was that they could not bring itself to
             view the VCI as the most important enemy. But as the US military troop buildup
             progressed in the early 1960s, more and more resources went toward battling the Viet
             Cong, and then to the North Vietnamese Army. Before the Phoenix Program was
             installed, the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA, had Provincial Reconnaissance Units,
             or PRU, which was a separate program which was a means of passing rice, medicine, and
             other building supplies into South Vietnamese's rural countryside. Unfortunately, many
             of those supplies ended up on the black market, or worse, in the hands of the Viet Cong.
             So as the war continued on, North Vietnam was winning the war and weakening US
             forces because of the their negligence of the Viet Cong.
             Army planners recognized the existence of both the political infrastructure of the
             Viet Cong and the main-force units of North Vietnam, but they were unable to
             distinguish which was more significant. General Westmoreland's answer to this
             dilemma was that he, like the rest of the army, had been trained to believe that war would
             always be conventional. But when the situation in Vietnam did not conform to this
             concept of conventional warfare, they had troubling dealing with Vietnam's warfare
             tactics, which its effectiveness was clearly shown. The American military insisted the
             war was basically conventional and could be won by conventional means. They chose to
             disregard many of the lessons learned by those, mainly the French, who preceded them in
             The CIA finally realized the value of seeking out and destroying the enemy
             infrastructure, even if the military did not. Along with the United States Overseas
             Mission, or USOM, the CIA began recruiting province special units, who were trained in
             techniques of rooting out and eliminating the enemy infrastructure. The CIA appeared to
             have the right idea about going after t...