0 - The Black Vault

THE BDM CORPORATION
b, Program Results--Another Failure
Nhu drove the hamlet program BlonaQ .ý.t a frantic pace.
Province chiefs were ordered to establish a certain number of hamlets by a
given date., The GVN used "statistical illusion" to make the orogram appear
to be a surging success.52/ (See Figure 5-8 for a graphic picture of thaC
9 ° growth.) Subsequent events gave lie to early GVN claims of success.
Notwithstanding the skepticism on the part of some US officials,
several o0servers 53/ expressed belief that sufficient data had been
developed by early 1963 to confirm some progress., Furthermore, both GVN
and US officials began exprecsi-g confidence in those efforts and hopes
that the right pacification program had been undertaken.
Sir Robert Thompson pointed to the following weaknesses in
the GVN's implementation of the Strategic Hamlet Program:
0 Ic had no strategic direction; Strategic Hamlets had Deen created
a
haphazardly and not linked together to reduce vulnierability to VC
attack.
Military operations, particularly in Lhe Delta, were not Gesigned
to support tFe advcnce of the program.
o No real effort was made to separate the people in the Strategic
Hamlets from the Viet Cong living in the haiilets.
0 Very little effort was made to impose controls on the movement of
the Vi.2t Cong and their supplies within the vicinity of and in
the Strategic Hanlets.54/
In Thompson's view, the GVN
had failed to acniev:? the three
objectives they had set -or the Strategic Hamlet Program, i.e.,, of protecting,
uniting and involving the people, with the ultimate aim of
isolating the guerrilla units from the population.55/
Others 56/ opined that the GVN's Strategic Hamlet Program
had encounterea opposition from the peasants it was designed to help and
protect because the Vietnamese and US administrative and support structure
could not keep up with their needs.
Compounding these failures of program
administration was the even more critical lack of a well-integrated plan
utilizing the principle of building outward gradually from areas of
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