NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 TOP SECRET – Sensitive
against being misled in the future about the status of programs. With respect to the Strategic Hamlet Program generally, it is evident that there was apprehension concerning the questionable statistics that had been used in the Diem regime's portrayal of the program. It was hoped that it would be possible to identify the requirements for a program of on-going current assessments of the program as quickly as possible. There was also an intention to publish an appropriate set of new guidelines for the coordination of construction, civic action and military programs, and, perhaps more important, to accomplish the consolidation and correction of hamlet programs in the shortest possible time. Five problem areas with respect to the strategic hamlet program were identified prior to the trip, these were:
a. What progress is being achieved by the surveys and when will the reports be available?
b. What specific actions were then underway to coordinate the companion military, political and social programs?
c. When would the new guidelines be published?
d. What action was underway to indoctrinate the newly assigned province officials to enable them to pursue the program effectively?
e. Was it plain that one big problem would be to insure that the province and district officials understood and executed vigorously their revised programs? Had any thought been given to adding an additional advisor or two, in the critical provinces, to work at the district level and to insure that the officials actually drove programs forward. 25/
A point to be noted in these is the growing idea of placing an increasing number of advisors at the province and district level. The Secretary made certain decisions of an immediate nature concerning programs in Vietnam while he as still in Saigon; and immediately upon his return he made his report to the President in which he described the situation as he had found it, and made further recommendations that he had evidently not felt empowered to enact without Presidential approval.
Among the actions agreed upon during the visit to Saigon on 19-20 December were the following:
1. The GVN should be pressed to increase troop density in six provinces in III Corps by about 100% (ten infantry and three engineering batallions), in
