171. Editorial Note
On February 27 the Department of State released a report entitled Aggression From the North: The Record of North Viet-Nam’s Campaign to Conquer South Viet-Nam. The report included maps, pictures, and appendixes and was divided into six sections:
Introduction
- I.
- Hanoi Supplies the Key Personnel for the Armed Aggression Against South Viet-Nam
- II.
- Hanoi Supplies Weapons, Ammunition, and Other War Materiel to Its Forces in the South
- III.
- North Viet-Nam: Base for Conquest of the South
- IV.
- Organization, Direction, Command, and Control of the Attack on South Viet-Nam Are Centered in Hanoi
Conclusions
The report, without the pictures and appendixes, was also printed in the Department of State Bulletin, March 22, 1965, pages 404–427. Also on February 27, Ambassador Adlai E. Stevenson transmitted a copy of the report to the President of the U.N. Security Council for the information of the Council’s members. The text of his covering letter to the Council’s President is ibid., page 419.
The report was a sequel to “A Threat to the Peace: North Viet-Nam’s Effort to Conquer South Viet-Nam,” released by the Department of State on December 8, 1961, whose preparation was coordinated by William Jorden, of the Department of State’s Policy Planning Council. In its early stages of preparation in 1964, “Aggression from the North” was sometimes referred to as the Jorden Report, but in its final stages, when Chester Cooper of the National Security Council Staff was its coordinator, it was more often referred to informally as the Cooper Report. For Cooper’s views on its preparation and release, see The Lost Crusade, pages 264–266.