Page:Pentagon-Papers-Part IV. A. 5.djvu/242

Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011  On 8 July 1959, the United States armed forces sustained the first combat deaths in the war: two U.S. servicemen were killed by a terrorist bomb inside a U.S. compound at Bien Hoa. Other Viet Cong terrorist activities mounted to new levels of intensity. In the fall of 1959, as recounted above, communist guerrillas began to attack openly units of the Army of Vietnam, and to occupy province and district capitals for short periods. 1931 On 12 September 1959, Premier Pham Van Dong told the French Consul in Hanoi, that: ""You must remember, we will be in Saigon tomorrow, we will be in Saigon tomorrow." 194/"

In November, 1959, Pham Van Dong twice told Canadian ICC Commissioner Ericksen-Brown that "we will drive the Americans in the sea" -- statements deemed significant enough by the Lao Dong hierarchy to elicit a visit from General Giap to "reassure" Ericksen-Brmm of th~ DRV's peaceful intent. 195/

But the U.S. and Diem were both inured to threatening communist invective; what should have been more ominous was the DRV's willingness to act, first evident in Laos.

b. DRV Intervention in Laos

During the First Indochina War, 1945-1954, a nominally independent national movement developed in Laos, the paramilitary Pathet Lao, and its political arm, the Lao Fatherland Front (Neo Lao Hak Xat). 196/ It was quite clear, hmTever, that the Viet Minh -- and the Lao Dong Party -- dominated the Resistance in laosj in fact, the Viet Minh negotiated the Geneva settlement on behalf of its Laotian allies. After the Accords were signed, some Laotians were regrouped to North Vietnam itself, and like the South Vietnamese, were formed into NVA units. In 1954-1955, the DRV openly assisted the Pathet Lao in consolidating political and military strength in Phong Saly and Sam Neua, two provinces on Laos' northeast border with North Vietnam, designated as regroupment zones by the Geneva Agreements. 197/ U.S. intelligence obtained evidence that DRV cadres remained in these provinces following regroupment, some as advisors, but some occupying key political and administrative positions in the Pathet Lao and Neo Lao Hak Xat. Captured documents indicate that a North Vietnamese headquarters for this effort was set up in laos, with the following missions assigned from Hanoi:

(1) implementation of the truce and the political struggle;

(2) establishment and training of the Laotian (Communist ) Party; Rh