Our AID mission alone in Saigon is said to have more than 4.000 officials and employees. No one knows how many thousands of CIA officials and employees operate in Vietnam. mostly in Saigon and In the Mekong Delta. in addition to the American officials of CIA. In addition refugee administrators. socalled. members of our overseas mission termed USOM and officials and employees of other of our alphabetical agencies are in evidence numbering thousands everywhere and everywhere in Vietnam wherever our Armed Forces maintain headquarters and refugee camps. Near An Khe in South Vietnam extending for a long distance in front of the barracks. headquarters. and artillery positions of our Armed Forces I beheld what is meant by defoliation. Miles. length and width. of what had been beautiful green forestland with humble homes of peasants were and are being defoliated as our forces have burned. destroyed. and poisoned the trees and foliage in the entire area. The land itself has been poisoned. Men. women. and children have been forcibly removed from their homes and most of them taken. against their will. to miserable refugee camps. socalled. Some of our refugee camps with thousands of old men. women. and children herded together may not be as terrible as this gutter. seared. destroyed land bereft of bushes and trees. but all except one refugee camp I saw were in exceedingly deplorable condition. It was explained to me by the general commanding that the French had never really conquered the Vietnamese at this area near An Khe and the French presence up to 1954 had never taken hold. They were peaceloving peasants who over the years had considered themselves free men and women. and the commanding general informed me that almost without exception they were unfriendly to Americans.