Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam
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Little wonder that Greene and the colons got on so well; they spoke in the same terms regarding all that European colonialism had wrought and the damage the Americans could do. It is ironic, therefore, that some leading French officials mistrusted him. General de Lattre, eager to win more American aid and aware that Greene was in Indochina on assignment from an American magazine, initially went out of his way to woo the novelist, inviting him to informal dinners and giving him the use of a military plane. But the general’s opinion changed after Greene visited Phat Diem and showed keen interest in Bishop Le Huu Tu. De Lattre hated the bishop’s seeming double-dealing, blaming him for his son Bernard’s death near Phat Diem the previous year—the bishop, de Lattre believed, had tacitly allowed the Viet Minh to sneak up on the position Bernard’s unit was defending. In the general’s mind, Greene became a kind of accomplice in the treachery.21
The elder de Lattre became convinced that Greene and his friend in Hanoi, the British consul Trevor-Wilson, were in fact spies, working for the British secret service. He blurted out to the head of the Sûreté: “All these English, they’re too much! It isn’t sufficient that they have a consul who’s in the Secret Service, they even send me their novelists as agents and Catholic novelists into the bargain.”22 De Lattre placed both men under Sûreté surveillance and used Vietnamese to assist in the effort. “The French gave us orders to watch Graham Greene very closely,” recalled Pham Xuan An, a self-taught English speaker who was tasked with censoring the Englishman’s dispatches, and who would later lead an extraordinary double life as a Time reporter and Viet Cong spy. “While he was in Asia, smoking opium and pretending to be a journalist, the Deuxième Bureau assured us he was a secret agent in MI6, British Intelligence.
“One day,” An continued, “Graham Greene came to the post office to file a story. His report was placed on my desk. It was a long report. ‘What do I do with this?’ I asked my supervisor. ‘You have to be very careful,’ he said. ‘If there are any words you are not sure about, just cross them out. Your English isn’t very good, but there’s nothing he can do about it. He can’t argue with you. So just go ahead and cross out the words. Mark it up and then give it to the man who types the telegram. They never give him a chance to argue anyway.’ ”23
Greene ridiculed the charge that he was engaged in espionage—the whole episode, he later said, was a comic adventure featuring funny little Frenchmen tailing him, a deluded old general, and a jolly companion (Trevor-Wilson) with an estimable knowledge of Chinese massage parlors. But very likely de Lattre had it right. Trevor-Wilson was not only the consul in Hanoi; he also managed the Secret Intelligence Service’s operations in the city. He was, moreover, sympathetic both to the Viet Minh and to fellow Catholic Le Huu Tu’s activities. De Lattre declared Trevor-Wilson persona non grata and forced him to leave Indochina in December 1951. As for Greene, he too likely was on dual assignment in Vietnam—for Life as well as for the SIS. He had joined the agency in World War II (he and Trevor-Wilson first became acquainted at SIS headquarters at St. Albans in 1943), having been recruited by his sister, and Greene continued the relationship periodically after the war. The Sûreté felt confident Greene was working for the SIS in Indochina, and his own correspondence hints at it. Most likely, the arrangement was informal; he was a kind of “casual spy,” passing on observations here and there as the mood struck him.24
Greene’s sympathetic views toward the French cause in Indochina would in time change, but not his negative assessment of the United States. It was set in stone. Even before he visited the country in 1938, on his way to Mexico, America had become for him a symbol of empty materialism, lack of tradition, political immaturity, and cultural naïveté. In his second novel, The Name of Action, published in 1930, we find the stereotype of the bad American, in the form of the arms dealer. Now, two decades later, with the onset of the Cold War and the McCarthyite witch hunts, his view grew darker still. How, he wondered, could a people be at once so smugly self-righteous in their conviction that the American way was best for everyone and so obsessively fearful of the Red menace?25
Fowler, the cynical and world-weary English narrator of The Quiet American, boasts at the beginning that he has no politics, but in fact his language is saturated with anti-Americanisms, as he picks up the fight against Pyle’s arrogant naïveté. Bitter experience has taught Fowler that the world is not always changeable, that some problems have no solution, and that certain Western abstractions, such as democracy, don’t necessarily correspond to how society actually functions. Along comes the Ivy League–educated Pyle, ignorant of the world and full of reforming zeal, “determined to do good, not to any individual person but to a country, a continent, a world.” Fowler does not initially see the danger but instead reaches out to shield the American: “That was my first instinct—to protect him. It never occurred to me that there was a greater need to protect myself. Innocence always calls mutely for protection, when we should be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world meaning no harm.”26
Innocence in this context does not mean freedom from guilt. This is the paradox on which The Quiet American rests. (We shall return to the novel in a later chapter.) Fowler continues to call Pyle “innocent” even after he determines that the American has been supplying plastic explosives to General Thé for use in terrorist attacks. Pyle never suspects that the world is a messy and complicated place and that people’s motives, including his own, may be more sinister than they seem. In his mind, there are no limits to what the United States can achieve; he is willing—to use the later Vietnam-era phrase—to destroy a village in order to save it. It’s Pyle’s very innocence, that is to say, that makes him dangerous.
IV
IN LATER YEARS, GREENE WOULD INSIST THAT HE HAD GOOD REASON to believe that the CIA was involved in the actual January 9 bomb attacks. Wasn’t it a little too convenient, he asked in his memoirs, that Life happened to have a photographer right there on the scene? “The Life photographer at the moment of the explosion was so well placed that he was able to take an astonishing and horrifying photograph which showed the body of a trishaw driver still upright after his legs had been blown off. This photograph was reproduced in an American propaganda magazine published in Manila over the caption ‘The work of Ho Chi Minh,’ although General Thé had promptly and proudly claimed the bomb as his own.” It seems, though, that the Life photos were taken not by a staffer but by an enterprising freelance Vietnamese, who sold copies the next day both to the magazine and to two U.S. officials.27
Nor has any other firm evidence for American involvement in the bombing turned up, though it’s apparent that among French officials (with whom Greene had close contact) there were strong suspicions to that effect. In mid-February, a few days after Greene departed from Vietnam, Minister Heath informed Washington of a French document that had come into his possession: It advocated French military action against Thé but acknowledged there were risks, as Thé was a genuine nationalist. “It expresses fear,” Heath went on, “that reaction would provide U.S. with opportunity [to] strengthen hold on country and … it accuses Thé of responsibility for January 9 explosions and claims explosive devices were provided by U.S.”28
British officials had their own suspicions. Hubert Graves, consul in Saigon, told the Foreign Office of “strong rumours” that “certain American elements” were involved. He noted that the explosives and clockwork devices used were “much too ingenious” to have been manufactured by the Cao Dai-ists themselves, and that another recent bombing by the group, this one of a major bridge, also used unaccountably advanced technology. “It is known,” Graves continued, “that members of the American official missions in Saigon make frequent visits to the Tay Ninh area and it is unfortunately now widely stated in Saigon that the Americans are behind General Thé.”
Veiled references made by the French to the irresponsible support by the Americans of nationalist groups have, in
private conversations with members of my own staff, now become direct accusations that the Americans are providing support to General Thé and his men. Incredible as it may seem, I am afraid that there may be some truth in all this. Members of the American Legation have admitted that their dealings with the sects are bedeviled by their desire to be in a position to use them as the nucleus for guerrilla activity in the event of Indo-China being overrun and it has been suggested that the training and equipment which is being provided for such an eventuality has been put by General Thé to premature use. I conclude this paragraph with considerable reluctance but I can no longer ignore the reports which continue to come in from usually reliable sources.29
Trinh Minh Thé himself cultivated the view that he had close ties to the Americans. In early March, after the French Expeditionary Corps attacked his private army’s headquarters in Tay Ninh, and some of his soldiers fled, he attempted to boost morale by claiming to have had secret contacts with the Americans that would soon yield a major influx of weapons and cash. He ordered his subordinates to have themselves photographed for the benefit of the U.S. mission in Saigon. When the French attacks resulted in an acute food shortage in the compound, Thé encouraged the rumor that American planes were about to air-drop several tons of rice. He reminded his men that Washington had long supplied the various “sect armies” in Cochin China with money and weapons, using the justification that these armies were officially supplétifs of the French military.30
The American documentary record is silent on whether there were close U.S. dealings with Trinh Minh Thé in early 1952. American officials certainly paid visits to the Tay Ninh area where Thé had his base, but what actually occurred on those trips remains obscure. No evidence has surfaced that U.S. agents supplied his organization with explosives—though that is not always the type of information that would be recorded on paper. Edmund Gullion subsequently denied any direct American connection with Thé at that time, though he was not quite categorical. “The idea of an independent force springing out of the rice paddies was not something we were really concerned with,” he noted. “There were disaffected people, people like [Ngo Dinh] Diem who held themselves aloof from the French for a long time, and we thought they were a more likely independent force [than Thé].” In the same vein, a CIA agent told author Norman Sherry, “To my knowledge, no single agency official was—at that time—in contact with Colonel Thé. And I would know.”31
The agent’s emphasis on the timing is important. A few years thence, as we shall see, at about the time the novel was published, U.S. officials were in close contact with Thé and did promote him as someone who could play at least a supporting role in a Third Force movement in Vietnam. In 1954–55, none other than Edward Lansdale had contact with Thé and worked to keep him supportive of U.S. policy. In one recently declassified memorandum from the period, Lansdale speaks of Thé’s charisma and political strength and calls Thé crucial to achieving America’s aims in Vietnam.32
That was later. In February 1952, as he readied to leave Saigon and Vietnam, Graham Greene had yet to begin writing his novel. His Paris Match article would not appear for another five months. But he had already made certain determinations about the Franco–Viet Minh struggle that are of particular interest here. For one thing, Greene’s anti-Communism and sympathy for the French cause did not keep him from appreciating the skill and commitment of the Viet Minh and the corresponding weakness of Bao Dai’s regime, with its chronic tendency toward lassitude and incompetence; he grasped already that France faced long odds against success. For another thing, he saw with his own eyes how entrenched the United States was becoming in the anti–Viet Minh effort (he opens The Quiet American with Fowler seeing “the lamps burning where they had disembarked the new American planes”), and how much friction existed between the Americans and the French, with whom they were ostensibly allied. Greene spent significant time only with one side in this dispute, which no doubt colored his perceptions, but there’s ample additional evidence that in the early months of 1952, relations between French and American officials in Vietnam were more strained than ever.
The seemingly relentless Americanization of South Vietnamese urban culture had something to do with it. More and more, young Saigonese flocked to American films, listened to American popular music, even dressed in the American style they picked up from Hollywood movies—shorts with angled pockets, loose short-sleeved shirts, Bata cotton shoes. Try as colonial officials might to convince themselves and one another that these developments were natural and to be expected, it wasn’t always an easy sell, even if there were also continuities: Privileged Vietnamese still preferred French food and French perfume, still used Français as their second (in some cases first) language, and still thought colons were more generous tippers than Americans.33
Howard Simpson, who arrived in Saigon in January 1952 to take up his post as a press officer for the U.S. Information Service, had barely set foot in the city when he experienced firsthand the French mistrust of all things American. At their first encounter, Jean-Pierre Dannaud, the director of the French Information Service, was cool and condescending toward Simpson and fairly oozed resentment at what he considered American interference in the war effort. Simpson initially brushed this tension off as unrepresentative and as stemming from his own lack of experience in the Far East, but he quickly changed his mind. It dawned on him, he later wrote, that “the two so-called allies saw the future of the Indochinese peninsula from entirely different optics.” True, Harry Truman and his top advisers in Washington preached the need to back the anti–Viet Minh struggle, and they matched their rhetoric by sending more and more aid to the French; also true, Donald Heath insisted in his first meeting with Simpson that France was “fighting the good fight” and as such deserved the legation’s full support. But neither these high-level convictions nor the diplomatic language and soothing official declarations offered by both sides could mask, Simpson determined, the mutual suspicions and growing rivalry.34
He got a fuller taste of that rivalry as soon as he ventured into the field. Although the French High Command had final say on the distribution of American military matériel, a stipulation in the bilateral agreement allowed the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) to make suggestions regarding that distribution. In addition, MAAG had the right to conduct “end-use” inspections in the field to determine how the U.S.-supplied equipment was being utilized. Simpson’s office, meanwhile, had the task of publicizing the aid program’s effectiveness in the United States and abroad. He consequently accompanied the end-use missions—or, as U.S. officials came to call them, “end-use charades.” Typically, the visits would take months to schedule, due to “operational requirements” claimed by the French. On the appointed day, French drivers would arrive hours behind schedule and then inexplicably get lost en route to the post. When at last the U.S. officers arrived on scene, they would be told that for “security reasons” the inspection would be limited to service and support units. An elaborate lunch table would be laid for them, with four courses, red and white wine, and cognac toasts offered by the senior French officer present. When Simpson and his colleagues at last emerged into the afternoon sun, it would be too late to visit the outlying posts.35
“The flowery mess toasts may have referred to ‘our gallant American allies,’ Lafayette, and the Normandy landings,” Simpson recalled, “but to a majority of the French, both military and civilian, we were ‘Les Amerloques,’ a derogatory slang phrase for ‘crazy Americans.’ They felt we were muscling in on their territory, spreading wild ideas about freedom and independence among the local population, and showing a dangerous tendency toward criminal naïvete in a region we knew little about.”36
Little wonder Graham Greene in early 1952 found so much to talk about with the French officers in Saigon: “Dangerous” and “criminally naïve” could be Fowler talking about Pyle. Simpson in fact met the novelist on two or three occasions, during which the “aloof and dyspeptic” Gr
eene “made no secret of his basic anti-American feelings” and his misgivings concerning the deepening U.S. involvement in the war. Early on Simpson thought Greene might ask him to help arrange an interview with Donald Heath, but it never happened. The Englishman “remained with his French and Vietnamese contacts, observing the Amerloques at a disdainful distance.” On a later occasion, Simpson and Greene, both of them hungover from a late night of carousing, found themselves seated side by side on an early morning flight to Laos. They exchanged a cool acknowledgment but, Simpson remembered, “it took no great receptivity to sense Greene’s displeasure at being paired with an ‘official’ American.” They passed the flight in silence.37
Bemused though he was by the depth of the French mistrust, Simpson acknowledged that the brash behavior of many Americans in Saigon didn’t help. The phrase “ugly American” was not yet in use, but the phenomenon could be observed on any given day. Moving through the streets in their large black sedans and new Jeep station wagons, hitting the bars and restaurants en masse sporting crew cuts and aloha shirts that they left untucked, these Yanks never made a pretense of blending in. Even those who were more low-key and subtle tended to separate themselves from everyone but fellow Americans—a point Congressman John F. Kennedy, it will be recalled, had noted on his visit the previous autumn. Each day Simpson and other Americans from USIS and the Aid Mission met for pre-lunch beers at the Continental’s terrace café, “a symbol of the old colonial Indochina.” He recalled of these sessions: “We were a boisterous group, playing the match game for drinks and laughing loudly at inconsequential jokes, well aware of the disapproving colons who left a cordon sanitaire of empty tables around us.”