He has just operated as a loner all of his life and cannot readily change now." McNamara continued his gloomy report with a summary of the Viet Cong infiltration, estimating that between 1,000 and 1,500 Viet Cong cadres entered South Vietnam from Laos in the first nine months of 1963. .
Operations Plan 34A (OPLAN 34A), which the Pentagon documents call "an elaborate program of covert military operations against the state of North Vietnam," was conceived by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and began on February 1, 1964. President Johnson ordered the implementation of the program based on McNamara's recommendation, though without the support of the intelligence community, in the hope that progressively escalating pressure from the clandestine attacks might eventually force Hanoi to order the Viet Cong guerrillas in Vietnam and the Pathet Lao in Laos to halt their insurrections. McNamara directed the clandestine operations through a section of the Joint Chiefs organization called the Office of Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities. .
A second major segment of the Johnson administration's covert war against North Vietnam was air operations in Laos, where a force of propeller-driven North American T-28 fighter-bombers had been organized. The planes bore Laotian air force markings, but only some belonged to Laos. The remainder were manned by pilots of Air America, financed and controlled by the CIA under the control of Ambassador Leonard Unger. .
Throughout 1964, OPLAN 34A operations ranged from flights over North Vietnam by Lockheed U-2 spy planes to kidnappings of North Vietnamese citizens for intelligence information, parachuting sabotage and psychological warfare teams into the North, commando raids from the sea to blow up rail and highway bridges, and bombardment of North Vietnamese coastal installations by PT-boats. The Pentagon delegated day-to-day direction to a studies and operations group (SOG), which enlisted CIA advisers.