Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Vietnam, Volume I

347. Memorandum of a Conversation, Department of State, Washington, September 25, 1956¹

Washington, September 25, 1956

SUBJECT

• Viet-Nam

PARTICIPANTS

• Mr. Walter S. Robertson, Assistant Secretary for Far Eastern Affairs
• Lt. General John W. O’Daniel, USA Ret., Chairman, American Friends of Viet-Nam
• Mr. Paul M. Kattenburg, SEA

General O’Daniel called on Mr. Robertson following his return from a 3 weeks tour of Viet-Nam, August 17–September 7, 1956, undertaken at the personal invitation of President Diem. While in VietNam General O’Daniel represented the American Friends of VietNam. He was the guest of President Diem during his entire stay in the country and accompanied the President on several tours in the country and visits to projects and sites.

General O’Daniel, who had obviously been highly pleased at the reception given him in Viet-Nam, informed Mr. Robertson that in his view Free Viet-Nam was now entirely pacified and secure. The problem of the sects had been completely eliminated and the Viet-Minh’s strength in Free Viet-Nam was rapidly decreasing. General O’Daniel had found district and local government officials throughout the country to be firm and alert. His overall impression was that “the ship of state was in running order; the only question was that of its direction.”

Among outstanding new projects General O’Daniel had noted during his visit were (1) the extraordinarily successful Cai San refugee relocation project in the South, (2) the new agricultural college at Blau in the Plateaux area, (3) a vast new irrigation project in the Tourane area of Central Viet-Nam. During his travels, General O’Daniel had inquired from strategically-located American missionaries throughout the country as to possible undercurrents among the population. Their response had been uniformly that there were none, and that President Diem’s government was growing increasingly popular.

General O’Daniel had had a three-hour session with the Vietnamese Cabinet at their request, on September 3, 1956. The meeting made it clear to him that the Vietnamese wanted U.S. technical aid in as large amount as they could possibly absorb. However, the Vietnamese Government wanted itself to select and hire American experts and wished to place them on the Vietnamese payroll. In other words, they wanted U.S. aid gradually to become a Vietnamese rather than an American project. It was also quite clear that the Vietnamese wanted U.S. private capital investment. Diem had provided General O’Daniel with two papers on this subject which the General had discussed with Ambassador Reinhardt in Saigon and which he passed on to Mr. Robertson.²

Mr. Robertson told General O’Daniel he was delighted that President Diem was interested in the possibility of private U.S. capital going into his country. This was an excellent way to ensure development of the country in rapid and effective fashion, and he favored it strongly.

General O’Daniel said that he wished to sound a note of warning if we were unreasonably slow in our aid programs to Viet-Nam, which was what the Vietnamese were complaining about. For example, we had been unreasonably slow in delivering road-building equipment. If we could not speed-up our procedures, we might well lose the gains that we had made so rapidly in the last year.

Mr. Robertson agreed that we had a very big stake in Viet-Nam and that we must at all times keep in mind that what we did or did not achieve in Viet-Nam would far transcend in importance the country of Viet-Nam itself, but would have a profound effect throughout the whole Far East. Mr. Robertson thought that one of our biggest problems wherever U.S. aid was required was the recruitment of qualified personnel. It was understandably extremely difficult to secure the kind of top-level experts that we really wanted in those countries, and yet the success or failure of the aid programs depended in large part on the people we selected to send out.

General O’Daniel then told Mr. Robertson that he had been informed by Mr. Nguyen Huu Chau, Vietnamese Secretary of State to the Presidency and a close collaborator of President Diem, who had recently visited New Delhi, that Nehru had told Chau that the Vietnamese should “stick to the West for aid.” Nehru had also indicated that the Indians were sending their technicians to West Germany rather than East Germany. Nehru had further dropped remarks to Chau implying that he did not trust Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia.

General O’Daniel next remarked that the Vietnamese felt their request to us for a raise in their force level from 150,000 to 170,000 men was justified on grounds of their great lack of adequate logistical support services in their armed forces. Mr. Robertson stated that we had a very serious Congressional problem to contend with in this respect. In view of the present trend of thinking in the Pentagon with regard to the effect of new technology and weapons on warfare and strategy, there was rapidly decreasing sentiment in Congress for large foreign aid programs. It was becoming increasingly more difficult to secure the needed appropriations. While Mr. Robertson agreed that Viet-Nam was essential to the free world’s position in Southeast Asia, he wished to stress the realities of the situation with which we had to deal here, and one of these realities was that Congress was in no mood to raise aid, rather to cut it. Moreover, Mr. Robertson pointed out that aid was not simply given, but that aid given must be maintained, as for example the question of providing the necessary maintenance aid to the Koreans for the planes given them under the MDAP program.

In concluding the interview, Mr. Robertson thanked General O’Daniel for his highly interesting and encouraging account of the situation in Viet-Nam. We would remain fully aware of the needs of Viet-Nam and of its importance to the free world.

1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 751G.00/9–2556. Confidential. Drafted by Kattenburg. Young, Kocher, and Robertson all initialed this memorandum, apparently indicating their concurrence.
2. These papers were not attached to the source text. The text of one is attached to a memorandum from Wisner to Robertson, infra. Both papers are summarized extensively in a memorandum from Young to Robertson, October 1. (Ibid., 751G.5–MSP/10–156)