273. Memorandum From the Counselor of Embassy in Viet-Nam (Mendenhall) to the Public
Affairs Officer in Viet-Nam (Anspacher)1
Saigon, November 22,
1961.
SUBJECT
- Proposals for Improving the Organization and Broadening the Base
of Support of the GVN
Attached is a paper prepared at the Ambassador’s request containing
certain specific proposals aimed at improving the organization of the
GVN and broadening the base of its
support among both the educated classes and the masses. Your comments
and suggestions on an urgent basis would be appreciated. It would be
particularly helpful if MAAG could
briefly spell out for inclusion in this paper the specifics of fleshing
out the authority of the Field Command over military counterinsurgency
operations.2
The Ambassador has made no decision about the use of this paper, but he
wishes to have it available for possible use during the current
negotiations with the GVN in case he is
asked by the GVN for specifics in the
fields covered by the paper.
[Attachment]
3
I. Organizational steps
- 1.
- Make the national-level Internal Security Council into a fully
functioning body meeting at least twice weekly and making all
policy decisions relating to the conduct of counterinsurgency
planning and operations.
- 2.
- Have the national-level Internal Security Council presided
over regularly by the Vice President or, in his absence, by the
Coordinating Secretary of State for Security.
- 3.
- Retain Mr. Nguyen dinh
Thuan as Coordinating Secretary of State for
Security and appoint him as Secretary of State for National
[Page 659]
Defense, but at same
time remove him from all other positions since each position he
now holds needs a full-time official.
- 4.
- Appoint three Assistant Secretaries of State for National
Defense in order to spread the growing burden of work in this
mammoth department and broaden the base of the
government.
- 5.
- Appoint as Secretary of State for the Presidency an official
who is a capable administrator who can serve as the implementing
executive of the national-level Internal Security
Council.
- 6.
- Give the Vice President as Coordinating Secretary of State for
Economic Development full power and authority over all the
economic ministries, requiring them to report to him and leaving
to his decision the further questions to be taken up with the
Internal Security Council and with the President.
- 7.
- Give similar power and authority to the Coordinating Secretary
of State for Social and Cultural Affairs.
- 8.
- Raise the Direction [Director] General of Information to
ministry level and replace the incumbent by an official who is
experienced in the use of information techniques and who can
work with the Minister of Civic Action and the ARVN Psywar Director.
- 9.
- Establish internal security councils at the regional,
provincial and district levels.
II. Steps to rally support of
educated class
- 1.
- Appoint to the Cabinet various representatives of a really
independent spirit and assure them of a full voice in policy
determination and of freedom within broad policy bounds of
running their departments. (Names can be supplied on request.)
Aim should be to establish a “Cabinet of All the
Talents”.
- 2.
- Find a means of removing Mme Ngo
dinh Nhu completely from the public eye in view
of the adverse affects (unintentional, to be sure, but,
nevertheless, true) of her activities on the political standing
of the Government.
- 3.
- Release non-Communist political prisoners, and place certain
of them in high position as a political gesture to establish
national unity in the face of the Communists.
- 4.
- Permit all non-Communist political parties to operate and to
put up candidates for the 1962 National Assembly
elections.
- 5.
- Liberalize press censorship permitting criticism of both the
government and the personalities therein, but excluding
pro-Communist propaganda.
- 6.
- Set up a public tribune for the free expression of ideas and
criticism within the same limitations as those applied to the
press.
- 7.
- Establish an independent judiciary with the Ministry of
Justice in the hands of a real independent.
- 8.
- Give the National Assembly freedom to debate on the measures
placed before it. As an example, send back for thorough open
debate measures recently adopted at Madame Nhu’s instigation re taxi girls and
establishment of a women’s paramilitary force.
- 9.
- To insure that deputies actually represent their constituents,
establish requirement applicable to 1962 elections that all
candidates must be bona fide residents of the districts in which
they present their candidacies.
III. Steps to rally support of
masses
- 1.
- Appointments to the Cabinet proposed under II, 1, above, can
also serve this objective provided representatives of the Cao
Dai or Hoa Hao are selected.
- 2.
- Increase Diem’s personal contact with people through more
informal trips to countryside, by making himself available at
palace to ordinary people, either in groups or individually, by
occasionally hearing mass in small church or visiting Buddhist
Pagoda, et cetera.
- 3.
- Frequent, frank, and down-to-earth talks over radio (at least
once a month).
- 4.
- Stop emphasizing “sacrifice and discipline” theme in talking
to the people and tell them what they are anxious to hear-that
better times are coming and that soon they will not be afraid to
sleep at night.
- 5.
- In Saigon and other cities institute, visit, and dramatize
labor-consuming projects for unemployed who have increased
considerably as result influx into cities because of insecure
conditions in countryside.
- 6.
- Initiate and publicize economic and social programs aimed at
improving conditions in every village.
- 7.
- Proceed to set up provincial councils which President Diem has
already promised publicly.
