Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume I, Vietnam, 1964

7. Memorandum From Michael V. Forrestal of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy)¹

Washington, January 8, 1964.

SUBJECT

• Reporting on the Situation in South Vietnam

I looked at John McCone’s letter of January 7 to Dean Rusk.² I see nothing wrong with attempting to improve the reporting system out of Saigon. As you are well aware, the great difficulties we had to live through last August and September resulted largely from a nearly complete breakdown of the Government’s ability to get accurate assessments of the situation in the Vietnamese country-side. The more we learn about the situation today, the more obvious it becomes that the excessively mechanical system of statistical reporting which had been devised in Washington and applied in Saigon was giving us a grotesquely inaccurate picture. Once again it is the old problem of having people who are responsible for operations also responsible for evaluating the results.

John McCone has made a great effort, aided and abetted by Lodge, to get his people out of all except a few operations in South Vietnam. He has been trying to put them back into the intelligence business, and I think we should encourage him to do so.

Bob McNamara is now equally aware of the reporting failure, and sincerely desires to do something about it. I have the impression, however, that the military system of reporting will not be responsive to the problem; and unless McNamara can create a separate reporting staff outside the chain of command, he won’t get very far. McNamara faces considerable difficulty in accepting the thought that CIA should take on a separate reporting function. His problem is that to do so is an implied criticism of the Saigon command and its uniformed counterpart in Washington. If John is discreet enough and if his efforts are very low key, McNamara’s problem will be reduced. One way of doing this is not to send large numbers of new CIA people into the field, but to utilize the civilians we already have there from whom the most accurate reporting has come in the past. The Agency’s function could be coordination and evaluation.³

I think John’s efforts should be encouraged along these lines, something which I will do at subterranean levels if you agree.

Mike

1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Vietnam Country File, Vol. II, Memos and Misc. Secret.
2. Document 5.
3. A revised plan for a covert spot-check on counterinsurgency reporting, reflecting in part these concerns, was sent by McCone to Rusk and Bundy on January 9. (Department of State, Central Files, POL 23 VIET S)