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Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011  launching too-venturesome, costly enterprises without proper preparation. Even top leaders were not immune to criticism on that score; e.g ., Le Dusn was apparently relieved of command over COSVN in late 1952 or 1953 for pressing too fast and hard. 181/ From the highest strategic level to the lowest. tactical level, Vietnamese communist doctrine underscores the essentiality of careful preparatory work, and the criticality of timing initial overt operations. 182/ It is not likely, then, that a decision to proceed toward the reunification of Vietnam by force was lightly taken by the Lao Dong leaders; it would in any event have countenanced extensive, painstaking, covert groundwork.

Such preliminary efforts might have be en the refurbishing of the Communist Party in South Vietnam, which had been seriously weakened by Diem's persistent Communist Denunciation Campaign. It seems probable that, whenever they were started, the initial steps of the DRV were directed to reinvigorating the Lao Dong apparatus in the South. For this purpose it would have needed relatively few cadre -- for instance, with 400 men, the Lao Dong could have dispatched 10 organizers to each of South Vietnam's provinces. From all indications, organizers were sent South in 1958; the numbers are not known. Similarly, in all likelihood the DRV would have looked to base preparations. Again evidence is scanty, but there were definite indications that guerrilla secure-areas were being prepared in the Highlands, in the Plain of ,Reeds, and in the War Zone C - War Zone D region north of Saigon. 183/ There are also indications, however, that debate over strategy continued through 1958. Reports captured while being forwarded via Lao Dong channels from South Vietnam to Hanoi indicate that some subordinates there clung to the belief that the Diem regime could be toppled without recourse to guerrilla warfare, and that others despaired of success without substantial militarJ aid from the North. There is also evidence throughout 1958 that Viet Cong tactics were being subjected to careful study in Hanoi. 184/

Whatever preparations were in progress during 1958, in December, 1958, or January, 1959, Hanoi apparently declded that the time had come to intensify its efforts. On December 1, there was an incident at a "political re-education camp" north of Salgon -- the "Phu Loi Massacre" -- which the DRV promptly seized upon to launch a worldwide propaganda offensive against Dlem. U .S. intelligence came into possession of a directive from Hanoi to its subordinate head-quarters in Inter-Sector V during December, 1958, which stated that the Lao Dong Party Central Committee had declded to "open a new stage of the struggle" ""}B 5/; the following month, January, 1959, U. S. sources also acqulred an order directing a Viet Cong bulld-up in Tay Nlnh province to provide a base for guerrilla operations; the same order mentioned simllar bases in the mountains of western Inter-Sector V. 186/ Rh