Marshall acknowledged the French claim that Ho Chi Minh had “direct Communist connections” and further that Washington did not wish to see a colonial administration supplanted by one controlled by the Kremlin. But he insisted—along with State Department liberals such as Moffat and Kenneth Landon—that the Vietnamese nationalists were motivated not by Marxist ideology but by a thirst for national independence. Should another government make a push for a UN diplomatic initiative, the general said, the United States would therefore have no option but to grant her support. What, then, should be
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