0 - The Black Vault

THE BOM CORPORATION
failure to obtain North Vietnamese compliance with the neutrality accords
of 1962 was a bitter disappointment to President Kennedy,333/
2) Impacts of the Laotian Neutrality Treaty
In July of 1962,
with the Laotian problem apparently
resolved, President Kennedy asked Secretary McNamara to re-examine the
Vietnam problem. The Secretary of Defense did so at a conference held at
Honolulu. The RVN situation depicted during the meeting was generally
favorable; hence, the following decisions 34/ were made:
0 to prepare plans For a scaling n of US units in RVN (a phased
withdrawal over a 3-year period)
* to prepare long-range RVNAF officers and NCO's training programs
* to prepare a long-range materiel suppoyt program (with an eye
towards reducin•, MAP
funds).
In part, the phased withdrawal program was rooted both
in false optimism about the strength of the Diem government and the impact
of the newly created strategic hamlet program, and in the belief that the
NLF would continue to pose only a minor threat to -he GVN in the countryside.
President Kennedy, it is said, believed that if any cf these factors
should change, the way to counter their effects was through diplomacy, not
US military iatervention.35/ Senator Mike Mansfield, who traveled to
Southeast Asia in October 1962 at Kennedy's request, agreed, suggesting
that if the situation should change for the worse, "We
may well discover
that it is in our interests to do less rather than more than we are doing.
If that is The case, we will do well to concentrate on a vigo, -us diplomacy
without bringing about sudden and catastrophic upheavals in Southeast
Asia."36/
With the Laotian t"-aty behind them,
the North Vietnamese
continued with the unrestricted use of that country as a sanctuary,
Meanwhile, the US, trying to live by the letter of the agreement, found
that its war was constrained to Vietrin.. Therefore, to counter the DRV's
"wider war", the (IS was forced to initiate a "secret iar" in Laos (which
was fought by CIA operatives).
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