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Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011  a principal subordinate Party headquarters on Ca Mau Peninsula called the Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN)) headed by Le Duan. 138/ However) the 1951 statutes of the Lao Dong Party) like other DRV official pronouncements, recognized in principle no separate identity for South Vietnam or South Vietnamese communists. 139/ It was the Lao Dong Party cadre which sorted out the southern Viet Minh for regroupment or stay-behind missions) and the regroupees themselves felt that their fate was thereafter in the hands of the Lao Dong leaders. 140/

As the Viet Minh military apparatus was dismantled, COSVN was apparently closed down. There is convincing evidence) however, that from 1955 on, there were tyro Party headquarters -- or at least communications centers -- in South Vietnam) each communicating directly with Lao Dong headquarters in Hanoi. 141/ One of these was located in "Nam Bo" (South Zone), the other was located in "Trung Bo" (Central Zone) Region Five). Captured docum e nts and prisoners indicate that these headquarters were active in handling the infiltration between North and South Vietnam in the years immediately after Geneva; they are also mentioned as the site of conferences between southern Vietnamese and northern leaders like Le Duan and Van Tien Dung. 142/ While prisoners and captured documents have established these links between Hanoi and the South) reports are too fev in number and insufficiently comp rehens ive to warrant the conclusion that Hanoi was always in a position to dictate or even manipulate events in South Vietnam; they do offer persuasive evidence that the Lao Dong Party continued conspiratorial, political, and military activities in South Vietnam throughout the years 1954 to 1969. Moreover) the documents and interrogations are supported by circumstantial evidence. The village level organization of the Viet Cong, even that in the early years of the insurgency, VC propaganda techniques, and the terror-persuasion methodology employed by the early Viet Cong, all closely followed the doctrine of the Lao Dong Party. 143/ The eventual appearance of a "front" structured like the Fatherland Front; the reiteration by Cong of propaganda themes being trumpeted by Hanoi; and indications of preoccupation within the Viet Cong leadership over following the Lao Dong Party line also support the conclusion that the Party was playing a significant role in the mOQDting rebellion against Diem.

In 1961, when the People's Revolutionary Party of South Vietnam came into being, there was some effort in both North and South to portray it as an indigenous South Vietnamese party, independent of the Lao Dong. But documents and prisoners have since proved that if this were the case, neither the Viet Cong hierarchy nor rank-and-file believed it so. A document captured in 1962; a provincial party directive) stated that the creation of the PRP "is only a matter of strategy … to deceive the enemy ... Our party is nothing but the Lao Dong Party of Vietnam) unified from North to South) under the direction of the Central Executive Committee of the Party) the chief of which is President Ho." 144/ Another party directive captured in 1966 provided that: "the masses who have good sympathy towards the Party should be well informed that the Lao Dong Party and the People's Revolutionary Party are one party headed by the Central Committee with Rh