Irdc: In spite of repeated declarations from the official authorities of Washington in 1960, claiming that the United States had not interfered in Vietbam before North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam, America was constantly involved in this unfortunate country in full scale since 1950.
The first decisive step was to send a great deal of military equipments (tanks, air freighters and etc.) for French army in Vietnam in the Spring and Summer of 1950.
Following the first cargo, hundreds of bombers, American military advisors and technical experts were sent to Vietnam and in the following years, the direct military aid from US to France's war effort reached to aproximately one billion dollors a year. In 1954 this number was about 1.4 billion dollars, 78 percent of the whole war budget of France.
The detailed history of the role of United States in Indo-China which was published by the defense ministry and was named "Pentagon Papers" afterwards, concluded that the decision to help France, directly engaged United States in Vietnam and stablished the furure policy of America.
In November 1953, CAT airways which is owned by CIA, helped to carry 16000 soldiers to an equipped base in North Vietnam which was founded by Frenchs in Dien Bien Phu.
In November 1954, New York Times reported that "The French Airforce is almost fully equipped with the US made aircrafts now".
In April 1954, military defeat of France was proven and negotiations were supposed to begin in Geneva. It was recommended in one of the documents of National Security Council that "US politics must accept nothing but military victory in Indo-China and United States must resist any agreement about Indo-China through active negotiations". Then the Council commented: "United States must consider resuming the war without the participation of France if necessary".
In May, Navy admiral Arthur Radford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent a note to Charles Wilson, the defense minister, with the title "Investigations into the probable operation of United States in Indo-China". He noted: "Using Atom weapons is considered, if it has military advantage". Two aircraft carriers equipped with atom weapons were ordered to head to Tankan Bay in North of Vietnam.
Genava Conference put an end to Vietnam war in January 20, 1954. United States was the only country to avoid signing the final statement, only because they were angry about solving the problem through negotiations.
In may 1956, it sent additional 350 soldiers to Saigon, which according to Pentagon Papers was "The example of ignoring Geneva agreements by United States". After a while, Dawes secretly told one of his coworkers: "Now e have a clear base in Vietnam with no sign of Colonialsim. The defeat of Frenchs in Dien Bien Phu was a Godsend to us".
Translated by: Roya Jalali
