Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
But there was no disagreement with McGarr's fairly optimistic assessment of the military situation and no sense of crisis.
Through unofficial channels, though, the White House was receiving a far bleaker view of the situation. Schelsinger reports:
'The situation gets worse almost week by week,' Theodore H. White wrote us in August. '…The guerrillas now control amost all the southern delta - so much so that I could find no American who would drive me outside Saigon in his car even by day without military convoy.' He reported a 'political breakdown of formidable proportions: …What perplexes hell out of me is that the Commies, on their side, seem to be able to find people willing to die for their cause…I find it discouraging to spend a night in a Saigon night-club full of young fellows of 20 and 25 dancing and jitterbugging (they are called 'la jeunesse cowboy') while twenty miles away their Communist contemporaries are terrozing the countryside.' An old China hand, White was reminded of Chungking in the Second World War, complete with Madame Nhu in the role of Madame Chiang Kai-shek. 'If a defeat in South Vietnam is to be considered our defeat, if we are responsible for holding that area, then we must have authority to act. And that means intervention in Vietnam politics…If we do decide so to intervene, have we the proper personnel, the proper instruments, the proper clarity of objectives to intervene successfully?' 18/
It did not take long to confirm White's pessimism, although this must have made the dilemma of what to do about it seem all the more acute. In September, the number of VC attacks jumped to nearly triple the level (about 450 vs. 150) that had prevailed for some months previously. The most spectacular attack; which seems to have had a shattering effect in Saigon, was the seizure of Phuoc Thanh, a provincial capital only 55 miles from Saigon. The insurgents held the town a good part of the day, publicly beheaded Diem's province chief, and departed before government troops arrived. The official reporting to Washington by the end of the month pictured the situation as stagnating, if not dangerously deteriorating, although there continued to be no sense of the imminent crisis that Theodore White foresaw.
Here is an end-of-month report that Nolting sent just prior to the meeting at which Diem asked for the treaty:
Status report on political items as of Sept 28:
General: Governmental and civil situation at end of month much same as at beginnings While neither of these gave open signs of deterioration, Diem government did not significantly improve its political position among people or substantially further national unity. On positive side several fifty-man district level reconstruction teams were sent to each of 4 provinces, and there was
