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Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011  2. Communist armed activities of all types began increasing in mid-1957. Largely of a terrorist type, involving assassinations, kidnappings, bombings, etc., these activities were concentrated in remote parts of the southern and southwestern provinces or the former Cochinchina area, were carried out by a few or several armed cadres, and were aimed principally at local administrative officials, police and security personnel, and village leaders. Within a year, however, it was clear that the Communist leadership in Hanoi were conducting a planned and increasingly diversified, although still low-level, armed campaign in South Vietnam, coordinated with stepped-up propaganda and other non-violent subversive activities and designed to weaken security and government authority in rural areas and demoralize the peasantry. In addition to the continuing rise in terrorist incidents, the number of guerrilla raids against small security and army units in remote villages increased, reflecting greater Communist armed capabilities and aggressiveness. Vietnamese intelligence sources, however, estimated the armed component of the Communist apparatus at just over 2,000 which included some remnant armed bands of the once-powerful  and   religious sects and of the   bandit organization. By the end of 1959, estimated Communist armed strength reached 3,000, with a proportionate increase in the the size of attacking guerrilla bands. During this period, Communist terrorists are believed to have assassinated or kidnapped a total of at least 1,100 persons, in addition to the number of military and security personnel killed during armed operations.

3. . Since the latter part of 1959, the Communist apparatus has waged an intensive and considerably expanded terrorist-guerrilla offensive in South Vietnam, supported by increasingly effective propaganda and intelligence operations. Terrorist acts against local officials and civilians and guerrilla raids against army and security units have increased to levels unprecedented since the end of the Indochina war. The number of persons assassinated and kidnapped during 1960 alone is more than double the total for 1957–59, Communist armed strength has more than quintripled, substantial parts of the countryside have come under varying degrees of Communist control and political influence, travel throughout most of the countryside has become extremely hazardous, and terrorist acts in Saigon itself have increased.

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