NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 TOP SECRET – Sensitive
attitude in the central government, and the strength of the RVNAF declined. Viet Cong depredations continued and pacification efforts fell behind.
As we pressured Khanh to adopt reforms to remedy the deficiencies of the GVN administration of programs within South Vietnam, his frustrations over these difficulties and failures were increased. He had no taste for the long, unspectacular social reform and social rebuilding that were the tasks of pacification. He soon began to talk increasingly of a scapegoat--a march to the North. He wanted to get the struggle over with. This corresponded to the means that we had considered but had for the time being rejected--seeking escape- from our own frustrations in South Vietnam by pressure on the North. We moved gradually in this direction, impelled almost inevitably to ultimate actions of this sort, but always reluctantly and always hesitant to commit ourselves to more than very minor moves, until suddenly and dramatically the Tonkin Gulf affair of early August provided an occasion to make a move of the sort we had long been anticipating but had until then always deferred. But during this period the debate over possible measures of this sort, and the instability of the Khanh government, increasingly distracted attention from programs focussed directly on the problems of pacification and of winning the loyalties of the Vietnamese for the GVN.
In the immediate aftermath of the Tonkin Gulf affair, Khanh, feeling his position strengthened, took ill advised measures to consolidate the gains that he believed had been made thereby, and quickly precipitated an overriding governmental crisis. Thereafter, the stability of the regime became the dominant factor in all considerations. Attention had to shift from pacification of the millions of rural Vietnamese, who made up the vast majority of the people, to the very few in Saigon, Hue and Danang who were struggling for power.
2. NSAM-288 Programs Mid-March to Mid-May 1964
Recommendation #3 of NSAM-288 was "to support a program for national mobilization (including a national service law) to put South Vietnam on a war footing." Responsibility for this was shared between ASD/ISA and AID.
A first step was taken on 20 March when the country team was asked to report on the status of GVN plans and also country team views concerning the adoption of a national service act. The points of greatest concern were what would be the main provisions of the act, and what would be the administrative machinery set up to implement it. The Country Team was also advised that economic mobilization measures should be deferred until after a joint U.S.-GVN survey had been completed. 68/
On 1 April Ambassador Lodge replied, with MACV concurrence, that Premier Khanh planned two categories of mobilization, one civil and one
