Changes were also afoot in an increasingly bureaucratized Saigon. In 1967, “Blowtorch Bob” Komer, a master bureaucrat, moved from the National Security Council in Washington to Saigon to take charge of CORDS (Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support), the office in charge of all pacification programs. CORDS would fall under MACV, rather than the embassy; Komer would be General Westmoreland’s deputy, and he would have command of military as well as civilian personnel. This would make him a far more powerful “pacification czar” than William Porter had been.
