Another Dissection - Home Bigart

The article I'm looking at is 'Vietnam Victory Remote Despite U.S. Aid to Diem,' by Homer Bigart, first published July 25, 1961, in The New York Times.

Not just any reporter, not just any newspaper

Who was Homer Bigart? I didn't know until I looked him up and found a 1991 eulogy in the American Journalism Review:

Bigart, who died last April at age 83, won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for his World War II coverage and one for his coverage of the Korean War. In a career that spanned the late 1920s through the early 1970s, first at the New York Herald Tribune and later at The New York Times, Bigart became a legend among his fellow journalists not only because of the quality of his work but also because he was so clearly a newspaperman's newspaperman.

Homer Bigart was not just any reporter. He was seasoned by two wars, he was highly experienced, honored by the the journalism profession, at death, a 'legend' among his peers.

Homer Bigart was the reporter on the spot for the New York Times. Is that a big deal? The Times was—and is—the most prestigious paper in the US, not a regional newspaper, but the chief newspaper for the entire country, read and followed closely by policymakers in the government, think tanks, people actually running things, and by the highly educated nationwide, and by the owners and editors of other newspapers throughout the country. In a way, it has the power to 'create' reality, at least in the minds of many well placed people.

Creating Reality

So what does this privileged mouthpiece for the real world do back in 1962? He starts like this:

The United States, by massive and unqualified support of the regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem, has helped arrest the spread of Communist inurgency in South Vietnam. But victory is remote. The issue remains in doubt because the Vietnamese President seems incapable of winning the loyalty of his people. (58)

Then he quickly paints by numbers. Someone—he doesn't say who is deciding this—on our side, is expanding the military:

By the end of the this year … 205,000 regular forces, 72,000 Civil Guard, 82,000 Self-Defense Corps… more helicopters, armored personnel carriers and other gadgets to enhance mobility, more sentry dogs to sniff out guerrillas, more plastic boats for the delta region, more American advisors with fresh, new tactical doctrines. (58)

against the other side, 'The Vietcong (Vietnamese Communist) guerrillas':

25,000 guerrillas who have no artillary, no anti-aircraft guns, no air power, no trucks, no jeeps, no prime movers, and only basic infantry weapons … and no substantial outside aid. (58)

And yet, 'victory is remote.' Why?

Visions of ultimate victory are obscured by the image of a secretive, suspicious, dictatorial regime. (59)

The rest of the article gives tangled evidence that the Diem regime is in the way of American efforts to stop The Communists from taking over South Vietnam. However, throughout the article, there is evidence of another story, that the Diem regime is against the population who are for the insurrgents and that the US is being forced to intervene with increasing violence

A 'secretive, suspicious, dictatorial regime'

Let's start to understand the world of Homer Bigart using the paragraphs quoted above. Despite 'massive and unqualified support' the 'Vietnamese president seems incapable of winning the loyalty of his people' because his is 'a secretive, suspicious, dictatorial regime.'

Bigart's language creates a tangle in the mind of the reader: to be 'incapable' one must be demonstrating effort and the desire to 'win the loyalty' of the real human beings in the country but failing. Is this what one would expect from a 'secretive, suspicious, dictatorial regime?' Does Homer Bigart suggest we should expect a dictator to try to win the loyalty of his subjects?

Insurrections without a cause

What causes the Communists insurrection? Bigart offers no help here. At the end of the article, he addresses a possible cause, but again in euphemistic language:

In the relatively quiet years between 1955 and 1958, when the Communist insurrection supported by North Vietnam began, South Vietnam made some modest economic progress. Saigon looked relatively prosperous. But United States economic aid was slow to reach the villages. And Ngo Dinh Diem did little to generate enthusiasm for his regime. (67)

This leaves the reader clueless as to what was going on in those years. What was this 'secretive, suspicious, dictatorial regime' doing in the countryside, where this insurrection was catching hold?

Signs are clear enough?

Bigart notes an inconsistency in the picture: Communists are attacking, but the rural population is not rallying to government, their defenders, but does not suggest a reason. He does note that 'the press is rigidly controlled and there is no freedom of assembly' presumably one reason it is hard to what the population thinks. However, he reports that in one attack

guerrillas moved into position in daylight, prepared the ambuscade in full view of the road and waited three hours for the convoy to appear. They must have been observed by scores of peasants. Yet no one informed the garrison in Bentre. Could this have happened if peasants felt any real identification? A family living at the scene said it was threatened with death if it informed. But the Vietcong probably would never have undertaken this action without full confidence that the peasants were with them, or at least indifferent. (60)

In fact, the opposite happens, as Bigart notes. When the government presence is felt, in the form of the army, the population flees:

Observers of sweeps by the Vietnamese army through the Mekong delta provinces are often struck by the phenomenon of deserted villages. As troops approach, all flee except a few old men and children. No one offers information; no one hurries to put out flags. Most of the rural area is controlled by Vietcong, whose agents will move back as soon as the troops have departed.

The rural population is quite likely sympathetic to the insurgents and flees from government forces. Bigart does not say why, but has euphemistically called this a 'lack of enthusiasm'  and summarizes the situation for the reader this way: 'In some areas, signs of dissatisfaction are clear enough.'

Clear enough? Not for Bigart.

Although he has already called the Diem 'regime' secretive and dictatorial and notes that it is heavily militarized, is suppressing the press and assembly, and is unsupported by the rural population who flee the army, he has failed to give any reason why. Instead, the story he his building so far is that the 'regime' we are supporting with massive military aid is not able to win the loyalty of the people who are for some reason dissatisfied with the government.

This, this right here, is how a reader is given information and simultaneously disabled from making sense of it. 

Two plus two does not equal four

Why does the rural population flee the Army. Bigart doesn't say. However, he knows why—or should—since he says a few paragraphs later:

generally the Communist rebels are indistinguishable from peasants. Thus, many of the "enemy" dead reported by the South Vietnam Government were ordinary peasants shot down because they fled from villages as the troops entered.… Some may have been Vietcong sympathizers, but others were running away because they did not want to be rounded up for military conscription or forced labor."(64).

Why does he tell us this at this point when he is questioning government claims for enemy casualties? Why didn't he mention this when he introduced the idea of 'dissatisfaction' with the government? Couldn't his readers then see that 'dissatisfaction' might be fear and rage at having people killed, conscripted and forced to work at gunpoint?

Bigart's reality includes skepticism about the government's claims of success in the fighting, but he can not build a picture of a government brutally indifferent to the population and at perhaps at war with it.

'Security:' Language to subvert the obvious

The next paragraphs talk about the importance of 'securing the countryside.' How are they doing this?

Diem is well aware of the importance of securing the countryside. His brother has visions of concentrating peasants into "strategic hamlets" ringed with mud walls, moats and barbed wire. The object is to isolate peasants from the Communists. Brother Ngo Dinh Nhu urged the creation of 8,000 hamlets by the end of the year. (60).

Does this sound like an attempt to 'win the loyalty of his people,' people who, it has already been admitted, are likely to be with the insurgents? That is what we are left to believe. Would this lead people to 'dissatisfaction?' Bigart gives the facts, the government is attempting to dislocate tens of thousands of people by force and isolate them in camps, and yet the only frame for understanding this is either incompetence or security.

What do 'Americans' think of this?

While appalled by the dreary regimentation of life in these fortified villages, most Americans are convinced that the strategic hamlet is part of the answer to the pacification problem. They hope to persuade the President that forced labor on hamlet defenses is not the way to win the affection of the peasants. (60)

'Secure the countryside' by isolating the peasants, who, Bigart admits, are probably with the insurgents. And a few paragraphs later he reports that these people are being murdered by the army or rounded up for forced labor. The cute language, 'enthusiasm,' 'dissatisfaction', 'loyalty,' 'observers struck by deserted villages' is not reporting; it is evasion.

So what do Americans propose:

that a trust fund be set aside to insure that emergency relief, food, blankets, medicine, or perhaps defense materials such as barbed wire and cement would reach the new villages in the first critical weeks. (60)

This is how reality is invented. 'Emergency relief' in the 'first critical weeks.' People are being uprooted and interned—perhaps 8,000 villages—to isolate them from those they side with by a dictatorial government, without getting support by that government, and this is a 'critical emergency' 'perhaps' needing 'defense materials' and 'relief.'

Unthinkable truths

Does Bigart help his reader make sense of what the US is doing?

In Bigart's world, separating a population from its insurgency is the pacification problem. This is 'defense.' So, what should be 'clear' if you follow his language, is this: Americans are defending a 'dictatorial regime' from a popular insurgency. The pacification problem is that 'forced labor' enslaved in a 'dreary regimentation' to defend a 'dictatorial regime' isn't working. But in this reporting, that picture is called 'not winning the affection' of the population. The euphemism is functional. It lets Bigart avoid the obvious and unthinkable truth about what the US is doing.

Bigart reports the facts, but lives in such a world that makes those facts incomprehensible, both to himself and to other 'Americans.'

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Americans are trying so hard, but this guy…

Diem is the problem. How? First, the suspicious dictator president is getting in the way of the military machine that the US is setting up in Vietnam. 'All major troop movements, all officer promotions, must have his approval.' He moves around troops, is afraid of a military coup, and makes 'use of general reserve troops' to secure the Presidential palace from other parts of the military, and to launch 'futile one-shot operations based on faulty intelligence and conducted with slipshod planning.'

Bigart illustrates with an example in which a convoy is 'wiped-out' by the guerrillas just forty miles from Saigon, the site of the presidential palace, but a follow-up by the military was delayed two hours because the general reserve needed the dictator president's approval. The guerrillas escaped.

This episode was a 'bitter revelation for Americans.' —'Americans?' Which? He doesn't say but presumably, all Americans, including his readers, as one singular point of view is put forward. Thus the reader is corralled in with those he talks of later: the leaders of the US advisory group, the American aid mission, US President Kennedy's military advisor, 'Washington,' the US Ambassador, the US Defense Department, the US Secretary of Defense, and the US Vice president. Why doesn't he say 'planners of the US government intervention in the South of Vietnam?'

What follows is a listing of the problems this unconditionally, massively supported suspicious dictatorial president is causing Americans.

By last year, the Communists controlled most of the countryside. The Vietnamese President was forced to ask for greatly increased military aid. President Kennedy responded by rushing thousands of United States military personnel to South Vietnam to serve as advisers and instructors. A united States Military Assistance Command was established under Gen. Paul Donal Harkins (67)

The final, confused prognosis, is that because Diem is not 'an inspired leader' and since there is no 'anti-communist alternative' the US may have to 'ditch Diem for a military junta' or fight the Communists themselves, and like the French before them, ultimately loose, 'lacking the endurance' for a jungle war.

Diem 'did little to generate enthusiasm for his regime' between 1955 and 1958 (67) and 'some feel the Vietnamese President cannot give his country the inspired leadership needed to defeat the Vietcong' (66).

An aside on objectivity

The journalists that gathered to honor Homer Bigart after his death obviously thought highly of the 'newspaperman's newspaperman.' Here is another extract:

As for Hiroshima, where he was one of the first reporters allowed in after the bomb was dropped, Bigart was curtly dismissive of those who would rewrite history. "At the time we thought it was just a hell of a good raid, just another big bomb. We were still full of the war spirit and Japan was an all-out war. We felt we had to win it and that we had to practically exterminate the enemy. I'm very suspicious of people's expressions of shock now. They've forgotten how we felt then."

Admirable frankness, at least regarding those who would 'rewrite history.' But what about those who write history, at least in the sense I spoke of above: reporters are the voice of reality. As the above anecdote shows, Bigart was rooting for the cause, 'full of the war spirit,' feeling 'we' had to 'practically exterminate the enemy,' even though in this case the enemy was a civilian city, which Bigart had to know.

How do the other 'we,' the ones who want our government to follow the norms of international law and decency, how do we defend ourselves against reporters who share the intentions, hopes, and ferver of those they report on?

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The article, "Vietnam Victory Remote Despite U.S. Aid to Diem", was written by Homer Bigart, and appeared July 25, 1962, in The New York Times. I read it in an anthology, Reporting Vietnam. Part One: American Journalism 1959-1969, in the Library of America series, (c) 1998, pgs 58 - 67.

The eulogy on Homer Bigart is available online, The American Journalism Review, "The Quiet Exit of Homer Bigart", November, 1991.

'Fumbling'- a slice of reportage by Stanley Karnow, 1961

I am trying to learn to read better. This article, by Stanley Karnow, presented a schizophrenic's reality to me, where the reporter seemed desperate to maintain one reality while reporting another. This juxtaposition seems decodable, but if one doesn't look for it, and work at it, I think it makes one's moral judgement confused. What looks at first to be horrible and wrong becomes OK, since it is never picked up and used by the authority who presents it. It must be alright, somehow, or it would be made a big deal.

(Historical note: the 'Diem régime' refers to the US backed government of what became known as South Vietnam. He was in power from 1954 until 1963, when he was killed in a military coup.)

How can a reporter do this:

In any conflict against guerillas, however, the key to success or failure lies in the rural population, and in many regions of South Vietnam the peasants' attitude to the Diem régime seems to range between plain and 'hostile' neutrality. To some extent, the army has been at fault. … Like most Oriental armies it has done its share of brutalizing peasants—raping, pillaging, torturing. And often it is caught up in clever Communist traps… psychological victori[es] for the Reds, psychological loss[es] for the Diem régime.

Does this win some award for density of rhetorical contortions?

hostile neutrality, to some extent the army has been at fault, like most Oriental armies, its share of raping, pillaging, torturing

The hostility must be neutral, as otherwise, the population would be leaning toward the other side, which apparently could never happen; the army is only somewhat culpable; they brutalize the population, but only because they are Oriental; and Diem, who earlier is credited with having inordinate control of the army, is not blamable at all. And of course, 'the Communists' are to blame too.

He goes on:

Aggravating this sort of fumbling… some of Diem's dramatic security decisions have fallen short. Late in 1959, for example, he devised a scheme to pull the peasants together in large agglomerations, officially to be called "prosperity centers" and commonly known as agrovilles. The laudable aim of these projects was to establish protected villages and, incidentally, to set up marketing cooperatives.

Now the award is for sugar-coating—or naiveté:

aggravating, fumbling, pull the peasants together, protect the villages

Diem is 'aggravating' army atrocities, which are lumped in as 'fumbling.' This time, Diem is given full potency in making this decision, whereas in the army's atrocities, he was not identified. The peasants are to be 'pulled together' and yet he gives no hint that they may not want to being relocated. It's 'laudable' that they be 'protected' even though it is clear from his own report that they should fear the army, not welcome it.

Next, for the only time in the article, Karnow reports facts from the scene himself. He visits a "prosperity center," a place called Vi Thanh, in the southern delta:

At first glance, it seemed magnificent compared to the scrubby farms I had seen along the way.… But probing a bit more deeply, I discovered some fatal flaws that, in practice, had made the entire scheme a detriment to South Vietnam's security.

So, what are the 'flaws' he discovered upon probing this government program? He describes them. I quote at length:

The swift and ruthless manner in which the agrovilles were created not only disrupted ancient customs, it also alientated more peasants then it could ever have protected. …In fifty days, beginning in December, 1959, with the help of the army [the official in charge] rounded up twenty thousand peasants—although they were in the middle of their rice harvest—and put them to work immediately. They were paid nothing, and many of them had to walk ten or twelve miles to and from the construction job every day. And when the agroville was finished, there was room in it for only 6,200 people, leaving some fourteen thousand others without their rice crop, without any payment for their work, and without any opportunity to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Here Karnow, without much obfuscation, quickly reports government brutality and indifference of terrible proportions, and yet just a sentence before, he says the scheme 'fell short' of its 'laudable aim'. He diminishes the massive, forced relocation by saying it 'disrupted ancient customs,' not uprooted entire communities. He fails to tie the history of the army, who rapes, pillages, and tortures, to this action, simply saying the peasants were 'rounded up'. He fails to probe that the people brought into the camp are now dependent on government supplies and services, a government that clearly cares nothing for their opinions or way of life. And even though he concludes that thousands would be without their rice or the money to buy food, he fails to follow up with a likely summary: thousands have been made totally dependent on an indifferent government and thousands more have been used as forced labor and reduced to possible starvation, without the slightest effort to help them.

These are 'flaws.' His next sentences:

On balance, there is no doubt that Diem has done a great deal for the South Vietnamese peasant. The accomplishments—credit, new seeds, irrigation projects, tax exemptions, land distribution and the like—cannot be overlooked. But the individualistic, self-conscious farmer, like farmers everywhere in the world, has an inherent inclination to discount his blessings; and in critical times, such as the present, failings tend to gain greater currency than achievements.

Now, its a blame-the-victim award. And an incredibly ugly one. But there are deeper points to bring out.

There is a schizophrenic dissonance in Karnow's reporting. He reports facts, though often vaguely, or with sugar-coating, but does not use these to build a coherent reality. He will obliquely introduce a quality, such as the brutal, authoritarian, and indifferent nature of Diem's government, but not use it to interpret or represent the reality in front of him. Instead, he works to maintain a different reality.

Two plus two does not equal four

Earlier in the article, Karnow noted that Diem was an authoritarian ruler who, together with his brothers, in order to 'control South Vietnam,' had set up extensive clandestine organizations, which, among other, unnamed, activities spied on every aspect of society. He often controls the army arbitrarily, and all officials above the village level, like the one who set up the "prosperity center" above, reported directly to the brothers. All were appointed by the Diem family, so none can be removed by popular vote. He also notes that Diem and his family were high functionaries in the colonial government of the French who had been defeated in an awful war a few years earlier, and that his family is believed by 'everyone' to be corrupt, controlling big parts of the economy and robbing the country of its wealth.

So? There is no reason to believe that this man, Diem, or his 'régime,' have the interest of the rural population in mind. None. They run an authoritarian government with a brutal army, have a history of serving outside interests, govern via secret societies, act arbitrarily, without consulting those affected, are indifferent to the actual lives of the rural population, and act in their own interests, not the country's. This is from Karnow's own reporting. Further, the one time Karnow reports from the scene of a government program, all this is proven out in spades. So why does he insist that Diem's aims are laudable and his accomplishments are praiseworthy?

Why—because he has too, or otherwise he has to see the whole situation differently.

'The Communists' are to blame for everything

This article starts history in 1959 by describing a military coup against Diem in 1960 and a 'deeper disturbance that has plagued South Vietnam for over a year,' namely that 'the Diem régime may well be approaching collapse, and with such a collapse, the country could fall to the Communists.'

But what happened to the years 1954-1959? Karnow editorializes: Diem "saved a régime that most 'experts' considered lost back in 1955" and launched a series of praiseworthy programs: land reform, resettlement, road building, industrialization, agricultural credit.

But that is not the reality his reporting paints, at least if you can still put two and two together. In Karnow's world, the army seems suddenly to have turned to rapists and torturers, the government programs into brutal experiments in development, the concern for agriculture and resettlement into appalling indifference. The authoritarian government run by personal cronies and clandestine organizations suddenly went from benign and effective to malign and arbitrary.

But why?

At root: "Bands of Communist guerrillas, directed from Hanoi in North Vietnam." More specifically, "the current Communist offensive against South Vietnam began to build up as early as September, 1959" using "the largest groups since they fought the French," a war that ended in 1954. They "are fanning out throughout the delta, hitting army posts, ambushing troops, terrorizing local village chiefs."

Karnow claims the crisis is due to the government reacting incompetently against this new threat, "demoralizing" the population and disabling the army, supported by tremendous US aid, a force that far exceeds the number and power of the guerrillas. And again he editorializes: "A durable anti-Communism can, in time, emerge from economic and social development. … Among other things, it requires a rational use of force accompanied by long-term economic planning and efforts to arouse popular enthusiasm. It also needs an intangible: style of leadership." Karnow did not think that Diem could provide that.

Sounds like a pentagon PR script for the next ten or so years of hell in Viet Nam.

Thinkable reality

What seems unthinkable to Stanley Karnow back in 1961 was that the Diem 'régime' was brutal, indifferent, authoritarian, and against the interests of the population from the beginning, though this seems to me the obvious inference to make from his own reporting.

It also seems unthinkable that the rural population of Viet Nam had any sort of independent agency, that it might mount a defense of its own against this abuse, that it might have indigenous ability to organize and direct itself in the face of these abuses.

Finally, it seems unthinkable that the undescribed group he routinely names 'the Communists,' the malign agent he blandly gives extraordinary agency to, might be complex, native, nationalist, and responsive to the population.

What is clearly thinkable to Stanley Karnow back in 1961 is the standard line for understanding the Vietnam war, then and now: an essentially evil and external character, 'the Communists,' already well known by the audience, is attacking a country, while the helpless population is hoping the local government, with sympathetic aid of the good character, the US, will continue its role as benefactor and protect it. However, ineptitude and bungling is keeping this from happening, much to the dismay of the population, who can only sit and hope that they good guys can find a way out of this mess.

Overall, the effect to me of this schizophrenic dissonance is to make the ugly truth of the Diem government invisible, folded into the overarching story of good vs. bad. It pushes back questions a reader might form otherwise: is this government legitimate? is there a reason for the violence against the government? is the population legitimately resisting an abusive government? and most importantly, why is the US funding this?

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The article, "Diem Defeats His Own Best Troops", was written by veteran reporter, Stanley Karnow, and appeared January 19, 1961, in a publication called The Reporter. I read it in an anthology, Reporting Vietnam. Part One: American Journalism 1959-1969, in the Library of America series, (c) 1998, pgs 3 - 17.

Stanley Karnow was co-producer and the Chief Corresponding on the landmark PBS documentary, Vietnam: A Television History, first broadcast in 1983, and was author of the 1983 Pultzer Prize winning tie-in book, Vietnam: A History. Given the popularity and accessibility of these accounts, they are likely to become the definitive popular version of the history of the Vietnam war.

Viet Nam - Two renditions of an attack

The attack was a significant escalation—both sides agree it was a major challenge to the army of the Diem government of South Vietnam. It was in January, 1960, on an old French fortress, Tua Hai, used as regimental headquarters of the Diem government's army in Tay Ninh province, northeast of Saigon.

Here is an incidental report, written in 1961, in an article on the challenges to the Diem government of South Vietnam, written by the American reporter, Stanley Karnow:

The current Communist offensive against South Vietnam began to build up as early as September, 1959. Communist guerrillas opened their operations with teams of fifty or more, soon increasing to company strength of a hundred—their largest groups since they fought the French. They had French, British, and American weapons hidden since wartime days; newer arms—some of Czech or Chinese origin—and fresh recruits were brought in from the north.

The first big push came last January. One night, attacking in company force, the Communists raided a regimental headquarters at Tay Ninh, northwest of Saigon, and killed thirty-four Vietnamese soldiers sleeping off their Chinese-style New Year's celebration. Soon they were fanning out through the southern delta, hitting army posts, ambushing troops, terrorizing local village chiefs. It is no longer safe to travel without escort in many parts of the country, and the important commercial highway between Saigon and Phnompenh is often closed. ( Stanley Karnow, The Reporter, Jan 19, 1961. In Reporting Vietnam, Library of America, p6)

Here is an account written in 1965 in a book about the guerrilla war, written by the Australian journalist. The below are all quotes from interviews with the man who commanded the attack

"The 'line' up till the end of 1959 had been exclusively a legal, political, non-violent form of struggle, but faced with the wholesale wiping out of all former resistance [to the French] cadres, it changed at the end of 1959 to permit the use of arms but in self-defense only.

"We decided to make the attack just prior to the Lunar year. The enemy's [the Diem government] terrorist campaign had reached its climax in the previous week. The Tua Hai regiment had just returned from a big military campaign in which hundreds of peasants in the Tay Ninh region had been massacred. … The biggest operation was launched at the end of January, not only to round up any former resistance members… but to grab up young able-bodied young men for their armed forces… [they] pillaged their homes, stealing their food. … People were demoralized, but underneath they were boiling with pent-up fury.

"We could not count on any outside force coming to the rescue. We had to stand up or be wiped out. … We got together 260 men—former resistance cadres, young men who had fled the press-gangs, some deserters from the Diemist army who had a few precious guns and some remnants from the armed religious sects. … Altogether we had 170 firearms, most of them archaic and with a strictly limited number of cartridges. … Apart from our fighting force, we also organized another 500 people from remote villages to arrive towards the end to carry our booty and any casualties. …"

[In a carefully designed attack, they took the fortress and carried away weapons and amunition.]

"There were arms everywhere, unopened cases of new weapons… The maximum we could carry were about 1,000 arms, including 800 rifles and a good selection of automatic weapons. … We kept enough arms for the battalion we set up immediately as a result of the battle, others were distributed to all other provinces, where they were most needed. They enemy's repressive machine started to disintegrate. With even a few arms in their hands, the people started moving everywhere and enemy prestige suffered a deadly blow. … A completely new stage in the struggle was ushered in. (Wilfred Burchett, Vietnam. Inside Story of the Guerrilla War, 1965. 116-117)