106. Memorandum From the Secretary of Defense’s Deputy Assistant for Special Operations (Lansdale) to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (Irwin)1
SUBJECT
- Counter-Guerrilla Training, Vietnam
In State message from Saigon, 2446, of 18 February,2 Ambassador Durbrow strongly recommends that U.S. Army Special Forces be assigned to USARMA, Saigon, to give “anti-guerrilla” training to the Vietnamese Civil Guard. He indicates that the Vietnamese Government is agreeable to this extension of USARMA activities and regards this type of training as an urgent need.
OSO concurs in this recommendation. While this is an action for ISA, it does touch upon matters of concern to OSO and we will be happy to assist you in this as fully as desired. We believe this is a real opportunity to assist the Vietnamese meet a Communist threat and to gain valuable experience in a type of warfare which is still too-little understood by Americans.
As a foot-note to this memo, it might help if my use of “counter-guerrilla” instead of “anti-guerrilla” is explained. “Anti-guerrilla” has come to mean operations which protect rear areas from guerrilla harassment during combat against regular forces; thus, there is emphasis on how to get truck convoys through ambushes and simple punitive actions. “Counter-guerrilla’, in my opinion, more accurately expresses operations against an enemy force which is entirely [Page 289] guerrilla, and who combines political subversion with his paramilitary actions. This enemy is “everywhere”, not just in the rear areas. This is the type of warfare we need to understand more thoroughly than we do today.