CIA activities in Vietnam the next 14 years, the focus of their paramilitary operations changed over time. Until 1964, the Hmong fighters in Laos focused on trying to fight back North Vietnamese fighters and on preventing further encroachment. They were highly important, because the US hadn't begun putting troops on the ground in any great numbers, yet. After that, in 1965, the report describes the Hmong activities in Laos as "flitt[ing] over mountain trails or mov[ing] by air to occupy key high ground and to harass Hanoi's tanks and artillery," meaning that US troops took on a frontline role and asked the paramilitary forces
1965 in the Vietnam War Vietnam was a matter of much debate. One U.S. government estimate was that the Viet Cong army consisted of 40,000 full-time fighters and 80,000 to 100,000 part-time guerrillas. The Department of Defense's fact book estimated that the Viet Cong numbered less than 200,000 plus 39,175 political cadre. These numbers presumably included thousands of fighters and cadre infiltrated from North Vietnam during the previous five years. The first North Vietnamese army units dispatched to South Vietnam, consisting of three regiments (about 5,000 men), had arrived in South Vietnam in late 1964. A junior-level CIA analyst, Samuel A. Adams, had just begun