Paul Kattenburg, a discerning State Department intelligence analyst who was in Saigon at the time and who would later pen a penetrating account of America’s Vietnam adventure, remarked to a colleague, in the winter of 1954–55, that the most profitable U.S. course would be to offer Hanoi $500 million in grant aid for the reconstruction of war damage. Ho could not refuse such an offer, Kattenburg maintained, since it would afford a means for him to maintain independence from Soviet and Chinese domination. The sum of money was considerable, but it was lower than what Washington seemed to be
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