by American troops, and the very large military construction prógrams of the U.S. military forces.

In order to meet the inflationary threat that has arisen for these reasons, the Government of Vietnam has undertaken a series of actions, most important of which was to prepare for the present fiscal year in Vietnam a very severely restricted-austere budget. The American and other economists who are in Saigon have felt that this was a courageous and correct move on the part of the Vietnamese Government to have a limited and austere budget under present circumstances.

In addition, as part of the effort to contain and control the problem of inflation, both the Government of Vietnam and the Government of the United States are planning to bring into Vietnam substantially increased levels of imports to make more goods available on the local market. As I said, $175 million of the funds which are requested before the committee now are for that purpose.

The other hundred million dollars which we are asking for Vietnam will be needed for projects-AID projects and direct operational assistance. This includes a wide variety of activities. It includes a number of activities related to the improvement of port operations and of internal transportation within Vietnam. We are buying coastal boats, barges, dredges, sheet steel for pier construction, and other elements of an improved logistics program.

In addition we are providing substantial funds for refugee assistance. This was a small part of our original program for the present fiscal year-it has become a much larger part. More than 700,000 South Vietnamese sought refuge in Government-controlled territory during the past calendar year, and about 400,000 of these were still residing in refugee camps at the end of the year.

We are providing around $20 million in food, housing, materials, blankets, and other relief supplies to the refugees in the present fiscal year. This is in addition to a roughly equivalent sum which the Vietnam Government is supplying.

AID is carrying out in Vietnam a major civilian health programwhich is growing steadily. More American doctors and nurses are being assigned to Vietnam. They must have working and housing facilities, and funds for this are included in the supplemental before this committee.

More staff is needed to handle and move supplies, to assist in the port customs operations, to help local officials carry out rural development projects, to assist the Government in its "open arms" program which welcomes defectors from the Vietcong ranks, to intensify the advisory program for the Vietnamese police, to help the police establish a resources control operation designed to deny rice, drugs, explosives, and so on to the Vietcong.

All of these and many more projects and activities are in support of the war effort and they are a recognition of the point the chairman was making a little earlier that security and peace cannot be achieved in Vietnam by military action alone.

General Westmoreland and his staff are among the strongest advocates of a U.S. program which meshes military, paramilitary, local government administration, welfare, and development measures to win the commitment, the active participation of the people in resisting Communist takeover. All of us are fully aware of the fact that

we could win the major military battles but still lose the political contest in the thousands of hamlets and the scores of towns and cities that will decide the future of Vietnam.

We, therefore, have in addition to our large military investment in Vietnam, this major and growing program of support for the economic, social, and political side of the effort.

ECONOMIC AID PROBLEM IN THAILAND AND LAOS

The other elements of the request that are before the committee are much smaller in size, but they are very significant. In Thailand and Laos, the U.S. economic aid program is supporting efforts to develop the rural countryside, to strengthen local government, to establish education facilities and transport facilities, and render other improvements in the lives of the people of the countryside.

În Thailand, as the committee knows, there was an announcement from Peiping a few months ago, that the same kind of attack which was launched several years ago in Vietnam, will be launched in the present year in Thailand.

We have been anticipating this for the last 2 or 3 years and the American economic assistance program has been helping the Thai Government develop a program for security and progress in the rural areas, particularly in northeast and northern Thailand. That program has made some headway.

I had the opportunity to visit there a month ago, and was well impressed. The problem is very serious; there are beginnings of the same kind of guerrilla attacks, sneak attacks, assassinations of civilian officials and policemen in northeast Thailand which have been so characteristic of the difficulties in Vietnam. So, that the problem in Thailand is an increasing one and we are helping the Thai step up their efforts to meet it.

In Laos, we have been engaged in similar activities for some years, and these programs are going well. We have rural development efforts in Laos reaching the villages-helping the village people improve their well-being-which are very impressive.

We have education efforts, agriculture efforts, transportation efforts, which are impressive and look impressive to any visitor.

REQUEST FOR DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

The request contains $25 million for the Dominican Republic. These funds are necessary to support the efforts of the provisional government in the Dominican Republic to reduce political and economic instability and move toward the installation of an elected government. We are supporting the costs, both current and capital of the Dominican Republic's budget, to the extent that their revenues have not yet recovered from the decline caused by the difficulties of last spring.

REQUEST FOR CONTINGENCY FUND

The

We are asking for $100 million for the contingency fund. present contingency fund has all been programed, and we believe that it would be appropriate for the President to have additional funds

available to him to meet emergencies that may occur during the remainder of the present fiscal year.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to make only one other comment at this time. As the committee knows, the President's request for supplemental funds provides-not in the legislation before this committee at the present time, but in other legislation-for the transfer of the costs for operations in Vietnam which were formerly funded from the military assistance program to the regular budget of the Department of Defense.

The costs of supporting the forces of South Vietnam and other nations allied with us there have been growing steadily. To continue to support these forces from military assistance funds would distort the basic purpose of that program as authorized by the Congress. Military assistance is intended to build forces as a deterrent to aggression. The program was not established to support forces engaged in a major continuing conflict.

The transfer of Vietnam military assistance costs to the regular defense budget is designed to maintain the character and clarity of purpose of military assistance. It will make for much simpler, clearer administration and accounting. It is a sensible move and I thoroughly support it.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Bell.

I would like to try to start off with a general approach.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. Mr. Chairman, would you indulge me for just a moment? I realize the paramount importance of taking pictures and things of that kind, which probably supersedes the importance of this committee meeting. But can't the cruel and unusual punishment of these strong lights shining in our faces be eased for just a little bit? It is just impossible, at least to me, to try to think about what is going on here with these lights in our eyes.

(Off the record.)

COST ESTIMATES OF VIETNAM WAR

Of

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bell, as you know, we are having to meet at unusual times and we will try to move along as rapidly as we can. I want to try to get an overall cost estimate for the war. course, we all realize that the most painful and tragic aspect of this whole operation is the loss of American and Vietnamese lives, both military and civilian. They are very heavy but this bill does not concern that directly.

Last

year on April 26, Secretary McNamara summarized the costs as of that time. I will quote one part of his statement:

Economic aid is probably running $300 million a year. *** Public Law 480 Contributions these are contributions of food and agriculture products-probably running on the order of $70 million a year. It seems likely that the military assistatce program for South Vietnam for fiscal 1965, our current fiscal year, will approximate $330 million. And very, very roughly, I would estimate the cost of the U.S. forces operating in the waters of South Vietnam and in the air, and the st of our advisory and logistical support, is running on the order of $800 million a year. So that we have a cost approximating a billion and a half dollars at the present time.

That was his estimate of the overall cost as of last April 26.

So, in trying to put together what the cost is presently running, it works out, according to my staff, in about this way: The base cost of our military forces around the beginning of the fiscal year would be $800 million using Secretary McNamara's estimate; then add to that the supplemental defense appropriations for Vietnam last summer of $1.7 billion, the $12.3 billion request currently being considered and the economic and military aid for this fiscal year of about $1 billion, making a total of $15.8 billion. Is that about correct as an estimate of the cost in dollars for this current year?

Mr. BELL. Mr. Chairman, I am competent to testify only on part of these sums.

The economic assistance for the current fiscal year, assuming the Congress appropriates the funds we are now requesting, will be about $600 million including Public Law 480.

The military assistance which was appropriated last fall for the present fiscal year is of the order that you were referring to. The CHAIRMAN. Those two together make about a billion.

Mr. BELL. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. You know the two supplemental requests total $14 billion?

Mr. BELL. I personally am not involved in the military supplemental.

The CHAIRMAN. You mean there hasn't been a conference or conversation between you and the military as to the overall costs of the program. You don't know anything about the military?

Mr. BELL. The military budget supplemental which is before the Congress of $12 billion, I know about

The CHAIRMAN. $12.3 billion and they had a $1.7 billion supplemental last summer. This is not secret; this has all been in the press.

Mr. BELL. Exactly. But the point is some of that is for other parts of southeast Asia. You can in one sense say that is all related to Vietnam. Some of it, however, will obviously be spent not in Vietnam but in Thailand, in the Philippines, and so on. So, all I am saying is that I do not, I am not competent to testify on the exact nature of what is in that $12.3 billion or the $1.7 billion.

The CHAIRMAN. I didn't want the exact nature. I thought it would give us a starting point as to what our operation in Vietnam is costing us. It is in the neighborhood of $15.8 billion according to the staff's estimate, and they try to keep up with these matters.

Mr. BELL. Right.

The CHAIRMAN. It seems to me this is never brought together. We take the requests piecemeal and no one has had a very clear view of what this involvement means in money. We know or are beginning to realize what it means in lives, and in human suffering. But this particular bill involves a supplemental request.

Do you know how many Vietcong were killed last year?

Mr. BELL. I am sure we have the figures, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Isn't it about 11,243?

Mr. BELL. Excuse me, Mr. Chairman.

No, the figure that is given to me here is 30,000

The CHAIRMAN. Killed or casualties?

Mr. BELL. Killed. However, it is a matter of estimates which can

easily be checked.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, the staff says they take this from, I believe, an official statement that there were 11,243 killed which works out as a very high cost per kill, if you want to use that distasteful word.

Senator LAUSCHE. Mr. Chairman, we ought to get the correct figure. The CHAIRMAN. This is the staff's figure.

Senator LAUSCHE. What is the answer of the witness?

Mr. BELL. I am not the authority on these matters, Senator, the figure that has been supplied to me is 31,360. It differs from the figure that was supplied to the staff. We will get the correct figure for the record.

Senator LAUSCHE. I would suggest that that be corrected so we get an accurate figure.

Mr. BELL. Of course the Senator recognizes that these are estimated figures.

As you know, the Vietcong do not always leave their dead on the battlefield in many cases.

The CHAIRMAN. Please look up that figure for the record. In any case, I only ask this to give the impression to both the committee and to the public that this is a rather substantial operation as of now, is it not?

Mr. BELL. It certainly is.

The CHAIRMAN. And it is growing.

Mr. BELL. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. You estimate it is going to be less next year?

Mr. BELL. No; more.

The CHAIRMAN. It is going to be more.

Have your estimates as to the rate of escalation in the past proved to have been accurate?

Mr. BELL. Are you asking me personally, sir?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. BELL. Or the executive branch?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. The executive branch.

Mr. BELL. They certainly have not been-it is a wartime situation. There were optimistic expectations a couple of years ago.

The CHAIRMAN. Would you say they were a little more optimistic than facts proved them?

Mr. BELL. They certainly were.

The CHAIRMAN. For several years running. It is escalated far greater than you had expected.

Mr. BELL. Yes, sir; that is correct.

EVIDENCE OF SUPPORT FOR SAIGON GOVERNMENT

The CHAIRMAN. Recently General Greene, the commanding general of the Marine Corps, on returning from Vietnam said this: "You could kill every Vietcong and North Vietnamese in South Vietnam and still lose the war." Do you think there is any evidence of growing popular support for the Saigon Government?

Mr. BELL. Yes, sir; there is a great deal.

The CHAIRMAN. Would you elaborate on that?

Mr. BELL. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Briefly.

Mr. BELL. Perhaps the most dramatic evidence is that last spring there were elections in the towns and district communities in Viet