Shadow Warrior (29 page)

In late 1961, the South Vietnamese president decided to hire his own counterinsurgency expert—Sir Robert Thompson. As usual, Colby adapted to the situation. As plans for what became known as the Strategic Hamlet Program evolved, it became clear that the main difference between Nhu and Colby, on the one hand, and Diem and Thompson, on the other, was that the American wanted development and political indoctrination—“winning hearts and minds”—to come first, and physical security to follow. Thompson, whom Nhu regarded as nothing more than a colonial administrator, favored fences, moats, guard towers, self-defense forces, and police first, and political and economic development second. Colby and Nhu eventually conceded the point, and the Strategic Hamlet Program was
born. In February 1962, Diem announced an interministerial committee to manage it and named Nhu its chairman.
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Colby got behind the Strategic Hamlet Program with a vengeance. In theory, it had everything—local self-defense, economic development, health care, and education—all leading to a sense of empowerment. It had been child's play, Colby wrote, for a few armed communist cadres to enter a village at night, terrorize and propagandize the population, recruit soldiers, and impose taxes. Not so anymore. There were failures, fraud, and fakeries, he admitted, but the program marked the beginning of the first nationwide response to the Viet Cong. And, by Hanoi's own later admission, the sheer volume of the military and economic activity of the program eliminated the Viet Cong presence from hundreds of villages, even in those where the local populace was hostile to the South Vietnamese government.
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On the whole, however, the Strategic Hamlet operation was a failure, and, like the Agroville initiative, largely counterproductive. At Nhu's insistence, arms were not given to village defense forces, but merely “loaned” for a period of six months. The provincial leadership, itself rich and well-educated, was supposed to support a new system that accorded no special status to wealth, social position, or education. That did not happen. There was no meaningful land reform. The assumption that the South Vietnamese peasantry was either anticommunist or neutral was erroneous. In some villages, there were families that had supported the Viet Minh and its successors for three generations. Finally, the man Nhu relied on to implement the program was Colonel Pham Ngoc Thao, a Catholic and a favorite of the Ngo family. He was also a communist agent. Thao used his position to see that as many strategic hamlets were built in communist strongholds as possible, thus exposing the settlements to maximum external attack and internal subversion.
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Colby later recalled his first meeting with Thao:

During his first two years as station chief, Colby had made a significant start toward his goal of seeing South Vietnam and the United States partner in an effort to win the support of the rural population. The CIA's efforts—the CIDGs, the Fighting Fathers, and so on—were small and sporadic, and the Saigon government's nationwide effort—the Strategic Hamlet Program—ended up with more failures than successes; but at least there were signs that some in authority were beginning to recognize that the conflict in South Vietnam was a “people's war” rather than a conventional conflict. The events of 1962 and 1963 would conspire to sidetrack the pacification/counterinsurgency train with—to Colby's mind at least—near disastrous results.

B
ill Colby had a love-hate relationship with the military. He was a warrior and had immense respect for soldiers, but he did not trust the military as an institution. Though it was free of corruption, and for the most part apolitical, the US military was hidebound and inflexible. As an institution, it lacked agility, the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. And if there was ever a time and a place for pragmatism and imagination, it was the Cold War in the developing world. The Vietnamese military suffered from the same rigidities, but it was also in many places and at many levels incompetent and corrupt. One of the reasons Colby continued to support the House of Ngo was that it transcended the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. But then, in 1962–1963, to Colby's great dismay, and to the detriment of the counterinsurgency/pacification effort, the military captured the flag in both Washington and Saigon.

Early on the morning of February 15, 1962, the residents of Saigon were again awakened by the thud of bombs and the rattle of machine-gun fire. Stanley Karnow, an American journalist, recalled the scene: “Rushing to my hotel room window, I peered across the city to see smoke billowing above the presidential palace, nine or ten blocks away. I pulled on my clothes, ran downstairs, and sprinted up Tu Do . . . to the Boulevard Norodom, a handsome avenue that opened onto the palace, an imposing structure that dated back to French colonial days. It was now a flaming shambles. Overhead, beneath a low cloud cover, two fighter aircraft were circling in an almost leisurely racetrack pattern.”
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Bill Colby was preparing to head for the office when he heard the roar of aircraft overhead, followed by explosions at the palace. “I quickly went to the porch to see another airplane coming in low and aimed at us,” he wrote in
Lost Victory
. “I saw its rockets release. I ducked into the house and herded the family and servants into a protected area under the stairs while some of the rockets detonated in the trees in front of the house.” Carl Colby was already at school when the assault began. Naturally, the students were sent home, but that decision, with the Colby residence three doors down from the presidential residence, meant the child would be deposited into the heart of the battle. Government tanks and personnel carriers clogged the streets. “I was picking up shrapnel because I thought I could use it in show and tell,” Carl remembered. “Then I walked into the house and there was glass and some plaster on the floor. My heart sank. Then my father stuck his head around the door of the kitchen and said, ‘Sit down, sport. We're having lunch.'”
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The attack on the palace was not the harbinger of a coup but an attempt to assassinate Diem and Nhu by two South Vietnamese Air Force pilots. They had turned back from a combat mission against the Viet Cong and dropped their ordnance on the palace because they had been passed over for promotion and believed that the government was not prosecuting the war with sufficient vigor. One was shot down over the Saigon River; the other escaped to Cambodia. The Ngo brothers, their paranoia increasing, chose to view the attack as part of a multifaceted plot to oust them. This fear, coupled with the Bay of Pigs fiasco, spelled trouble for the Civilian Irregular Defense Group program as well as counterinsurgency and pacification in general.

From its inception, Colby's initiative with the Rhade had been plagued by hostility and jealousy on the part of the South Vietnamese military and the provincial governors. Even as it complained about American usurpation, the ARVN refused to supply the officers that Combined Studies had asked for. Layton later described the role of South Vietnamese government officials in the program as one of “obstructionism, jealousy, suspicion and continual concerted drive to get their hands in the till.” In the spring of 1962, two Viet Cong companies attacked the village of Buon Trap. With the defenders under siege, a strike-force relief unit had to fight its way through a large ambush before it could relieve them. While the battle raged, a company of ARVN marines sat on a hill overlooking the village and did
nothing. Dave Nuttle, who was a CIDG adviser, subsequently learned that they were cheering for the Rhade and Viet Cong to kill each other.
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Beginning in June 1962, Nhu started pressuring Combined Studies to turn over CIDG villages to local ARVN commanders. That same month, Colonel Le Quang Tung's Special Forces began moving in and disarming the Rhade. The government then drafted strike-force members into the regular army and sent them to the Cambodian-Laotian border to guard the frontier. The Highlanders were, of course, interested in protecting their homes and families, not the Vietnamese, and they melted away into the jungle. As far as the Montagnards were concerned, the government in Saigon and the Americans had violated both the letter and the spirit of their original agreements. During the Vietnamese takeover, two Montagnard representatives petitioned Layton. Why have you abandoned us? they asked. “Mr. Dave” had come to the villagers and promised them that the weapons they were being given would belong forever to the Rhade. Without arms, the villagers would once again be at the mercy of the Vietnamese; it mattered not whether they were from the South Vietnamese government or the Viet Cong. Their appeals fell on deaf ears. In truth, the CIA was in the process of being pushed out of the paramilitary business in Vietnam.
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If distrust and antagonism from Saigon were not enough, the CIDGs and other CIA-run covert operations in Vietnam were coming under attack from Washington. In October 1961, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Maxwell Taylor and Deputy National Security Adviser Walt Rostow arrived in South Vietnam to conduct a fact-finding mission for President Kennedy. Colby almost missed them; he had been summoned to Baguio, in the Philippines, together with other Far Eastern heads of station, to meet with newly appointed DCI John A. McCone. He arrived back in Saigon just as Taylor and Rostow were preparing to leave. “I had the chance for no more than a hurried exchange with Taylor and Rostow at the end of their visit,” he wrote in his account of the Vietnam conflict, “certainly not enough to give the rationale for our approach and to interest them in its potential.”

Upon his return to Washington, Taylor advised the White House and the 303 Committee that the CIA was not adequately staffed or organized to carry out any but the smallest paramilitary operations. Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and MAAG smelled blood. Unlike the regular military, McNamara did not disdain unconventional warfare—he had
vocally seconded Robert and Jack Kennedy's enthusiasm for special forces—but he believed that any and all paramilitary operations should be controlled by the Department of Defense (DOD). The new DCI was not one to swim against the tide. On June 28, 1962, the 303 Committee met to consider the Agency's request for a $10 million supplemental to support the CIDGs, the Sea Swallows (Father Hoa's Catholic Youth), and other paramilitary operations. McCone spoke up: “It may be advisable for DOD to take the lead in CIA counterinsurgency programs, with the CIA in support, rather than the reverse situation.” Thus was “Operation Switchback” born. It would have a profound impact on America's struggle to contain communism in Southeast Asia.
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Colby would have an opportunity to monitor and, he hoped, influence Switchback directly. In the summer of 1962, Desmond FitzGerald, who had been named head of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs in the Directorate of Plans, summoned the former Jedburgh to Washington and asked him to become his deputy. Colby recognized a promotion when he saw one, but he asked FitzGerald for another year in Vietnam to see his various projects through to maturity. FitzGerald said no—and so the Colbys bid a fond farewell to Vietnam. Before leaving, in company with General Nguyen Khanh, Diem's military aide, and General Tran Van Don, from whose father-in-law the Colbys had rented their second house, the station chief toured the Highlands. Bill accepted a tiger skin from the Corps Commander, General Ton That Dinh; visited Father Hoa in Ca Mau; and then met Barbara and the children (sans baby Catherine and the newly independent John) as they emerged from a drive over the picturesque Hai Van Pass separating Hue and Danang. The entire family attended an exit interview with President Diem. Smoking cigarette after cigarette, Diem reminisced from early afternoon until dusk. Finally, Bill interjected: “Mr. President, we would like to continue this conversation as long as you would like, but we are expected for dinner at the ambassador's and your brother will be there.” Diem apologized and called in the photographer.
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Colby was well-satisfied with his work in Vietnam: “For one thing, I could feel that CIA had played a key role in helping to find a proper strategy by which to fight the war,” he wrote. “Moreover, the station had contacts and influence throughout Vietnam, from the front and rear doors of
the Palace, to the rural communities, among the civilian opponents of the regime and the commanders of all the key military units.”
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Following a leisurely trip halfway around the world that included stops to see the Taj Mahal in India, Jerusalem, Greece, Rome, Lourdes, and the bull rings of Spain, the Colbys arrived back in Washington in the summer of 1962. To Barbara's delight, Bill bought a house in suburban Bethesda, Maryland, and equipped her with a station wagon.