is threatened by a “clear and present danger,” of communist aggression. Kennedy also during that year sent a cable to Robert McNamera and General Maxwell Taylor for a proposed visit to talk to Diem in about Vietnam and Laos. Taylor and McNamara were sent on a series of trips during 1961-1963 to Vietnam. The Taylor- McNamara report recommended the use of 8,000 US combat troops a 5,000 man combat engineering group JFK was personally convinced that ground troops shouldn't go in but his experts said otherwise. The Laotian Crisis occurred during 1961. People saw this as a direct link to the expansion of US activism in Vietnam.JFK's first decision about Vietnam was a counterinsurgency plan. On January 28, 1961 JFK approves the plan. In April of 1961 the first of 16,000 Green Beret advisors was sent to Vietnam. Kennedy sends 500 military advisors, a total of 1,400. A problem of this plan was the military was unable to stop communism. By the end of 1961 Kennedy was devoting a lot of resources to the Vietnam problem as well as the entire Southeast Asian region. Kennedy and administration believed that losing Laos would probably mean the loss of all South East Asia. It was also apparent to Kennedy that a communist victory in Laos would pose a threat to the United States. Dec. 1961 JFK implemented the Strategic Hamlet Program. Which was rural pacification. Which was a newer version of Agroville Program under Eisenhower. This program fortified villages surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers to keep the VC out of schools, community center small hospital, and homes for peasants.In 1962, Kennedy’s expanded intervention policy in South Vietnam received extreme bad press. NY Times ran very critical articles on rising intevension on a remote corner of the world. They began to question the accuracy of ARVN reports. They began to focus on US participation and direction instead of support and training. All this ...
