Scope and Contents

One copy of a document titled 'Sadec Province: War and Rebuilding on the Mekong' written by Gordon Bare. This document is a history of Sadec province in the central Mekong Delta drawing on published and archival material, interviews with Army and State Department officers who served there, and the author's own experience as a Lieutenant in 1969 to 1970 engaged in both Phoenix and economic development advisory work. He traces the contemporaneous emergence of both the Viet Minh and the staunchly anti-Communist Hoa Hao sect of Buddhism in the 1940's and the decline of security through 1967 when the Viet Cong had a major base area in Duc Ton District and substantial control of most of the province after dark. The high attrition which the VC experienced in Tet 1968, the expansion of the Regional and Popular force militia, and a smarter counterinsurgency strategy by the U. S. and Saigon led to major increases in security in 1969 through 1970, which in turn permitted

Biographical / Historical

Gordon Bare spent the bulk of his career as a Foreign Affairs Officer with the U. S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and served on the delegations to the U. S.-Soviet Standing Consultative Commission on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and to the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty before retiring in 2003. He also served as Assistant for Southeast Asia for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, attended the national War College and was a Brookings Fellow to the Senate. He remained in the Army Reserve reaching the rank of Colonel and was the Army Reserve Attaché to Hong Kong in the 1990's.