ABSTRACT
In April 1964, the US Department of Defense estimated that the South Vietnamese government controlled 34 percent of the villages as against the National Liberation Front’s (NLF's) control of 42 percent, with the loyalties of the remaining villages still contested. The Strategic Hamlet Program had collapsed. The northern Communists were not long in taking advantage of the deteriorating situation in the south. In order to step up the level of guerrilla warfare to the stage of attacking towns and larger army units, Hanoi began to infiltrate large tactical units along the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam. Robert McNamara's assistant secretary, William Bundy, a scholarly civilian, in March 1, 1964, proposed a blockade of Haiphong harbor "to hit at the sovereignty of North Vietnam" and to warn that "we would go further." He also recommended bombing strategic targets in the North such as railroads, highways, industrial plants, utilities, and military training camps, precisely those bombed after February 1965.
