0 - The Black Vault

THE BDM CORPORATION
support, provided medical, educational and developmental supplies and
training.
The project was given th,- name, Citizens' Irregular Defense
Groups (later Citizens' was changed to Civilians'), to mark it clearly as a
civilian operation and not a military one ana irregular because it wps to
"meet the need of various dirferent communities,
During the fi,'st year, the CIA's experiment proved to be successfrl
arnd its spread throughout the highlands was rapid. By December 1962,
about 38,000 tribemei, were armed and over 200 villages, involving a population
of 300,000, were incorporated into the overall scheme.66/ Armed
Montagnards found their defenses to be effe-tive when backed up by a
responsive strike force consisting of a few hundred men available from
surrounding villages whose dssignment was to come to the aid of a community
that was attacked by insurgents.
success of the CIDG
The presence of Americans was an important factor in the early
program, mainly because the tribesmen had an abiding
suspicion of all Vietnamese, both north and South.
The feeling was mutual,
and after more than a year of successes, Nhu decided that the program
threatened GVN control of the tribal areas. He therefore directed the
systematic disarming of many of the purely village defense units, 67/
sought their integration into the Strategic Hamlet Program.
and
At about the
same time, a change also occurred on the US side of the CIDG pysgram..
CIA
transferred its responsibility for program oversight to the Army's
Special Forces.68/ Thereafter, the CIDG were no longer considered to be
hamlet militia. They were formed into military units, usually company-
- ssized, under command of Vietnamese Special Forces officers, and were given
improved training, weapons and unifo.'ms.
a reluctance on the part of the CIDG
The
Throughout this period there was
strike force troops to be integrated
iito conventional Vietnamese units and the GVN, for its part, was not
prepared to take over the ongoing village development projects.69/
In July 1963, there was a shift in the pricrity of the CIDG
effort as their villages were assimilated into the Strategic Hamlet Pro-
A gram. The mission of thp tribal strike forces was changed frow local
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