Shadow Warrior (32 page)

Colby and Herbert Helgerson, Norway, 1945

(The Colby Family Collection)

Liberating Namsos, Norway, 1945

(The Colby Family Collection)

More than ten thousand people participated in a protest demonstration in Hue on May 10. Prominent monks signed a manifesto demanding legal equality with Catholics, an end to official persecutions, and indemnification of the victims of the May 8 shootings and their families. On June 10, a Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc sat down in the middle of a busy Saigon intersection and set himself on fire. His colleagues at the local pagoda had invited members of the media, and soon images of the protesting monk engulfed in flames appeared on front pages and television screens across the world. From that point, the Buddhist protests grew into a powerful, deeply rooted movement with broad support among students, intellectuals, and even some in the Catholic community. Aware that unrest had spread to the military and that certain officers were planning a coup, Nhu hatched a byzantine plan to crush the Buddhist movement, blame the military, and seize control of the government from Diem. He had concluded that his brother had become too weak to rule. “I don't give a damn about my brother,” Nhu exclaimed to CIA station chief John Richardson in June. “If a government is incapable of applying the law, it should fall.” The regime, he said, was incurably “mandarin and feudal.”
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In a gesture of goodwill toward the United States, Diem permitted his flag officers to attend a Fourth of July reception at the US embassy. Afterward, CIA operative Lou Conein joined the men, nearly all of whom he had known since his OSS days in 1945, for drinks at a downtown hotel. There, General Tran Van Don informed Conein that he and fellow officers were going to remove Diem and Nhu from power. Conein duly passed this information on to Richardson, who, with the approval of the ambassador, told the former legionnaire to maintain his contacts.

On the evening of August 18, the coup plotters met and decided to ask the president to approve imposition of martial law. They would argue to Nhu and Diem at a subsequent meeting two days later that the decree was needed to enable the military to disperse Buddhist crowds in the nation's cities. It was clear, they said, that the communists had co-opted the protest movement, a charge Diem was only too ready to believe. Their real purpose, however, was to use martial law to position troops strategically in and around Saigon.

But Nhu had other plans. On the night of August 21, with Ambassador Nolting out of the country, Colonel Tung's Special Forces, dressed in regular ARVN uniforms, attacked pagodas all across the country. Armed with pistols, submachine guns, and clubs, they flattened the gates of Xa Loi Pagoda in Saigon and began beating monks and nuns with clubs and pistol butts. They then vandalized the main altar and seized the intact heart of the martyred Thich Quang Duc. In Hue, the violence was even worse. At Tu Dam Pagoda, the temple of protest leader Thich Tri Quang, Nhu's Special Forces soldiers ransacked the building before blowing it up. At Dieu De Pagoda, a Buddhist crowd fought back but was eventually overwhelmed, with 30 dead and 200 wounded. The total number of people killed in the raids nationwide was never confirmed, but estimates ranged into the hundreds. More than 1,400 monks, academics, and other protest leaders were arrested and jailed indefinitely. Nhu knew that the raids would further outrage the Vietnamese and Americans, and he hoped that ire would be directed at the regular military, thus undercutting support for a possible coup. He miscalculated.
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As it happened, at the time of the raids, outgoing ambassador Nolting and incoming ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. were meeting in Honolulu with Admiral Harry Felt, commander of US forces in the Pacific. Bill Colby was there representing the CIA. At that point, the Agency had ruled out Nhu as head of government no matter what transpired in Vietnam. McCone had not made up his mind on Diem, but he tended to agree with Colby, who would subsequently note the danger of discarding a bird in the hand before knowing the “birds in bush, or songs they may sing.” Nolting reiterated his view that the Diem regime was the best choice available and that its overthrow would lead to a communist victory. Colby observed that the best that could be hoped for from a military coup was that the United States and anticommunist elements in South Vietnam would work through “a Naguib first phase” while waiting for the emergence of a “Vietnamese Nasser.” The references were to Muhammed Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser. The former was the popular nonpolitical general who had become the first president of Egypt after the antimonarchist uprising of 1953. He was a front man for a younger, nationalist, and politically ambitious group of officers headed by Nasser. Lodge kept his counsel, but in fact he had already set his face against the House of Ngo.
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Washington, DC, unbearably hot and humid, was typically nearly empty in August. Thus it was that on the Saturday following the pagoda raids, a
rump of the foreign policy establishment gathered to decide how to respond to the embassy's request for guidance. Present were Undersecretary of State George Ball; Roger Hilsman, the State Department's Vietnam expert; Michael Forrestal, an aide to NSC director McGeorge Bundy; and W. Averell Harriman, the veteran diplomat who was then serving as undersecretary of state for political affairs. To a man, the four believed that Diem and Nhu were morally and politically bankrupt and that the United States must abandon them. They prepared a cable instructing Lodge to seize the opportunity to rid himself of Nhu; if the president refused to jettison his brother, “the U.S. must face the possibility that Diem cannot be preserved.” Lodge was also to make clear to the generals that Washington would provide them with direct support during the period between the breakdown of the present government and the establishment of a new one. The cable was cleared with President Kennedy, who was vacationing at Hyannisport in Massachusetts. On Sunday, a copy was circulated to the relevant agencies. As soon as he read it, Colby realized that a major change of policy was in the offing. He phoned McCone, who was vacationing at his palatial home in California. At the DCI's request, Colby borrowed one of the CIA's small jets and flew out to brief his boss. McCone, according to Colby, was furious and returned to Washington with him Sunday evening.
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On the following day, August 26, with the full team back in Washington, JFK presided over a stormy NSC meeting. McNamara and Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, together with the DCI and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, declared their support for Diem and accused Harriman and Ball of blindsiding them. Kennedy wavered, but in the end he instructed Lodge, at his discretion, to publicly announce a reduction of American military and economic aid to Diem's government, the signal the rebellious generals had asked for. From late August on, the United States was firmly committed to a coup. As Colby noted in
Lost Victory
, “there was an almost total absence of consideration and evaluation of the personalities who might succeed Diem[,] beyond generalized references to ‘the military.'”
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The day following the NSC meeting, Colby instructed Richardson in Saigon to begin casting about for a replacement if Diem could not be saved. The chief of station did not trust the generals. If and when they came to power, he told Colby, “the Ngos would be lucky to get out of the country
alive.” He wanted to see Vice President Nguyen Ngoc Tho succeed to the presidency and the constitution preserved. Don't be absurd, Colby replied. The “U.S. must win this affair if it goes into it, and it has already decided to do just that. . . . We are confident you will keep [your] eye on this main ball rather than [the] window dressing of civilian leadership.” He wanted, he said, ideas on a “man, team, or false face behind which we can mobilize the necessary effort to continue the main war against the Viet Cong.” Colby had such a person in mind, although he saw him as more of a Nasser than a Naguib. Before leaving Saigon, Colby had suggested to Langley General Nguyen Khanh as a possible replacement for Diem. Both former parachutists, Colby and Khanh had become personal friends during the former's tour as chief of station. Colby was drawn to Khanh because of his skill at maneuvering between the palace and various generals as well as among the political factions that constantly roiled the waters in Saigon. The general had expressed understanding of, and sympathy for, Colby's ideas on counterinsurgency and pacification. Last but not least, he had not demonstrated the racism toward the Montagnards that was characteristic of so many of his fellow Vietnamese.
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Policymakers in Washington and Saigon anticipated a coup before the week was over, but on August 30, General Tran Thien Khiem, chief of staff of the South Vietnamese Army, informed General Harkins that he and his colleagues did not have sufficient forces in and around Saigon and did not feel ready to proceed. “This particular coup is finished,” Richardson cabled headquarters.
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The fundamentals of the situation had not changed, however. The Buddhists may have been intimidated, but they were no less resentful of the regime, and the military would never trust the House of Ngo again. The White House was wracked with angst, but Kennedy insisted on leaving the matter in Lodge's hands. Thus it was that the newly arrived ambassador would be the American who held the fate of South Vietnam's ruling family in his hands.

In 1953, when Lodge was serving as Eisenhower's ambassador to the United Nations, a crucial vote on the Korean War had come before the Security Council. The State Department advised the New Englander to vote yes. When Robert Murphy, head of the International Organizations section in State, read the next day that Lodge had voted no, he cabled him: “Apparently, our instructions failed to reach you,” he wrote. The ambassador
replied, “Instructions? I am not bound by instructions from the State Department. I am a member of the President's cabinet, and accept instructions only from him.” Ten years later, nothing had changed.
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Lodge, according to Colby, was a disaster as an ambassador. “He had no concept of running a mission,” Colby later told an interviewer. “He was a total lone wolf, and couldn't waste his time on administration. He took an instant dislike to Diem.”
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In truth, Lodge came to Vietnam not to manage and coordinate, but to rule. He brought with him a military and a civilian aide, Lieutenant Colonel John Michael Dunn and Frederick Flott, respectively, both junior in rank but both entrusted with his personal mandate. Together they ran roughshod over the rest of the mission—or tried to. Lodge did not believe in delegating authority. He anointed himself as sole spokesman to the press for the entire US Mission and insisted on the right to fire and hire any member of the team, including the CIA chief of station. The ambassador had patience neither for the palace intrigues that swirled around the Ngo brothers nor for the bureaucratic maneuverings within his own camp.

President Kennedy knew who and what Cabot Lodge was and had selected him deliberately. As historian Jane Blair has pointed out, JFK saw Vietnam in 1963 as primarily a political problem. His goal was to keep the South Vietnamese ship of state afloat while shielding his administration from excessive criticism. Lodge, a Republican presidential aspirant, would protect his Vietnam policy from partisan attacks. Above all, however, JFK wanted Lodge to deflect a crescendo of criticism coming from a group of young American newspapermen in Saigon. Beginning with the disastrous battle of Ap Bac, this pack of ambitious journalists, led by David Halberstam of the
New York Times
and Neil Sheehan of United Press International, had led an assault on US support for the Diem regime. They made the Buddhist crisis their own, writing scathing reports about the perfidious Ngo family and the outrages committed by Tung's Special Forces. Indeed, these young media turks wrote about the situation in South Vietnam with the deliberate intention of promoting a coup. JFK demanded of Halberstam's editors that they reassign the young reporter, but at the same time he made it clear to Lodge that he wanted him to get Diem and Nhu to clean up their act. Colby certainly thought that the American press corps and the Buddhists' manipulation of it were crucial. “When that picture of the burning bonze [monk] appeared in
Life
magazine,” he told an interviewer,
“the party was almost over in terms of the imagery that was affecting American opinion. That put enormous pressure on President Kennedy.”
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It was not until four days after he landed in Saigon that Lodge deigned to meet with Diem. He arrived at the palace dressed in a white sharkskin suit and accompanied by twelve aides. The ambassador urged his host to appease the Buddhists and tone down Madame Nhu—Nhu's outspoken wife, who was considered the First Lady of South Vietnam because Diem had never married, and who had caused a stir by offering matches and fuel if any monks planned future self-immolations. Diem listened to Lodge and then launched into a two-hour diatribe, during which he chain-smoked two packs of cigarettes. The Buddhist protesters represented a small minority of the total population of South Vietnam, he declared. What he expected of Lodge was that he put an end to interference in the internal affairs of South Vietnam by representatives of various US agencies. Lodge feigned ignorance. This would be the last face-to-face meeting between the two men for nine tension-filled weeks. On September 2, Nhu's English-language mouthpiece, the
Times of Vietnam
, sported the banner headline “CIA Financing Planned Coup d'Etat.”
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