xxI ntroduction
Faced with the failure of purely po­liti­cal means to bring down the Diem govern-
ment, the Central Party Committee in Hanoi made a momentous decision. At the
Fifteenth Party Plenum in January 1959, a secret resolution was signed authoriz-
ing the use of revolutionary vio­lence to complement the po­liti­cal strug­gle, both of
which ­ were focused on the overthrow of the government in the South. Hanoi began
to send equipment and personnel southward along what would become the Ho
Chi Minh Trail to join in the fight. Scattered and sporadic acts of terror evolved
into a sustained campaign fostered in part by northerners who had infiltrated back
into South Vietnam to take leading positions in the growing insurgency. To direct
this effort, the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) was founded
on December 20, 1960. The NLF was a classic united-­front organ­ization, which
included participation by non-­Communist nationalists who joined the NLF to defeat
the U.S.-­backed Diem government in Saigon; despite protestations to the contrary
during the war, Hanoi ­later admitted that it had controlled the NLF, directing vir-
tually ­every aspect of the war in the South.
In 1961, in response to the rapid growth of the insurgency and based on the
recommendations of a team sent to Vietnam to report on the conditions and assess ­
future American aid requirements, President John F. Kennedy deci­ded to increase
U.S. support for the Diem regime, signing a military and economic aid treaty with
the Republic of Vietnam. Some $65 million in military equipment and $136 mil-
lion in economic aid ­ were delivered that year. By the end of 1961, the number of
U.S. military advisors had increased to over 3,200. ­These advisors, who had previ-
ously been involved only in training and high-­level staff work, ­ were now advising
South Viet­nam­ese ground combat units in the field at the battalion and regimental
levels.
To coordinate all U.S. military support activities in South Vietnam, Military Assis-
tance Command, Vietnam (MACV) was established in Saigon in 1962. As the
insurgency grew, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) proved increasingly
unable to ­ handle the expanding threat. By this point in the war, all Communist
armed units in the South had been unified into a single ­People’s Liberation Armed
Force (PLAF) in 1961. This force, which became popularly known as Viet Cong
(VC), a derogatory slang expression for “Viet­nam­ese Communists,” numbered about
15,000 and would grow rapidly as more and more North Viet­nam­ese soldiers flowed
down the Ho Chi Minh Trail to join the fight in the South. By the end of 1962, the
NLF, including both po­liti­cal and armed ele­ments, had grown to an estimated
300,000 members.
Meanwhile, the ARVN continued to experience severe internal prob­lems, includ-
ing rampant corruption and poor leadership, and remained largely in­effec­tive in
combating the rapidly growing insurgency. This was demonstrated only too clearly
at the ­ Battle of Ap Bac on January 2, 1963. Although the ­ battle was reported as a ­
great victory for the ARVN ­ because the Viet Cong quit the battlefield ­ after the fight-
ing, the outcome had been just the opposite—in real­ity, a small VC force had
soundly defeated a much larger force from the 7th ARVN Division before withdraw-
ing from the area in good order.
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