Book Description

Pt. 1: This volume describes those JCS activities related to developments in Vietnam during the period 1960-1963, when the United States expanded its initial military commitment to Southeast Asia. In 1960, the United States increased its military advisory strength in South Vietnam in response to increased Communist infiltration and to more sustained guerrilla attacks in the south and its contingency planning effort to deploy regular US forces to both Laos and South Vietnam to counter any threat by Communist Army units from the north or from China. President Kennedy's called for a new emphasis upon guerrilla warfare at first received only lukewarm support from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After the failed Bay of Pigs episode very early in the Kennedy administration, the President lost faith in the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and appointed General Maxwell Taylor to serve as his intermediary with the Joint Chiefs, until he assumed the Chairman responsibilities in October 1962. The Kennedy administration's policy was marked by clashes between factions in the Defense Department, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department, and the White House. By 1963, these differences involved the support the US should provide for the Republic of Vietnam under its President, Ngo Dinh Diem. The history ends with the killing of Diem by a coup followed by the coincidental murder of President Kennedy a short time later.