NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 TOP SECRET – Sensitive
in the main area of insurrection in the far south. That leaders and radio guidance come in we know. But the amount of ammunition and weaponry that a man can carry on his back for several hundred kilometers over jungle trails was not increased appreciably by Marx. No major conflict can depend on such logistic support.
A maximum of 18,000 lightly armed men are involved in the insurrection. These are GVN estimates and the factor of exaggeration is unquestionably considerable. Ten thousand is more probable. What we have in opposition involves a heavy theological dispute. Diem it is said is a great but defamed leader. It is also said he has lost touch with the masses, is in political disrepute and otherwise no good. This debate can be bypassed by agreed points. It is agreed that administratively Diem is exceedingly bad. He holds far too much power in his own hands, employs his army badly, has no intelligence organization worthy of the name, has arbitrary or incompetent subordinates in the provinces and some achievements notwithstanding, has a poor economic policy. He has also effectively resisted improvement for a long while in face of heavy deterioration. This is enough. Whether his political posture is nepotic, despotic out of touch with the villages and hence damaging or whether this damage is the figment of Saigon intellectuals does not bear on our immediate policy and may be by-passed at least in part.
The SVN army numbers 170,000 and with paramilitary units of civil guard and home defense forces a quarter of a million. Were this well deployed
