Explain to me what the conditions were like in the countryside in '66- what had happened, what were the realities in the areas of importance were, Saigon or other important cities?

By late '65 you were in a situation where you had had a successive turnover of governments. After the death of Diem, you had short lived governments. The continuity of leadership in the Vietnamese countryside was short lived. Policies were changed. One day, force was present, the next day it was removed. Ah, little or no economic assistance for the people, ah, whose normal resources had been curtailed, that is the landlord, the money lenders, uh, due to insecurity no longer operated in their area.

And they were left pretty much on their own, uh, from the government point of view. However, among the fabric of the society in and out of the hamlets and villages was the omnipresence of Viet Cong. They had their cadre, they had their workers, uh, in among the people either overtly or covertly, and both at times, and a force. You're aware that in underdeveloped countries like Vietnam, for generations people had been, uh, forbidden... you're aware...

Give me a lens change.

Can I stop for a moment?

Sure.

During this time, uh, due to tradition, the people had little, uh, in the way of weapons to protect themselves it's forbidden for generations that they should keep weapons. As a result, two or three guerrillas coming into a village in the absence of government presence or government forces can control hundreds and literally thousands of people by the threat of force. Uh...

Did they even have to use force?

Quite often they had to use force on the dedicated, uh, members or the leadership element to either drive them out, to leave the people further in the hands of Viet Cong, uh cadre or the threat of force, if you do not cooperate with their, uhm, thought seminars and uh their proselytizing endeavors. As a result, uh, in the absence of the government due to the vast turnovers and the changing of the rules, uh, minute by minute, day by day from Saigon, the enemy had a field day in terms of exerting his influence and his control over many areas of Vietnam. So that's uh...

Is there anything else that uh, and you can change the lens, anything else in terms of what had happened. Describe a little more what it meant, the changes in the countryside, landlords had been forced to leave areas. You mentioned briefly the money lenders. What were the conditions in the countryside that the Viet Cong had come in and responded to?

Uh, traditionally, landlords, uh, absentee landlords in the most part, controlled vast areas of the rural, um, um, rice lands in the southern part of the country. Uh, they had been driven out by the enemy, by the Viet Cong, some of them assassinated, some of them were threatened out. And the second echelon of control, called the "taka" or middle man who actually lives in the village and does the work for the landlord, were, uh, compromised.

They were either inactive, inert, or um, were in no way able to exert any control over over the rural people. In this way, uh, the peasant, which is the reservoir of manpower for an insurgency, was left to the Viet Cong for guidance, was left to the Viet Cong for day-to-day advice as to how to survive. Quite often this very presence of the enemy exerted yet another uh debilitating influence upon the peasant. He got poorer, and poorer, and poorer because they exacted taxes from him, ah, in addition, ah, to his, ah, normal daily expenses.

But were the were those taxes during '65 felt more severely then the other kinds of taxes, the other kinds of economic problems that peasants had? Was...

Well, all of these...

Was there a sense, I'm trying to get at, in general of being less well off in NLF areas that may have been with landlords and middlemen?

In answer to the question of the well being of the peasants during these areas, I would have to say that his economic life uh deteriorated considerably. But, in a perverse way this gave rise to opposition to the government. Because, without anyone talking, uh, back to him, without anyone holding an argument with the Viet Cong cadre, the Viet Cong quite often can turn the peasant's mind into the idea that if you revolt, if you join us, we can change this system.

Each year you are worse off- each year you are poorer. Next year your children will be in a worse position for the future then you are now. Join us, you have only your shackles to lose, that's in the manifesto. And they carry this out pretty much in their proselytizing. As a result, as a result, many young men and women voluntarily, willingly joined the Viet Cong in order to, to change the political, economic cultural system, uh, in Vietnam.

It's pretty hard to understand how you can be under a, um, total domination of a strict enemy who uses force when necessary and still rally to his cause which he in part has imposed upon you as an idea of breaking out of, of those conditions. But under constant, uh, uh, propaganda, and I must say, uh, tremendously, uh, well motivated leadership, uh, the key mark, the, the, the, most important thing, I think, in any insurgent organization led by the Communists, is, is, is ah, is qualified leadership, dedicated leadership.

The good will of these people and the extremely tough conditions under which they live, their self-denial, their living among the people, at the level of the people, uh, their uh, constant, uh, observation of being willing to give their life and their future for their cause tends to be catching among the young uh peasants, and uh, they joined this organization that then becomes their father, their teacher, uh, becomes everything all encompassing. And they, in turn, develop this esprit de corps, which is very hard to develop, ah, at the national level in a, any developing country where you have so many conflicting loyalties the loyalty of the family in, in say, in Vietnam, where...

Before we go on to that, if you don't have time before he starts to make a lens change, just tell me. We'll continue rolling.

I was just in the process of starting that starting the lens change when you told me.

Okay. Good.

Were there any other reasons why they were able to get good people, good leadership, why the NLF was able to get good leadership in the countryside? They're the ones you've already mentioned this response to previous conditions.

In Vietnam, for generations, the real power and the economy and the education through which you get power, uh, was in the hands of a very few people. Maybe three to five percent of the population controlled the government, controlled the economic life of the country. If you were a peasant, or a lowly born, it was almost impossible to break out of, of this chain of your father and your grandfather. The Viet Cong offered social mobility. In those days, '65 and '66, before the great pacification experiments, the great pacification uh, programs came in to try to change this.

A perceptive, intelligent rural boy with a little education could understand from the propaganda of the enemy that there might be some social mobility, that today he was a peasant boy riding a buffalo, tomorrow he may be a corporal, a year later he may be a sergeant And for him to reach some position like that, uh, in the uhm, uh regular forces of Vietnam, would have almost been impossible.

He was cannon fodder. And because of his lack of education, in a modern army you don't understand artillery, you don't understand tanks, you don't have the calculus and the math to do some of the chores of warfare, but in a guerrilla army where it is ah principally ah on ah on the basic operation of ah of a platoon, or at, the most a company, ah the farmer boy, the peasant boy can master these and due to high attrition, here is ah here's the point of the knife being turned is that probably one of the greatest reasons the communists can offer social mobility is there is tremendous casualties against the government forces in the early stages, that is to say there are many deaths and and uh wounded spots to fill so there's a quick way to move up in the Communist uh uh uh guerrilla force.

What was the relationship of the of the people recruited uh to families, how they would...

We're out of film here.

Okay.

So let's go back to uh the family question.

The significance of uh cadre of uh a young rural boy joining the uh Viet Cong uh tremendous change to his status. It was a tremendous change for his family because everyone in the hamlet knows that he went off to join either the government side or to the Viet Cong side. There are no secrets in the rural area, there are uh few secrets in the countryside. As a result, the government then classes his family uh as a possible security problem. And the police, constabulary forces, military forces the administration, uh seeks them out at all times and I guess you could say they're under some form of harassment then on.

Either outright harassment or from a point of view of the government trying to talk the family into getting the boy uh to come in through the Chieu Hoi Program, the surrender program, or something or simply desert uh uh the forces he joined. For the boy, Vietnamese families are extremely close. You can't in the American sense of the word, understand what the big family means uh to Asian folks. Uh it is almost uh uh impossible to describe how close the families are.

For him to cut this umbilical cord and to go off into the jungle to where he cannot get back to see his family too often he is jeopardizing his safety and his unit if he comes back. Uh he has to form new liaisons with people that he may not know. He needs a new father and mother, uh he needs a new counselor, he needs a new teacher, he needs a protector. He finds all of this in generally the political cadre of the unit he joins. They replace all of this for him. So what he has to do, is really find all of the um things that he previously got from his own family and from his community he has get that from the unit.

This in turn works for the Viet Cong, it builds the kind of elite units that they are well known for, because having cut, cut the bridges, having burned the bridges in back of him he has to depend upon his unit for everything. And as a result they can mold him, and develop him, and train him, and bring him up through the ranks in the form that they want. They control his behavior, his thoughts, his actions. Uh it's a complete metamorphosis. If you look back when he was riding that buffalo in uh the patty field from the time he that he joined the unit and became uh uh a fighting uh soldier against the government.

Was there a uh an effort um at that level to to make Communists of these young men, or what ah what was the the new view of the world, so to speak.

At this uh at this point...

Start again.

At this uh at this point of his education, at this point of his education, there's very little attempt, or very little mention of uh what we would classify as Communist doctrine. He's developed into a super nationalist, an anti-government fighter. Uh a savior of his village and his family eventually, and for uh and for uh and very great emphasis on his children and grandchildren the future, sacrifice yourself for uh what's going to happen in the future. If he survives, and he shows a great deal of intelligence and dedication, a superior quality which the Vietnamese call [incomprehensible] or zealousness, which is more than just ordinary drive.

Uh then he is brought up through promotions and importance uh in the cadre organization, in the guerrilla organization to where people do begin to talk to him about his economic and political thoughts, and it's that point later, or when he has proven himself uh that he is introduced to to uh what we in the West would recognize as as uh Communist indoctrination, and eventually he, is sold on this uh political uh economic system and becomes himself a teacher of that to others.

What did being a uh super-nationalist for that young man or woman mean in detail?

I can, I can tell you what this means uh to the individual in terms of how it limits his behavior. Uh, it gives him a philosophy uh an esprit de corps, which is pretty hard to duplicate uh in uh in Western society and uh in Western armies because of the freedom which is prohibited, which is uh permitted.

Start again.

Ah, let me give you an example of um... how the super-nationalism uh impacts upon um a a boy who is joining the Viet Cong. It limits his acitivities, it limits his behavior and it controls his behavior. He has to uh at many times during the course of his uh his day, break the old habit of uh thinking first of his family, and lastly about his country or his mission. And make decisions which uh uh effect uh uh what he is doing. That may harm his family, it may ac—actually jeopardize his family. He has to put mission and cause before family ah considerations, for the immediate.

This is extremely hard uh for rural people to do. It also uh puts him in a position of where, well he might be an extremely passive person uh an extremely sensitive young man uh who uh may be Buddhist may regard human life very highly, and uh actually uh uh lose merit for his passage to the life beyond by taking uh human life, he has to steel himself and he has to be able to be a pretty savage fighter.

Ambushes, quick hit and run uh, uh, operations, participate in the terrorism and the um beheading or assassinations of village chiefs or effective government officials who are opposed to him. So he undergoes quite a uh psyche change, uh, in uh, going, uh, towards, uh, this um, uh political goal. Uh, uh he can accept this and they generally do very well because uh the cause justifies the act. They are so imbued with their cause, that it follows on that anything they do to attain their ends and uh it justifies the means by which he gets there.

Would you define uhm what the cause is.

The cause is... the cause for all of them is revolution to change the economic uh, the political and the social systems of uh, of uh, their country. It is uh, a an attempt as one very uh, uh well known Vietnamese told me at one time, it really comes down to an attempt to destroy the ethics and the philosophy of uh, Confucianism. That this is really what they're uh, doing to to break the chains of Confucianism, as the Communists might uh, uh might, uh, tell their cadre...

And so it's, it's uh, an attempt to leap frog the the city Vietnamese and become a modern state or, or what?

Social—it's an attempt to bring social justice and and uh, upward mobility to the uh, to the peasantry or the lowly uh, born Vietnamese, to break this endless cycle, of son, grandson, and grandfather, uh, knowing that they're always going to be, uh, at a certain station of life, they are not going to be able to break out of this endless chain of poverty.

And through the proselytizing propaganda of the insurgent force, and in the case of Vietnam, the Viet Cong, they could convince a considerable number of people who had been mistreated by the government for generations, who had been mistreated by the Diem police, uh, who had been, uh, held back from, from, uh, from progress, and they recognized it, and as a result this became a big gamble for them to break this cycle, to break out of this cycle. Perhaps not they personally, in the in the short run, but certainly the class of people they represented. A class struggle.

Would you describe the the uh, the view of of countryside people for city Vietnamese.

The urban-rural conflict exists in any society. We have it in the United States, you have it in Europe, but I don't think it's, uh, uh, as prevalent as it is in in underdeveloped societies, because there the haves almost always reside in great numbers in the cities at the seat of power, the seat of control; where the armies operate from, where the police operate from, the economic systems. In rural countryside places, such as Vietnam, you have a small frog in a small pond who carries out the uh, edicts of the central government.

A high, that's a also another indication of a, of a society uh, that has no social mobility. A very rigid, centrally directed system. Oh, other than these few people who enjoy privileges and power, uh, for whom the laws seem to be uh made to help, and to hinder everybody else, uh, the rest of the people, uh, of rural Vietnam uh, simply have to uh, endure these uh, these uh, restrictions upon their mobility and their uh, desires, uh, uh, for the last hundreds of years.

We're out of film...

Let's uh, let's go on to your experience, as, as I think the city-countryside thing for discussion.

When the Americans arrived in Vietnam, in force with the advent of the advisory effort, and the uh, larger, uh, economic mission, uh, group of civilians, there wasn't really very much expertise among uh, this group of people. There wasn't very much to read about. You could read of the French experiences and of, Malaysia who had a similar problem that was somewhat successful in fact um in terms uh, of the military effort was quite successful. Ah, the Americans were left to try to figure out what it was they were going to advise the Vietnamese to do.

The Vietnamese have had some experiments, they have had uh, some attempts to separate the Viet Cong or the Viet Cong families, uh, from the uh, rest of the population who had no family or other ties, political ties, uh, to the enemy. And this proved to be a failure because the man assigned to do it would have had to gone into the Viet Cong uh, part of, uh, the population division.

And this kind of an insurgence in this situation almost every family and I'm speaking of the large family, the mothers, the grandfathers, and the uncles and cousins, has uh, some of the people, some of their family members, uh, in the enemy opposition. The next experiment was almost directly taken from Malaya, and that was uh, removing people from extremely remote uh, areas, that were under constant, uh insurgent, harassment, or control, and bringing them to larger, new villages, and they called this a agroville project.

Some twenty two or twenty three of these larger relocation uh, projects, were instituted and while it accomplished uh, some of they uh, aims, uh, it really made uh, the economic and the um, social life of the villager, uh, quite painful , and quite often it simply collected him into one spot where the enemy could uh, shot at him, harass him, mortar him, uh, to to throw fear into him for joining their, or at least being allowed uh, allowing himself to come to the government side. So this failed. Uh, by the time the Americans resources were available and the and the um, and the civilians who were there to advise upon this pacification idea, pacification meaning the the taking back of geographical and and um, and groups uh of population from enemy control, and then eventually converting them to resources for the government side or to their own side.

Put it another way for me.

All right.

Just say pas, just define pacification for me here so that we can...

Pacification essentially means the uh, deprivation of population and areas to enemy control and enemy uses for resources, and converting the people into a viable force to protect themselves and uh, of course protecting the uh, the uh, ideals of uh, the host government, uh, prefers, of adopting the democratic system as opposed to the Communist one. Uh, this has uh, a mixture of military force and military ideas, along with, uh, creating a uh, political system that is more amenable to the wishes of the peasants, uh, some democracy involved, an economic system that replaces the landlord and the money lenders, uh, with uh, uh, a more Westernized or, uh, freer type of uh, uh, source of funds, to for the villager to develop his own independent economic life.

Let's um let's talk about the main elements of pacification, the ones that you think are most important was land of the tiller the central element or obviously there were dozens, but let's go one by one through the ones that you think were most important in terms of being successful.

To take back an enemy area or to pacify it, involves many many delicate steps. It is a it involves a great deal of timing, and it uh, involves a great deal of depth of knowledge of that particular village and their history and what has happened to it. Regardless of what the mix are, regardless of how you divide up what it is you do, it has to be done in the correct phase. In the first phase, and I don't know what percentage this is, but the first phase, and the first percentage your resources you put in are military. You must exclude major enemy forces from the area, and you must build a cofferdam around that area so that they do not reintroduce themselves midway through your, your process.

And after you've brought security to the people, to where they can depend upon, uh, their tomorrows, depend upon the government's word, uh, then you begin a process of economic and political building so that they can become self sufficient and do their own protection. There is not enough soldiers in any army of the world to protect everyone, and you can see the logic of this just in plain mathematics. You would need one soldier to protect one individual, uh, you would have half the people in the army, and you don't have that kind of resources.

So the people must protect themselves. Eventually, you can provide a main force, you can provide a constabulary force over a period of time, but the end purpose of this pacification is to prove to the uh, rural people that their interest in their future lies with the government and not with the Viet Cong.

The way giving people security, the way the word is is used, ah, implies that it would be popular for them to be secure from the NLF when in fact a lot of areas, it might be unpopular. Um, isn't security, isn't the definition of security in those terms of, in in government terms, security for a new set of people with power and a new set of ideas?

Ah, security is a tricky word in a rural, insurgent area. Ah, it means twenty-four hour security. When you initially move in and displace the insurgent force, the Viet Cong, you must do it on a seven day a week, twenty-four hour basis, because if you lapse for just one hour, the enemy guerrilla force, political forces, can move back in to that hamlet and punish anyone who cooperates with the government. So it has to be per, pervasive, and it has to be constant. And you have to give to the peasant uh, his uh, a feeling that this is permanent and it it will be there as long as required.

In the mean time, uh, you educate him to the fact that uh, if he wants the economic, political, social benefits of the program that you are about to start after security is established, then he must be willing to defend it and take some chances to defend a better way of life. And you, so therefore you must give him a better way of life. If you simply move in with military forces and uh, say OK we've done our job, now here are weapons, you must protect yourself, it's a failure from the very beginning because you haven't convinced him of the necessity of giving up his life or fighting an enemy force uh, uh, because you haven't put anything different into the pot, into the equation.

Therefore, you must go through stages of developing a better life for him, educating his children, bringing the health of the village up to par, providing money that he can borrow, uh, in order to buy his to buy his seed grain and fertilizer, and increase his harvest so that the end of the year he has a little extra money so he can use this extra money to educate his children, so the children once educated can break out of the of the the rural poor status and perhaps go one to be something much greater than than would uh, normally be possible without the education.

Would you describe briefly, uhm, what the the uhm health conditions, educational conditions, ah, just a thumbnail sketch of what uh, what it is like...

Okay. In 19...

A remote place with [inaudible] communications...

In ah, remote rural portions of, in remote rural portions of Vietnam in the '65, '66 era, you found inadequate schooling from the point of view that perhaps the teacher, uh, who taught the children were barely uh, more literate, uh, than the children that she was teaching. Uh, you found that the schoolhouse was simply a bamboo thatched roof, or a uh, a poorly, uh, constructed, uh, uh, local edifice. Uh, you also found that perhaps they were so limited, so many children and so few school, uh, uh, chairs, that only some of the selected boys could ever go to school.

Girls had little or no possibility of receiving any education. And that education for a rural uh, child generally stops after the third grade, and absolutely by the end of the fifth grade. So without this um further education uh, he had literally no chance to break out of the, uh, of social pattern that he and his grandfather were locked into. The health of the uh, of the hamlets were pretty much the same. Twenty to thirty miles...

Let's start over...

The health of the um...

Excuse me a second, is this noise outside coming over . .

In terms of uh, what the rural health was like in those days, I've been to village and hamlets in the Delta, remote areas where there were no health rooms, and no one who was well versed in any kind of you might even call first aid, so anyone who had dysentery which can be fatal, uh, anyone who had high fever simply had to uh, wait it out, and they were lucky if it turned out to be a minor uh, bacteria or a minor virus, and it turned out to be something more serious meningitis or one of the more serious disease they simply uh, had waited too long before they could be transported some fifty or sixty kilometers ah, into a ah, government facility.

Quite often when they got to the government facility, it was so crowded they still had hours to wait or uhm, unfeeling medical personnel, overworked who simply didn't pay too much attention to them. It was the very basic medical facilities that uh, that anyone could imagine. The problems of uh, mobile medical teams were also magnified by the culture, that you might have a doctor to come around to a village once a month, or once every three months, and treat everyone ah, from as an outpatient. He would find someone who ah, needed medication for a chronic condition and he would leave the medicine, and tell them and instruct them how this was suppose to be taken.

Invariably because of the naïveté of the people, by the end of the third day they'd taken all of the medicine because if one teaspoon is good uh, five teaspoons must be better and as a result, quite often they had side effects from the medicine. So what was needed, of course, was um, uh, medicine that was uh, closer to the people ah, and was more sophisticated in in terms of uh, of uh, of of public health uh, considerations, which up through '65 existed only in the cities and the major towns and the major villages.

Let's go on to uh, the other pillars of the pacification program that were uhm, that we felt were important.

Traditionally, uh, the village was organized ah, ah, in sort of a paternal uh, way. Uh, the richest or most important man, uh, was generally uh, designated as the village chief or the village leader, or he was appointed by the government, or if the government did not trust that village for some previous reason, some past reason, they would send in an outsider, a person not even from the village in order to be their village chief, and you can't imagine the immense power this gave this person.

Uh, generally, under a non-democratic system, everything that came into the village came through his hands, so quite obviously his friends and his family in most cases, benefited first, uh, from any of the resources the government uh, was able to uh, to uh, share with the people. Uh, service, public service, was an unknown word. It's simply a public servant, simply didn't see himself in Vietnam as a person who served ah, a constituency. He was there to dominate them, to carry out central orders, to direct the peoples' daily lives and as a result, a conflict developed between the population and ah, the government officials.

The Viet Cong, understanding this because they were from the people, would not use the word, the same word in Vietnamese to to designate their leadership or their ah, people ah, who served in the hamlets, they called their people "cadre" or "canbol", to differentiate between the Vietnamese word which meant government official, because the people felt so badly and so estranged from normal civil servants, the Viet Cong didn't want to be mistaken or identified that they were simply another government, so they changed the very word which they called ah, ah their administrators.

Later on, after the Americans and the host government, uh, learned a little bit more about how one uh, changes the minds of people, how one pacifies them, uh, they developed a very large cadre of nationalist uh, civilians who they called cadre also. Oh, they lived and administered among the uh, uh people of the hamlets and villages much in the way that the Viet Cong had been doing for the past fifty years.

Let's go on to to ah, describe the dimensions of the problem, ah, from the government...from our point of view.

The uh, tremendous geographical and uh, human uh, dimensions of this problem in Vietnam uh, just can't be overstated. It's a country with many jungles, many inaccessible areas, uh, few roads and has a spine of uh, high mountains running down uh, uh, the central part of the country. You have, you had approximately twelve thousand populated hamlets and villages within the country, and they were separated by miles, quite often, from from their neighbors. As a result, uh, you needed to have some type of pacification program that built upon success. There were not enough forces, not enough resources, not enough cadres, not enough anything to go out and simultaneously try to pacify or secure twelve thousand hamlets and villages at the same time. You had to do it piecemeal.

And mention uh what portion of the population that rural society was, why...it was important.

Ah, these twelve thousand hamlets and villages comprised about ninety percent of the population. There were only ah, ah, a small number of really large cities in Vietnam, ah, major portion of the population, ah, lived in the countryside. As the war went on, and the security in many areas could not be guaranteed by the government, as the enemy used more and more, uh, terror tactics, on uh, uh, hamlets, that uh, like Catholic hamlets and uh, hamlets that would not uh, readily go along with their domination.

Uh, the urban people or the urban population increased significantly, perhaps doubling ah, because they sought safety, ahh, in the urban areas they sought economic, uh, uh, advancement, and uhm, there were some social mobility later on in the in the cities as opposed to the countryside, they were able to lose themselves among the large uhm, migrant population.

What was the proportion of that ninety percent of the population, and that was open to government influence and...

In trying to determine where the loyalties ah, ah, were among the rural people, I might say that ninety five percent of the urban people who had lived there over any length of time, eventually came to see that the future, ah, was with the non-Communist world, it was with their government, perhaps their government was imperfect and corrupt, and at times oppressive, but they saw the other side, they saw the insurgents, and the Communist as a long term greater threat.

As a result, the people who eventually came to the cities in great numbers, and who stayed there and who worked and who prospered a little bit more than if they would have stayed if they'd stayed in the countryside, eventually chose, and I think the proof of this pudding is that most of our refugees who have left Vietnam since the takeover have have come from the uh, mostly the urban the urban areas. Going back to the uh, uh, population control picture of uh, whose allegiance belonged to whom, and early '55, I had occasion to visit many of the hamlets in the Delta, in the central area, and found that there were huge areas, like the whole, almost the entire province of Quang Ngai in central Vietnam, that couldn't ever be pacified in my opinion, because almost every family had a father, or or a close relative in the Viet Cong.

Now in trying to turn that family against the Viet Cong, against their uh, relatives and bringing them over to overtly support the government and to literally take up arms against their relatives was an almost impossible tra—task. Many times the government, backed by the Americans, uh, uh, attempted to pacify these areas, but I term, I, I want, I prefer to call them occupations of those areas, which is about as good as you can do. Uh, changing their mind was almost impossible. Uh, there were many other areas, uh, like that.

Six great areas, there were six great areas that you had to put in the same category as Quang Ngai and Ca Mau the most southern province in the country, because these are the relocation areas after the Geneva Convention of where about one hundred thousand of the former Communists troops that fought against the French, bivouacked for up to a year. And during their time there they married into the local population, made propaganda to such an extent that these areas were almost permanently converted ah, to insurgent-oriented people.

Now, if we exclude those areas and we go back to the other parts of the country, in '55 I found that there was about a fifty-fifty uh, division, that about half of the people were anti-government and pro-Liberation Force, and the other people were either neutral, and we have say that in terms of sometimes neutrality is a vote for the insurgents, cause they're unwilling to supply intelligence or unwilling to to cooperate with the government. Uh, but at least they were denying their resources, uh, to the insurgents. Uh, due to some problems on the insurgent side, and some minor successes with the government...

We have clean through...

Can you generalize now about what conditions were in '66 in terms of...

In general early '54, '55 you might have had half of the rural people supporting the insurgents giving them their their cooperation, and the other half ah being neutral or at least in some way supporting the government. By late '65 early '66 through some problems on the insurgent side, making some mistakes, perhaps the overuse of terror, and some small successes on the government side and doing the right thing, they probably effected a ten percent shift of ah...

By late '65 or early '66 I would say a slight shift towards the government had occurred. Ah. Principally due to some problems that the insurgents had. Perhaps the overuse of terrorism, ah, some small successes the government had had in key areas around major cities doing some things right for the first time that you had this ten percent shift. So, probably a a 60-40 division of rural people towards the government.

Would you tell us what terrorism is just recently. How the VC used it. What their ends were?

In most cases the Viet Cong used terrorism in a very careful manner. They used it as a scalpel instead of a, of a hatchet, that terrorism was a threat they held over ah the government apparatus. If you keep killing a village chief you get to the point of where no one will take the job of coming in to to ah run that ah that ah village, or no local person will step up and take the leadership, or you can use the threat of assassination ah to to ah let him sit in place but be entirely inactive, ah be a village chief in name only but not exert his control and to give perhaps even false and misleading information about the security of the place ah back to the government, ah, to indicate that it's more in government control than it is so that the government does not send security forces there.

But, the threat of force and the willingly, willingly using the force is a tremendous tool in in destabilizing ah ah a sitting government. Ah. In order not to alienate too many people, the Viet Cong would use it very carefully principally on ah people who had been recruited as intelligence agents in the villages and hamlets. Ah. The apparatus that were there to represent the government, and in some cases ah villagers who tended to espouse pro-government or anti-communist sympathies. The average villager who simply was neutral. Ah. Who simply bent with the wind like the bamboo was very safe ah from the terrorist because he was he was not the target. He was ah a ah a a non sequitur in this equation. As a result he was safe by being neutral.

Let's, before we forget it, go back to... give us your personal example of... knowledge of VC areas and VC troops and how you ha...

Well, my personal knowledge of of the VC ah modus operanda how they operated and how they obtained their success and what their political and social messages were came to me beginning about early 1964 or I'm sorry late '64 right after ah ah... My personal observations on the modus operanda and the methods of operation of the of the Viet Cong began to take shape in late 1964 after the Diem government fell.

Ah. I was asked along with some friends, both Vietnamese and Americans to form up what you might call survey teams to go go into the hamlets. It was first chance we had had to really do anything of a of a nature where we could operate without a a large government presence which, of course, tended to make the villager ah apprehensive. We went in ah for a period of six months and interviewed people. Lived in the hamlets with the people. Ah.

We took along medics who held ah ah medical call for ah minor ill, illnesses that occurred in all hamlets and talked to the people at length to develop a a rational of what had happened to the Diem government, why it was unpopular, why the people gave their support to the enemy and in so doing we ah gained a great deal of information about ah ah ah his program and his cadre and ah how he ah managed to destabilize the government. We called this the Long An Survey.

Do you want to mention a specific instance of going down into the dungeon with those people, was that particularly revealing for you?

We did this in a number of ways. We we did these surveys or had these long talks with villagers and and people in rural areas by going to their homes, by quite often going to the prisons where some of the Viet Cong were were held prisoner and one particular case in in a a very remote area of Long An I was on the spot in the district town when they brought in a rather elite platoon of propaganda people, armed propaganda team, in fact, and they had them in an old French dungeon and the value to me of talking to these people before they had been in captivity overcame my reluctance to crawl down into this dungeon and and ah sit with them and talk with them for hours.

As a result of of experiences like this a number of us developed for the first time a really ah truly understanding of what kind of apparatus we were working against and how they how they managed to do what they did with so meager ah resources. Other occasions ah ah took us to the schools in Vietnam ah where with a an edict from the local province chief we would have the senior or the most ah mature of the males and females in the classes there come away with us to the athletic fields out of teacher's sight and we'd sit with children and quite often from children ah great truths emerged and ah ah old friends like Douglas Ramsey who spent seven years as a captive with the Viet Cong ah later in his life.

We used to sit with the children and ah find out what it was their parents talked about and why they and many of their friends would join the Viet Cong and ah what the government had to do to regain their loyalties. Many of them told us during these interviews that they were going to graduate from that school and then go off and join their friends in the Viet Cong.

What was your your feeling ah at the time ah about that challenge as an American ah working in Vietnam? Did you feel that optimistic, did you feel we could do the job?

I felt like all of the Americans who were assigned there and who stayed there any time. If you had any political or moral qualms about being engaged in this type of new warfare you soon left. Those who stayed tended to be the most dedicated people. That is, people who could accept this challenge, who felt ah that again ah it was a long proposition ah where we had to support the Vietnamese over a long period of time to almost any lengths. Ah. We couldn't lose this, that for international as well as domestic reasons we couldn't lose this.

This was as much a war as say WWII or Korea to us. It was a different kind of of conflict. But it was one we had to master, and as a result, I accepted ah the ah part of the job that ah was ah pretty difficult ah for most Americans to accept from a moral or a political point of view. Ah. Literally taking part in a conflict ah which was not in a a direct way involving the security of the United States, of being a a surrogate ah government representative sometimes. It even amounted to the fact that ah we were involved with our counterparts to the point of where we were the only communication chain from the lower level back to the central government to get things done.

We were doing a job for village chiefs and district chiefs that they couldn't do for themselves because of their own bureaucracy, and in that way, it was an invigorating ah circumstance. It was a a a ah most unusual situation which you could be in and and from the standpoint of seeing micro and macro economics at work, of seeing a developing, budding political system, of seeing democracy ah a context which was not ah very well known in Vietnam being introduced to see what its problems were, of trying to get it introduced, or trying to get people interested in electing their own officials, setting up economic systems like a rural bank, land reform which was fraught with many problems, land reform being a a method of of increasing social mobility and economic mobility, taking the land away from the vested gentry and breaking it up and getting it to the people, and then being able to institute a government program allowing them ah ah credits and monetary flexibility so that the production didn't go down.

So that you could keep production up and so forth. These were fascinating things from an intellectual standpoint and ah and invigorating from the point of view that to my knowledge very few Americans have ever faced this in the past. We've had wars that involved tanks and airplanes and and basic ideologies but not this kind of of delicate...Out?...

Let's start with the...

By '66 when we started what I think was the the most important pacification program that ah ah we started ah in the in the entire period where we had come together and understood the various things that goes into pacification from the point of view of first security, uh then democratic evolution of the political system, making the changes that were necessary. Ah. Of trying to sail in front of the Viet Cong revolution with an evolution of ourself. But, an evolution that would ah mature in in a time that would satisfy domestic politics in the United States.

We all felt under a tremendous time constraint from our our superiors that if we developed a program which we thought would work, in five years we were pushed to make it bear fruit in two years because we were working against this this backlash developing here in the United States. The the opposition at home which really had nothing to do with the Vietnamese directly but it had a heck of a lot to do with our ability to stay and see it done and continue to have the American taxpayer put up the resources.

Ah. We attempted to convince the Vietnamese government that main force troops are necessary but what's really more important for the security of the people local people are regional forces and popular force—people drawn from the local population properly trained properly armed who provide close and day and night support. They live there. They're the families ah of the villagers there, and that they stay there forever because if you move the regular army in from fifty miles away the peasants knew that eventually the army was going back to their base and then everyone who had cooperated would have a visit from the Viet Cong enforcer.

So, we were successful in developing this paramilitary force ah beginning in in the sixties and to the late '60s, '70s ah because we put so much effort in it. We put so much force on the Vietnamese to accept this idea and we had the resources committed so that we could raise a tremendous number of local military forces. The follow-on or third phase of security then was to get the old men and the young children of the hamlet to take an active part in their security as lookouts. Gave them old weapons and we didn't expect them to fight the Viet Cong units but when they saw a VC unit approaching or they were aware of it they would fire the guns into the air, draw attention to the fact there was infiltration going on.

Make them do a an overt act which forever put them on the side against the insurgent and for the government. In the economic field ah we introduced agricultural credits and the most successful thing we ever did I think was to introduce what's called the Honda rice, a particular type of rice ah developed in the Philippines which when properly fertilized developed tremendous yields. Four hundred percent increase in in the peasant's reward for his labor and it was not a proto periodic rice as the indigenous rice, that is to say, it didn't depend upon the lunar ah conditions ah to mature.

It was simply a a certain amount of time in the ground and you had a a crop. So, they could three crop their paddies a year. With the increase yield you can see that they soon had enough surplus to buy a radio and a Honda bicycle or a Honda motorcycle, hence its name. Ah. That was successful. It depended, however, on on high fertilization ah backup, that you had to introduce fertilizer and distribute it. Ah. The democracy part of it or the self-government part of it was more difficult.

Peasants for generations had been told what to do. Suddenly to say hey, hey democracy is here. Elect your own village chief and your own administrators. Quite a new idea. So, they tended to look to the traditional leaders to tell them who to elect (chuckle) and quite often it was really the same people who would oppress them because they didn't know what else to do. In a few cases in some cases the old rascals were thrown out and somebody new was put in, but in general the elective process takes a long time.

It takes literally generations before you can build an understanding of democracy and to have democracy work ah in a way that is is positive for your political situation, and the village level in Vietnam, the villa—the hamlet and village, the district, the province and the national level represents the flow of power back and forth. And, the Vietnamese were never willing to let democracy go as far as electing the next level of government, the district chief who really had tremendous control because he had control of all the forces in his area and he who controls the gun really controls.

So as a result we had these experiments in self government ah successful a few times, unsuccessful in many times and never getting beyond the lowest level of government. Whenever it seemed that this political process was getting out of control someone some village chief or in the case of the central government where you had a national assembly popularly elected, got too powerful and challenged the government something happened to these people. They were out of power, out of resources, or in the case of a a famous Vietnamese, Tran Ngoc Chau who was a a ah firebrand in the Thieu government ah he was sent to jail for contact with his brother who was on the other side.

So, the government while going along with the general concept of a freer more liberal ah type of political environment did not really believe you could bring over a short period of time a free choice or democracy to the rural population without the government itself being displaced. Ah. As a result, we made a little head road here but not very much. The, by the end of '66 in this era of the great pacification effort, the integrated pacification effort. We had taken back and secured a great number of people ah from the Viet Cong.

We had made roads secure for ah unescorted travel. Ah, we had had increased those roads by 500 to 1000 percent in some areas where a person could reasonably drive in his jeep ah in a remote area without expecting to be ambushed or blown up. This allowed the administrators from the government to bring supplies, to come and bring leadership ah ah to the lower levels. It allowed the people to move out of the areas when they had to for commerce, to move their resources out to sell them. Ah.

To receive ah medical aid and so forth. And, during those those days of the big pacification program ah Vietnam looked like it was ready to take off. It looked like we had attained our in, and then, of course, that was ah stepped upon by the famous Tet Offensive and after that we had to start all over again because we had lost the security umbrella around all of these these gains.

Did ah...were we ah...just mention the ah the principal obstacles in in your mind whether on our side or the Vietnamese side in ah making it take off.

Okay.

Was there underestimation of the of the ah the nature of the problem from a policy level ah or complete...

There are a few basic problems. There are a few basic problems in implementing a pacification program. One is from the the strategy concept. What you're asking the ruling gentry of the country to do. The three to five percent of the people who control ah all facets ah of of a country in the throes of an insurgency. You're asking them to be very effective, non-bureaucratic, non-corrupt. Don't think about yourself. Think about the country. So that when you are successful you have displaced yourself.

They're, that that vested gentry can look forward to their children and their grandchildren, their great grandchildren benefiting from this hard fight against the communists, if you don't change the system. You keep them in power and they're they're family members in power. If they're very successful and you have social mobility then the rulers of the future are going to come from all aspects of life. You're going to use the resources of all the people and through a democratic process th—some of the better ones are going to rise up and take over the positions they hope to reserve for their grandchildren.

So, you're asking a man to work hard, risk his life, fight the enemy so you can be, you yourself be displaced. In Confucianism terms that's kind of a contradiction. Okay. The second thing you have is the trying in a short period of time ah to make a bureaucratic neutral type of administration. The public servants take fire and become active and do their job in an enthusiastic way. Because when you're fighting a war of attrition or you're fighting a protracted war ah the idea is to survive.

As a soldier told me who would not move very quickly towards the enemy dug in a in a fence line. He said you've only been here a few years. I've been here all my life. Why do you want me to rush to my death towards that fence line. They will be in that fence line next month and the month after and and many times it will come back to that fence line. I simply want to survive. I've never forgotten that. Well, this this applies not only to the soldier but it applies to the civil servant. Ah.

It is unknown in Vietnamese culture for the lower echelon administrator to make suggestions up to the boss or to say no, boss, you're wrong. Here's a better way to do it. You're only there to take orders from top downward. So, as a result implementation of programs are very clumsy very slow and very, inefficient. Quite often the implementer not knowing really why he's doing certain things.

And why....Let's, why don't we start again.

Start with the US as...

After we developed an expertise in pacification and an understanding of the Vietnamese mentality and the limitation of the government's forces for implementing change, we had on our own side a a tremendous ah problem. We had all of these eager young Americans who spoke the language, understood what they were doing, working with Vietnamese they liked and admired but always under this push from Washington to get things done quicker. When the Viet Cong talk about a protracted war they mean just that.

That one of the most important weapons they have is time. When they talk about fighting a twenty, forty, fifty year war most Americans laughed and scoffed. That was funny to them. It wasn't for the Viet Cong. They thoroughly were willing to fight fifty years. They would wait us out. If we were successful one year and we thought everything had been completed and retired they'd be back the next year and undo what we had done and they were willing to do this fifty times, if necessary. That's the way they were indoctrinated.

We had pressures on us from Washington. Every day. Every week. Every month. To get the figures, to get the numbers. How many enemy have you eliminated? How many hamlets have you taken back? How many roads have you secu—have you secured. Get this thing over and looking in back of the the reason for this was, of course, that a protracted war would become unpopular eventually and we'd lose the support of the American people and we'd lose the resources. Get it done while you can.

Make hay while the sun shines. But there are some things like an evolution of a of a system of ah changing the nature of a people, of having a people who were denied access to a weapon all their lives suddenly have a weapon thrust upon them say now it's okay. You're supposed to defend yourself with this. This is a very long process. It's one really that takes a a bit of ah brain washing as the communist used the term. Of convincing people ah of working with them, of educating them.

Starting with the young and and ah bringing them forward so they where they accept these things as normal requirements on a a citizenry. Ah. We would have something that would ah be successful in a pilot project because in a pilot project we had no focus upon us. The, the administration the government, the American government wasn't looking closely at us. The press wasn't reporting on what we were doing and we could take our time.

So that the pilot project was very successful. Then in the analysis of this, the administration, the leadership would buy this and say now you have to mature this thing, you have to make it bear fruit in a third of a half or a fourth of the time. A baby takes nine months. You can't have a baby in two months, and we kept feeding this back up the line but we kept getting orders back down, it's got to be done faster, faster, faster.

We, and John Vann is was a very close friend of mine who was killed in the war there and he used to use a phrase almost everyday that we have enough time to do something over ten times but we don't have enough time to do something correct the first time and take ten years. Ah. He was very aware of this problem of pressure to get things done quickly even though often it was imperfect and had to be done over again the next year.

Put that a different way. Say it again. Ah...

Ah. Eager Americans knowing what to do and how to do it ah after being there some time understood how long it would take ah to change Vietnamese ways of doing things and then the Vietnamese have to believe this and they had to be convinced that it was important in order to sustain it after we left, after we were not immediately involved. This took time.

Constantly from Saigon and from Washington to Saigon ah we got the pressures ah to get things done more quickly to to ah speed up the whole process so that we could wind this war up in a way that we wound up WWII ah Korea and so forth. We were caught in this ah domestic political ah problem of doing things quickly ah if not perfectly.

Was the introduction of so many American troops ah a sign that we were going to lose?

When the, had the introduction of the American troops ah the ah the process ah had two of...let me start all over again.

Do you want to answer that?

Yeah, I will. When the American troops were introduced ah there were some good benefits to it and some bad benefits. The good benefits were that in the in the immediate we got increased security. Ah. The bad benefits ah were that we introduced into essentially a civil war ah situation a foreign ah element. The French had been there as conquerors and as as ah ah the exploiters of Indochina and as a result of that the the communist nationalist forces formed a coalition to drive out the foreigner, drive out the the French.

Ah. By reintroducing American troops in the minds of many unsophisticated people it was almost like history repeating itself. And, it became a good propaganda ah vehicle for the enemy. It also escalated the war because North Vietnam simply wanted to maintain some kind of parity in the size of their military forces as to those that they were opposing, and as we raised the ante they were forced to raise the ante so the war got larger and larger and more people got killed and injured and there were more devastation and and in terms of the size of the military operation it took much longer to put back a populated area, to put it together again after two giant war machines had clashed in in the in the area.

So, it had negatives and positives and the fact that we could never stay there forever, and the fact that the American army was not going to be an occupation army and stay there for twenty to forty or fifty years almost had defeat built into it because as you exercise one limb, which is the American army, at the expense of the other limb which is the Vietnamese army, the one that exe... not exercises so much gets weaker and I think Madame Binh put it very correctly when we announced Vietnamization. She said...

Say who she was.

Madame Binh was a political leader...

Madame Binh was a...

Just say Madame who was...

Binh, who was a political spokesman for the ah the Viet Cong, said after we announced Vietnamization that it would be admitting defeat ah for the South Vietnamese because if two people could barely carry a heavy stone when one set it down how could the other expect it to carry it alone, and she was alluding to this very fact that ah ah the ARVN or the regular army of Vietnam could not stand against this huge formal army that had been built up to contest the American army, and as we withdrew they were not going to withdraw also. They were going to keep the size of their army. And, essentially, it moved in to the traditional set peace battle and the country was lost by division to division contact and not through the insurgents and the guerrillas at the lower level.

Cut.

Preceding this note to the editor is several seconds of reference tone at minus etb and ah coming up is an interview with Vernon Gillespie and we're going to... go to magazine 717 or Camera Roll 717.