that they were active in the community. The next day, U.S. planes bombed the village and its Catholic church. VC operatives emerged after the destruction to tell survivors about the perfidy of the U.S. imperialists. Such methods could sometimes backfire, with villagers blaming VC forces for the destruction and death brought to their communities. In December 1960 the South Vietnamese government reported to the International Control Commission (ICC) that during the year the VC destroyed or damaged 284 bridges, burned 60 medical aid stations and, through destruction of schools, deprived some 25,000 children of schooling. In October 1961 a U.S. State Department study estimated that the VC were killing South Vietnamese civilians at a rate of 1,500 per month. In October 1964, U.S. officials in Saigon reported that from January to October 1964 the VC killed 429 Vietnamese local officials and kidnapped 482 others. In June 1965 South Vietnamese officials reported that the rate of assassinations and kidnappings of rural officials had doubled in June compared to May and April, with 224 officials being either killed or kidnapped. On May 11, 1967 State Health Secretary Dr. Tran Van Lu-Y told the World Health Organization in Geneva that more than 200 doctors and medical workers in South Vietnam had been victims of the VC in the previous ten years. He said that 211 members of his staff have been killed or kidnapped; 174 dispensaries, maternity homes and hospitals destroyed; and 40 ambulances mined or machine-gunned. By 1969, nearly 250 civilians were being murdered or kidnapped each week. VC/PAVN terror squads committed over 36,000 murders and almost 58,000 kidnappings from 1967 to 1972 according to a U.S. Department of Defense estimate in 1973. Statistics for 1968–72 suggested that "about 80 percent of the terrorist victims were ordinary civilians and only about 20 percent were government officials, policemen, members of the self-defence forces or pacification cadres." PAVN/VC forces and spokesmen consistently denied using terror tactics. They attributed mass graves found at Huế after their temporary occupation of the city to spontaneous action by aggrieved communities. However, the use of terror was encouraged in official VC documents. A May 17, 1965 memorandum from the COSVN Security office, directed Nguyễn Tài, the chief of security for the Saigon-Gia Định Party Committee, to "exploit every opportunity to kill enemy leaders and vicious thugs, to intensify our political attacks aimed at spreading fear and confusion among the