U.S. Assistance Programs in Vietnam

U.S. Assistance Programs in Vietnam

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Monday, August 2, 1971

House of Representatives,
Foreign Operations and
Government Information Subcommittee
of the Committee of Government Operations,

Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to recess, at 10 a.m., in room 2203, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. William S. Moorhead (chairman) of the subcommittee presiding.

Present: Representatives William S. Moorhead, Ogden R. Reid, and Paul N. McCloskey, Jr.

Staff members present: William G. Phillips, staff director; Norman G. Cornish, deputy staff director; Harold F. Whittington, staff consultant; Dale E. Moser, supervisory auditor, GAO; and William H. Copenhaver, minority professional staff, Committee on Government Operations.

Mr. Moorhead.  The Subcommittee on Foreign Operations and Government Information will please come to order.

While waiting for other members to arrive, I will make an opening statement.

During the past several weeks, we have been looking into the economy and efficiency of the operations of the U.S. assistance programs in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. We have reviewed the degree of inequity in the exchange rates in the currency of these countries with the U.S. dollar. We have begun our inquiries into the long-range implications of U.S. assistance operations to help strengthen the economic trade and stability of these nations once U.S. military support has been withdrawn.

Likewise, we have reviewed various economy and efficiency aspects of such programs as commodity imports, health, refugees, public safety, and rural development and other types of inter-related activities involved in the so-called CORDS “pacification” programs.

Wednesday and Thursday afternoons of this week will be devoted to hearing additional witnesses on the operation of black market currency manipulation and other illegal activities in these countries.

The Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Eugene Rossides, will be the principal witness on Thursday. Following the hearing that day, I hope to discuss with the other members of the subcommittee the overall plans and timetable for reports on these hearings and the advisability of resuming certain areas of these hearings in September after the recess.

Earlier in our hearings, we discussed various aspects of the pacification program carried on by the CORDS organization. Ambassador Colby, former head of the programs, testified 2 weeks ago today. Members have been disturbed by certain allegations made about the U.S. involvement in the so-called Phoenix program, under which some 22,000 persons of the Vietcong infrastructure were neutralized this past year. We learned that neutralized means killed, imprisoned or rallied.

Ambassador Colby went into some detail about the Phoenix program in a supplemental statement he submitted to the subcommittee. He also {p.288} responded to numerous questions about its objectives and its operational characteristics.

For the record, I would like to include an article in today’s New York Times which is headlined: “Rewards up to $11,000 Set for Captured Vietcong.”

Without objection it will be made part of the record.

(The article follows:)

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REWARDS UP TO $11,000 SET FOR CAPTURED VIETCONG

(By Alvin Shuster)

SAIGON, South Vietnam, Aug. 1— The United States and South Vietnam have decided to start paying the highest cash rewards of the war — up to the equivalent of $11,000 — for each of certain key leaders of the Vietcong’s political underground.

Informed sources said today that the program, to be financed by the United States, would be tried first as a pilot project in four of South Vietnam’s provinces and extended to others later if successful. It is designed to stimulate interest among the South Vietnamese civilians in the lagging effort against the Vietcong’s clandestine organisation, which remains a serious threat to the pacification program.

There is continuing concern among American and South Vietnamese officials that the enemy’s subversive apparatus will step up activities after the withdrawal of American troops, restore its hold over many rural areas and again challenge the stability of the Saigon government.

“It is the cream of the leadership that we are now after with those high rewards,” said one official.

The decision to increase the rewards reflects the difficulties of the so-called Phoenix program, called Phung Hong by the Vietnamese. The controversial program, which its critics say emphasises assassination, is often described as one of the most important but least successful programs in Vietnam.

Authorities will now offer from 1 million to 3 million piasters, or $3,700 to $11,000 at the official exchange rate, to civilians who provide information leading to the capture of known leaders in the Vietcong network.

Until now, the usual limit under the Phoenix program has been 100,000 piasters, or about $370. Higher amounts have been paid in rare cases.

As part of the pilot program in the four provinces, the military or police units capturing the Vietcong leaders will also be rewarded. Sources said they would share 200,000 piasters, or about $760, if the leader is captured alive, but only half that if he is killed.

ELECTION ATTACKS FEARED

The four provinces, one in each of the military regions, are Quangnam in region I in the north, long a troublesome area; Binhdinh, a Communist stronghold in region II; Bienhoa, just north and east of Saigon in region III, and Vinhbinh, a coastal province in the populous Mekong Delta and an area where officials fear the Communists may try to disrupt this year’s legislative and presidential elections.

At this point, officials believe the Vietcong may operate on two levels during the elections for the House of Deputies next month — remaining relatively quiet in the few areas where they support sympathetic candidates and trying to disrupt the elections in other places. Sources report that instructions have gone out to Vietcong cadres to attack polling places with mortars, attempt to intimidate the electorate, overrun local outposts and generally work to show weaknesses in the government’s pacification programs.

In explaining the new pilot program of higher rewards, officials said the goal was quality rather than quantity. Last year in the Phoenix program 22,841 Vietcong were “neutralized” — those killed or captured and sentenced to jail or who defected. Most of them, however, were regarded as low-level operatives.

60,000 BELIEVED IN NETWORK

Officials said some details of the new reward effort were yet to be worked out, including how much to pay for which leaders. They estimate that there are 60,000 in the network, called the Vietcong infrastructure but that the top leaders sought represent only 2 to 5 percent of the total.

“You can be sure that if the leader carriers a price of three million piasters, he’s really a key man” said one official. {p.289}

The Phoenix effort was conceived by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1967 but was turned over the next year to the South Vietnamese, who continue to receive vital American help in the form of advisers and money.

Recent Congressional testimony in Washington showed that American financial aid for Phoenix from 1968 until May, 1971 amounted to $732 million. The current American contribution to the program is not known.

While American officials acknowledge that there are abuses in the program and some indiscriminate killing, they remain convinced that it must be continued and improved if South Vietnam is to have a chance for survival after American troops leave. Officials recognize, however, that diligent police and intelligence work is required to identify and hunt down the Vietcong suspects and that many South Vietnamese lack the knowledge and the interest to make the effort always effective.

“They will go in and pacify an area with their troops and local forces and think they have put out the fire,” said one American official in the delta recently. “But then they will leave it smouldering. That’s the Vietcong underground and therein lies the real danger.”

In defending the bounty system, officials note that money incentives have long been part of the struggle here and have had some success. The Vietcong who go over to the Government side, for example, have been paid for the weapons they bring with them, from the equivalent of about $2 for a flare gun to $370 for a heavy antiaircraft weapon.

Rewards have also been paid to civilians, not only for information on wanted Vietcong, but also for leading the authorities to weapons and ammunition caches. Some high Pentagon officials have called this program the “most cost effective effort we have.”

The names of the wanted Vietcong leaders and when possible their pictures are posted in villages and hamlets, much like the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s posters in American post offices.

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Mr. Moorhead.  I would also like to include in the record a letter to me from Mr. Robert W. Komer, who was formerly head of the CORDS program. He enclosed an article he wrote entitled: “Impact of Pacification on Insurgency in South Vietnam.”

Without objection the letter and the article will be included in the record.

(The material follows:)

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Falls Church, Va., July 23, 1971.

Hon. William Moorhead,
Chairman, Subcommittee on Foreign Operations and Government Information,
U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C.

Dear Congressman Moorhead:  Let me express my appreciation as a citizen that in the current hearings of your subcommittee on the CORDS support program in Vietnam, you as Chairman are attempting to give a rounded picture of our accomplishments as well as failures. It was good to hear that you asked about land reform (already 500,000 acres have been distributed under the new 1970 law — a notable achievement in any country within 1 year), and even pointed up the unique nature of our attempt to blend civil and military in a unique advisory organization.

The facts about this catastrophic war are grim enough without the invention of a new mythology to buttress charges of ecocide, genocide, and war crimes which will look silly in a few year’s time. For example, some witnesses before your subcommittee apparently invented figures to prove their points. Take, for example, a claim of 100,000 political prisoners — when the total population of every lock-up in South Vietnam is only a little over 35,000 — of whom at least 35 percent are ordinary criminals. Similarly, I see figures of up to 400,000 illegal children sired by Americans, when the only responsible estimate is 5,000 to 15,000, itself a guess and itself tragedy enough.

Perhaps parochially, I am distressed to see everything we Americans tried to do in Vietnam put in the worst possible light. To me, the GVN pacification effort we Americans helped support and shape in 1967-1971 will ultimately be judged on balance as one of the few generally constructive aspects of the Vietnam tragedy. I have tried to bring this out in a recent article, a copy of which I enclose. You might wish to include it in the subcommittee record.

Sincerely,

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Robert W. Komer

Impact of Pacification on Insurgency in South Vietnam

I.
Introduction

Whatever one’s views about U.S. policy toward Vietnam or U.S. performance in that tragic conflict, in at least one respect the U.S. consciously attempted not to overmilitarize or over-Americanize the war, but attempted rather to cope with its rural revolutionary and largely political dimension. This attempt has had many names; the most widely known (though hardly the most apt) is pacification.

From Diem’s Agrovilles in 1959 through the Strategic Hamlet program of 1961-1963, Diem’s Civil Guard, and the Revolutionary Development program of 1965-1966, many promising though regretably modest experi-

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Ambassador Komer served as Deputy for Civil Operations and Revolutionary {sic: Rural} Development Support (CORDS) to the Commander, United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (COMUSMACV), and as chief pacification adviser to the Government of Vietnam in 1967 through 1968. He then went to Turkey as U.S. Ambassador. Before going to Vietnam, he was a senior member of the National Security Council staff from 1961 to 1965, Deputy Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs from 1965 to 1966, and the Special Assistant to President Johnson in charge of supervising the “other war” of pacification in Vietnam. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in December, 1967, and the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Honor Award in November, 1968. He is currently doing research at The RAND Corporation.

Any views expressed in this paper are those of the author. They should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of The RAND Corporation or the official opinion or policy of any of its governmental or private research sponsors.

Prepared for delivery at the Sixty-sixth Annual Meeting of The American Political Science Association, Biltmore Hotel, Los Angeles, California, September 8-12, 1970. Copyright RAND Corporation, 1970.

Reprinted from: Journal of International Affairs, Volume XXV, 1971 Number 1. {p.291}

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ments were tried. But not until the so-called “new model” pacification program of 1967 was the effort made on a sufficiently large and comprehensive scale — and sustained consistently over a sufficient period — to provide any full-scale test of its potential in coping with rural insurgency. Moreover, it was the only program carried out when the tide was running in favor of, rather than against, the Government of Vietnam (GVN) (thanks to massive U.S. military intervention at horrendous cost), thus permitting a sustained expansion into enemy-held and contested rural areas. For these reasons, this article will focus on the 1967-1970 pacification effort.

Unfortunately, the open literature on Vietnam pacification efforts in general and the 1967-1970 effort in particular is exceedingly thin. 1  Despite the millions of words written about Vietnam since 1965, there is a notable dearth of systematic analysis of such key aspects as the pacification program. This aspect of the Vietnam tragedy has been consistently neglected in favor of the more dramatic aspects of the war. A survey of press and periodical reporting over the three years of 1966-1968 reveals very few articles annually that even attempt to deal with pacification in the round. Most open sources available to the academic community seem quite impressionistic, particularly on the 1967-1970 period when commentaries on pacification almost invariably became caught up in the growing controversy about the war. An adversary proceeding developed — indeed a vicious circle — wherein the more the establishment attempted to show that progress was occurring the more the media and other critics attempted to show that it was all a house of cards. Hence, this article will be based primarily upon the author’s personal experience and access to operational data during the period. This necessarily entails a certain parochial bias. However, most of the data on the impact of the current program is of comparatively recent origin, since it only began to gather momentum with the first Accelerated Pacification Campaign of November 1968-January 1969, and the cumulative results have become fully apparent only in 1969-1970. {p.292}

II.
Nature of the “New Model” Pacification Program, 1967-1970

Since there is so little in the open literature, it seems worthwhile to summarize the 1967-1970 Vietnam pacification program as a prerequisite to assessing its impact. It differed in many significant respects from previous pacification efforts, in Vietnam or elsewhere.

Conceptually, all Vietnam pacification efforts have been designed essentially to serve two constructive aims: (1) sustained protection of the rural population from the insurgents, which also helps to deprive the insurgency of its rural popular base; and (2) generating rural support for the Saigon regime via programs meeting rural needs and cementing the rural areas politically and administratively to the center. A secondary purpose has been to help neutralize the active insurgent forces and apparatus in the countryside. In essence, then, it is a civil as well as military process.

The 1967-1970 program differs from its predecessors less in concept than in the comprehensive nature and massive scale of the effort undertaken, and in the unified management which pulled together a great variety of subprograms for the first time on a fully countrywide scale. It must also be seen as a product of the circumstances and constraints existing at the time. It came late in the day, and only after costly U.S. military intervention had averted final collapse of the coup-ridden GVN and had created a favorable military environment in which the largely political competition for control and support of the key rural population could begin again. This competition was also facilitated by the increased stability at the center afforded by the Ky-Thieu regime. But the previous deterioration of the chronically weak GVN administration and security apparatus in the countryside made pacification an uphill task from the start. The new program also entailed a painful build-up and deployment of resources, which took at least two years. All this necessitated a crash effort, as did the time constraints uppermost in U.S. policy-makers’ minds. Few expected that the U.S. public would sit still for a slow, methodical ten-year campaign.

Since most available resources were in Vietnamese and U.S. military hands by 1967, since pacification required first and foremost the restoration of security in the countryside, and since what little GVN administration that existed outside Saigon had become military dominated, it was also logical for the new pacification program to be put under military auspices. On the U.S. side the result was a hybrid “Rube Goldberg” type of civil-military advisory organization called Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS). Paradoxically, CORDS resulted in far greater civilian influence on the pacification process than would otherwise have been likely, since civilians occupied most top CORDS positions. {p.293}

Even though the U.S. made a major advisory, logistic, and financial contribution, the “new model” pacification program has remained primarily Vietnamese from the outset. With one or two minor exceptions, all operational programs were staffed and managed by Vietnamese. The Vietnamese-to-U.S. adviser ratio at the peak of U.S. involvement was over 100 to 1. Of course, this was made possible (especially on the security side) because during 1966 to 1969 the U.S. military assumed the chief offensive role against the Viet Cong/North Vietnamese Army, (VC/NVA) — except in IV Corps — thus permitting the allocation of South Vietnamese military resources to providing local security in the countryside. On the other hand, the very fact that pacification was essentially a Vietnamese enterprise entailed another series of constraints:

Providing Territorial Security. Pragmatically, the multifaceted 1967-1970 pacification program is perhaps best described in terms of its components. A notable feature was the stress on sustained territorial security (local clear and hold) as the indispensable first stage of pacification. Earlier pacification efforts had partly foundered on the lack of this. The military — regarding pacification as civilian agency business — had never provided adequate security resources. Nighswonger finds this a major source of the failure of earlier programs. From his own experience he saw the “heart” of pacification as “protection of the peasant,” and he concluded in 1966 that “a rural security system is only an urgent need, but not yet a reality in Vietnam.” 3  This was recognized in the imaginative Revolutionary Development (RD) program of 1966-1967. Its cutting edge, the 59-man, RD Cadre team, was designed as an armed paramilitary force to provide protection as well as developmental help to the hamlet. Also relevant was the allocation of 40 to 50 Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) battalions to provide temporary security in selected RD campaign areas in the 1967 pacification plan.

But large-scale pacification required full time sustained protection at the key village/hamlet level on a scale far beyond that which could be provided by these expedients. The pacification planners saw the long neglected Regional and Popular Forces (RF and PF) as the logical force-in-being on which to build. They were all locally recruited, and the bulk {p.295} of them were volunteers (partly in order to avoid the draft). RF served only in their own provinces and PF in their own districts. The placing of the RF/PF advisory effort under the new U.S. civil-military pacification management, CORDS, in conjunction with the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (RVNAF) reorganization of 1967 marked the beginning of a truly integrated civil-military pacification program on a major scale. At long last, primary responsibility for local protection of the rural population devolved upon local forces recruited from this population itself.

The RF/PF were re-equipped and upgraded, their command clearly placed under province and district chiefs, and their numbers greatly increased. They expanded by more than 100,000 in 1958 alone, and now number some 510,000 men in over 1500 RF companies and 6000 PF platoons. The Tet shock of 1968 led to revival of another local security mechanism, the part-time People’s Self-Defense Forces (PSDF). These have grown to over three million, equipped with some 500,000 weapons. Though PSDF have often engaged the enemy, their most useful role is probably less in local defense than as a means of engaging the population politically in anti-VC activity.

Two other pacification sub-programs were designed to help cut into insurgent strength. A revitalized Chieu Hoi program aimed both at inducing VC to rally to the GVN and then at employing them productively. Ex-VC ralliers are now used in a wide variety of military as well as civil pacification roles. The GVN’s Phung Hoang (Phoenix) program aimed at neutralizing the clandestine VC politico-administrative apparatus, which many regard as the key to their insurgent capabilities. The VC infrastructure (VCI) taxes, proselytizes, propagandizes, and terrorizes the rural population; recruits and controls VC local forces; and administers VC-controlled areas. To date Phumg Hoang has been a small, poorly managed, and largely ineffective effort, though some attrition of the VCI has taken place.

Civil Programs. The other major aspect of the “new model” pacification effort has been the many civil programs aimed primarily at: (1) the revival of a modestly functioning rural administration; (2) rural economic revival to provide pragmatic incentives to the farmer; and (3) the establishment of other essential rural services, such as medical and educational facilities, refugee care, and a civil police presence. Many of these programs, inherited from the USAID mission, were integrated into a comprehensive pacification scheme by the GVN Central Pacification Council and CORDS. {p.296}

Perhaps most significant has been the concerted GVN/U.S. effort to restore village/hamlet self-government, which was abolished by Diem in 1956. During the 1967-1970 period, a series of GVN decrees were promulgated, and pragmatic steps were taken to provide for the election of hamlet chiefs and village councils, the creation of autonomous village budgets, and the reservation of local taxing powers and use of local tax revenues to the village. Moreover, GVN decree #045 of 1 April 1969 placed local security forces and police under the village chief’s authority for the first time in history, and lodged responsibility for framing local self-help plans in the village itself. Also in 1969, the GVN granted each elected village council a one million piaster village self-development fund under control of the village council itself. 4 

The RD Cadre program, which grew to a peak of 47,000 men in some 750, 59-man teams, and its associated New Life Development (later Village Development) program under the RD Ministry were used largely to strengthen local government and to assist in self-help projects. Another facet of the effort to restore functioning local government has been the continuing purge since late 1967 of corrupt or ineffective military district and province chiefs; the purge has touched most provinces and districts in South Vietnam.

A major parallel effort, given high priority from 1968 on, was the revival of the rural economy, which for years had suffered the chief brunt of the war. War-induced boom conditions and greater security were enhancing the urban sector of the economy while the rural sector was ever more depressed. A combination of techniques was introduced to close this urban-rural gap; among them, changing the terms of trade between urban and rural sectors by increasing prices paid to the crop producers, large-scale introduction of new IR-5 and IR-8 rice strains, accelerating import and distribution of fertilizer, expanding protein and free grain output, and not least, reopening and upgrading of key roads and waterways utilizing military engineers and U.S. contractors. Rural taxes were abolished, along with a web of economic and resource control restrictions. Water pumps and tractors were introduced in large numbers. In June 1970 a far-reaching land reform program finally passed the National Assembly, and the GVN is laying plans to redistribute 200,000 hectares of land per year for the next several years.

Other pacification programs also gathered momentum between 1967 {p.297} and 1970. Greatly increased resources were devoted to refugee care and, more recently, refugee resettlement. The USAID-supported hamlet school and teacher-training program was continued and broadened. There was a major effort to improve rural hospital and dispensary facilities. The GVN’s feeble propaganda capabilities were strengthened, but more important, the widespread use of radio (and even some television) in rural areas gave the GVN a virtual monopoly of mass communications. The effort to provide a civil law-and-order capability by strengthening the feeble National Police was also stepped up, and in 1969 police again were being stationed in the villages.

Two other distinctive features of the 1967-1970 pacification program were unified civil-military single management (for the first time), and a massive increase of resource inputs. Total pacification funding by the U.S. and GVN rose almost threefold from roughly $582 million in 1965 to over $1.5 billion scheduled in 1970 (dollar equivalents), including military outlays (the largest single is RF/PF funding). By 1970 roughly half of the real cost of pacification was borne by the GVN. Unified management of these outlays and of the multiplicity of pacification activities in several thousand villages and hamlets was feasible only by creating stronger central management at Saigon, region, province, and district levels.

Once again, the purpose here is not to represent the pacification effort of 1967-1970 as a highly efficient, high-impact program; it made no such pretense. Like most things in Vietnam, it has been cumbersome, wasteful, poorly executed, and only spottily effective in many respects. The aim is rather to describe the major differences between the “new model” and previous programs in management, size, and program emphasis. Nonetheless, GVN and U.S. efforts in 1967-1970 did manage to convert some innovative but small-scale experiments into a coherent, integrated, civil-military program on a big enough and consistent enough scale to produce gradually significant impact on Viet Cong prospects in the countryside. Whatever its faults, the 1967-1970 program at least stands out as one of the few innovative efforts undertaken by the GVN and U.S. to cope with a revolutionary, largely political conflict. In a conflict in which mistakes of policy and execution were almost the rule rather than the exception, the so-called “new model” pacification effort of 1967-1970 stands out as at least addressed to the key problems of dealing with rural-based insurgency via techniques that indeed attempted to compensate for the destructiveness of the war. It was a unique wartime expedient, designed specifically to cope with revolutionary war as it had evolved by the late sixties in Vietnam. {p.298}

III.
Pacification Measurement Systems

Aside from a handful of in-depth studies of local situations (of which few are based on recent evidence 5 ), the most extensive body of available data on the effects (good or bad) of the major 1967-1970 pacification effort lies in the statistical and other reports developed for operational management purposes by the pacifiers themselves. These measurement systems were another notable feature of the “new model” pacification program. Despite their many limitations, the new reporting systems represent a comprehensive attempt at systematic collection and evaluation of relevant pacification data mostly from the village/hamlet level — perhaps the most innovative measurement technique of the Vietnam war.

Given the nature of the problem — keeping periodic track of the changing situation in 44 provinces, and 250 districts, over 2000 villages, and over 10,000 hamlets — stress had to be laid on relatively simple quantitative techniques. A similar problem was faced in keeping track of the multitude of small-scale pacification assets — now over 1500 RF companies and 6000 PF platoons, numerous thinly spread national police and RD teams, etc. The systems had to be designed realistically for input by relatively unskilled and overburdened field advisers — since one of the principles adopted was to have all possible inputs made at the lowest feasible level (hamlet if possible) — and then not to permit them to be changed as they travelled up the line.

In fact, the most controversial of the pacification measurement systems — the Hamlet Evaluation System (HES), initiated in January 1967 — was designed specifically to overcome the flaws inherent in previous, more subjective efforts to assess what was really happening in the countryside. These consisted of largely narrative reports based on Vietnamese sources that had proved consistently overoptimistic. The HES was prepared monthly by U.S. district advisory teams, using a standardized format questionnaire pertaining to physical changes in the hamlet. The HES assessed a matrix of 18 specific security and development indicators according to a simplified five-letter scoring system. At Saigon level, automated data processing is used to save clerical costs and to act as a memory bank. 6  {p.299}

As a result, data can be analyzed and compared month by month for the last three and a half years by individual hamlet, village, district, province, region, and SVN as a whole. Functional categories can also be separately analyzed.

HES has been frequently evaluated and criticized by civilian contract analysts; with their help a revised and updated version called HES/70 came into use in 1970 after an extensive trial period. It involves a more detailed and objective uni-dimensional question set, including 25 monthly questions on village/hamlet security and 114 quarterly questions covering all pacification matters. Instead of doing the rating, the adviser simply answers the questions; all scoring is clone centrally by a mathematical weighting formula not known to the field. During the i969 trial period, HES/70 showed consistently lower security ratings (about 4-6 per cent) than the old HES.

CORDS also designed over a dozen specialized data reporting systems, all closely related to each other and to HES for comparative purposes. They include PSDF, Chieu Hoi, National Police, Refugee, RD Cadre, and Territorial Forces Management Information Systems, a Pacification Data Bank, Rural Information System, Self-Help Project Monitoring System, Terrorist Incident Reporting System, and the like. Now a system is being designed to help carry out and monitor land reform. Monthly narrative reports on a standard format from U.S. province advisory teams have also been required since 1967; deliberately problem oriented, they provide an additional source of useful insights and were used primarily to identify matters needing attention by higher echelons.

Lest all this seem like too much reporting for its own sake, it should be noted that these systems were designed for management control at each level, not just progress reporting. Consistent emphasis has been placed on problem identification and analysis, not just results. It is impossible to manage a multifaceted pacification program effectively in thousands of villages and hamlets without such reports and measurement systems. But the important point is that these systems provide what one analyst has described as a “gold mine” of raw data on various facets of pacification impact.

In the absence of much else, any assessment of pacification impact must rest heavily on the validity of these CORDS measurement techniques. Much ill-informed criticism has been directed at HES in particular, but most seems to challenge HES for what it does not even claim to be — a measuring of popular attitudes — rather than analyzing it for what it is — a management tool. As with so much involving Vietnam, few critics have {p.300} taken the time to study what they deplore. Other critics really seem to be complaining less about the HES itself than about the way in which its aggregate scores have often been used in simplistic fashion to advance the notion of “progress.” Unfortunately, there is much to this criticism. When HES data is used by officialdom and the media without suitable qualification to claim that “x percent of SVN population is now secure,” it is not surprising that such oversimplification sometimes contributes to the Vietnam credibility gap. At any rate, CORDS field briefings on pacification included many relevant qualifiers which were usually ignored in media reporting. Moreover, it is too little recognized that the HES has consistently shown pacification regression and “churning” in rural areas (a fact unduly obscured by use only of overall aggregates). For example, HES provided the only quantifiable and detailed assessment of the sharp drop in rural security following the VC Tet Offensive in 1968.

There are obviously many limitations to the overall utility of pacification measurement system data. Perhaps most significantly, they provide only indirect inferences as to what the population of the countryside really thinks — about the GVN, the VC, security, etc. Periodic physical status indicators are the chief output, first because these are the easiest to measure, and second because of the indispensable need for simplified, standardized procedures if the whole village/hamlet spectrum is to be covered — and with relatively unskilled U.S. advisers as the chief source of input. It is often forgotten that these systems were designed as U.S. reporting systems precisely to avoid the kind of overly optimistic Vietnamese reporting which had characterized earlier efforts. For the same reasons, emphasis was placed on generating detailed factual reporting rather than subjective evaluations. While some fudging of figures to show progress has inevitably occurred, particularly when Vietnamese sources are used, a much larger source of perturbation has probably been the frequent shifts in U.S. advisers.

Yet those who have consistently used pacification measurement data have found it generally reliable within its limitations. For example, the analysts in the Systems Analysis Office under the Secretary of Defense have used it regularly for the most impressive “in-house” analytical critiques of pacification performance produced in the last few years. Indeed, one criticism that can be made is not that the mountain of raw data now available is distorted or inaccurate, but that so little of it has yet been analyzed in depth. In a real sense Vietnam has been the most extensively commented on but least solidly analyzed conflict in living memory. Both the establishment and its critics can be faulted on this score. Even CORDS {p.301} itself places greater stress upon systematic collection of data than upon its exploitation for management purposes. Since most of this data is unclassified, or will doubtless become so, its full exploitation may have to be left to the academic community.

More recently CORDS has been experimenting with poll-type survey techniques, using trained Vietnamese teams to conduct semi-structured interviews of a cross-section sampling of the rural population to determine trends in rural attitudes toward pacification and related subjects. Once this technique is fully developed, and results become available, they should offer useful insights.

IV.
Pacification Impact on Insurgency

It is still premature to attempt more than an interim assessment of the impact of the “new model” pacification program. Though the improvement of the GVN position in the rural areas since the low point of 1965 is clearly visible, its real depth and extent and its ultimate lasting quality are still untested. But here some important distinctions must be made. First, much more can be inferred about the short-term impact of pacification on the current VC insurgency than about its longer-term effect in helping to create a socio-political environment in which future insurgency would not again flourish.

Second, even over the short-term, it is hard to assess the relative extent to which observed changes in the countryside can be properly attributed to the pacification program as opposed to other factors. How much is attributable to the shield provided by the allied effort in the “big unit” war, which largely drove the VC/NVA main forces from most populated areas? How much did VC/NVA exhaustion from heavy manpower losses in their 1968 Tet and follow-on offensives weaken the insurgeney’s rural base? These two factors did much to create the conditions in which the rapid pacification upsurges of late 1968-1970 became possible. Or how much did systematic VC tactics of coercion and terrorism eventually alienate the rural population? How much did factors such as peasant perceptions as to who was winning affect rural actions and attitudes? All such factors undoubtedly had (or will have) some impact. Thus, in an unconventional conflict like Vietnam the relative impact of pacification versus other political, military, or psychological factors is exceedingly hard to sort out.

A third problem is the difficulty of distinguishing between the southern based VC insurgency itself, and North Vietnam’s input — especially through NVA infiltration. For analytical purposes at any rate, we cannot {p.302} dismiss this by calling Vietnam a “civil war.” Hanoi’s chief contribution in the 1965-1970 period has been well-trained regular forces. Their relative role in proportion to that of the southern VC has steadily increased to the point where over 70 per cent of the VC/NVA main force units and combat support are estimated to be NVA. Vietnam has become more and more “an NVA war” as VC military strength has declined. What began as an externally supported civil war in the south has by now become largely an internally supported “invasion” from the north. Clearly pacification has had much more impact on the faltering VC insurgency than on the NVA main force threat, which could be sustained almost indefinitely by infiltration from the north.

Last is the sheer difficulty previously mentioned of drawing adequate inferences from the mass of statistical data available. It is infinitely easier to quantify the physical changes in the situation in the countryside than to assess the impact of these changes on — to use the once fashionable cliché — the hearts and minds of Vietnam’s peasants. In terms of popular reactions, to what extent are any positive effects of pacification (improved security, economic revival, etc.) offset by the negative effects of how the GVN and U.S. have conducted the war? To what extent has coercion corruption, or arbitrary use of power by GVN administrators taken the bloom off the rose? Is peasant alienation from VC terror and exaction significantly greater than his alienation from similar GVN actions in many cases? Is the farmer fatalistic about all the destruction, or would he rathe have a harsh peace even under VC control than the continued destructive ness of the U.S. style of war? One can only pose these questions. No adequate basis for inference is yet available and may never be. But then in what field of analysis are data on behavior and attitudes as satisfactory as those on quantifiable changer

Despite all these caveats, however, at least some tentative inferences can be drawn. In general, the thesis of this article is that the 1967-1970 pacification program probably played a major role in reducing the VC insurgency to its present straits. Indeed, the consolidation of GVN local control over the countryside, the consequent drying up of the insurgency’s population base and the expansion of the GVN’s base, the attrition of the VC politico-administrative apparatus, the large number of ralliers under the Chieu Hoi program, and the constructive civil aspects of pacifcation — restoration of local government autonomy, rural economic revival, local economic and social development — may have contributed as much over the period to damping down the insurgency as the “big unit” {p.303} casualties inflicted over the same period. The evidence to support the thesis will he assessed under several headings.

Effect on Active Insurgent Strength. The 1967-1970 pacification program has contributed materially to the cumulative attrition of most components of VC active strength. First, the local pacification security forces (pricipally RF/PF but also the National Police, RD Cadre, and PSDF) has consistently inflicted more casualties on enemy forces — and taken more in return — than ARVN itself. Their activities, as well as their she growing presence at the local level, have greatly inhibited VC recruiting taxation, propaganda, logistics, and even terrorism. Second, the Chi Hoi program has facilitated the rallying of over 160,000 hoi chanh rallied (about two-thirds military) since it began in 1963, and over 132,000 of these came between 1966 and 1970. Though many of these are low-level people, and some no doubt rallied more than once, the cumulative total must have put at least a crimp in VC strength. The great bulk of these ralliers are from III and IV Corps, where the indigenous VC insurgents was largely centered.

Third, even the feeble Phung Hoang program has, according to the U.S.-designed reporting system, led to the neutralization of over 40,000 mostly low level VCI during 1968-1970. Of course, over half of those rallied, were captured, or were killed in the course of military and police operations of one kind or another. But the important point is that the growing if belated focus on neutralizing the VC politico-military apparatus as well as insurgent military strength has probably seriously rediced insurgent capabilities. The most recently published figures indicate that the remaining VCI are now carried at about 70,000. 7 

Whether or not the above figures are wholly accurate, the point is that the cumulative impact of these pacification programs has contributed materially to the reduction of insurgent strength to a point where, without continued infusion of NVA personnel (and now reportedly political cadre), most professional observers estimate that it would be difficult for the VC insurgency to survive as a major threat to the GVN.

The fact that the VC are increasingly targeting pacification programs may be an interesting indicator of the extent to which pacification is hurting the VC. During the three day April 1970 offensive “high point,” for example, nearly half of the enemy attacks were against pacification targets. {p.304}

Recent VC documents clearly indicate greater 1970 concern over pacification and direct greater efforts to combat it. Of course, all this may be partly because harassing pacification is a cheap way to keep the pot boiling during a “protracted war” phase.

Effect on Insurgent Population Base. Pacification programs, in conjunction with other factors, have had a similar effect on the VC-controlled rural population base. This can be systematically measured by the HES, which, with due allowance for the necessary qualifications, nonetheless is better than any other data for measuring such trends. It has been officially admitted that at the end of 1964, only 40 per cent of South Vietnam’s population was under government “control” — a sometime thing in those days — and over 20 per cent under VC control. Even when HES was first instituted in January 1967, only some 62.1 per cent of a total 16.3 million people were then rated as even “relatively secure,” some 18.5 per cent as contested, and still 19.4 per cent as admittedly VC-controlled. Furthermore, a high percentage of this increase in “relatively secure” population in 1965-1967 did not occur because of increased security in the countryside, but rather as a result of refugee movements and the accelerated urbanization taking place. However, these factors can be removed from the calculation by considering only rural HES scores. In January 1967, only some 46.3 per cent of the rural population was rated as relatively secure. Even at the end of 1967 less than 50 per cent of the rural population was so rated, and this dropped further as a result of the 1968 Tet Offensive, which was faithfully reflected in the HES. But the June 1970 figures (from the revised HES/70, which is much more sensitive to enemy activity and VCI presence) rate over 91 per cent of SVN’s 17.9 million population as “relatively secure,” 7.2 per cent as contested, and only 1.4 per cent or 256,000 rural people as VC-controlled. The great bulk of this VC-controlled population is concentrated in less than a dozen of the 44 provinces. The 1969-1970 gains have been mostly in the key rural areas.

Whatever one’s prejudices as to the precision of these figures, there is little doubt that GVN domination of the countryside has expanded rapidly since late 1968 at the expense of the VC-controlled population base, with inevitable effects on VC recruiting capabilities. Of course, GVN general mobilization in 1968, which led to the build-up of RVNAF and para-military forces to over 1.2 million men, has also operated to sop up manpower which might otherwise be available to the VC.

Effect on Rural Security. A mass of quantitative data, mostly from the hamlet/village level, in the HES and other data banks provides over- {p.305} whelming evidence that the physical security provided the bulk of the rural population has expanded considerably since the 1965 low point. HES security scores for rural population show an increase in relative security (ABC categories) to 90.5 per cent at end-1969. For those who are unwilling to accept so-called “C” hamlets as even relatively secure, even A and B population has risen to about 75 per cent as of June 1970.

Increased security in most populated areas, though still spotty in some cases, is also amply evident to the observer. There is also a direct correlation between increases in local GVN security forces and the resulting improvement in security indices. Improved security can also be directly inferred from the decline in the overall incident rate. From available statistics it is clear that the number of battalion-sized attacks and even lesser incidents was down significantly in 1969 from 1968 and has declined even further in 1970. Terrorism is still high, especially in March through May of 1970, but the overall terror, sabotage, etc. trend is down from 1968 to 1970. It is worth repeating, however, that the overall decline in the intensity of the war can be attributed to many other factors besides pacification.

Equally significant, the war has become largely localized. Analysis of the 1970 incident rate and the HES statistics show clearly that both the military war and terrorism now impact mostly on a few key areas. Leaving aside the “big unit” war in the almost unpopulated jungle and mountain areas along the borders, insurgency-type activity or VC incursions into populated areas are largely concentrated in the three provinces of southern I Corps, Quang Nam, Quang Tin, and Quang Ngai; Binh Dinh, Phu Yen, Pleiku, and Kontum in northern II Corps; and four provinces in the Delta, Kien Hoa, Vinh Binh, An Xuyen, and Kien Giang (the last mostly because it is along the border). In most populated areas of the other 33 provinces, the intensity of conflict and even terrorism has radically declined — in many cases to sporadic harassment.

The number of refugees who are increasingly returning to the countryside (with help from the GVN refugee resettlement program) is another gross indicator of improved rural security. Excluding refugees from Cambodia, the number on the rolls has declined from over two million at the highest point to some 1.5 million in February 1969, and then to around 217,000 by mid-1970. While refugee statistics (especially earlier ones) are not wholly reliable, they are sufficiently reliable to establish this broad trend. The return to villages has continued in 1970.

Effect on Rural Participation in GVN-Sponsored Activities. It is at least partly relevant that popular participation in GVN programs, organiza- {p.306} tions, and activities of one sort or another has soared in recent years. No doubt to some extent this is a function of GVN pressure or coercion, or at least a matter of the peasant doing what he is told to do. Moreover, such participation does not necessarily equate with active commitment, though it would be equally mistaken to argue that it has no such meaning at all. At any rate, the rural population is becoming heavily engaged in the business of local government, local defense, self-help, etc., particularly since the Tet Offensive of 1968. Significant on this score are the rapid increases of GVN military and paramilitary forces (excluding PSDF) from 700,000 in April 1968 to about 1.2 million men today, and the rising enrollment in the part-time Popular Self-Defense Force, all since May, 1968, to between 3 and 3.5 million (though in urban as well as rural areas).

Increased popular participation in GVN-sponsored elections also may be relevant to popular acquiescence in the governmental process. While there has unquestionably been some fudging of the results in local cases, the extensive statistics available since 1967 on voter registration, participation, and number of candidates are considered generally reliable by professional observers in the field. In May 1965, only 3.8 million (of 4.2 million registered voters) voted in the provincial and municipal elections. In September 1966, 4.3 million of 5.2 million voted for the Constituent Assembly. The proportion of the 5.87 million registered voters voting in the 1967 national elections was 83 per cent. The proportion voting in the 1970 provincial and municipal council elections of 28 June 1970 dropped to 72.5 per cent (as usually happens in local vs. national elections), but the number of registered voters had risen to 6.1 million. The number of candidates for each seat (3.5 in the 1970 elections) has also increased. New faces are much in evidence; in I Corps the number of new candidates who won in village/hamlet elections increased from 20 per cent in 1969 to 30 per cent in 1970. The 1970 provincial and municipal council elections in I Corps produced 60 per cent new faces since 1967. At the lowest level some 961 villages and 5344 hamlets elected local administrations in 1969, bringing total elected local governments to 2048 out of 2151 villages and 9849 out of 10,496 hamlets. Some of these local elections were only nominal, but given the sheer looseness and inefficiency of the GVN at all levels, few would contend that local elections were mostly rigged. While difficult as yet to evaluate, the GVN’s continuing efforts to restore local autonomy at the grass roots level have apparently stimulated greater rural popular interest in local government.

Effect on Socio-Economic Conditions in the Countryside. Here again, mostly quantitative indices must be relied upon. It is difficult to translate {p.307} into meaningful impact all the USAID-type statistics on hamlet or other schools built, teachers trained, fertilizer distributed, rural dispensaries and province hospitals constructed, refugees cared for, wells dug, roads and waterways opened and repaired, tractors imported, markets built, self-help projects completed, or piasters and dollars spent. But there is little question that the range of services and assistance provided the rural population in GVN-controlled areas, mostly through the pacification program, has increased dramatically by 1969-1970 over 1965-1967. The net impact of priority measures to revive the rural economy has been to reverse the long decline in agricultural production, and according to a recent U.S. economic study, to make many Delta farmers the “new rich” of Vietnam. By June 1970 there were an estimated 3400 tractors in the Delta (IV Corps), a doubling over fifteen months as a result of agricultural development loans and sheer private spending. Of course, increased agricultural income is far from evenly distributed, and against all the improvement must be weighed the continued difficulties posed by military operations, GVN inefficiency, corruption, and the like.

Effect on Rural Attitudes Toward VC and GVN. So far this tentative analysis of pacification impact has stressed mostly quantifiable factors. It is far harder to assess systematically the effect on rural attitudes and commitment to the contending sides. Yet even here there is a growing body of evidence that the farmers are turning against the VC, even though they may not look with favor on the GVN. The decline in VC popular support has been noted by many observers, and attributed to a variety of causes. It can also be documented in numerous rallier interviews. Some point to how increased VC use of coercion, forced conscription, high taxation, and terror have alienated farmers in many areas. Statistics indicate that more than three-fourths of the terrorist victims in the period 1967-1970 were ordinary civilians. The widespread destruction in the Tet and May Offensives of 1968 generated a particularly noticeable anti-VC backlash. Others point to a drastic decline in the appeal to peasants of life in VC-controlled areas, as opposed to materially improved conditions in areas under GVN domination. Still others contend that the farmers are increasingly coming to believe that the GVN is winning, and in pragmatic fashion are gravitating toward the side that has the “mandate of heaven.”

But in terms of generating positive rural political support for the GVN, the evidence is much more spotty. And this may be the heart of the matter. To Popkin, one of the few scholars who has addressed this issue, “the central problem of pacification is how to translate economic resources and {p.308} military power into village control.” He sees this as “a political and not a technical problem,” 8  and renders the tentative verdict, based on 1966-1967 and 1969 field observations, that:

In effect Popkin sees pacification as succeeding in its proximate aims but by no means yet achieving positive rural political support for the GVN. He recognizes that the Thieu regime is attempting to build a rural political base through methods already described. But to him:

He grants that the new pacification programs in the village “have begun to energize a long dormant village political structure,” but sees Thieu as hemmed in in his attempts to move further in this direction by the ARVN, which regards its still dominant role in rural administration as a base of political power which it will be reluctant to relinquish.

Popkin’s critique, based on actual field research in 18 villages, is perhaps the most perceptive and up-to-date yet available. Yet to what extent should a wartime program like pacification be measured in terms of what must essentially be a longer-term political process lasting perhaps a de- {p.309} cade? It seems too much to expect that in only three years or so even the major pacification effort finally launched in Vietnam should have achieved more than the restoration of relative local security in most areas, a considerable degree of economic revival, and the re-establishment of at least a semblance of popularly based local administration — with a substantial degree of popular acquiescence and perhaps some support. Thus, Popkin’s verdict seems a bit premature. If pacification is looked on as mainly aimed at suppressing insurgency and creating a climate within which the longer-term political process can have its inning, then Vietnam pacification may have been (as indeed Popkin grants) largely successful. 12  It has bought time to let the GVN see if it can knit together the government and the peasantry. At a minimum the peasantry now apparently sees a brighter future under the GVN than under the Viet Cong, aside from regarding the GVN as now having the “mandate of heaven.” Moreover, more recent 1970 rural attitude surveys (by Vietnamese) show a more positive rural attitude toward the GVN than Popkin has suggested.

Indeed, Popkin himself sees the conflict which will now determine ultimate GVN viability as one between the peasantry and ARVN rather than between the GVN and VC. Other observers would rate the ARVN’s political power as less of a fearsome threat to Thieu. In a real sense he has more control over ARVN than anyone else, a result of his powers to promote and reward as the senior general and president. In any case, ARVN is not very cohesive as a political power center and is increasingly being redeployed toward the borders, away from populated areas.

Moreover, the decentralization of power has gone further than Popkin suggests. Some 70,000 village/hamlet officials have been educated at the Vung Tau National Training Center for their new responsibilities (and harangued by Thieu himself to exercise them). Greater decentralization has occurred in 1970 (e.g., autonomous village budgets, new provincial councils) and more is planned for 1971 (e.g., election of province chiefs as called for in the 1967 constitution). Though local autonomy still exists {p.310} more on paper than in reality in many areas, and a natural conflict of interest is emerging between the new village leaders and the military men who dominate at the district and province levels, the trend is in the right direction.

If Thieu survives, he will almost certainly push decentralization further for his own political purposes. Moreover, despite the natural conflict of interest between ARVN and the newly emerging rural groups, there is less of a conflict inherent in the relations between these groups and the central government. It is easier to envisage a sharing of power between the village at the local level and the GVN at the center than between local civilians and military leadership groups. In any case, the related diffusion of power now taking place between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches will operate to limit the impositions of the center on the village. Neither Thieu nor ARVN are any longer as much the free agents they used to be.

V.
Tentative Conclusion

In sum, the gathering weight of recent evidence indicates that the 1967-1970 “new model” pacification program, with all its flaws and weaknesses, has contributed materially to at least a short-run improvement in the GVN’s ability to cope with rural insurgency. There is no doubt that the position of the GVN vis-a-vis the VC in the countryside has grown much stronger — militarily, economically, and administratively — since 1965-1966. The dramatic physical improvements in most areas are highly visible, and the trends are further confirmed by the systematic CORDS measurement systems, despite their limitations. The weight of evidence also shows that the VC position has drastically declined in all areas of Vietnam and remains a major threat in only about 8-12 provinces. Moreover, despite U.S. withdrawals, GVN capabilities to push the pacification process further still appear to be growing, and the capabilities of the southern VC (though not necessarily the NVA) appear to be on the wane.

It should also be borne in mind that pacification’s contribution to these results was achieved via programs that have been primarily Vietnamese staffed and run from the outset, though extensively subsidized and logistically supported by the U.S. Even so, the direct U.S. dollar input to pacification in probably the peak year 1970 is only about $777 million out of the many billions still being spent, which makes pacification probably more cost-effective than most major wartime programs in Vietnam. Nor have pacification programs generally entailed the sort of counterproductive side effects on rural attitudes characteristic of many aspects of the {p.311} ”big unit” war. Indeed, many programs (refugee aid, village development and self-help, etc ) were designed partly to compensate for these.

What is less apparent, and far less subject to measurement, is how lasting the change in the countryside or the degree of positive rural commitment is to a still feeble GVN. In the author’s view, the war and its consequences (e.g., pacification) have stimulated what amounts to a rural revolution in Vietnam — politically, socially, and economically. But the extent to which this revolution will benefit the GVN’s cause over time is still unclear. Definitive evidence may not be available for years. Moreover, the VC — though greatly weakened — is still a force to be reckoned with. Indeed, despite the growing evidence as to pacification’s short-term impact on rural insurgency, such other factors as new NVA offensives, political changes in Saigon, or the terms of a negotiated settlement may so affect the final outcome in Vietnam that no real test of pacification’s ultimate impact may ever be feasible.

Footnotes

{Each footnote appears on the same page with its text reference}.

1  The most coherent analysis of one phase of Vietnam pacification is by William A. Nighswonger, Rural Pacification in Vietnam (New York: Praeger, 1966). But it covers only the period before the major “new model” pacification program got underway. Most open literature is on pre-1966 pacification efforts. See for example the brief but perceptive accounts in George Tanham, editor, War Without Guns: American Civilians in Rural Vietnam (New York: Praeger, 1966). The most comprehensive account of the current program is the extensive testimony of Ambassador W. E. Colby and his CORDS colleagues before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February 1970 (which has not yet been published by the Committee). For a summary of 1966-1970, see R. W. Komer, “Clear, Hold, and Rebuild,” Army (May 1970), pp. 16, 24, and its companion piece, “Pacification: A Look Back and Ahead,” Army (June 1970), pp. 20-29.

2  Komer, “Pacification,” ibid., p. 24.

3  Nighswonger, op. cit., pp. 70, 130, 147.

4  See The Vietnamese Village 1970: A Handbook for US. Advisers, Community Development Directorate, CORDS MACV, 2 May 1970.

5  For example, D. W. P. Elliott and W. A. Stewart, Pacification and the Viet Cong System in Dinh Tuong: 1966-67, The RAND Corporation, RM-5788, January 1969. See also Nighswonger, op. cit., on Quang Nam province 1964-1965. Perhaps the most systematic current study of the impact of the war on a sample of 18 villages is the continuing work by S. L. Popkin of Harvard for South East Asia Development Advisory Group (SEADAG) (see below).

6  See Colonel E. R. Brigham, “Pacification Measurement,” Military Review, May 1970, for a short analysis of the HES. He was chief of the CORDS Research and Analysis Division during the evolution of HES.

7  George McArthur, Los Angeles Times, Part I, April 2, 1970, p. 4.

8  Popkin, SEADAG Discussion Paper, “Village Authority Patterns in Vietnam,” Asia (2 June 1969), p. 1.

9  Popkin, “Pacification: Politics and the Village,” Asian Survey, (August 1970), p. 663.

10  Ibid., p. 664.

11  Popkin, ibid. The author’s own observations in Vietnam, 7-19 July 1970, would tend at least partially to confirm his thesis of the growing clash of interest between elected village councils and the military province and especially district chiefs who are reluctant to share local power.

12  For a view that the extent of popular support for a government, or its shift from an insurgency to a government, is not a reliable indicator of success, see Nathan Leites and Charles Wolf, Jr., Rebellion and Authority (Chicago; Markham 1970), pp. 87-89, reviewed in this issue of the Journal. Theirs is the only systematic analysis of indicators of success in counter-insurgency known to the author. In their view, the “hearts and minds” theory that popular attitudes play a decisive role in enabling insurgencies to achieve success is grossly overdrawn. They see popular behavior as depending “not only on likes and dislikes” but also on the opportunities and costs to the population of choosing whether to follow their attitudinal preferences. Moreover, to them “the progress made by each side in an insurgency influences the affiliations of most of the population as much as, or more than, it is influenced by those affiliations.” (pp. 150-151) {p.312}

__________

Mr. Moorhead.  Today we will hear from two outside witnesses who will testify on the economy and efficiency of the field operations of this program. The witnesses, Mr. Michael Uhl and Mr. Barton K. Osborn, both served in the U.S. Armed Forces in Vietnam during the past several years. Both had command and operational responsibility in the intelligence area, charged with implementing various directives, orders and stated objectives of the Phoenix program.

Both were honorably discharged from the military service and appear here as voluntary witnesses. We will hear their statements and then both will be available for questions from the members of the subcommittee and the staff.

Mr. Uhl and Mr. Osborn, will you come forward to the witness table, please.

This being an investigative hearing, we will swear you both, if you will please rise and raise your right hand.

Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give this subcommittee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Mr. Uhl.  I do.

Mr. Osborn.  I do.

Mr. Moorhead.  Mr. Uhl, since you have a prepared statement, why don’t you proceed first.

Do you have an initial statement, Mr. Reid?

Mr. Reid.  No.

Statement of
Michael J. Uhl,
a Public Witness

Mr. Uhl.  Thank you.

My name is Michael J. Uhl. I am currently listed in the Army records as a retired first lieutenant by virtue of my disability.

Upon arrival in the Republic of Vietnam in November of 1968—

Mr. Moorhead.  For the record you might give us your address here.

Mr. Uhl.  I currently reside in New York City. I am using my parents’ address as my address of record: 35 Coppertree Lane, Babylon, New York, Code 11702.

Mr. Moorhead.  Thank you.

Mr. Uhl.  Upon arrival in the Republic of Vietnam in November of 1968 I was assigned as the team chief of the 1st Military Intelligence Team — 1st MIT — 11th Brigade, Americal Division. I remained with the 11th Brigade until late May 1969, at which time I was medically evacuated, having contracted pulmonary tuberculosis.

The 1st MIT consisted of three sections: Counter Intelligence (CI), Order of Battle (OB), and Interrogation of Prisoners of War (IPW). My primary function was to administer the team and coordinate its efforts, in order to fulfill our mission of providing the combat brigade with tactical intelligence for immediate exploitation and security from compromise of its operations. By virtue of my military occupational speciality (MOS) I also had direct supervisory control over the CI section.

Through my testimony today I hope to convey, generally, a perspective shared by many of my veteran comrades. This is a perspective gained from the field, of those charged with the responsibility for {p.313} implementing ambiguous and often absolutely misleading directives, policies, and standard operating procedures. Most of these I believe to be based on fallacious analysis of the historical and contemporary Vietnamese situation, not to mention a fundamentally misguided concept of what the role of the United States should be in foreign affairs.

I do not make these charges lightly. For those who have strong beliefs in the many revolutionary concepts that first shaped our Nation, disillusionment does not come easily. Our system has evolved away from the best sentiments of Thomas Paine, Sam Adams, Patrick Henry, and thousands like them throughout our history.

William Jennings Bryan, in spite of his failings, summed up many of these sentiments before this very body {Indianapolis, April 8 1908}. At that time Congress was debating whether or not to withdraw American troops from the Philippines.