Office of the Historian

341. Telegram From the Chief of the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Viet-Nam (McGarr) to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Lemnitzer)1

Saigon, December 27, 1961.

SGN 919. Appreciate information your JCS 2027-612 but of course am professionally and personally disappointed, as had hoped for recognition my position here. Evident from 16 December conference my frank periodic reports have failed to apprise top civilian policy makers of crux situation here, as they thinking of solving very unconventional situation in a basically conventional manner. Demand for speed of solution based on large scale military victories without comparable strong demand for equally important political-economic-psychological advances largely forces unilateral military action which will not give permanent results and which will prove counter productive. Permanent results require long range coordinated action on all fronts and defeat of insurgencies historically take years. Thompson, British Advisory Group now estimates at least five years required here.

Failure of recent governmental level negotiations to obtain any semblance of mutual US-GVN decision making authority in any field continues give GVN actual veto power over valid U.S. proposed measures required to win. This participation in decision making reference spelled out in your cable.

However, decision to form a higher level command structure as a means of further impressing Diem with U.S. desire to help so that he will then cooperate by actions, not merely promises, disregards the basic nature of the man which our SecDef stated we could not change. Therefore, feel strongly fully adequate terms of reference for new Senior Military Commander need to be spelled out in detail and agreement in concrete be obtained from GVN prior to establishment top command slot. If SVN to be saved U.S. needs to receive real cooperation spelled out in action. This will not be gotten if we continue to give on all bargaining points in fear of charges of violation of sovereignty, which action increasingly “Fronts” military in near impossible unilateral role.

  1. Source: National Defense University, Lemnitzer Papers, 1961 Eyes Only Messages. Top Secret; Eyes Only. No transmission time is given on the source text.↩
  2. Document 338.↩