NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 TOP SECRET – Sensitive
When the Special CAS group turned in its final appraisal on 18 February, Gen. Harkins was asked by the CGCS to comment. Gen. Harkins offered, 3 days later, a paragraph by paragraph commentary, much of which agreed with the CAS group findings. There were a few minor points of fact that were in disagreement. Where General Harkins pointedly disagreed was in the matter of interpretation and emphasis and where both the CAS group and Gen. Harkins agreed that past performance had not been good, Gen. Harkins tended to emphasize the hope, as the CAS group did not, that under Khanh the situation would perhaps improve. Beyond this, Gen. Harkins was, in general, somewhat disturbed that the CAS group might be exceeding its terms of reference by reporting unilaterally, and misleading the national decision process by forwarding information not coordinated and cleared with other elements of the U.S. reporting mechanism in Vietnam. Perhaps most significant of all, at the very beginning of his comments he offered an observation that, internationally or otherwise, raised very basic issues of the nature, function, and limitations of the intelligence and estimation process.
Except for the spectacular and eye catching lead sentence ["Tide of insurgency in all four corps areas appears to be going against GVN"], I have no quarrel with most of the statements contained in the CAS Survey Team appraisal. Where the statements are clean-cut, the supporting information was usually provided by my field personnel and reflected in reports already sent to Washington by this headquarters. Where the statements are sweeping, they are based on opinion or an unfortunate penchant for generalizing from the specific. My detailed comments follow and are geared to the specific paragraphs of the CAS message. 34/ [emphasis supplied.]
If we examine this statement with particular reference to the words and phrases underlined, the large, epistemological problem of the junction of intelligence and national decision-making is pointedly indicated. By "clean-cut,^ Gen. Harkins undoubtedly referred to phenomena that were concrete, highly specific and narrowly factual. These were the sort of phenomena about which there could seldom or never be any serious dispute. By sweeping "statements^ and by "unfortunate penchant for generalizing from the specific," he was referring to the mental process of bridging the gap from the small concrete detail -- which was seldom or never by itself a basis for large decision -- to the interpretation of that detail -- to the judgment of the significance of that detail. Only upon the basis of interpretations (judgments) of the importance, meaning and relevance of things could policy decisions be made. And that judgment or interpretation was seldom, or never inescapably inherent in the measurable, sharply definable, completely unarguable concrete detail. It might be derived from or directly reflect such data, but its form would be determined equally, or
