intelligence collection and counterintelligence. In 1956, it had 68,000 men organized into companies and platoons. The Civil Guard was represented by two to eight companies in each province. It had a centrally controlled reserve of eight mobile battalions of 500 men each. Operating on a local basis since 1955 and formally created in 1956, the Self-Defense corps was a village-level police organization, for protection against intimidation and subversion. It put units of 4-10 men into villages of 1,000 or more residents. In 1956, it had 48,000 non-uniformed troops armed with French weapons. The Self-Defense Corps, like the Civil Guard, was established to free regular forces from internal security duties by providing a police organization at village level to protect the population from subversion and intimidation. The Civil Guard and the Self-Defense Corps were poorly trained and ill-equipped to perform their missions, and by 1959 their numbers had declined to about 46,000 and 40,000, respectively. 1960 As mentioned in the introduction to this section, the U.S. was urging the RVN to revise its parallel province/district command and military operations command structure; the Counterinsurgency Plan (CIP) was the first of several such proposals. Laotian operations After the initial 180-day assignment phase of the Special Forces personnel in Laos, the name of the operation changed to Operation White Star, commanded by Colonel Arthur "Bull" Simons. Beginning of Phase II raids On 25 January 1960, a Communist force of 300 to 500 men escalated with a direct raid on an ARVN base at Tây Ninh, killing 23 soldiers and taking large quantities of munitions. Four days later, a guerilla group seized a town for several hours, and stole cash from a French citizen. These were still in the first Maoist stage, as raids rather than hit-and-run battles. Still, larger guerilla forces broke lines of communications within areas of South Vietnam. There was uncertainty, expressed by Bernard Fall and in a March U.S. intelligence assessment, that there were distinct plans to conduct larger-scale operations "under the flag of the People's Liberation Movement", which was identified as "red, with a blue star." It was uncertain if their intent was to continue to build bases in the Mekong Delta, or to isolate Saigon. The Pentagon Papers stated the guerillas were establishing three options, of which they could exercise one or more; incite an ARVN revolt set up a popular front government in the lower Delta force the