Powerful White Mice

Much of the Viet Cong terrorism in recent months has been aimed at South Viet Nam's national police, the canh sat. In one attack last week the raiders blew up the canh sat headquarters in Hien Nhon. In another, at Long An, raiders smashed a police checkpoint, killing three police. The enemy has good reason to try to cripple the cops. For the Vietnamese in the white uniforms do not handle only the usual policeman's lot of random robbery and mayhem. More and more, they are meeting the guerrillas face to face. "What is the guerrilla if not a criminal?" demands the canh sat commander, Colonel Pham Van Lieu. "He commits all the possible crimes--murder and rape, grand larceny and petty theft, extortion and blackmail."

Lieu's definition is unarguable--and so are the results his men are getting. In one recent week they seized 54 tons of foodstuffs destined for the Viet Cong, 31,290 items of equipment and 1,436 of medicine--plus 340 weapons. They arrested 346 Viet Cong and V.C. suspects, killed 54 guerrillas. In the process they lost only one canh sat--a ratio of effectiveness that if equaled by the regular armies for only a few weeks, would soon end the war. They are fast winning deep respect from their U.S. allies and from enemy terrorists.

After Diem. Even the South Vietnamese populace is impressed--no mean feat, considering the fact that for years the police had been little more than pawns in Saigon's political chess games. President Diem turned them into a family guard and on occasion played them off against the army. He created a subdivision known as the "combat police" that he used to raid pagodas during the feud with the Buddhists that ultimately led to his downfall. After Diem's government was overthrown, the canh sat were so demoralized that the Americans often called them "the white mice" because of their timidity.

Timid no more. A year ago last May, Saigon and the U.S. decided to build up the national police so that they could carry out a classic role in counterinsurgency as developed by the British in Malaya: Resource Control. In plain terms, their function is to deny guerrillas food, medicine and supplies. Pham Van Lieu, a crack former marine commando, was brought in to restore discipline and esprit and to try to mend fences with the regular military. The number of canh sat was doubled from 22,000 to the present 53,000, will total 72,000 by 1967--many of them trained by 144 U.S. policemen imported by AID's Public Safety Division. Eventually, the number may grow to 100,000 --enough to move in behind combat troops once an area is cleared of Viet

Cong and form a permanent, local pacification force.

Off With Whites. Meanwhile the canh sat .ring Saigon with checkpoints on all major highways and waterways. Mobile units on Jeeps set up random roadblocks to keep the Viet Cong's messengers and supply carriers off balance. Other police teams constantly circulate through Saigon in family census sweeps, checking the identity cards that all South Vietnamese over 18 are required to carry. Such sweeps in the last year have flushed out 4,813 Viet Cong, plus another 1,733 army deserters.

Soon the canh sat will be sweeping even wider. Last week the first graduating class from the new "field forces" division of the police was issued camouflage suits and automatic weapons. White uniforms are hardly suited for its mission: laying night ambushes for the Viet Cong in the jungles of enemy-infested Long An province.

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