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Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011  it not been for U.S. aid, many of the refugees might never have reached the South, and without U.S. aid there, many might have perished. The U.S. Navy moved 310,848 persons in its "Operation Exodus." The $93 million the GVN received from the U.S. comprised 97% of the funds it dispensed for these purposes, nearly $100 per refugee in a country with a lower national income per capita. This official aid, plus substantial assistance from American charities, combined with a remarkably energetic and imaginative Vietnamese administration, succeeded by 1957 in providing decent habitation and livelihood for all but a few of the refugees—a genuinely laudable accomplishment, which must stand with the defeat of the sects among Diem's crowning achievements.

Because of the GVN's undertakings for the refugees, the Geneva "regroupment" turned out, at least initially, very much to its advantage: it gained nearly 1 million loyal citizens adamantly opposed to reunification were it to mean their return to DRV rule, whose recounted experiences with the Viet Minh buttressed the moral fiber of the South. Here were whole communities largely dependent on the GVN, untouched by the armed religious sects, and hostile to the Viet Minh, from which Diem could recruit reliable political and military cadres. Here were masses disposed to follow Diem uncritically, easily manipulated for political purposes by Diem or his family. Here, for aid-dispensing Americans, were Vietnamese whose needs were basic, and who proved capable of absorbing simple, quick-return, highly visible forms of assistance.

The GVN began to politicize the refugee communities almost immediately. For example, in July, 1955, when the DRV appealed to Diem to commence consultation towards the plebescite, an apparently well-directed mob of refugees attacked the hotel quarters of the ICC. Some 20,000 of the refugees were moved together to a sparsely settled tract in the Mekong Delta of 100,000 acres, which was cleared, plowed and irrigated with substantial American technical assistance and 100 tractors; this, the Cai San project, became a showcase of American aid for visitors. In a much smaller, yet perhaps more significant instance, the GVN formed small, black-pajamaed "civic action" cadres for the purpose of building communications between Saigon and the villages; although the original idea had been to use Saigon bureaucrats, these failed to volunteer, and the bulk of the teams were eventually manned by northern refugees. Later, refugee communities were transplanted to the frontiers to enhance both the local economy and security there. The GVN was not ungrateful, and eventually the preferred positions in the Army and the bureaucracy began to be filled with refugee Catholics and other northerners.

In the long run, however, Diem squandered the advantage the Geneva regroupment brought him. His policies kept the refugees an unassimilated, special interest group, which produced further distortions in an already stressed polity. They in turn projected in rural areas an unfavorable image of the GVN, which probably figured in its eventual rejection by most Cochinchinese and non-Catholic Annamites: a government Rh