NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 TOP SECRET – Sensitive
economy, for increased educational opportunities in hamlets, for increased production of rice, for marketing of fish, and so forth. McNamara believed a well publicized announcement of this nature would find ready response among people and would materially assist Khanh to obtain and hold support of Vietnamese people… 58/
9. NSAM 288
The program formulated in March 1964 in connection with the trip to Vietnam was reported orally to the President by the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs on their return, then presented formally to the President and the NSC by memorandum to the President dated 16 March. It was finally approved as NSAM 288 dated 17 March 1964. As such NSC documents go, NSAM 288 was comprehensive and programmatic. It reviewed U.S. objectives, appraised the situation, discussed various alternative courses of action, and finally recommended a rather detailed program intended to serve the defined objectives and to meet the situation as it had been described. It consisted of seven parts. The first was a discussion and definition of objectives, the second a description of U.S. policy, the third an appraisal of the present situation, the fourth a discussion of alternative courses of action, the fifth a consideration of possible actions, the sixth a mention of other actions considered but rejected, and seventh and last, a statement of specific recommendations.
NSAM 288, being based on the official recognition that the situation in Vietnam was considerably worse than had been realized at the time of the adoption of NSAM 273, outlined a program that called for considerable enlargement of U.S. effort. It involved an assumption by the United States of a greater part of the task, and an increased involvement by the United States in the internal affairs of South Vietnam, and for these reasons it carried with it an enlarged commitment of U.S. prestige to the success of our effort in that area.
In tacit acknowledgement that this greater commitment of prestige called for an enlargement of stated objectives, NSAM 288 did indeed enlarge these objectives. Whereas, in NSAM 273 the objectives were expressly limited to helping the government of South Vietnam win its contest against an externally directed Communist conspiracy, NSAM 288 escalated the objectives into a defense of all of Southeast Asia and the West Pacific and redefined American foreign policy and American security generally. In NSAM 273 the statement of objectives was comparatively simple and limited:
It remains the central object of the United States in South Vietnam to assist the people and the government of that country, to win their contest against the externally directed
