Shadow Warrior (21 page)

Meanwhile, the national legislature became a rubber stamp while the Ngo family exercised total control over the executive. In addition to Diem as president and Nhu as counselor/minister, there was Ngo Dinh Can, governor and warlord of central Vietnam, and Ngo Dinh Thuc, the Catholic archbishop of Hue and primate of Vietnam. Nhu established the Can Lao (Workers) Party, modeled on the communist parties of Asia and Europe. Clandestine cells of three to five people each penetrated political parties, the highest reaches of the military, and every echelon of the bureaucracy. Those who dared voice dissatisfaction with the government were dealt with quickly and harshly.

If there had been no communist insurgency in the south, Diem's increasingly repressive policies would have created one. Initially, the ruling Politburo in Hanoi had ordered the stay-behinds in the south to abjure violence and concentrate on political organization. But with the demise of reunification elections and the success of the Anti-Communist Denunciation Campaign, Hanoi changed direction in 1959, authorizing the Viet Minh in the south to arm and defend themselves. The level of violence increased dramatically, with assassinations of South Vietnamese government officials ballooning from 700 in 1958 to 2,800 in 1960.

The North Vietnamese Army's corps of engineers began working in 1959 to improve the network of jungle trails leading from the north into the south through Laos and Cambodia; these became the precursor of the famed Ho Chi Minh Trail. In December 1960, at Hanoi's direction,
southern revolutionaries founded the National Liberation Front (NLF), a broad coalition of groups, factions, sects, and individuals opposed to the House of Ngo, but in fact directed and controlled by the Lao Dong (Vietnamese Communist Party). The NLF's military wing was named the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) (subsequently dubbed the Viet Cong by the South Vietnamese and Americans). The Diemists and communists found themselves caught up in a never-ending cycle of provocation and reprisal. On May 6, 1959, Diem promulgated Law 10/59, which created special military courts to hear charges against individuals accused of plotting or committing crimes against the state, whether political, economic, or military in nature. Those found guilty were to be summarily guillotined.

The Colbys arrived in Saigon on February 8, 1959; it was Tet, Vietnam's most revered holiday, the first day of the New Year. Tan Son Nhut Airport was one of the few operations in the country open for business. Bill, Barbara, John, Catherine, Carl, and Paul, the newest addition, were overwhelmed by the tropical heat as soon as they stepped off the plane. It was midwinter, but Saigon lay only ten degrees north of the equator, and the terminal did not yet have air conditioning. Bill's diplomatic passport enabled the family to hurry through customs. Colby recalled that the officials were focused on a Chinese-Vietnamese woman whom they suspected of smuggling gold in her packages of silk and transistor radios. “The heat, the ritualism, the suspicion of contraband was my introduction [to Vietnam],” Colby wrote.

The mission had sent an automobile to pick up the new CIA deputy chief of station. Tan Son Nhut lay north of the city, and the trip allowed the family to get a long look at their new home. The residential outskirts consisted of streets and alleyways densely packed with squalid shanties, which were interrupted periodically by high-walled French villas, oases in a desert of poverty. The road they traveled was named for Ngo Dinh Khoi, Diem and Nhu's elder brother, who had been executed by the communists in 1930. Soon, however, the little motorcade entered Saigon proper; its Chinese district, Cholon, lay just to the west. The family was charmed. “The city itself,” Colby later recalled, “was shaded by tall trees spaced evenly along the streets, with gracious white and cream-colored tropical houses behind walls giving both privacy and security. The sight evoked memories of provincial towns in the south of France.”
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Saigon, the “Paris of the Orient,” with its wide boulevards and plastered villas, had been built by the French to rival Singapore in colonial charm
and culture. The city of some 2 million was situated on the west bank of the Saigon River some 25 miles inland from the South China Sea. An additional 700,000 ethnic Chinese lived in Cholon. As in a typical European city, the boulevards of Saigon were periodically intersected by traffic roundabouts with island centers; most of these were adorned with monuments to a fallen Vietnamese—or, more rarely, French—hero. As in Paris, there were large parks, archipelagos of greenery that set off the vivid orange blossoms of the tamarind trees. The principal street, at least as far as Europeans were concerned, was Tu Do. It ran from the Catholic Cathedral in the heart of Saigon east to the Hotel Majestic overlooking the Saigon River. Tu Do was lined on both sides with shops featuring clothing, wine, furniture, raw silk, tobacco, and other consumer items affordable only to the elite. In addition to the Majestic, Europeans could find air-conditioned rooms, fashionable bars, and fine restaurants at the Continental at 132 Tu Do, and at the Caravelle, just a block over at 23 Place Lam Son. The Continental, situated in the heart of the city, was the favorite haunt of journalists and writers. The American journalist Robert Shaplen had a permanent room booked there, as did British novelist Graham Greene.

Saigon was known for its cuisine—Indian, Chinese, and French, as well as Vietnamese. Colby would later claim that the Arc-en-Ciel in Cholon served the finest Chinese food in the world. For Europeans, Americans, and upper-class Vietnamese, there was the Golf Club de Saigon and the equestrian-themed Cercle Hippique Saigonnais. By far the most popular club, however, was the Cercle Sportif Saigonnais, situated near the Presidential Palace in the heart of the city. There, members could swim, dine, play tennis, indulge in cards or chess, and, of course, drink. It was in Saigon's hotels, clubs, and restaurants that contacts were made and deals discussed, whether having to do with diplomacy, espionage, black marketeering, or romance. Aficionados of Hollywood could see films at the Alhambra Theater.

Western influences did not extend to the narrow, crowded side streets where Vietnamese families occupied single rooms behind and over shops. One place where Saigonese of all social classes could be found was the central market, the Marché Central Saigonnais. Under one vast roof were hundreds of stalls packed tightly together. Shoppers could buy fish, meats, vegetables, fruits, fabrics, chopsticks, candleholders, straw placemats, and a thousand other items.
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By 1959, the French diplomatic and military presence in Vietnam had been greatly reduced, but the Corsicans still dominated the social and economic life of South Vietnam's principal city. They were among the first European settlers, having come out to escape a life of poverty and discrimination. The Corsicans owned and operated many of the city's eateries, ran the police department, operated the city's vast smuggling operation, and, along with remnants of the Binh Xuyen, provided private muscle to various individuals, factions, and secret societies.
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The Colbys moved first into a French colonial villa near the cathedral, “a lovely, old-fashioned one,” Barbara recalled fondly. Their second house, occupied after Bill was promoted to station chief, was more modern, verging on art deco. It was situated on Alexandre de Rhodes, one of the two streets bordering the park in front of the Presidential Palace, a sprawling stone edifice that faintly recalled Versailles. The Colby residence was the second house on the right as one faced the palace. The first order of business for an American family assigned to Saigon was to hire a staff of servants. For a family of the Colbys' status, that meant a cook, a boy or
boyesse
(a French term for a female servant) to clean and serve meals, a laundress, a gardener, and an
amah
, or nanny, for the small children. One could employ either Vietnamese or Chinese, but not both in the same household. Tuberculosis was an ever-present threat, so families were advised to have potential employees' chest's X-rayed. “Servants were plentiful, loyal, and friendly,” Colby wrote in his memoirs, “freeing my wife, Barbara, for a busy schedule of gatherings with wives of senior Vietnamese and other diplomats.” As in any tropical, semideveloped country, health problems were a concern. Malaria was under control in Saigon but not in the countryside. When the government inaugurated a DDT-spraying campaign in the provinces, the sprayers were immediately targeted by communist insurgents. Neither water nor food was safe to ingest without processing. The former had to be boiled for at least ten minutes. Because crops were fertilized with feces, both animal and human, fruits and vegetables needed to be peeled and preferably also cooked before being eaten.
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Barbara and Bill put the boys in a French Catholic school, but when they learned that the curriculum would be taught in Vietnamese rather than French, they transferred them to the American Community School. “We didn't speak French or Vietnamese,” Carl later recalled of his first school. “The only other Caucasian was my brother.” If that were not bad
enough, the monks would constantly rap Carl on the knuckles with a ruler—he was left-handed, and left-handedness was still seen as the sign of the devil in many Catholic schools worldwide. Catherine was enrolled in a convent school for girls where the language of instruction was French. Almost as soon as they were settled, Bill took Barbara and the children to visit the gravesite of Roger Villebois, his Team Bruce partner who had been killed in Vietnam during the First Indochinese War.
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In those days, the First Indochinese War was a fading memory and the Second a faint cloud on the horizon. One could move about the city day or night by taxi, pedicab, or motorbike. Except at military installations, there were no checkpoints or guardhouses. The children, Carl remembered, had free rein in both Saigon and Cholon. “Noon frequently meant a family gathering at the Cercle Sportif,” Bill recalled, “where a fine French lunch was served during the two-hour midday break.” It was terrifically hot and humid; the Colbys learned to limit their physical movements during the middle of the day, and the bedrooms of Europeans were generally air-conditioned.
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Bill Colby did not arrive in Vietnam in 1959 unprepared. He had spent nearly six months at Agency headquarters in Washington reading in-house histories of Vietnam and the increasingly dense cable traffic between the American mission and its bureaucratic partners in Washington. He was aware of the role the United States had played in the First Indochinese War—that the Eisenhower administration had limited aid to money, materiel, and advice, stopping at the water's edge during the siege of Dien Bien Phu. He was aware of Diem's rocky first two years, when he'd had to battle both the sects and the French who backed them in hopes of controlling Vietnam indirectly. He knew of the dueling CIA stations, and he knew of Lansdale's philosophy of basing policy on winning hearts and minds, an approach with which he sympathized to a degree. The former Jedburgh was aware of both Diem's patriotism and his penchant for autocracy. By the time he arrived in Saigon, the government's anticommunist denunciation campaign had caused the north to begin openly aiding communists in the south. In addition, Hanoi had started funneling some of the ninety thousand Southern Viet Minh who had gone north in 1954 back into the south, with orders to eat away at Diem's political base through agitation, terror, and socioeconomic reform. But one of Bill Colby's enduring characteristics was an awareness of his own limitations. There was still
much to learn, and he knew it. Before the lesson could begin, however, the Saigon Military Mission's newest arrival was forced to deal with a “flap”—the CIA word for crisis—of major proportions.

Only months before, Cambodia's neutralist ruler, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, had formally recognized the government of the People's Republic of China and followed up the announcement with a state visit. Cambodia was a large, populous, but almost defenseless country, its army more virtual than real. Sihanouk was not a communist and did not want to become an instrument of Sino-Soviet foreign policy, but neither did he want his country to become a Western protectorate. As the South Vietnamese and Thai governments saw it, however, Sihanouk was opening the door to the communists, paving the way for his country to become a staging ground for North Vietnamese and Chinese incursions. As the Colbys approached the US embassy on their journey in from the airport, the wife of the officer driving them had flagged down their automobile on the street to inform them that Sihanouk had just announced that he had thwarted a coup against him organized by the Thai and South Vietnamese governments with the help of the CIA.

There had indeed been a plot. It was headed by General Dap Chhuon, a rightwing warlord who had been encouraged and supplied by Saigon and Bangkok. Moreover, the agents whom Sihanouk had sent to capture Chhuon and his coconspirators had found in their midst one Victor M. Matsui, a CIA agent who had been keeping headquarters abreast of events by radio. Colby would claim that Matsui was there merely to monitor the situation for the Agency, and that the thrust of US advice to the coup plotters had been to cease and desist. Sihanouk was convinced otherwise, however, and publicly denounced the CIA specifically and the United States in general. Disinterested observers noted that the US ambassador to Thailand at the time was John E. Peurifoy, who had overseen the 1954 coup that ousted a leftist regime in Guatemala. Colby was detailed to secure Matsui's release, which, after much negotiating, he did. Chhuon was subsequently killed while trying to escape. The lesson to be learned from all this, Colby wrote in his memoir, was that the Agency would be identified and blamed for any activity it was found to be in contact with, no matter its role or motives. There was a second lesson to be learned as well: the United States, despite being a burgeoning presence, had and would have remarkably little control over events in Southeast Asia. With Matsui safely
extracted from Cambodia, Colby was at last able to look about him and get his bearings.
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