SAIGON
AVERELL HARRIMAN WAS JUST ONE of a long list of opponents who confronted the president of South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh, the leader of communist North Vietnam, was determined to eliminate Ngo Dinh Diem, his archrival for leadership of the former French colony. Ho, who issued a death warrant for Diem in 1945, finally arranged for an assassination in 1957. This was a messy third world affair lacking a sophisticated assassin with a high-powered rifle, a telescopic sight, and a guarantee of success. Instead, an unpaid teenager with a dirty pistol was assigned the job. The death warrant was issued after Diem had fled Vietnam. It was ordered in absentia after Diem refused Ho’s offer to serve in his communist government in Hanoi. Ho recognized Diem as a nationalist with an impeccable reputation. But Diem rejected Ho just as he had rejected the French in Saigon. He despised both communism and colonial government. Twelve years later, in 1957, the world had turned. Diem, the fugitive exile, had returned to Saigon, tamed South Vietnam’s warring factions, and was building a powerful army with American money that just might mean the guillotine for Ho. Diem favored beheading, French style, for his opponents. He owed his position at least in part to determined backing by Senator John F. Kennedy.
At every turn in Diem’s fight for power, Kennedy joined in blocking U.S. diplomats who wanted to get rid of the defiant Saigon leader. Kennedy teamed up with Senator Mike Mansfield to foil U.S. abandonment of Diem. As leading Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kennedy and Mansfield repeatedly threatened to cut off all U.S. aid if French and American opponents in Saigon succeeded in ousting the leader of the shaky new South Vietnamese government. At the time, French colonial leaders depended on American millions to retain their tenuous grip on Saigon. Efforts by Kennedy and Mansfield proved crucial as President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles backed Diem in the face of a political turmoil in Saigon.
State Department representatives were angered by Diem’s blunt defiance of their demands for a more democratic government. The heads of the U.S. mission in Saigon urged Eisenhower to dump the embattled Diem. But in almost every instance, Eisenhower and Secretary Dulles would reject their pleas. From Dulles, the cables to Saigon were always the same: Senators Kennedy and Mansfield would block aid authorizations, even organize a Foreign Relations Committee vote to withdraw from Vietnam if Diem was deposed. “The U.S. should stick to its guns in continuing to support Diem,” Mansfield said in one memo relayed by the State Department during a crucial moment in 1955. “Ngo Dinh Diem and Ho Chi Minh are the only two national leaders in Vietnam. To eliminate Diem would leave the field to Ho. If Diem quit or was overthrown, there would very likely be civil war and as a result Ho could walk in and take the country without any difficulty.”
By 1956, Senator Kennedy became the leading member of Congress to promote the Catholic president of South Vietnam. His father, Joseph Kennedy, and Francis Cardinal Spellman, the New York Catholic leader, provided the financial foundation of the American Friends of Vietnam. Senator Kennedy became a founding member along with men who later became part of his New Frontier administration—historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., speechwriter Ted Sorensen, and Angier Biddle Duke, chief of protocol. Kennedy gave the Friends inaugural address at Washington’s Willard Hotel in 1956. Kennedy’s theme was the amazing success of President Diem. “Vietnam represents the cornerstone of the Free World in Southeast Asia, the keystone to the arch, the finger in the dike,” Kennedy said. “Burma, Thailand, India, Japan, the Philippines, and obviously Laos and Cambodia are among those whose security would be threatened if the Red Tide of communism overflowed into Vietnam.” Kennedy’s father, Joseph, along with Francis Cardinal Spellman enlisted Catholic leaders and parishioners in Diem’s anticommunist crusade. Spellman’s repeated attack on Vietnamese communists had the support of Pope Pius XII. According to Malachi Martin, a former Jesuit priest who worked in the Vatican, the pope was alarmed by the communist takeover of China and the suppression of Christianity in Asia. “He turned to Spellman to encourage the American commitment to Vietnam,” Martin said.
Kennedy and Mansfield were also instrumental in American support for Diem’s army that in 1957 threatened the Hanoi leadership. For Ho, the time had come to liquidate Diem, who had become his worst enemy. “There are only two real leaders in Vietnam,” said Hanoi general Vo Nguyen Giap. “One is Ho Chi Minh. The other is Ngo Dinh Diem. There is no room in the country for both.” Ho’s agents near Saigon selected a teenage commando, Ha Minh Tri, to do the deed. Tri stalked Diem on February 22, 1957, slipping through the crowd at the fairgrounds in the highland town of Ban Me Thuot. Wearing his white sharkskin business suit, the Saigon leader, short, paunchy, and duckfooted, was walking as always without armed guards. Members of the diplomatic corps, including David V. Anderson, the U.S. chargé, had accompanied the smiling, waving Diem on the excursion. Commando Tri was equipped with an automatic pistol that was improperly cleaned and checked. He got off one shaky shot that missed Diem and struck the minister of agriculture in the arm. An unflinching Diem coolly stared at the assassin. Tri brought the weapon to bear on Diem and pulled the trigger. Nothing. The weapon jammed. The crowd descended on Tri with kicks and punches. In a cable to the State Department, chargé Anderson saw it as “a striking example to the general public of Diem’s strength of character.
“His calmness and courage also greatly impressed the many members of the diplomatic corps, including the undersigned, who witnessed the incident at close range,” Anderson cabled. Instead of cutting him down in cold blood, Ho’s bumbling attack burnished Diem’s image to the point that the United States would elevate him to the pinnacle of American political celebrity. The event became icing on a cake of hyperbole baked by American journalism. Newspaper and magazine articles about Diem always seemed to contain the word “miracle” when describing Diem’s ascendance to leadership in South Vietnam. “We rejoice that his life has been spared,” said a New York Times editorial. “It would have been a major tragedy for Vietnam and an occasion for the gravest concern for all the free world had the assassin’s bullet reached its mark. This was an act of sheer madness aimed not merely at a man but against a country and against the cause of liberty and progress.” This was an understatement compared to Time-Life publisher Henry Luce’s effusion. “President Ngo Dinh Diem is one of the greatest statesmen of Asia and of the world,” said Luce, who twice chose to put Diem on Time magazine’s cover. Newsweek’s Ernest Lindley wrote: “Ngo Dinh Diem is living proof of what is often called a miracle.” A New York Herald Tribune headline read: “Miracle-Maker from Asia—Diem of South Vietnam.” And the New York Journal-American’s William Randolph Hearst Jr. wondered, “How did the miracle of South Vietnam happen? The story is largely written in the ascetic personality of Ngo Dinh Diem.”
All these accolades were not just the result of Diem’s survival of Ho’s death warrant. Commando Tri was just one hapless agent who misfired in an attempt to eliminate Diem. The U.S. State Department dispatched a series of ambassadors who sought to remove Diem. And, like the young assassin, their fumbling served only to enhance Diem’s reputation in the United States and—more important—in the White House. Most notable was Army General Joseph Collins, handpicked by President Eisenhower to evaluate and bolster Diem and his fledgling government in 1955. Collins, nicknamed “Lightning Joe” because of his World War II exploits, served under General Eisenhower and rose to be Army chief of staff.
On his arrival in Saigon, Collins stepped into the political minefield. The 1954 Geneva Conference produced turmoil in Saigon. While Ho headed a new communist government in Hanoi, the conference left France in charge of the newly created South Vietnam for at least two years. Although the French were defeated and out of money, they hung on in Saigon with a 140,000-man French expeditionary army, continued military aid from the United States, and control of Indochina’s rice, rubber, and minerals. France’s previous legal justification to rule in Saigon came from Emperor Bao Dai, who lived on the French Riviera. Paris underwrote his gambling losses and stable of women. Bao Dai was the last of a 143-year-old Vietnamese dynasty usurped by the French in 1820. The last emperor wound up serving any role assigned by the French in peace and war. Bao Dai got a cut of U.S. military aid—$4 million a year. He also shared with the French colonial government a slice of income—$516,000 a year—from the most celebrated whorehouse in Asia, the Hall of Mirrors. The brothel, the opium trade, river piracy, and the sprawling Grand Monde casino were all part of a criminal enterprise called the Binh Xuyen. The boss was Bay Vien, a former taxi driver and river pirate who was given control of the Saigon police department in exchange for payoffs to Bao Dai and the French governors. Bay Vien mixed with the rich Chinese, French rubber plantation owners, and Vietnamese at the roulette wheel, which continued spinning until six o’clock in the morning. Guests at Vien’s riverside estate were permitted to feed his collection of tigers.
The corruption was also sanctioned by General Nguyen Van Hinh, commander of the South Vietnamese National Army. Hinh was forever plotting coups against Diem, even riding his motor scooter onto the palace grounds and shouting insults against the premier. Palace troops deferred to the putt-putting general. General Collins embraced the oily enterprise after arrival in Saigon and quickly accepted the French view that Diem had to go. Collins was endorsing the written verdict of the resident U.S. ambassador, Donald Heath. “We must keep our eyes open for another leader,” Heath cabled Washington. “[Diem’s] lack of personality, his inability to win over people of opposite views, his stubbornness and intransigence, his general political ineptitude, and his slowness in decision and action” were just some reasons to seek a change. Heath’s negative assessment came only two months after Diem was installed as premier in 1954. The coalition of American diplomats and the French in Saigon were greasing the slide for Diem.
In Washington, Kennedy signed on to Mansfield’s warning that events had reached an “acute crisis.” In a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, Mansfield foresaw a military junta replacing the Diem government. “In the event that the Diem government falls, I believe that the United States should consider an immediate suspension of all aid to Vietnam and the French Union forces there,” the Mansfield report said. Eisenhower and Dulles had handpicked Diem. But the turmoil reported by the U.S. embassy in Saigon upset the president, who had invested in Diem’s anticommunist credentials. Ike dispatched Collins for a closer look.
Washington’s pressure on the French was the big reason Bao Dai formally appointed Diem as premier of the newly created South Vietnam. Once before, in 1933, Bao Dai had made Diem minister of the interior—a job Diem quit in protest over French meddling after three months. This new appointment launched a relentless campaign by opponents to oust Diem or at least bring him under the domination of the French colonial government. That included enlisting American diplomats in Saigon and Paris to bring Diem under the French thumb. Collins became close to a fellow general, Paul Ely, who held France’s title of commander in chief Indochina. Ely described Diem to Collins as a “losing game.” The American envoy agreed that the French language and culture should be maintained in Vietnam and that the United States and France should build the Saigon military. Diem was not consulted on any of these bilateral agreements, which he bitterly opposed.
“Diem is a small, shy, diffident man with almost no personal magnetism,” Collins cabled. “He evidently lacks confidence in himself and appears to have an inherent distaste for decisive action.” It was a fundamental miscalculation by Collins. Although he carried the title of premier, Diem was powerless. The French controlled his military and American aid and the crooks controlled the police—all of them aligned against him. Despite the odds, Diem quietly plotted to finish off all of his enemies, including the detested French. First to go was General Hinh, who defied all direction from the presidential palace, the premier’s office and residence. The South Vietnamese army commander was thrown into permanent exile in France after Eisenhower let Paris know that he personally endorsed Diem’s order to expel Hinh. Next was the band of felons, the Binh Xuyen, that controlled the Saigon police, the Sûreté. Their leader, Bay Vien, had 40,000 men armed with automatic weapons and mortars supplied by the French.
Diem picked General Duong Van Minh to head the Vietnamese National Army and lead the military campaign. He was known as “Big” Minh to distinguish him from another but shorter army leader of the same name. Still, at almost six feet, he was tall by Vietnamese standards, and his growing stature would make for a fateful appointment by Diem. Big Minh would play key roles in both the beginning and the end of Diem’s political life. This soldier, initially an officer in the French colonial army, was known and admired in Saigon circles. Big Minh was tortured by Japanese occupiers during World War II. They extracted all but one of his front teeth. Big Minh’s toothless smile became his badge of courage. His escape from a communist prison in Hanoi where he had been held as a military prisoner was also celebrated. Big Minh strangled one of his jailers before fleeing. Diem declared war in March of 1955 by refusing to extend the Binh Xuyen’s criminal business license. At the same time, subsidies were ended for two religious sects that also maintained small armies—the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao. While the sects were effective in eliminating communist forces in their areas, they openly defied any Diem government direction. And Diem’s crackdown resulted in the villains and the religious sects joining forces, creating the United Front.
Collins was under orders from Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to do everything possible to support Diem. But Diem had consistently rejected Collins’s advice, firmly refusing to include political opponents in the new government or implement other democratic reforms. “He is so completely uncompromising, ascetic and monastic that he cannot deal with the realities,” Collins reported. As civil warfare simmered in the streets of Saigon, Collins wound up on the French side of the showdown. “I have done everything in my power to assist Diem.” Collins cabled on April 7. “I must now say my judgment is that Diem does not have the capacity to achieve the necessary unity of purpose and action from his people which is essential to prevent this country from falling under communist control.” Knowing turmoil was about to erupt in Saigon, Collins’s verdict alarmed official Washington. Dulles awakened Eisenhower after midnight to read the cable. The president decided to summon Collins home for a first-person report. At a later White House meeting, Collins told Eisenhower of Diem’s rejection of American advice and his micromanagement, such as his personally signing of exit visas. “The net of it is,” Collins told the president, “this fellow is impossible.” Reluctantly Eisenhower yielded. Dulles dispatched cables to Paris and Saigon saying representatives of both governments should inform Diem they “are no longer in position to prevent his removal from office.”
Just what happened next is still classified by the Central Intelligence Agency. One unofficial version is that the brothers Dulles, both instrumental in putting Diem in power, rescued him at this crucial moment. CIA chief Allen Dulles alerted Diem to brother John Foster’s cable terminating his leadership. Allen Dulles’s agent in Saigon was Air Force Colonel Edward G. Lansdale. In turn, Lansdale informed Diem, who launched the Battle of Saigon. Lansdale flashed Diem’s decision back to the CIA chief. Lansdale was a former advertising executive who had been in the spy business since World War II. Allen Dulles personally ordered Lansdale to Saigon to secretly advise and support Diem as he had other Asian leaders backed by the United States. From the moment Diem returned to Saigon, Lansdale, with his crew cut and brush mustache, was at his side, chain-smoking together sometimes into the wee hours.
Lansdale operated independently of the CIA station in Saigon, with a seemingly unlimited supply of cash, his own handpicked team of secret agents, and a communication line directly to the CIA boss. He was intricately involved with Diem in game-changing events in the spring of 1955. When John Foster Dulles’s cable went out at 6:10 P.M. April 27, it was 6:10 A.M. April 28 in Saigon. Within hours, Diem had launched a full-scale assault on the criminal Binh Xuyen. The Battle of Saigon was under way. General Big Minh rolled out the howitzers and sent the river pirate’s forces running. Diem’s early military gains were relayed by Lansdale to Washington, where Eisenhower had second thoughts. By midnight Washington time, the secretary of state had canceled his edict dumping Diem and ordered both cables burned.
Still, Diem was far from victory. “It was a near thing,” Diem said later. “A true nightmare.” Artillery and mortar rounds thumped in the streets of Saigon. Machine gun fire rattled, some of it felling hundreds of civilian spectators. Whole neighborhoods went up in flames; a black smoke drifted everywhere. As the Binh Xuyen crumbled, Lansdale took care of the second part of the United Front, the Cao Dai and the Hoa Hao sects. Lansdale targeted the military commanders of the religious organizations’ armies for payoffs. Individuals got $3 million each in covert CIA funds. Even so, some sect units skirmished as they retreated into swamps and jungles, some across the border into Cambodia. Some units later joined Diem’s army.
The shy and indecisive man dismissed by Lightning Joe now had the upper hand in Saigon. Diem’s victories brought citizens into the streets of Saigon chanting for the downfall of the French puppet, Bao Dai. Collins was recalled. A new American ambassador, G. Frederick Reinhardt, arrived and announced unequivocal backing of Diem and an aid package of $300 million. By the fall of 1955, Diem called for a nationwide vote between him and the absent emperor, Bao Dai. A side benefit of the Geneva Convention enabled Diem to expand his political base. The accord permitted an estimated 200,000 Catholics to leave North Vietnam and resettle in South Vietnam. Later estimates were as high as 900,000. The CIA’s Lansdale and his team of secret agents were crucial in implementing the mass pilgrimage, using U.S. Navy ships to transport thousands from north to south.
And Lansdale helped organize the 1955 election that gave Diem a new legitimacy. The lopsided October vote ended Emperor Bai Dai’s position as head of state and sped the departure of the French colonial government. Diem was now president of the Republic of Vietnam. Lansdale made sure of the outcome. Bao Dai, for openers, was prohibited from campaigning in South Vietnam. On Diem’s behalf, Lansdale implemented some of the worst techniques of the democratic process. Ballots cast for Bao Dai near Hue were simply thrown in the trash, Chicago style. Or, as they did in Old New York, Diem thugs would muscle supporters of the emperor. “The [Diem] agents poured pepper sauce down their nostrils or forced water down their throats,” one voter told reporter Karnow.
No one was more delighted with the outcome of the October 23 vote—98.2 percent for Diem—than Eisenhower and the brothers Dulles. The American secretary of state rebuffed final French demands that Diem share power with pro-French opponents and otherwise broaden his government. “The U.S. cannot undertake to force upon him a government or policies which he does not like,” Dulles cabled Paris. “He has a mind and will of his own and the fact that he survives proves he has virtues that are not easily replaced.” It was the last time a senior American government official recognized that Diem knew more about running South Vietnam than the best brains in Foggy Bottom. A succession of American ambassadors to Saigon would ignore Dulles’s sage insight in the coming years. Their cajoling, demanding, pressuring, intimidating, and even pleading failed to pry Diem’s fingers from total control of South Vietnam. “I am not a puppet,” Diem told more than one U.S. envoy. “I will not serve.” For one reporter, Diem would imitate an American envoy waving a forefinger under the president’s nose and demanding government reform that suited U.S. sensitivities.
To Diem, his government was formed in a crucible of mortars, howitzers, and machine guns. He was a wartime president with powerful enemies in Hanoi and a communist guerrilla force attacking his provinces. Democracy might be down the road, but in the meantime Diem forged a mandarinate with brother Ngo Dinh Nhu as chief counselor and brother Ngo Dinh Can as boss of central South Vietnam. His eldest brother, Bishop Ngo Dinh Thuc, was consulted on all family issues. The youngest brother, Ngo Dinh Luyen, served as ambassador to London and Paris. Outsiders joined the government only on the basis of unconditional loyalty to Diem. Mandarin stems from a word used by early Portuguese explorers in Asia and means to order or to command. Through study, dedication, and hard work, Diem’s father, Ngo Dinh Kha, rose to be senior mandarin to the royal court in Hue, where Emperor Thanh Thai’s decisions were implemented by the mandarin bureaucracy. The father instilled in his nine children the virtues of study, Catholicism, and service.
Diem’s character was forged from a combination of Roman Catholicism and Confucianism. Both emphasized self-discipline, piety, and integrity. Mass and Holy Communion were a daily ritual for Diem. He dedicated a life of chastity to Jesus Christ. And his vow of chastity added to his image of incorruptibility. Sexual abstinence, a requirement for Buddhist monks, won Diem widespread admiration in both North and South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh also claimed to be celibate, but many knew he was married—perhaps twice. Diem, who was baptized Jean Baptiste, briefly flirted with taking holy orders. “The discipline was too rigorous,” Diem told reporter Stanley Karnow. Instead, he chose the mandarin’s path to leadership in Saigon.
With the Saigon war over, General Big Minh finally captured Ba Cut, the fanatical guerrilla commander of the Hoa Hao sect in 1956. Diem marked the victory with a public execution of Ba Cut. When Ba Cut’s head was placed on the block and the guillotine blade thudded home, it marked the growing stability of a government once viewed by Vietnamese and the West as having no chance of survival. An early priority was ousting communist political supporters and Viet Minh guerrillas. Hanoi’s regular army units were withdrawn under the provisions of the Geneva Conference. Mobile courts and truck-mounted guillotines were used to eliminate residue throughout the country. Hundreds who avoided the blade wound up in cells of Con Son prison at Poulo Condore, the Asian version of France’s Devil’s Island. In some instances, Diem was as ruthless as Ho, who, after he assumed power, killed off thousands of opponents of communism in North Vietnam. Still, Hanoi maintained a secret network of communist supporters in South Vietnam, including the cell that selected Tri to gun down Diem in early 1957. The attempted assassination resulted in an important decision in the White House.
“Greatly shocked to hear of outrage at Ban-Me-Thout and relieved to know you are unharmed,” Eisenhower cabled Diem. The American government had put aside Diem’s request for a formal state visit to the United States in May. But shortly after the attempted assassination, Eisenhower approved the visit and even sent his personal airplane, the Columbine III, to pick up Diem in Honolulu. In Washington, Diem got the works—the president and the secretary of state at the bottom of the airplane steps to personally welcome him in as he descended to a twenty-one-gun salute. Diem was greeted by an estimated 50,000 federal workers and others who lined the streets, cheering and applauding as he and Eisenhower drove to Blair House. A white-tie state dinner was exquisite, with Long Island duckling, three great wines, and icy Pol Roger accompanying dessert. Guests including Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York applauded as the president of the United States toasted the president of South Vietnam. Pianist Arthur Rubinstein played Chopin.
Diem’s five-foot-four stature and his potbelly seemed out of place to one American reporter. “Diem looks like a fat little teddy bear,” said Andrew Tully of the Washington Daily News. But another, New York Times reporter Russell Baker, recognized the national genuflection to this bantam Asian. “Today only the best was good enough,” Baker said. The last Washington event was the address to a joint session of Congress as Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Speaker Sam Rayburn looked on. Members stood frequently to applaud Diem as he repeatedly thanked them and the American people for helping to rebuild Vietnam out of chaos. He talked about the moral platform that was the basis for their diplomatic relationship. “It is on the same plane that your and our fight are one and the same,” Diem told the assembly of cold war warriors. “We, too, will continue to fight communism.” It got another standing ovation.
In New York, Diem met again with Cardinal Spellman, the prelate who five years earlier arranged a room for the exile at the Maryknoll Missionary Center in Ossining, New York. He visited old friends in Ossining, where he was known as a clumsy golfer, a dishwasher, and the first one in the pew for morning Mass. Seminarians in their black cassocks greeted him with “Hip hip hooray!”
“It was in this house that I had a clear vision of my plans to bring freedom to my people,” he told the aspiring priests. Mayor Robert Wagner, in presenting him with the key to the city, saw Diem’s rise to power as a “miracle.” Wagner said history would rate Diem “as one of the great figures of the twentieth century.” In the whirl of introductions and congratulations, there were handshakes at the United Nations, including one from a man almost a foot taller—Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the American ambassador to the UN. Both men would recall the encounter when they met again six years later in Saigon under very different circumstances. In 1963, Lodge was dispatched to Saigon by President Kennedy as U.S. ambassador empowered to decide if Diem would stay or go as head of the Saigon government.
On May 13, 1957, the world contained in the Big Apple was at Diem’s feet. The day for Diem was akin to those in ancient Rome, when a triumph for heroes meant a chariot ride from the Servian Walls to the Circus Maximus amid cheering citizens and a rain of flowers, accompanied by a slave holding a golden laurel wreath over his head and whispering in the hero’s ear how all glory was fleeting. In the United States, the celebration began at Bowling Green in lower Broadway and ended at Gracie Mansion, the office of Mayor Wagner. There were cheers and applause from more than 100,000 New Yorkers. A blizzard of torn office paper spilled from the canyons of the city to shower Ngo Dinh Diem. The ticker-tape parade featured bands and marching Army, Navy, and Marine Corps troops. There was no golden laurel wreath. Instead, Times reporter Robert Alden saw Diem being presented with a hat, a black homburg. Diem never wore hats. The homburg was strictly something to wave from the backseat of the open Cadillac limousine.
None of the passengers in the limo with the president of South Vietnam whispered that this American adulation was fleeting.