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Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011  Barring a significant increase 1.n the present level of guerrilla infiltration and military aggression, the G.V.N. armed forces (170,000) and the Civil Guard (68.000) bolstered by the establishment of an effective intelligence and patrol system, regular aerial border surveillance and the application of technological area-denial techniques (e.g., CW, BW, light plastic, air-droppable landmines, fluorescent materials, etc.), have the capability of continuing the suppression of.the insurgency and even making considerable headway against it. This capability will, of course, depend on a major acceleration of the present retraining program. Given the augmentation and strengthening of the G.V.N. armed forces now being proposed, it is considered an acceptable military risk that South Vietnam can cope successfully with the Laos border problem.

Similar considerations apply to the frontier between South Vietnam and Cambodia. It is hoped, however. that a realization of the increased threat to their own security posed by Communist advances into Laos would persuade the G.V.N. and Cambodia Governments to cooperate more effectively-in the maintenance of adequate border security between the two countries.

In furtherance of these efforts. a special staff element {approximately 6 U.S. personnel), to concentrate upon solutions to the unique problems of Vietnam's brodersborders [sic], will be activated in MAAG, Vietnam, to assist a similar special unit in the RVNAF which the G.V.N. will be encouraged Rh