Nguyen Cao Ky - Buddhas Child: My Fight to Save Vietnam

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CONTENTS

For all who were touched by the armed struggles of Indochina, and especially those who gave their lives in defense of freedom.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

M ANY thanks to our literary manager, Peter Miller of PMA Literary and Film Management Agency, for his tireless efforts in finding the best publisher for our work. We greatly appreciate the sensitivities and support offered our project by our editor, George Witte, and his principal assistant, Marie Estrada, as well as the efforts of Henry Yee, who created the graphics.

We are also indebted to Julie Wheelock for her work in transcribing dozens of interview tapes both rapidly and accurately. Retired Foreign Service Officer Douglas Pike was generous with his time and personal recollections. Dr. James R. Reckner and Dr. Ron Frankum of Texas Tech University provided several photos and allowed us access to much helpful historical material.

Archivist Mike Parrish of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, was especially helpful in locating declassified documents from the LBJ era.

John Taylor and Susan Naulty of the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library in Brea, California, were courteous and most helpful in offering records and photos of Mr. Nixons post-presidential contacts with General Ky.

Joseph and Barbara Treaster graciously offered the hospitality of their home during several visits to New York in connection with this book.

PREMIER

P LAYING with my toddler son and daughter, laughing and teasing and very much enjoying fatherhood, I was spending a rare quiet evening in my quarters at Tansonnhut Air Base. Then my wife beckoned me to the telephone, and the voice of an army officer told me that there was an emergency: The Armed Forces Council was to meet in the prime ministers office immediately. I threw on my uniform and hurried off. It would be a long time before I would again enjoy the leisure to roll around on the floor with my children.

In Prime Minister Phan Huy Quats office I found several army generals, along with Quat and President Phan Khac Suu, South Vietnams chief of state. I learned that Quat and Suu were determined to resign their posts.

Suu was a picture postcard of Vietnams past. Although trained in France as an agricultural engineer, this goateed octogenarian, a member of the Cao Dai sect, wore the black silk robes and circular cap that in the colonial era had symbolized a mandarin, a learned official. Such dress had gone out of fashion in my fathers time; to Americans of the 1960s, Suu looked like a character from a Charlie Chan movie.

Appearing equally obsolete, Dr. Phan Huy Quat, leader of the Dai Viet party, was looking like a frail, white-haired schoolmaster, then in his sixties. Together they were symbolic of Vietnams biggest problem: too many leaders and not enough leadership.

In the eighteen months since an army coup dtat toppled the repressive Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963, five military-dominated regimes had held power in Saigon. After so much infighting, the military brass was sick of politics. The generals hoped that the Phans, who were not related, would lead a sixth and purely civilian government that would provide at least steady management of our nations many urgent problems.

Diem had been toppled by a quartet led by Duong Van Big Minh, who made himself chairman of the Military Committee and ran things, after a fashion, for less than ninety days. General Nguyen Khanhs coup drove him from office, but Big Minh came roaring back nine days later. He lasted just thirty-six days, until Khanhs second coup. Five months later, Big Minh again maneuvered Khanh out and returned for a third try as boss. In between these successful coups were several that failed.

By the time Big Minh returned for the third time, the communist leaders of North Vietnam had taken full advantage of this boiling pot of political instability. Not content with supplying and controlling the Vietcong guerrillas who terrorized many of our rural areas, Hanoi had begun to move well-equipped regiments and divisions of its regular army into South Vietnam, especially into the thinly populated Central Highlands region. We had an invasion to repel, and so the Armed Forces Council, of which I was a junior but outspoken member, finally tired of Big Minh and Khanh and their game of musical chairs. Two months after Minhs last coup, we invited a pair of widely known, white-haired civilian politicians to take over. The armys leadership had hoped that this combination of Suu, a southerner, or Cochinchinese, and Quat, an Annamese from central Vietnamboth familiar political figures of the colonial erawould cancel some of the regional animosities that infused almost every Vietnamese political issue.

But just like the military, the civilians could not resolve their differences. When Premier Quat shuffled his cabinet following an attempted coup, two of the ministers he had dismissed refused to leave office. Chief of State Suu backed them, arguing that Quat had no authority to fire anyone without Suus approval. When neither would back down, both decided to quit. Trying to patch things up, we pleaded and cajoled and discussed for hours, seeking ways to narrow the gulf between these two stubborn politicians, each beholden to relatively small but very different constituencies.

The problem went beyond the current impasse. Quat and Suu could not agree on anything. If President Suu wanted to do something, the prime minister, who held more power, vetoed it. If Prime Minister Quat tried to institute some activity that Suu objected towhich seemed to be every initiative that Quat held dearthe president used his influence to undermine, obstruct, or delay.

Personally, I was disgusted by both of these dinosaurs. They had learned their trade under French colonial rule, and their values and methods were inappropriate to a republic. South Vietnam was backed by the United States, a world power that sought to contain the spread of international communism. America had made a commitment to help defend our small, struggling nation, but along with their millions of dollars and the legions of young men who were prepared to die for our freedom came a thicket of restrictions and advice. I suppose that everything was too new for Quat and Suu, that they were too set in their ways to accommodate the change required by our situation. Nevertheless, like most of the other generals, I would have preferred them to continue in office. The military needed to focus on fighting.

There is no use talking any more! said Quat. The military must now assume responsibility for the government. It was past two in the morning, and everyone was exhausted. Quat picked up the phone and in minutes a man with a tape recorder appeared. While we generals watched, Quat and Suu read resignation statements. The man with the tape recorder left for the government radio station, where the tape would be broadcast a few hours later. We scheduled an emergency session of the Armed Forces Council for 8:00 A.M. , and I went home to sleep.

Our meeting convened in an enormous, air-conditioned conference room at the Saigon headquarters of General Le Nguyen Khang, commandant of the marines. Behind a table at the head of a room that seated 500 was General Nguyen Van Thieu, who as minister of defense was ranking officer. He was flanked by the Armed Forces Councils other leaders, four senior generals.