According to news agency reports General Nguyen Khanh, the new military boss of South Vietnam, told reporters at his first press conference that General Paul Harkins, chief of United States military tassistance”™ in Vietnam is “our bost friend. I cannot say he's my boss just now, but we have full confidence in him." (Reuter) According to the New York Times international Services "“hen Mr. Diem sent the army to quash the dissisent religious sects, General Khanh worked closely with General Duong Van Minh whose place he took as head of Stateces. Gonord Khanh was part of the coup last November that overthrow President Diem, but three years earlior he defended Mr. Diem against an attempted rebellion of paratroopers."
This recent coup has apparently halted a much—heralded Government offensive into the areas controlled by the National Liberation Front (the so-called Vietcong). According to Time magazine Jan. 31: "One of it*s (the National Liberation Front) most important tut less well know functions is to administer the one-third of South Victnamese territory controlled by the Reds.....The Front's ‘capital! is beliaved to be the Vietcong's military G.H.Q., which is situated deep in the jungle 19 miles north-west of Saigon, conveniently close to the Cambodian frontier, and protected by a maze of fortifications plus 1,000 elite troops. From there a disciplined apparatus extonds through provincial and district levels, down to the smallest village...in estimated 4,000 propaganda (education: aitor) squads follow Red guerilla units into the villages,
"The Front even publishes 30 crude newspapers. JDoldly the Front's yellow-starred flag now flies over dozens of villages. The guerillas levy taxes, circulate their own currency, even operate a primitive postal system...For weeks, Radio Liberation has been triumphantly boasting that tho organisation held its "Second National Congress" early in January in a secret “liberatoi area." The 150 delegates were said to have demonstrated "a mood of patriotism as mighty as the Mekong River.”