GVN into such repressive countermeasures that popular uprisings will follow. South Vietnam corruption breeds discontent In April 1960, eighteen distinguished nationalists in South Vietnam sent a petition to President Diệm advocating that he reform his rigid, family-run, and increasingly corrupt government. Diệm ignored their advice and instead closed several opposition newspapers and had journalists and intellectuals arrested. On 5 May 1960, MAAG strength was increased from 327 to 685 personnel. Formation of the NLF In December, the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) formally declared its existence, although it did not hold its first full congress until 1962. The NLF platform recognized some of the internal stresses under the Diệm government, and put language in its platform to create autonomous regions in minority areas and for the abolition of the "U.S.-Diêm clique's present policy of ill-treatment and forced assimilation of the minority nationalities". Such zones, with a sense of identity although certainly not political autonomy, did exist in the North. In the early 1960s, NLF political organizers went to the Montagnard areas in the Central Highlands, and worked both to increase alienation from the government and directly recruit supporters. 1961: Slow U.S. engagement Not surprisingly, with a change in U.S. administration, there were changes in policy, and also continuations of some existing activities. There were changes in outlook. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara (in office 1961–68) told President John F. Kennedy (in office 1961–63) in 1961 that it was "absurd to think that a nation of 20 million people can be subverted by 15-20 thousand active guerrillas if the government and the people of that country do not wish to be subverted." McNamara, a manufacturing executive and expert in statistical management, had no background in guerilla warfare or other than Western culture, and rejected advice from area specialists and military officers. He preferred to consult with his personal team, often called the "Whiz Kids"; his key foreign policy advisor was a law professor, John McNaughton, while economist Alain Enthoven was perhaps his closest colleague. Still trying to resolve the problems of GVN conflicting command, a new reorganizational proposal, the "Geographically Phased Plan", was offered. Its goal was to have a coherent national plan, which was, in 1962, to be expressed as the Strategic Hamlet Program. Kennedy pushes for covert operations against the North On January 28, 1961, shortly after his inauguration, John F. Kennedy told a National