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Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011  "built the Viet Cong's political apparatus.

"The earlier arrivals had had at least five years of indoctrination and training in North Viet Nam, or elsewhere in the Communist bloc, before departing on their southern missions . . ." 132/"

The monopoly of Viet Cong leadership by the infiltrators from the North became evident after 1960. By 1965, they were clearly dominant. For example, while southerners still controlled the Viet Cong of the Mekong Delta, in the provinces just north of Saigon -- Tay Ninh, Binh Duong, Binh Hoa, and Phuoc Tuy especially -- regroupees and northerners had assumed most of the principal cow_mand positions. A document captured in January 1966 listed 47 VC officials attending a top-level party meeting for that region, of whom 30 had infiltrated from 1961 through 1965. Seven of these, all holding high posts in the regional command, were North Vietnamese. 133/ U.S. intelligence has estimated that one-third of the infiltrators from 1962 through 1964 were military officers or political leaders. 134/ A high-level defector from the VC 165A Regiment, charged with the Saigon region, stated that in 1965 8 of its 20 top officers were infiltrators. Other prisoners and ralliers have provided evidence that from one-quarter to one-third of Viet Cong officers in Liberation Army units were infiltrated from the North. At Viet Cong central headquarters in Tay Ninh -- Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN) -- Senior General Nguyen Chi Thanh of the NVA and Major General Tran Van Tra of the NVA and the Lao Dong Central Committee, his deputy, both North Vietnamese, held the top positions in the Communist Party Secretariat, under which there was a Military Affairs Committee heavily weighted with North Vietnamese military Officers. By 1966 it was clear that in the northern provinces of South Vietnam, the NVA was in direct command. General Hoang Van Thai, a deputy chief of staff of the NVA, and Major General Chu Huy Man, a member of the Lao Dong Central Committee, comraanded all VC/NVA operations there. 135/

4. The Communist Party. U .S. intelligence has been relatively well assured that throughout the years since 1945 the Communist Party of North Vietnam -- in its several guises -- has remained active in South Vietnam and in control of the Communist Party there. Public statements by Ro, by Truong Chinh, and other DRV leaders confirmed intelligence collected by the French that the Party went underground upon its formal disestablishment in 1945, but stayed operational and united throughout Vietnam. 136/ The Party publicly and privately took credit for organizing and leading the Viet Minh in the years 194·5 to 1951, and upon the DRV' s legalizing the Lao Dong Party in 1951, openly identified the latter, with both the Indochinese Communist Party pre-1945, and the covert Party of the years thereafter. By 1954, the Party seems to have asserted itself in virtually all of the Viet Minh IS sprm-rling undertakings. Party members held the key positions in the Front, both in the North and in the South, and Party cadre served as the chain of command for both operational int elligence and decisions. 137/ The Viet Minh administered South Vietnam as tvo Itinterzones It or regions (see map), and established Rh