military presence in Vietnam when the Communist subversion started. For that matter we still do not have combat forces, but I can assure that our observers are first class-the "first team" as you say.

Mr. TAYLOR. I see what you mean.

Mr. ZABLOCKI. Mr. Hamilton, will you yield to Mr. Murphy?
Mr. HAMILTON. Certainly.

Mr. MURPHY. I would like to ask Dr. Fall: The rebels in Malaya, were they not more Chinese than Malayan?

Dr. FALL. This is the key difference. This is why I wish people would cease to compare Malaya with Vietnam. In Malaya, to use a quaint phrase, you could tell the "good guys" by the color of their skin. In Malaya almost all the 8,000 Communist guerrillas were Chinese Communists. So, automatically, you could dismiss the Malay part of the population as being a likely support for the Communists. Out of the remaining two and a half million Chinese citizens of Malaya, a good two million had solid jobs, were long in the country and had no reason for supporting a Communist movement. A man who is about to buy a second Chinese laundry isn't going out in the jungle to fight. This left the British with a half million squatters, meaning poor Chinese who had worked on plantations, been displaced by World War II and had nothing else to do except support the Communists willy-nilly. The British hamlet program in Malaya was a total of 423 hamlets for 500,000 people. You can afford to fortify well 423 villages. In Vietnam the program covered 8,000 villages. It was poorly done.

So, therefore, in Malaya, once the British had pried those 8,000 Communists out from a half-million people--not like in Vietnam where half the populace is working with the Communists-the British problem was pretty well solved. The emergency was proclaimed on June 18, 1948, and called off on July 30, 1960. The British had a total force of 350,000 troops; 70,000 were British. Therefore, this gave the British a superiority ratio of over 40 to 1. In South Vientam the United States and Vietnamese forces are fighting at roughly 412 to 1.

Mr. MURPHY. Let's take the geographical situation. The Malay Peninsula is narrow and the British proceeded northward.

Mr. FALL. They also sealed off the Thai border. It was an allaround operation. The British Navy surrounded the peninsula on three sides. They worked inward.

Mr. MURPHY. At the same time the Cambodian and the Laotian borders were refuges for any Vietcong activity?

Mr. FALL. Even the 17th parallel is wide open.

Mr. ZABLOCKI. Mr. Farbstein.

Mr. FARBSTEIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have heard in the short while I have been here a pretty black picture. It seems as though there is only one choice. The one choice is to fight, because the other choice, as suggested by Mr. Fall, that we negotiate while fighting, can't very well take place because I understand that the North Vietnamese are unwilling to negotiate, unless I am wrong. I wish I were told what the facts are. Is there any positive thinking on this? All we have been hearing, aside from bombing, is, well, we are just in a very difficult situation and we have no choice. Is there anybody who can give any positive thought to this discussion aside from bombing?

Admiral BURKE. There isn't any easy way. There is no way that we can solve this problem in any short time. It is going to take years and years and years. It is not going to be easy. There isn't any way that we can devise a method of operation, a single method of operation or do a single thing which will solve the problem.

It is a difficult military problem, if it were only a military problem, but it also has all the other aspects in it, economic, political and everything else that has to be solved concurrently or shortly after the military problem is solved.

This is going to have to be solved village by village. There are thousands of villages and they have to be taken village by village, and it is going to take a lot of time and lots of people and heartaches. Mr. FARBSTEIN. Is that the consensus?

Admiral BURKE. That is my view.

Mr. TAYLOR. I feel there is no choice there. We are at about the same state that the British were in 1950. It looked pretty bad.

Mr. FALL. To your first question, sir, you know that we receive every day, in the United States, Government-published radio reports of radio broadcasts from foreign countries, notably the Communist countries. On Monday, March 10, 1965, at 6 o'clock Greenwich mean time, North Vietnam broadcast an interview which the Communist commander in chief and Minister of Defense, General Vo Nguyen Giap, gave to the Japanese television. Obviously if the North Vietnemese rebroadcast it, it was for the purpose of getting their message across, not only to southeast Asia, but since it was broadcast in English, particularly to the United States.

The North Vietnamese outlined in that broadcast the three conditions under which they would negotiate. I don't happen to have the text with me, but it was a rather interesting text, because it did speak, and I speak of the English translation

Mr. ZABLOCKI. I am sure we could get the text, but if you have a

copy

Mr. FALL. I will provide it for the committee.

Mr. ZABLOCKI. We will put it in the record at this point. (The information follows:)

GIAP GIVES INTERVIEW TO JAPANESE TV NEWSMEN

HANOI, March 10.-During its recent visit to the DRV, the Japanese television delegation headed by Suzuki was granted an interview by Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, DRV Minister of National Defense. The following are the questions and answers * * * The only way out for the U.S. imperialists at present lies in the measures which President Ho Chi Minh and the DRV government have indicated many times:

1. The U.S. Government, as well as the governments of all other participating countries of the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indochina, must correctly implement the Geneva agreements, respect the sovereignty, independence, unity, and territorial integrity of Vietnam, and refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of Vietnam.

2. The U.S. Government must stop at once its acts of provocation, sabotage, and aggression against the DRV, end immediately the aggressive war in South Vietnam, withdraw U.S. troops and weapons from there, and let the South Vietnamese people settle their own affairs by themselves in accordance with the program of the NFLSV.

3. The problem of peaceful reunification of Vietnam is the affair of the Vietnamese people, it will be settled by the Vietnamese people in accordance with the spirit of the programs of the Vietram Fatherland Front and the NFLSV***

Mr. FALL. The broadcast said the United States should cease bombing of North Vietnam forthwith. The second thing is that the United States should cease participating in combat operations in the south and I think it said something like "immediately."

Then it said, without any condition as to time, it said American troops should withdraw from South Vietnam. I consider this a significant departure from the earlier Communist attitude that the Americans must get out of South Vietnam immedately, which of course is totally unacceptable to the United States.

It was Secretary Rusk who said, and I think is the official position, that the United States will not leave South Vietnam as long as the Communists continue doing what they are doing. So I think that North Vietnam in turn seems to be looking for those "signals."

In other words, the position is not as completely clearcut, black and white, as it sometimes may appear. As early as 1962 I have spoken of the fear of North Vietnam of being bombed by the United States. I wrote in an article in the Saturday Evening Post, November 24, 1962:

The North Vietnamese genuinely fear American retaliation. They fear it not only because it would wreck their country, but because it would raise the specter of Chinese intervention and occupation.

This is something to think about. The United States has an interesting club over North Vietnam. It has a double club which is represented by U.S. air power, and vice versa, that a broadening of the war may bring about the one thing that any Vietnamese, whether he is red or blue, Communist or non-Communist, fears most: and that is a Chinese occupation.

Mr. FARBSTEIN. What is the date of that broadcast?

Mr. FALL. March 10, 1965.

Mr. FARBSTEIN. Is that subsequent to the commencement of bombing?

Mr. FALL. Subsequent. The bombing as far as I recall began February 7.

Mr. FARBSTEIN. Then would you suggest that perhaps the bombing may have helped it along a little bit?

Mr. FALL. I would say it certainly must have given some second thoughts to those people who fear their cities would be destroyed.

Mr. FARBSTEIN. Would you say that the administration is on the right road, that we may get further requests for settlement or additional statements in that connection?

Mr. FALL. As I said in my statement, one of the risks is that past a certain point the Communists say: "We have nothing to lose except to leap forward and fight the war.' The "signals" may get crossed, as I point out in my statement, at the end, and produce a miscalculation. This is precisely the point. I am not in any position to appreciate whether this policy may result in a miscalculation or may result in an eventual diplomatic success. It would be difficult for me with an outside vantage point to assess this.

Mr. FARBSTEIN. I appreciate that it is very difficult for you and I think it is difficult for the President and for the administration to determine the exact line of demarcation. But in view of the fact that so far this has brought on a suggestion that perhaps they might be willing to negotiate instead of taking the original position that they took"We have nothing to talk about"-that maybe until we get some further requests that perhaps we ought to continue with our present

course.

Mr. FALL. I would say if one looks over the record of the last 3 years, one will find that the North Vietnamese have watered down their original aims several times. Apparently this has perhaps not often been appreciated. The specialist, as is my case, who lives with North Vietnam or Vietnam every day of the week, is perhaps a little more attuned, just as Dr. Taylor is on China; to those vagaries of North Vietnamese policy.

I would say the North Vietnamese in 1955 expected to get South Vietnam very rapidly. They toned down the Fatherland Front and they started the South Vietnam Liberation Front when they felt their original timetable was wrong. The bombing today is one facet of the thing.

Mr. FARBSTEIN. Would you care to give your best opinion from your knowledge, your experience, if you can anticipate at what stage would it be wise and I understand and appreciate this is just a guess on your part-to slow down the bombing?

Mr. FALL. Again as the President said the other day, one would have to be a pretty good guesser in this field to make any guess. I would say the United States has established the point of credibility of her position in South Vietnam, if that point ever was required.

Mr. FARBSTEIN. Would you suggest then now is the time to stop bombing?

Mr. FALL. Perhaps now would be the time to take political advantage of the credibility that the American position has already been established.

Mr. ZABLOCKI. On what do you base your statement that our credibility has been established in the minds of the North Vietnamese?

Mr. FALL. Simply and purely on the observable facts. I would say the repeated American strikes, which no longer are retaliating against a North Vietnamese torpedo attack. When the United States would attack North Vietnam positions of her choosing and without any direct relationship to a North Vietnamese attack, when it is not a tit-fortat retaliatory process, the North Vietnamese can be under no illusions that the United States is acting defensively, on a tit-for-tat basis.

But this is done to fulfill American strategic objectives in the area. Mr. ZABLOCKI. Dr. Fall, would you expect that if they know we mean business that they will now be withdrawing their troops or not sending any further military equipment to South Vietnam? There is no such evidence

Mr. FALL. No, sir, there is not. Since you mentioned my "Meet the Press" interview earlier, you will remember that I considered bombing not a suitable counterinsurgency weapon. It is at best a political weapon, but not a counterinsurgency weapon.

Mr. FARBSTEIN. There is one point that has been bandied around and I wish that I could get some information or advice. The suggestion is that Ho Chi Minh is very jealous of the independence of Vietnam and that even if we were to get out and he were to take control of the entire country, that he would resist the possibility of any Chinese domination.

Would you care to speak to that?

Mr. TAYLOR. I don't know much more about it than that, sir. Traditionally, there has been a certain amount of antagonism between the two, but that doesn't mean too much when you are dealing with

the Communists. Ho Chi Minh is Russian trained and tends to think very much in Russian terms. The other thing is that one result of the split is that many of the smaller Communist countries and parties have seen the advantage of having the two big fellows at each other's throat. This gives them more room for maneuvering and more chance for running things their own way.

Mr. FARBSTEIN. I don't think you have been altogether responsive to the question, but continue.

Mr. TAYLOR. Would you care to restate it?

Mr. FARBSTEIN. Whether or not in your opinion Ho Chi Minh would seek independence for his country and resist the possible domination by China or Vietnam?

Mr. TAYLOR. I think he is a Communist first and a nationalist a long way after.

Mr. FARBSTEIN. You lay this thought to rest?

Mr. TAYLOR. You can't dismiss antagonisms completely, but when the chips are down, obviously, he is going to behave like a Communist and not like a traditional Vietnamese: jealous, fearful of the control of China. In other words, if we put him in a position where his whole regime is at stake, and he has to have help, he will take it from where he can get the most effective help.

Mr. FALL. You will recall that we do have Communists on record who finally were shot by another Communist regime, such as Imre Nagy, the Communist Prime Minister of Hungary. He died before a firing squad for his country. There is a breaking point and we have found how low the boiling point is between Eastern European communism, and nationalism.

Again, Tito. Here again was a man whose record in the past, prior to his break in Moscow, was an unswerving faithfulness to the Communist cause. Ho Chi Minh has a significant record. The man has been a founding member of the French Communist Party in 1920. He was a delegate to the Comintern in 1923. He was head of the southeast Asia office of the Comintern in 1927, an unswerving member of the Communist cause to be sure.

But his appeal in Vietnam has been literally on the nationalist side. It is remarkable to see to this day that very few South Vietnamese leaders ever attack Ho Chi Minh as a person. The man, unfortunately for us, has become an institution. This is what is so hard to beat about the man himself.

Whether North Vietnam would resist a Chinese Communist takeover like the Russian takeover in Hungary in 1956 is a good question. They have the army with which to do it. As we all agree, the approaches from Yunnan to North Vietnam are tough. The North Vietnam Army, in the face of the blatant attempt on the part of the Chinese to march into North Vietnam over the objections of the North Vietnamese, might put the Chinese Army in a rather difficult position.

Mr. FARBSTEIN. But the North Vietnamese

Mr. ZABLOCKI. Admiral Burke wanted to comment on your last question, Mr. Farbstein, and then we had better let Mr. Rosenthal ask a question.

Admiral BURKE. Although I agree that Ho Chi Minh gets his power and his influence in North Vietnam primarily because of his attitude