(Source: National Archives)

There’s been some debate on Twitter of late about the origins & use of the word “terrorism” and it’s definitions. I thought this USAID study from 1967 was instructive about how the USG had seemed to define it in a previous conflict involving a local insurgency. Interesting how assassination of key local leaders figures so prominently in the VC’s tactics…tactics the USG would itself employ via the Phoenix Program within a year of the publication of this report, and tactics it has been employing of late in the “drone wars”.