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Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 (5) I note that problem of confidence is partly our making. There is a fashionable tendency, though not by most senior military and diplomatic figures, to depict your decision of last spring on Laos as a disaster without any reference to alternatives available. This flows over to local con@unity. Word should be passed down that when we make the best of bad alternatives second guessing of this sort does no service.

(6) As I will argue, there is no solution that does not involve a change of government. To say there is no alternative is nonsencenonsense [sic] for there never has seemed to be where one man has dominated the scene. So while we must play out the ineffective and hopeless course on which we are launched for a little while, we must look ahead very soon to a new government. On this more later. Given an even moderately effective government and putting the relative military power into perspective, I can't help thinking that the insurgency might very soon be settled.

(7) As I shall argue more fully in my letter, the diplomatic initiative should of course go forward. But I am convinced that the insurrection has more internal material base and less to meet it than I had previously imagined. Accordingly, the calling off of or stopping Rh