9. Letter From the Secretary of Defense’s Deputy Special Assistant for Special Operations (Lansdale) to the Chief of the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Vietnam (Williams)1
Dear General Williams: Your two letters about the Civil Guard2 were really disturbing, primarily because there is so doggone little that can be done from here. The difficulty is that the Defense policy people some time ago came to a firm decision that police business belonged under civil authorities, and this position is still held.
In trying to bring your specific problem into proper focus in Washington, we are getting State and Defense to ask Col. Bob Evans to “look into” the problem of the Civil Guard while in Saigon and to report back here. Our real purpose in doing this was to throw a few scares around town that Defense is far more interested in this problem than I can honestly say it is privately to you. Since Evans was on your staff at MAAG and presently handles the Viet Nam desk at ISA, including the OISP (supposedly Defense’s contribution to country police problems), he is well worth turning into a combat man on this problem for you. Suggest you get Evans in the proper mood to come home and do battle!
I have shown your letters only to my boss, General Erskine, and to one of my present staff officers who works on these problems (and who has been working with ISA, State and ICA on the basis of my personal expressed interest in this problem.) General Erskine had a suggestion which I feel you might consider seriously. He suggested that you and Diem go along with ICA (this was on the initial request you outlined in the first letter), obtain the necessary support in the way of equipment, and then after he gets it, to blandly transfer it over to Defense. While this is hardly honest, it might meet the immediate [Page 27] need and break in deadlock which Washington seems unable to do.
The personal convictions of General Erskine and myself are that it is wrong for us to arm two separate forces within a country, since this can lead to all sorts of mischief in the future. Thailand certainly offers a glaring and close-by example of what happens when a police force is built up as something separate form the armed forces. It might be that Diem, after receiving ICA support, might suddenly discover events in Thailand and use them as a basis for transferring control to his Defense Ministry. Have just seen Saigon 18483 which seems to be a further extension of your second letter. After reading this message, I see a real need, just as one American to another, for you to have a private and frank talk with Diem.
With warmest and best wishes to you and Mrs. Williams, as ever
Sincerely,
- Source: Center of Military History, Williams Papers, Official Correspondence Jan–June 1958 (34).↩
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Dated March 1 and 7. In the first of these Williams discussed problems encountered in equipping the Civil Guard and remarked that some people believed that Diem’s desire to have the Civil Guard under the Defense Ministry was “a veiled scheme to increase the size of the Army, frankly to my mind a ridiculous assumption.” Williams believed instead that Diem wanted the Civil Guard under Defense because it was an “up and going ministry” which was becoming more efficient monthly. In the letter of March 7 Williams stated that a Vietnamese plan given the Embassy on March 6, which envisaged a Civil Guard of almost 50,000 men, had not been shown to him in advance, and that “submitting this to Durbrow within 24 hours prior to his departure for Formosa and thence to the States for 2 months leave and talks in Washington was a dreadful mistake and has played directly into the hand of those that have bucked the rearming of the Civil Guard.” (Both ibid.)
For additional information on the Vietnamese plan and the Embassy’s reaction, see Document 12.
↩ - Telegram 1848, March 11, contains information which is summarized in the document cited in footnote 2 above. (Department of State, Central Files, 751G.5–MSP/5–1158)↩
- Printed from a copy which bears this typed signature.↩