of Johnson, pressed forward. As a halfway measure the Office of Civil Operations (OCO) was set up with civilian leadership in November 1966 to coordinate all civilian pacification programs. OCO failed but strengthened Komer and Johnson's view that MAC/V leadership of the pacification program was essential. Komer argued that the pacification success desired by President Johnson could only be achieved by integrating three tasks. The first and most basic requirement for pacification had to be security, because the rural population had to be kept isolated from the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army. If this was to be achieved, the insurgents had to be weakened both by destroying their infrastructure among the rural population and by developing programs to win their hearts and minds and gain support or at least toleration of the South Vietnamese government and the U.S. military forces. The third point emphasized by Komer was that the new strategy had to be applied on a large scale in order to turn around what had been up until then a war in which the insurgents held the initiative. Creation of CORDS Organizationally, in Komer's view, the pacification goals required that efforts be concentrated under a single command. He believed that only the U.S. military had the resources and personnel to implement a large-scale pacification plan. After initial reservations, Westmoreland agreed with the plan, but civilian agencies still balked. They feared being marginalized and overwhelmed by the U.S. military with its much larger number of personnel and greater resources. Johnson overruled them and on 9 May 1967, the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support organization (CORDS) was created. Komer was appointed one of Westmoreland's three deputy commanders with the title of Ambassador and the equivalent rank of a three-star general. This was the first time in U.S. history that an ambassador had served under a military command and been given authority over military personnel and resources. Komer chose a military officer as his deputy and repeated the pattern of having either a civilian in charge of every component of CORDS with a military deputy or, alternatively, a military commander with a civilian deputy. He consolidated all the diverse pacification and civil affairs programs in Vietnam—military and civilian—under the authority of CORDS. Starting with a staff of 4,980, CORDS expanded to 8,327 personnel in the first six months of its operation. In 1968 CORDS was working in all 44