110. Editorial Note
Sherman Kent, Assistant Director of Intelligence for National Estimates, visited Saigon in the winter of 1960. Portions of his trip report, dated February 29, 1960 are summarized in John Kerry King, “Vietnam and the Office of National Estimates”, October 1964, CS Historical Paper No. 26, Top Secret.
According to this summary, Kent stated that indications in Saigon were that the Army of the Republic of Vietnam was not being trained for the contingencies that United States estimates considered most likely, from terror raids to guerrilla war. Instead, ARVN was undergoing divisional and corps maneuvers and there were only 300 members of the special forces. Ambassador Durbrow was also concerned about this situation. Kent raised the questions of whether ARVN was the concern of G–2 or G–3, and whether it was a legitimate intelligence target or not. Then, after generalizing this question to include other Asian armies, Kent stated that the information the United States had on such armies depended very much on the personality of the Chief of MAAG. If he gave the attaches access to information on the local armed forces, intelligence analysts would know a good deal about them; if not, they would know next to nothing. (CIA Files)