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Civilianization

Over 20,000 U.S. civilians, experts in military and "pacification" technology, have quietly replaced the military advisors in South Vietnam in conducting U.S. clandestine, paramilitary operations in support of the Saigon regime. Most of the new advisors have been recruited straight from the U.S. military and are performing the exact same duties that they did while in the military, except that they are now employees of such corporations as ITT, sperry-Rand, NHA, Lear-Siegler, etc. Some advisors have even remained on the Pentagon payroll. Civilian support of military operations falls into two basic categories: aircraft maintenance and operations, and civilian pacification.

Thanks to the massive build-up of last November and December, South Vietnam's air force is now the third largest in the world, with over 2,000 aircraft. However, their maintenance force for the sophisticated U.S.-supplied aircraft and equipment are the worst in the world. Throughout the entire war, almost all aircraft maintenance was done by Department of Defense-contracted U.S. firms, who did little or no training of VNAF personnel. The reasons for this were two-fold: to insure continued U.S. presence in South Vietnam by making them extremely dependent upon the U.S. for maintenance of their aircraft and equipment; and to continue the increasingly large contracts for the DOD-affiliated corporations who had already received huge profits through "sweetheart" deals with their cronies in the Pentagon. According to critical U.S. officials, the contractors are being given cost-plus contracts, which fix the corporations' profits as a percentage of total cost. So the higher cost of a project, the higher the company profits. Such contracts lead contractors to bring in excess personnel, since the more workers they have, the higher their cost and their profit. Of the $78.1 million requested by the Pentagon for the support of the SVNAF, $53.4 million is for "contract assistance".

With the recent beefing-up of their air force, the Saigon regime is woefully lacking in pilots capable of flying their own warplanes. However, Pentagon spokesman Jerry Friedheim stated at a Washington press conference that "the Vietnamese could bridge the pilot gap by hiring contract personnel which could either be active-duty U.S. pilots loaned to them or recently retired USAF fliers. The CIA's Air America airline uses some active duty personnel who merely shed their uniforms for the duty." Outfits like Air America make the distinctions between civilian advisors to military programs and civilian employees of U.S. war contractors negligible. A recent Air America recruiting brochure clearly states that civilian flying is merely a cover for covert military activity: "Although flights mainly serve U.S. official personnel movement and native officials and civilians, you sometimes engage in the movement of friendly troops, or of enemy captives, or in the transport of cargo more potent than beans. There's a war going on. Use your imagination!"

While the American corporations are being contracted by the Pentagon to carry out its war effort, the U.S. pacification (Vietnamization) program is also being civilianized. Directing programs from refugee management to support for Saigon's rural militia and advice to the ARVN's before the cease-fire, the pacification staff was composed of both U.S. military men and retired military men. With the cease-fire came a new name for the program: "Directorate for Resettlement and Reconstruction", but the staff has remained essentially the same. The true nature of the pacification program is evident from the fact that between 1968 and 1970, 80% of the $4 billion budget was for "territorial security or related military programs."

The most popular was the infamous Phoenix program, which was designed to "neutralize the Viet Cong infrastructure." Under supervision of the CIA, Operation Phoenix assassinated 40,000 South Vietnamese between 1968 and 1971, and thousands more were imprisoned on suspicion of advocating peace, opposing the Thieu regime, or other "procommunist neutralist activities." Operation Phoenix has now been replaced, in name only, by "F-6", according to Deputy Ho Ngoc Nhuan of Saigon's National Assembly. It appears that F-6 is being secretly run under the cover of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

USAID is already responsible for the training, equipping and advising of Thieu's National Police force, and seems to be the main tool of U.S. civilianization. USAID Office of Public Safety (OPS) had over 100 advisors assisting the police in F-6 operations, fighting small guerrilla units and maintaining Thieu's prisons. OPS funding is now being projected through 1978, even though the cease-fire agreement specifically prohibits all U.S. police advisors after March 1973. But the U.S. is fully aware that the civilianization of South Vietnam may not be enough for Thieu to remain in power and for the U.S. to preserve its military and economic domination of Southeast Asia. Secret U.S. military operations such as SLAM (search, locate and annihilate missions), led by civilian-clad Special Forces with mercenaries into North Vietnam and liberated areas of Indochina, will probably continue with secret American funding.

A few Americans and foreign diplomats have expressed doubts about the wisdom of the post-war policy of civilianization. "It's like 1961 or 1965 all over again," said one Western official who served seven years in Indochina. "The Americans are full of optimism again, and once more they are proceeding as if the Vietnamese aren't even around."