Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
would prejudice relations with Diem, they would not necessarily harm relations with others of influence in the country, in particular his generals.
Finally, a;though Kennedy's decisions here were contrary to the implications of the summary paper in the Taylor Report, they were not particularly inconsistent with the appendices by the State representatives. For these, as noted, took a far less rosy view of Diem's prospects than appeared in the summary.
On the second issue -- the U.S. combat military task force — the available record tells us only the positions of Taylor and of the Defense Department. We are not sure what the position of State was -- although Sorenson claims that all the President's senior advisors had recommended going ahead with sending some ground troops. 7/
Even Taylor's position is slightly ambiguous. It is conceivable that he argued for the Task Force mainly because he thought that the numbers of U.S. personnel that might be sent as advisors, pilots, and other specialists would not add up to a large enough increment to have much of a psychological impact on South Vietnamese morale. But his choice of language indicates that a mere question of numbers was not the real issue. Rather Taylor's argument seems to have been that specifically ground forces (not necessarily all or even mainly infantrymen, but ground soldiers who would be out in the countryside where they could be shot at and shoot back) were what was needed. Combat engineers to work in the VC-infested flood area in the Delta would meet that need. Helicopter pilots and mechanics and advisors, who might accompany Vietnamese operations, but could not undertake ground operations on their own apparently would not. There is only one easily imagined reason for seeing this as a crucial distinction. And that would be if a critical object of the stepped up American program was to be exactly what Taylor said it should be in his final cable from Saigon: "…assuring Diem of our readiness to join him in a military showdown with the Viet Cong…" 8/
Thus the flood task force was essentially different from the balance of the military program. It did not fill an urgent need for military specialists or expertise not adequately available within Vietnam; it was an implicit commitment to deny the Viet Cong a victory even if major American ground forces should be required.
Taylor clearly did not see the need for large U.S. ground involvement as at all probable. ("The risks of backing into a major Asian war by way of SVN are present but are not impressive," in large part because "NVN is extremely vulnerable to conventional bombing.") At another point, Taylor warns the President, "If the first contingent is not enough, … it will be difficult to resist the pressure to reinforce. If the ultimate result sought is the closing of the frontiers and the
