Fire in the Lake (45 page)

Certainly the atmosphere of the war had changed substantially. The two hundred thousand U.S. troops made a profound impression on the cities. The troops carried with them the businesslike atmosphere of a country where the telephones worked, where schedules are kept and teamwork is assumed. They carried with them the sense that Americans long in Vietnam tended to lose, of the disproportion between Vietnamese politics and American power. Arriving in their starched summer uniforms from Honolulu, Wake, and Guam, the GIs seemed to overawe the small stucco terminal with its public flowers and its damp, tropical smell. The stiff, square carriage of their shoulders set them apart from the limber Vietnamese. Physically, Saigon seemed to change in their direction, the rectilinear shapes of the new American office buildings, billets, and hotels towering above the sloping red-tiled roofs of the French and Vietnamese city. Having established such a visible presence, the United States would surely do what was necessary to maintain it. It seemed only natural that the United States should take control of the war.

To the reporters recently arrived in Saigon, American control over the GVN was already an assumption. How should it be otherwise? The assumption was to be reinforced by the type of experience they were to have in Vietnam. Unlike the old Vietnam hands, who spent their time attempting to understand Vietnamese politics, these new reporters thought of themselves primarily as war correspondents attached to the U.S. armed forces. The American war filled their horizons. Every day at five they would gather in the windowless theatre in the JUSPAO building to watch colonels pointing out the sites of American actions on four-color overlay charts and toting up the figures of “structures destroyed,” “enemy dead,” and missions flown against “targets” in the north. Few of them went to the seedy room across the street where the Vietnamese held their briefings, and, as the American officers refused to report on ARVN operations, these operations and their results — or lack of them — were generally ignored. With the insatiable demands for combat coverage from their home offices, the television and newspaper correspondents spent most of their time with American units, visiting aircraft carriers, and watching demonstrations of new weaponry. Though it was difficult to find the battles and to write the kind of stories that came out of the Korean War, the new American presence appeared to have a certain solidity to it. Besides, there had been no political activity to speak of in Saigon for several months. By the beginning of 1966 the Ky junta was the longest-lived government since the Diem regime.

The stability of the Ky government took most American officials by surprise — a not very pleasant surprise at that. Gloom had, after all, reigned in the American embassy that preceding June when the Armed Forces Council had announced the formation of a new triumvirate. On principle, Maxwell Taylor had opposed the dissolution of the civilian government. To him the new junta seemed merely a middle term in an endless progression: each junta being ousted by a coup, each coup skimming off a new layer of generals and promoting a new group of colonels, majors, and captains, onward ad infinitum through the ranks of the army. The new National Leadership Council was certainly the youngest and least experienced of all the juntas yet formed. Most of the generals were under forty; they had risen to power by virtue of the fact that they controlled the air force, paratrooper, and Marine battalions stationed near the Armed Forces Headquarters in Saigon. In particular, General Ky — or Air Vice-Marshal Ky, as this commander of a handful of Skyraiders and training aircraft entitled himself — seemed to have very few qualifications for the job of government. Among Americans he had achieved a certain notoriety for threatening to bomb Hanoi with his own aircraft a good six months before it was American policy to do so; and then, when he was permitted to fly north, for leading his squadron to bomb the wrong target.
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He had also twice threatened to bomb Saigon. Apart from these exploits, his political experience was confined to one coup, two demi-coups, and a counter-coup. Upon hearing of his nomination to the role of acting premier, Taylor tried to block the appointment out of fear that he would prove both insensitive to American policy and unacceptable to the Vietnamese. Taylor thought Ky positively dangerous.

Taylor perhaps exaggerated the differences between Ky and the other Vietnamese generals. Still, it was true that Ky did not resemble any leader the Vietnamese had ever had before. He was thirty-four years old, a slight, rather elegant, figure who, as one writer put it, suggested a tango instructor rather than a general. His tastes ran in somewhat the same vein, from nightclubs to cockfighting to fast cars. His new wife, a beautiful stewardess from Air Vietnam, was to accompany him on trips throughout the country dressed, like him, in a black flying suit and batting her long lashes over newly doctored, “Westernized” eyelids. General Ky was a pilot at heart as well as by training. He played the part well, and his troops adored him for his mastery of these important American machines. As his chief of staff, General Cao Van Vien, once said of him, “He can fly so well bombers, helicopters, fighters — anything. You should see him. He is…” Vien paused, searching for a suitable epithet. “He is Superman!” Outspoken to the point of rashness, Ky had all those qualities that usually go into the making of a successful juvenile gang leader. That Ambassador Taylor tried and failed to prevent the gang from electing him as its chief did not increase his modesty or his sense of responsibility to the Americans.

Much to the ambassador’s chagrin, Ky not only became premier, but then refused to follow his predecessors into the obscurity they no doubt deserved. Despite his seeming lack of qualifications for office, the young general showed an extraordinary capacity for survival. Two months, three months, and then six months passed without a single coup attempt. The American officials gradually began to reconcile themselves to him. When Henry Cabot Lodge replaced Taylor as ambassador, the adjectives surrounding Ky’s name began a slow migration over from “immature” and “irresponsible” to “informal,” “colorful,” and “charming.” After seven months passed without a single coup, embassy officials began to speak of “that young man who is maturing so rapidly in office.” The phrase “transitional regime” no longer passed their lips. In February 1966, even Maxwell Taylor made his peace with the Ky government, testifying before a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee that “this is the first government which is solidly backed by the armed forces; and as long as they are behind this government in the present sense, it is not going to be overturned by some noisy minority as some governments were overturned in the previous years. So I do feel there is some encouragement, indicators of growing stability in the political scene.”
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The Honolulu Conference in February 1966 came as the final confirmation of this new American view of the Ky government. President Johnson’s decision to meet with Generals Ky, Co, and Thieu signified that the United States would support the junta in a way they had supported no government since the Diem regime. As most reporters recognized, of course, Johnson looked upon the conference as having more relation to American than to Vietnamese politics. His primary concern was perfectly expressed by a remark he made to Barry Zorthian, his chief information officer in Saigon. “Barry,” the President said, “Barry, every time I see a picture of a battle in the papers, I want to see a picture of a hog.” But with all his interest in putting a good face on the war by means of public relations, Johnson no doubt did believe in the efficacy of his new alliance. That is not to say that he and his aides attributed any extraordinary virtues to this new junta. They simply believed in the power of the United States to put the Saigon government on the right track. From their perspective, all the Vietnamese generals had to do was to deliver a stable government and an effective pacification program — the United States would do the rest. And in the opinion of most high American officials the generals were well on their way to the first objective. In Saigon, embassy officials sagely concluded that the generals had worked out their political differences and were settling down to the real work of the war. The new reporters nodded sagely back at them. It seemed only natural that the generals should do so. It was their responsibility to the American troops. The whole two-year history of coups and riots was forgotten as if it had never existed.

8

The Buddhist Crisis

In April 1966, just two months after the Honolulu Conference, two American journalists were wandering through the Vietnamese military headquarters inside the old imperial city of Hue. They were wandering in the vague hope of finding someone — a general, a flack for the ARVN First Division, anyone whom they might quote on the position of the government in this crisis. But the offices were empty. Doors banged, and their steps echoed hollowly on the stairs. After a while they began to debate whether or not they should give up the attempt and join the student demonstrators in the street. They turned a corner, opened another door and finally, to their surprise, came upon an official who looked as if he were of some importance. In the succeeding interview they managed to establish that this personage was the chief of police for Hue. Just what he was doing in this empty office, just what he had been doing for the past few weeks of near civil war, and which government he now represented — these questions remained unanswered. Quite clearly the chief of police had come to that office with the express purpose of avoiding anyone with such inquiries. For the last few weeks he had been pretending with some success that he did not exist at all.

For the American journalists new to Saigon the Buddhist crisis began in Robbe-Grillet fashion from middle to beginning and proceeded in a series of apparently disconnected events. On March 10, 1966, Premier Nguyen Cao Ky announced that the First Corps commander, General Nguyen Chanh Thi, had tendered his resignation because of a sinus condition and was en route to the United States for treatment of his nasal passages. The U.S. military briefers could give no clarification of this report, not considering the matter within their jurisdiction. When pressed for an explanation, the chief civilian information officer, Barry Zorthian, said that Ky had fired Thi with the full approval of Ambassador Lodge as the first step towards strengthening the powers of the central government. The next day, however, the United Buddhist Church issued an obliquely worded communiqué demanding that the junta hold elections for a civil government. Advised by their more experienced colleagues that the two events were probably related, the newly arrived journalists dutifully reported that the Buddhists were protesting the dismissal of General Thi. The Buddhists, however, claimed that this was not true. The next day a series of demonstrations broke out in the capitals of the First Corps — Hue, Da Nang, and Hoi An — and cloth banners appeared in the streets of Hue demanding the resignation of Generals Ky, Co, and Thieu.

As the week went on, the demonstrations grew larger. Or so it seemed, but even the most experienced officials and journalists in Saigon found it difficult to tell, for the communications with the First Corps appeared to be breaking down. For what reason no one knew. On March 16, a thousand people appeared at a large intersection in Saigon calling for a return to civilian government. When a band of young toughs broke through the crowds and began swinging clubs and setting fire to automobiles, the police did little to stop them. Why? There were rumors everywhere, but nothing the journalists could fasten upon as printable news. During the next week, the Ides of March, the demonstrations once again spread from their starting point in Hue, down through all the coastal cities of the center — Da Nang, Hoi An, Qui Nhon, Dalat, and Nha Trang — and back into Saigon. What most alarmed the resident American officials was that neither the police nor the army moved against the demonstrators in any city except Nha Trang. In Da Nang, the head quarters of the First Corps, thousands of soldiers and civil servants marched with the dock workers shouting anti-government and occasionally anti-American slogans. Most of the regular army operations stopped and the port of Da Nang closed down. The entire government appeared to be falling — to be replaced by no one. The Buddhist bonzes, the only visible leaders of the revolt, continued to disclaim all responsibility for the violence in Saigon and to insist that they had no interest in the generals’ quarrels, but only in the future of Vietnam in this time of crisis. As for General Thi, he remained in Saigon under house arrest claiming that he had refused American bribes to go to the United States and that his sinus infection had come from “the stink of corruption in Saigon.” Going to visit Thi, a few of the old hands among the journalists found him in his villa entertaining the Saigon chief of police who, they knew, was an old friend of his. Whether the chief was guarding Thi from Ky or Ky from Thi they could not be certain; nor could they explain why Ky had chosen at this moment to fire his old political crony and the only one among the corps commanders who was not noticeably venal. The chief Vietnamese public information officer himself could give no explanation. Upon hearing the news from an American reporter, he said, “If this is true, it means I know nothing about Vietnamese politics.”

A few weeks later, a high U.S. embassy official called a meeting of the more “responsible” journalists in Saigon to inform them discreetly that the ambassador had nothing to do with the firing of General Thi, that the U.S. information officer had spoken hastily and without sufficient information, that General Ky had in fact fired Thi in a sudden fit of pique and told the ambassador afterwards. Clearly the embassy officials had until that moment thought that the affair would blow over.

By the second week of demonstrations the journalists newer to Vietnam were beginning to register the full shock of the political crisis. Led to expect some organized gratitude on the part of the Vietnamese for all the sacrifices of the American troops — the image was, perhaps, of crowds of native girls throwing leis over the necks of the incoming U.S. soldiers — they found only hostile crowds and officials who seemed to be growing more uncooperative every day. What was more, the American officials themselves could not give them a straight answer as to what was happening. The “bastion of the Free World” that the military officials had talked about seemed to be disintegrating into a chaos of generals with interchangeable names. In the cafés and corridors their more experienced colleagues rushed about trading rumors as to whether General Thi would oust Ky or vice versa, whether the whole affair had to do with General Thi’s ex-mistress in Cambodia (allegedly a Communist) or whether Generals Co, Thieu, Bao Tri, Vinh Loc, and Quang would take sides. When asked their opinion, most of the Vietnamese politicians would explain that it was all the fault of President Johnson.