Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Vietnam, Volume I

176. Memorandum of a Conversation, Saigon, June 24, 1960, 4 p-m.¹

Saigon, June 24, 1960, 4 p.m.

PARTICIPANTS

• President Ngo Dinh Diem
• Mr. Nguyen Dinh Thuan, Secretary of State at the Presidency
• Mr. Frank E. Walton, Chief, Public Safety Division, USOM
• Mr. Donald Q. Coster, Acting Director, USOM

1. As a result of a meeting held with the Secretary of State at the Presidency, Mr. Nguyen Dinh Thuan, the previous day, at which time Mr. Frank Walton, Chief, Public Safety Division, explained in detail, certain problems faced by USOM in an endeavor to implement the Civil Guard Project, Mr. Walton and I were asked to meet with the President at 4:00 p.m. on June 24.

2. Prior to our appointment we met for a few minutes with Thuan and I took this opportunity to suggest to him that, if at all possible, our meeting with the President should be limited to a discussion of the Civil Guard. It appeared obvious to me at the time that the President only desired to use the question of the Civil Guard as an excuse for a thorough airing of the Aid Program. Thuan said that he was in accord with my desire to limit the conversation to the Civil Guard but added that he naturally had no control over what the President might wish to discuss.

3. My suggestion that the Civil Guard should be the only topic for discussion was a prime example of wishful thinking. The meeting lasted a full 5 hours and we did not leave the President’s office until after 9:00 p.m. At the time of our departure from the Palace, I had the impression that the President could have gone on for hours and I thought that possibly he felt that we had endeavored to cut him short.

4. The President covered a multitude of subjects but at no time did he mention the recent reduction in aid under the Commercial Import Program for FY 1961 per se. At my suggestion, Walton had prepared a brief summary in French of the various obstacles that confronted USOM in our efforts to successfully implement the Civil Guard program. After a quick glance at the list the President asked Walton to summarize the problems. This Walton did, particularly mentioning: (a) Failure of the Civil Guard to give USOM daily, weekly and monthly operational reports as provided for in the Project Agreement. These reports had been received for a time but were discontinued at the direction of Secretary of State for the Interior Trinh; (b) Changes in organization, plans, and programs without consultation with or notification to USOM, i.e., formation of Commando Companies, transportation companies, personnel increases and changes in training programs; (c) Unavailability of Colonel Phat, the Director General of the Civil Guard, for conferences with Public Safety Division personnel; (d) Failure of Mr. Trinh to issue an arrete establishing the single security communications network for the Civil Guard and the Surete as had been agreed upon at a meeting on March 19, 1960, chaired by Mr. Thuan; (e) The difficulty in establishing the mission and thus a firm TO&E for the Civil Guard river companies, i.e., Civil Guard requests for crafts for the river companies have varied from boats as small as a two-men patrol craft powered by a 5 HP outboard motor, to a 50-foot sampan-type craft capable of carrying 70 persons with combat equipment at a speed of 15 knots.²

5. It was pointed out to the President that the above were just examples of the extremely unsatisfactory liaison that presently exists between the USOM and the Civil Guard. Walton and I stressed that the crux of the problem appeared to be a lack of responsiveness on the part of the Civil Guard and that USOM was regarded by the Civil Guard as a quartermaster rather than a mutual partner in a most important undertaking. We stressed that the primary difficulty appeared to rest with the Secretary of State for the Interior, as the Civil Guard personnel were apparently carrying out his orders.

6. The President then went into a lengthy discussion in Vietnamese with Thuan and concluded by saying to Walton and me that he felt we should be fully aware of the history and the background of the Civil Guard leading up to its present unfortunate status before we formed any definite opinions as to where certain faults lay.

At this point the President spent about one-half hour tracing the various steps in the formation of the Civil Guard and ended up by placing the blame for the situation in which it currently found itself on the United States. He said that in the first place the major error involved was U.S. insistence that the Civil Guard should not be under the Department of Defense but should come under the Secretary of State for Interior. Secondly, the President said that U.S. blame also rested in part with the MSUG for attempting to make a police force out of the Civil Guard, which concept had subsequently proved to be completely unrealistic.

7. The President stated that the Civil Guard should initially receive the same training as ARVN and that after this instruction they could be trained as constables. Walton pointed out to the President that in Malaya the reverse was true. There the security forces are initially trained as constables and subsequently as anti-guerrilla units. The President claimed that the problem in Malaya was not comparable to that in Viet-Nam, as in Malaya the terrorists are all Chinese while in Viet-Nam they are Vietnamese. He added that in Malaya food was not easily available and had to be brought in for the insurgents from outside, while in Viet-Nam food is plentiful and can be obtained by the terrorists at any time and at any place. The President buried the Malayan comparison by saying that while Malaya is a peninsula, Viet-Nam had many hundreds of kilometers of vulnerable borders with unsympathetic neighbors.

8. The President next asked Walton what communications training was being given or contemplated for the Civil Guard. It was explained to him that courses were presently being conducted at Petrus Ky and Phu Tho and that approximately 3,000 communications technicians (majority to be trained out of present Civil Guard strength) of one kind or another would be required for the maintenance of the communications operation for the security forces.

9. The President at this juncture launched into a severe criticism of Colonel Phat and said that he had been much too arbitrary in his decision to bring Civil Guard personnel from the provinces into the Saigon area for training as commandos. All provinces, he said, were asking for more Civil Guards just at the time that Colonel Phat was depleting their forces.

10. The President stated that it was important that the Civil Guard should relieve ARVN of the internal security problem so that the army could re-group and train for its primary function which was defense of the country against external aggression.

11. The President said that the GVN force level of 150,000 was not nearly large enough to cope with the external threat and that he needed an army of at least 170,000. He added, however, that if he had a force of this level, the GVN could not afford to pay them so that he was reconciled to keeping the ceiling at 150,000.

12. The President terminated the discussion of the Civil Guard by saying that now that the rainy season had commenced, it was necessary for them to be provided with ponchos or raincoats. He thereupon asked for USOM assistance and wondered if 50,000 ponchos could be obtained from war surplus stocks. Walton told the President that he would look into the matter.

13. Diem then took off in a highly critical vein concerning what he termed lack of support from the U.S. for many of his particular projects other than in the military sphere. (At this point it should be mentioned that the President said in passing that MAAG originally made the same mistake as had the French in concentrating their training in conventional warfare.³ He stated that now this situation had been rectified. Diem was highly complimentary in his remarks concerning the Chief MAAG and stated upon several occasions that General Williams had always cooperated with him to the fullest possible extent.)

The President claimed that while USOM had aided the Vietnamese in the building of many roads, we actually were failing in part of our mission as we were not providing them with the wherewithal to maintain them in good condition. He stated that although we had constructed many schools, we were not helping in their upkeep or defraying the expenses of the necessary teachers. (USOM has never undertaken any commitments to maintain roads or keep up schools.) He went on to say that he had a critical need for more bulldozers and other heavy equipment to help build not only roads but also agrovilles, a cement factory, plywood plants, etc., and especially for the clearing of forest to plant more rubber trees. Diem took this occasion to say that the GVN had already spent many millions of its own dollar reserves and that he had the figures to prove his statement. I told the President that such figures would certainly be of interest to our government.

14. In speaking of foreign reserves, Diem said Cambodia and Thailand had also built up large reserve balances but were not criticized by the United States for so doing. He also stated that there could be no valid comparison of the success of the economic development programs in Viet-Nam and Taiwan as the latter country did not suffer from the similar internal security problems and had no 17th parallel.

15. After mentioning, as stated above, his government’s need for more heavy equipment to build additional agrovilles, as well as other projects, Diem launched into a full half-hour discussion of agrovilles and gave this subject the complete treatment (Embassy Despatch No. 426, June 6, 1960⁴). He said that he anticipated that the number of agrovilles would increase from 12 to 20 during the present year.

16. Diem next brought up his deep hatred for the French and for about 45 minutes he traced his past relationship with them in extremely vitriolic terms, emphasizing the efforts on the part of the French to place obstacles in the way of his country’s progress and their efforts to get rid of him. He spoke at length of old French-Communist collaboration and went into detail concerning the U.S. military equipment sent to Viet-Nam during the war which had been “stolen” by the French and taken back to France with them, with the explanation that it was actually World War II material. He blamed the U.S. for this and said that the French would never have been able to get away with it had we not dared to offend them by making an inventory of the material which had been sent out here. Diem then went into the difficulties which had occurred because of the channeling of U.S. aid to Viet-Nam through the French and said that he had taken drastic means to solve this problem. He stated that what he had done was a secret which he had never told anyone before now. He went on to say that in July 1954 he had sent a personal cable⁵ to President Eisenhower through non-diplomatic channels, requesting that he arrange to have all U.S. aid given directly to the GVN after January 1, 1955. He stated that the President had immediately acceded to his request.

17. The above thorough castigation of the French led automatically into another one-half hour talk on the importance of roads in Viet-Nam both from the military and the economic point of view. Diem stated that the French had absolutely no economic or strategic understanding of the importance of a highway system. For example he said that the highway which the French had constructed along the coast was vulnerable at too many points. He said that the French had built roads in the interior of the country only for purposes of transportation to and from their rubber plantations and accomplished nothing in the way of road construction which would aid in the development of the country. He said that every new road which was built opens up Viet-Nam economically and provides more benefits to the people. Diem went on to say that not only did the French not know how to build roads but they also did not have proper road building equipment. He said that he considered the highway program to be of the greatest possible urgency. He once more brought up the subject of additional bulldozers as well as compressors and dredges. He said that the need for dredges was so great that the GVN had bought two with their own money and that if these worked out satisfactorily he intended to by ten more.

18. Diem devoted a full two hours to a detailed history of his regime and his ascendancy to power. He emphasized his refusal to deal with the Communists, the French and with other “gangsters and thieves”. He went into great detail describing the battles between the sects and said that “even then” many of his ministers deserted him by making deals with leaders whom they thought would come into power. In heated terms, he described how a mortar shell once detonated on the grounds of the Palace and that many of his ministers told him that he was crazy to continue on with a cabinet meeting which he had called at that time. He said that at this point his close advisors informed him that some of his ministers were deserting and that he had replied “let them go—if they are not here when I need them, it is better that they leave now.”

19. Diem then brought up the question of his present political enemies. He classified the so-called intellectual opposition as made up of communists and opportunists and added that he was “as strong as a rock” and that no one would break him. He touched on the questionable loyalty of “certain ministers” without mentioning names and said that “these people” and others opposed to him would find it impossible to leave the country when they might consider it necessary because they would have no passports, visas or means of transportation. Diem stated that in 1955 his trusted and loyal friends had advised him against the creation of an opposition party and that he had followed their advice with success since that time. He said that he had no intention of changing that policy.

20. In a lengthy discussion concerning the security situation, Diem once more emphasized with considerable emotion his Gibralter-like qualities and likened himself to an “unbreakable rock”. First, he said that Viet-Cong were to have their big push in March, then it was to be April, and in May Saigon was slated to be under siege. In June, a coup d’etat was planned and he was to have been thrown out of office. Diem added, quite heatedly, that all these plans were thwarted because of his personal strength and domination over the Vietnamese people. He said that now the next Viet-Cong D-Day was set for September 2nd, the anniversary of the founding of the DRV.

21. It should be emphasized that during this long session Diem appeared to be in a highly emotional state. His efforts seemed mainly to be directly in an endeavor to impress us with:

(a) His political strength;

(b) Viet-Nam’s progress under his leadership, despite the efforts of the communists and the French; and,

(c) Loopholes in the U.S. aid program which in his opinion require immediate correction for the country’s economic viability and political survival.

The President continually stressed the present critical period in Viet-Nam’s development and often repeated that his country would not require outside assistance in another 5 years time.

22. In the final analysis, I would say that Diem gave the very definite impression that he is worried about his position and that he was making an all-out effort to convince us that he had everything under control.⁶

1. Source: Washington National Records Center, RG 330, Lansdale Papers: FRC 63 A 1803, Vietnam. Secret. Drafted by Coster.
2. The following marginal note in General Williams’ handwriting appears on the source text at the end of this paragraph: “blind leading (?) the blind”.
3. “1956–57” in General Williams’ handwriting appears in the margin of the source text beside this sentence.
4. Document 169.
5. Not found.
6. Beneath the last paragraph on the source text is the following note in General Williams’ handwriting: “Believe the boys missed the point. When Diem told me of this Conference (& not knowing I’d read a report of it) I jokingly asked why he kept them for 5 hours. His answer was to the effect that both knew so little about Vietnam & its history and the history of the C.G. that he felt it necessary to go into great detail to impress them with the seriousness of the problem at hand.”