Page:Pentagon-Papers-Part IV. C. 1.djvu/138



Although some HOP TAC progress was occasionally reported the pacification situation otherwise was quite gloomy. The Vietnam Sitreps of 3 March 1965 reported the nationwide pacification effort remained stalled. The HOP TAC program "continues but personnel changes, past and future, may retard the future success of this effort." The 10 March Sitrep called the national pacification effort "stagnated" and objectives in some areas "regressing." In the I and II Corps pacification has "all but ceased." Only a few widely scattered places in the rest of the country could report any achievement. In the HOP TAC area the anticipated slow-down in pacification had arrived -- the result of shifting military commanders and province and district chiefs. On 17 March, pacification was virtually stalled, refugee problems were mounting in I and II Corps. Only in the HOP TAC area were there "modest gains…in spite of increased VC area activity." By 24 March the word used for pacification efforts generally was "stalled," and the effort had now become increasingly devoted to refugee centers and relief. However, the Sitrep said 356 hamlets in the HOP TAC area had been reported -- by Vietnamese authorities -- as meeting agreed criteria and 927,000 persons were living in zones that had been declared clear. 141/

At the time of the Johnson Mission, concern over the evident failures of the pacification program was such that proposals to change the framework within which it was conducted -- proposals to put the USOM, USIS and CIA pacification operations all under MACV -- were examined at length. Ambassadors Taylor and Alexis Johnson as well as General Westmoreland were opposed to sweeping changes of this sort. All apparently conceded the need for better coordination of the different kinds of programs, military and civil, which went into pacification but senior mission officials strongly opposed any major revision of the non-military effort. Rh