ABSTRACT
American officials in Saigon judged the Accelerated Pacification Campaign (APC) a watershed event in the other war. The APC enjoyed greater military support from United States Army units than any pacification effort. The APC sought to establish a permanent government presence in the targeted hamlets, many of which had been without government representation since the Tet Offensive or longer. The Central Intelligence Agency, more critical of the South Vietnamese government than Ambassador Bunker, found the regime lacking the skills and resources needed to improve its conduct of pacification and particularly laggard in coping with the political threat of the infrastructure. The Americans in Saigon tried to view the regime's shortcomings in carrying out the APC in the context of the serious handicaps the relatively new government had had to overcome. The campaign helped weaken the infrastructure, but local communist organizations still constituted a potent threat to the government.
