Editing Viet Cong (section)

==Relationship with North Vietnam==
Activists opposing American involvement in Vietnam said that the VC was a nationalist insurgency indigenous to the South.<ref name="Ruane">{{Citation |last=Ruane |first=Kevin |title=War and Revolution in Vietnam, 1930–75 |year=1998 |page= 51 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn= 1-85728-323-6}}</ref> They said that the VC was composed of several parties—the [[People's Revolutionary Party (Vietnam)|People's Revolutionary Party]], the Democratic Party and the Radical Socialist Party<ref name="Burchett" />—and that VC chairman [[Nguyễn Hữu Thọ]] was not a communist.<ref name=Karnow>{{cite book| title=Vietnam: A history |first=Stanley |last=Karnow |author-link=Stanley Karnow| year=1991 |publisher=Penguin Books | isbn=0-670-84218-4}}, p. 255.</ref>

Anti-communists countered that the VC was merely a front for Hanoi.<ref name="Ruane" /> They said some statements issued by communist leaders in the 1980s and 1990s suggested that southern communist forces were influenced by Hanoi.<ref name="Ruane"/> According to the memoirs of Trà, the VC's top commander and PRG defense minister, he followed orders issued by the "Military Commission of the Party Central Committee" in Hanoi, which in turn implemented resolutions of the Politburo.<ref group=nb>Trà begins, "How did the B2 theater carry out the mission assigned it by the Military Commission of the Party Central Committee?" ({{citation |author=Trần Văn Trà |title=Vietnam: History of the Bulwark B2 Theatre |url=http://www.cgsc.edu/carl/resources/csi/tra/tra.asp |year=1982 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110602120806/http://www.cgsc.edu/carl/resources/csi/tra/tra.asp |archive-date=June 2, 2011 }})</ref> Trà himself was deputy chief of staff for the PAVN before being assigned to the South.<ref>{{cite web |first= Dr. Ernest |last= Bolt |url=http://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~ebolt/history398/WhoIsTVT.html |title=Who is Tran Van Tra? |access-date= April 7, 2009 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110710013735/https://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~ebolt/history398/WhoIsTVT.html |archive-date= July 10, 2011 }}</ref> The official Vietnamese history of the war states that "The Liberation Army of South Vietnam [Viet Cong] is a part of the People's Army of Vietnam".<ref name="Victory68"/>