Summary: The General Accounting Office has made a review of the Military Assistance Program (MAP) for Vietnam as administered by the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) to Vietnam. Our review was made pursuant to the Budget and Accounting Act, 1921 (31 U.S.C. 53), and the Accounting and Auditing Act of 1950 (31 U.S.C. 67). This review is one of a group on the military assistance program, The purpose of this program, its organization and management, and its method of financing were described in our report on the military assistance program transmitted to the Congress on August 29, 1957.
We found that (1) program requirements for Vietnam have been developed without valid tables of organization and equipment on which to base initial needs, without accurate country consumption rates, and without complete knowledge of equipment assets already possessed by Vietnam forces, (2) France has failed to carry out the agreement originally negotiated with the United States for the disposition of United States-financed military supplies held by the French at the end of the Indochina war, (3) satisfactory control had not been established over the use of local currency provided from United States aid programs for supporting the Vietnam military budget, and (4) the inability of Vietnam to support from its own resources the Vietnamese program objectives recommended by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff requires an informed determination, based on the development of long-range program costs for Vietnam and the military assistance program world-wide, as to whether these costs are within the resources of the United States to be made available for such purposes.
