Undercover Armies - CIA FOIA - Central Intelligence Agency

IC05303949
Chapter Ten
ing open the prospect of a "middle course," one which avoided "premature
creation of armed uprising" while developing a "sympathetic following" to be
used for intelligence and propaganda purposes. Meanwhile, the tribal people
in border areas of the DRV would be offered the "hope of an alternative to
Vietnamese communist control."16D
Doug Blaufarb pursued the issue and reported that Sullivan would have
nothing to do with a "middle course" program that involved "the arming of
populations ... or any moral commitment to population groups." Headquarters
refused to give up, and when the ambassador visited Washington in July,
Bill Colby and Des FitzGerald pressed for a more liberal approach to recruiting
in North Vietnam. Sullivan argued that "it would be immoral to encourage
'resistance' of any size in the DRV if we were not willing to follow it up
and support it." Colby interpreted this as posing an obstacle to exploiting
Hmong potential on the Route 7 axis east of the border; he worried that even
intelligence operations would suffer "if we were not able to develop at least a
popular base of opinion [sic] and some armament to protect the teams." Sullivan
disagreed, and insisted that provocation be minimized by limiting operations
in that area to intelligence collection by small teams operating
surreptitiously· l7 O
Conl1icling EquilicsD
However compelling, the ambassador's argument did not end the discussion.
The arrival of marine units at Da Nang had been immediately followed
by the commitment of thousands of US Army troops into South Vietnam. At
the same time, the program of US airstrikes on the Ho Chi Minh trail begun in
1964 under the code name BARREL ROLL was having only modest success
in stemming the flow of North Vietnamese troops and materiel into the
south· 18 D
To US military commanders, it was simply intolerable to allow Hanoi a
quasi-sanctuary through which to supply the forces now engaged in bloody
combat with American as well as South Vietnamese units. MACV commander
William Westmoreland and his nominal superior, Adm. U.S. Grant Sharp in
IWilliam E. Colby.
Mi:"em=or=a=-nd:;:u=m:-::CofCCC"oC:n=v=er=sa:::ti:::o=-n."n·M"cC:e"tin=g'-w=ith"'A-=m"'b=as:::sa:::dC:o=r-.-..'5"u'"1I"'iv:::a=-n."23 July 1965," FRUS
1964-1968,378-79. Sullivan's tentative approval of theSam Neuaeffort, given 27 April. specified
that he expected it to remain small, based on irregular units "in their current position."
I
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18Special National Intelligence Estimate. Short-Term Prospects/or Laos, 5 August '1965, FRUS
1964-1968.38D-84c==J .
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r: 16