US Army Center of Military History - Reorganizing for Pacification Support - study by Thomas Scoville.

This study describes the background and implementation of President Lyndon Johnson's decision in May 1967 to create a civil/military organization, Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development; Support--CORDS, to manage US advice and support to the South Vietnamese government's pacification program. It focuses on the years 1966*68 when the organization was conceived and established, and it relates events both from the perspective of government leadership in Washington and the US mission in Saigon. Over these years, the organization changed three times, culminating in CORDS. Each change is examined with special emphasis on the role of important officials, such as General Westmoreland, Ambassador Komer, Secretary of Defense McNamara, and President Johnson.
Parameters - Blowtorch: Robert Komer and the Making of Vietnam Pacification Policy - article by Frank Jones.

From Komer’s arrival in Vietnam in May 1967 through the end of the pacification program in February 1973, two leading authorities on this subject, Richard Hunt and Thomas Scoville, credit Komer, who left Vietnam in November 1968, and his successor, William Colby, later Director of Central Intelligence, with making CORDS largely successful on several levels.

First, Komer integrated the organization effectively into the US Mission and Westmoreland’s headquarters, thereby promoting healthy working relationships with Bunker and Westmoreland and helping CORDS not only survive later changes in military and political leadership but improving, as was necessary, US military-civilian coordination and programs under a single manager. Although the US military contributed the bulk of the personnel, funding, and resources, civilians held numerous policymaking positions as well as serving as field advisers, thereby improving cooperation between military and civilians...