- were called in to drop napalm and
namization" scheme. The firing ons behind it all originated with bombs around encircled Saigon
of Gen. Trien therefore is a move the U.S.
puppet army units.
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HER AI
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1 1972
E - 21,494
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arse earns S Snits he criticized because the entire
incident had been falsified, he
IT-
I
? had been attacked wasn't 65,
0ex~rq~ rl miles at sea and?its mission had
~,y u C been spying.
He said because of the nature'
By HUNTLY GORDON Morse,?? considering himself t of the ship, the international
Of the Bellingham Herald strict constitutionalist. said o' doctorine of hot pursuit pre,
Former U.S. Sen. Wayne constitutional law: "I didn' vailed.
teach it all my life to walk out
Morse of Oregon told a Western on it." And secrecy, too .
Washington State College au- Morse retraced the years of
dience Tuesday, numbering no his obstruction on the Senate; He criticized government se-
more"than 100, that the nation is Foreign Relations Committee,: crecy which made the resolu
Well on its way to "government during which he, called the Eis tion possible and said: "If 5 per
by executive supremacy and se- enhower administration's top: cent of the truth had been
crecy." men "liars." known. it would never have got-
Morse, one of the Senate's lie accused then Secretary of ten out of committee."
earliest doves, used the series State John Foster Dulles of sit- Although he criticized Con,
of "presidential wars" as an ex- ting at the conference table in gress for failing to halt presi-
ample of presidents exceeding Geneva working out a peace far! dential power, encroachment, he
their constitutional authority. Indochina while secretly seek- was just as tough on the courts.
"The President has no power ing alliances from Britain and. He said the Supreme Court
to make war-that power , is France to perpetuate the