INSURGENCY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79T00429A001100030027-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 31, 2006
• Sequence Number: 27
• Publication Date: April 30, 1963
• Content Type: MEMO

Approved For Remise 2007/03SE:
OCI No. 1664/63
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Office of Current Intelligence
30 April 1963
CURRENT INTELLIGENCE MEMORANDUM
SUBJECT: Insurgency in Southeast Asia
1. There has been no significant development
in the Cambodian security situation during the past
week.
2. There have been no significant changes in
the situation in Thailand in the past week. The
joint Thai--Malay security operation aimed at Com-
munist..terrorists in the border area, which began
in March and will end on 1 May, has not been suc-
cessful.
3. Laos
a. The situation in the Plaine des Jarres
has been relatively quiet, but further clashes are
likely since Kong Le continues preparations to re-
take the positions he has lost and the Communists
are showing an increasingly intransigent attitude
toward negotiations. There is also evidence of in-
creasing Communist. military activity in. the south,
where thePathet Lao attacked a FAR position east
of Savannakhet on 25 April.
Pathet'?Lao pressures are increasing on Kong Le 's
units in southern'Laos and that North Vietnamese
troop movements in the area may have occurred.
b. There are a number of indications that
the Communists, if they are prepared to negotiate
at all, intend to follow a hard line backed by the
threat of renewed military action. They are in-
sisting that they will discuss a settlement in the
Plaine Be Jarres'area only if a whole series of
problems related to the coalition government is in-
cluded. They are charging that additional Phoumi
troops were brought in to reinforce Kong Le on6
April, allegedly in US aircraft. Finally the Polish
State Dept. review completed
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member of the ICC is adamantly opposed to the station-
ing'of an ICC team with Kong Le's headquarters and
is demanding that Air America be removed from Laos.
c. The unwillingness or inability of the
USSR to bring influence to bear on North Vietnam
and the Pathet Lao was further indicated in Khru-
shchev's talks with Undersecretary Harriman. Al-
though Khrushchev professed that the USSR still sup-
ported the Geneva agreements, he suggested that a
solution was up to the Laotians themselves and said
that the USSR could not control the ICC.
4. South Vietnam
a. The step-up in the tempo and scale of
Viet Cong military activity continues. The latest
incident was a two-battalion attack on 27 April
against a government security unit in western Icontum
Province near the border of Quang Ngai Province. The
week ending 22 April saw the highest weekly total
(128) of attacks since June 1962. This included a
series of attacks on the strategic hamlet program
in Quang Ngai, where the Viet Cong were subsequently
routed with heavy losses; attacks--at least one in
battalion strength--on government posts in the ex-
treme southern province of An Xuyen, company-size
attacks east of Saigon, and an increase in the number
of acts of sabotage against rail lines.
b. This Viet Cong activity suggests a con-
tinued capability for well-coordinated military
actions in wide areas of the country and for ef-
fective concentration and dispersal of striking forces.
The Viet Cong now appears to be directing its activi-
ties more directly at slowing down the progress of
government pacification programs and preventing in-
roads into traditional Communist strongholds, and
its effort may have been timed to undercut the
psychological impact of Diem's recent "open arms"
appeal for the surrender of Viet Cong followers.
The Communists probably will not sustain this pace
indefinitely. The past pattern indicates a fluctua-
tion between periods of aggresiveness and periods
of slack for retraining, regrouping, and replacing
losses.
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c. Government forces in Quang Ngai have
demonstrated an ability to react quickly and ef-
fectively against attacking Viet Cong,.forces and
to enlist considerable popular cooperation in areas
where systematic political-military pacification
is underway.
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