The following month, he had decided to create the United States Military Assistance Command Vietnam ( MACV), in Saigon, and appoint Harkins to head it. In December, 1961, President Kennedy had committed the arms of the United States to the task of suppressing a Communist-led rebellion and preserving South Vietnam as a separate state governed by an American-sponsored regime in Saigon. The commanding general in Vietnam then was Paul Harkins, who had made his reputation as the principal staff aide to George Patton in the Second World War. Porter soon had the feeling that if the commanding general were to tell this junior lieutenant colonel he was surrendering direction of the war to him John Vann would say, “Fine, General,” and take charge.
When Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann, in starched cotton khakis and a peaked green cap, strode through the swinging doors of Colonel Daniel Boone Porter’s office in Saigon, shortly before noon on March 23, 1962, he struck Porter as a man no one could keep down.
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