A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam

by Neil Sheehan

  Two days after the lunch, Maxwell Taylor returned to the United States. He gave a press conference in the VIP lounge at Tan Son Nhut on the morning of his departure. He dismissed questions by some of the correspondents about reports of tension between American advisors and their Saigon counterparts.

  “One has to be here personally,” he said, “to sense the growing national character, the resistance of the Vietnamese people to the subversive insurgency threat. My overall impression is of a great national movement, assisted to some extent, of course, by Americans, but essentially a movement by Vietnamese to defend Vietnam against a dangerous and cruel enemy.”

  Vann had driven back to My Tho with his worries intact. He explained why in a summary of the luncheon discussion he wrote with a ball-point pen on the back of his invitation card before he filed it among his papers:

  Opportunity to present views to Gen Taylor as one of four advisors so selected (2 Capt’s & 1 Maj & myself). Luncheon lasted 1 hr 15 min. General tenor of conversation such that Gen Harkins presented views and/or overrode key points I tried to present.

  His gravest immediate worry was that although the Viet Cong were being killed in unprecedented numbers, the United States was at the same time removing the basic limit on the expansion of the guerrillas—the availability of captured weapons. The advisory mission was inadvertently equipping the Viet Cong with U.S. arms. Since the spring of 1962 the 28,000 Saigon territorials in the division zone had been turning in their bolt-action French rifles for fast-firing American weaponry as quickly as they could be trained to shoot the U.S. arms. The 10,000 Civil Guardsmen were being equipped with a full bristle of infantry weapons from M-1 rifles to machine guns and mortars. The 18,000 Self-Defense Corps militiamen were being armed more selectively but still quite handsomely with semiautomatic .30 caliber carbines, Thompson submachine guns, and the BAR, the clip-fed light machine gun. What Harkins and his staff had failed to foresee prior to ordering the program full speed ahead was that no weapons should be handed out until the little outposts garrisoned by the territorials had been dismantled and consolidated. Otherwise the Saigon territorials would serve as a conduit to channel this American arms largess to the Communists, which was exactly what was happening. The Civil Guards and the SDC were the troops most frequently ambushed, and they manned the 776 outposts in the northern Delta which were the prime targets of the guerrillas. The great majority of these outposts inherited from the French (there were about 2,500 in the whole of III Corps) were easy marks, because the masonry watchtowers, which Vann called “brick coffins,” were garrisoned by half a dozen SDC and the little triangular-shaped forts of mud walls surrounded by a moat were held by no more than a reinforced squad. The elimination of most of these “VC supply points,” as Vann and his advisors referred to the outposts in general, had been another of the priorities that Vann and Porter had agreed on. Vann had ordered a survey done that had entailed an inspection of every post in the zone by his province advisors. He had checked out many himself on his jeep forays. Afterward he had recommended to Cao and the province chiefs that they consolidate the 776 outposts into 216 camps of company size or larger capable of defending themselves until help could arrive. These defensible posts could then function as bases from which to patrol and initiate local operations. Cao and the province chiefs had all replied that it was impossible to eliminate the outposts, that they were symbols of the government’s authority and Diem would never permit their removal. Vann had argued that they ought to tell the president it was irrational to hold on to symbols that were undermining his government, and that in addition to being militarily stupid the outpost system was cruel. Many of the militiamen kept their families in the little forts because they could not house them outside where the guerrillas could capture them and blackmail the garrison into surrendering. The dead or mangled bodies of women and children caught in the crossfire during attacks made propaganda material for the Vietnamese photographers employed by the U.S. Information Service (the U.S. Information Agency was called the U.S. Information Service overseas), but surely there were enough genuine atrocities by the guerrillas so that no one needed to generate them. Neither of Vann’s arguments got him anywhere. He could see that Cao and the province chiefs had the same irrational attachment to the outposts that Diem did. The only posts dismantled were those the guerrillas overran and had the peasants tear down before they withdrew, and the province chiefs rebuilt these as fast as they could.

  The Vietnamese Communists were clearly able to recruit all of the peasant guerrillas for whom they could obtain arms. Substituting newly captured automatic and semiautomatic American weapons for the previously captured French bolt-action rifles that were still the standard weapon of the regular and provincial guerrillas would also mean a manifold improvement in Viet Cong firepower. That the guerrillas were attempting such a quantum upgrading was evident in the M-is, carbines, and Thompson submachine guns which were starting to show up in arms seized from Main Force and Regional units. If nothing was done to stop this drain of American arms through the outposts—and Harkins and his representatives were always prodding the training advisors to hand out weapons faster despite the warnings from Vann and other division senior advisors—then Vann would encounter increasingly better-armed Viet Cong in his shakily led campaign to destroy the Main Force and provincial guerrilla units. If his campaign was ever interrupted or lost momentum for some reason and the Communists were able to fully reconstitute their striking force and go on the offensive with impunity, the guerrillas would capture many more American weapons, build their strength far beyond current numbers, and become a foe more formidable than Vann cared to imagine.

  There was an ugly side to this war and to his Vietnamese allies that went far beyond the everlasting problem of the Saigon troops treating their peasantry like an occupied population, stealing the chickens and ducks and rice and molesting the women. Vann had learned about beating and murder of prisoners in Korea. During the first months of that war the North Koreans had often killed Americans they captured. The American troops had taken revenge when they could. Vann had considered it stupid to beat or kill a man who might have information that one could exploit to kill or capture a lot more of the enemy if the prisoner was interrogated skillfully, but he had understood how infantrymen, angered beyond reason by combat or the loss of friends, could commit such atrocities. Nothing he had seen or heard of in Korea would have prepared him for the cultivated sadism with which the Saigon troops treated captives.

  The worst offender he knew was, oddly, a brave officer, a captain of Cambodian descent named Thuong who led the division’s Ranger company. Thuong’s troops, the majority of whom were also ethnic Cambodians, were the one competent group of soldiers the 7th had. Thuong’s position was equivalent to that of a battalion commander, because his company served the division and he was often given a second Ranger company to control on operations. The Ranger companies were designed to operate alone, but most were simply ordinary infantry companies that had been renamed Rangers and detailed to the province chiefs. Cao showed his special confidence in Thuong and his men by sending them off on their own without hesitation, which Vann could never persuade him to do with any of the division’s regular companies.

  Captain Thuong meant his appearance to be menacing, and it was. Ziegler, who had initially worked with Thuong’s company on Ranger training and who continued occasionally to go out with him on operations, remembered how husky and relatively tall he was for a man of his race. His skin was the dark one of a Cambodian, his nose flat and wide and the lips beneath it pronounced. He wore prescription sunglasses in thick frames of black plastic and silver-colored metal. He carried his Colt .45 in a leather shoulder holster with a string of extra bullets in loops up the strap that ran across his chest. Thuong had been taught how to soldier in the French colonial paratroops long before the Americans had persuaded Diem to form Ranger companies to fight the guerrillas, and he was proud of his antecedents. The snarling tiger’s face that the A
mericans had invented as the Ranger insignia was sewn in a patch on the left shoulder of his shirt, but on the right above his breast pocket were his French parachutist’s wings. He often wore the distinctive reddish-brown camouflage fatigues of the French airborne, and he was never without the red beret or the small-brimmed forage cap of les paras. In a scabbard on his belt, however, Thuong carried a distinctly American weapon that was his favorite instrument. It was a Bowie knife, a heavy, fifteen-inch blade made famous in knife fighting by James Bowie, the frontiersman who was killed at the Alamo.

  Ziegler made a partial list in his diary of the techniques used by Thuong and his Rangers, cataloguing a dozen. Ziegler printed the title “Strong Methods” above the list in a translation of a French euphemism for methods of torture:

  Wrap in barbed wire.

  Strip skin off back.

  Rack by use of vehicle or water buffalo.

  Head in mud—1½ minute.

  Shoot thru ear.

  Hook up to EE8. [EE8 was the designation of the American-supplied battery-powered field telephone. The common method was to tape the ends of two wires from the phone to the genitals of a man or to a woman’s vagina and a breast. Shock was then administered as desired by turning the crank handle on the phone.]

  Sit on entrenching tool. [The entrenching tool was the folding pack shovel the U.S. Army supplied the ARVN for use in digging foxholes. The shovel blade was thrust firmly into the ground. The prisoner was stripped of his pants and made to sit on top of the end of the shovel handle. He was then forced down on the handle.]

  Knife strapped to back. [Thuong would tie the prisoner’s hands behind his back and lash the Bowie knife to the wrists with the blade pointing inward toward the back. He would have the prisoner hauled up against a tree, place his hand on the victim’s chest, and start pressing as he asked questions.]

  Water treatment. [Water was forced into the mouth until the stomach swelled painfully, when it was beaten to induce more pain, or a wet rag was held over the nostrils while water was poured down the throat to create the sensation of suffocating.]

  Calves beaten.

  Knee in back, face down, dislocate shoulders.

  Beat stomach until it collapses and indiv. vomits it out.

  Ziegler penned an asterisk next to technique 11 and a matching asterisk between two photographs he had taken and Scotch-taped to the facing page of the diary. The photographs showed a Ranger first dislocating a prisoner’s shoulders and then kicking him in the testicles as he lay on the ground. Three more captives, their arms bound, guarded by other Rangers, were standing by for their turn should chance not spare them. It was amazing how the prisoners kept their composure during the agony of their companion. They looked away stoically as if they had expected these soldiers to inflict a death of pain on them and seemed to be trying to summon courage for the ordeal that might begin for them in a few minutes. Whenever Ziegler attempted to stop Thuong and his Rangers, they ignored him. He felt his greatest sense of helplessness and anguish when suspected guerrillas were found in hiding places in their hamlet. The wives and children would cling to the fathers, pleading with the Rangers not to take the men away, until they were cuffed off by the soldiers. If the torment and murder then began right in front of the families, as it sometimes did, the screams and wails of the women and children unnerved Ziegler and nauseated him even more than the sight of the tortures.

  Dick Ziegler had told Vann of these experiences. The Rangers were not an exception. Vann had heard similar accounts from some of his battalion advisors and the captains and lieutenants working with the Civil Guard and the SDC. He had been disturbed that prisoners reported captured had disappeared before they reached Drummond and Binh at division level. Because of his tendency to doubt what he did not witness himself, he had wondered whether these horror stories were the exaggerations of young men who had never seen war before. One night in mid-July he had gone out with Thuong’s company on an ambush in Cai Lay District about seventeen miles west of My Tho. Ziegler had also gone along. There had been a good possibility of action because the region was a guerrilla stronghold where the majority of the peasantry had sympathized with the Communist cause since the French war.

  At dawn a group of seven Viet Cong, thinking they were in a safe area, came walking right across the dikes of a rice field in front of the company. They were local guerrillas, young farmers in black shirts and work shorts. Thuong waited until they were less than a hundred yards away before giving the order to fire, pinned them down, and captured them by sending a platoon to circle around behind. Three were slightly wounded.

  Thuong lined up the prisoners, unsheathed his Bowie knife, and began playing the game he liked best of all. He walked back and forth in front of his captives, speaking quietly to them, telling them that he wanted the truth and that he would not tolerate anyone lying to him, holding the Bowie knife in his hand, flicking the big blade in the air with a snap of his wrist. All of a sudden his dark arm shot forward. He snatched a young farmer by the hair, jerked the man’s head back, and slashed with the Bowie knife. Then he resumed walking back and forth, talking softly again about telling the truth and not lying while the guerrilla who had lost to Thuong’s whimsy writhed on the ground, clutching at his throat, kicking away the last spasms of his life. The rest of the prisoners began to tremble, which is what Thuong wanted. Vann had assumed that Thuong would not dare to murder prisoners in his presence. He had thought Thuong was just threatening them until Thuong slashed the first throat.

  “Hey, tell him to cut that shit out,” Vann yelled, so taken aback that he shouted first at Ziegler instead of at Thuong.

  “That’s his way of interrogating,” Ziegler replied, shuddering as Thuong cut another throat.

  “Goddam you,” Vann screamed, leaping toward Thuong with menace in his voice this time, “I said to cut that shit out!”

  Thuong quickly slit a third throat to show that he was not intimidated by Vann’s screaming and turned, waved his knife at the four surviving guerrillas, and shouted back into Vann’s face: “You want ’em. You take ’em.” He paid no heed as Vann cursed him for a stupid, murdering bastard. He wiped the blood off the knife onto his pants leg, slid the blade back into the scabbard, and walked away.

  One of the four surviving guerrillas had been shot in the leg. The pilots of a Marine helicopter that Vann summoned to evacuate the prisoners hovered just above the flooded paddy instead of landing. Because of a problem with spare parts in these early years, the pilots tried to avoid the stress on the engine of pulling the wheels out of the muck. Vann had picked up the guerrilla with the leg wound and was lifting him into the machine when the pilots tipped the aircraft sideways, tossing Vann and the Viet Cong back into the water. The guerrilla jumped up despite his injured leg, grabbed Vann, shoved him into the machine, and climbed in behind him. His three companions and Ziegler followed.

  The episode compelled Vann to conclude that the other stories he had been told were not exaggerations and that torture and murder were a common practice. As an American officer he had resisted making a judgment like this about his ally. At the next general meeting of his advisors he lectured them never to discuss this filth with outsiders, but to report to him every instance they witnessed and always to try to stop it.

  He confronted Cao with his conclusion and argued that Cao had to confront the problem and take disciplinary measures to demonstrate to his officers and men that he did not condone what they were doing. A soldier had to learn that he existed to uphold law and order, not to undermine it. Torture and wanton killing were not only morally corrupting, they corrupted discipline in a military organization. If a commander allowed his officers and men to fall into these vices, those like Thuong would pursue them for their own sake, for the perverse pleasure they drew from them. Everyone had to be taught the immense stupidity of these perversions. The guerrillas Thuong had killed might have been the ones with the most useful information.

  Cao listened to Vann and agreed that
he had to do something, but he took no disciplinary measures against Thuong or anyone else and issued no new instructions on the proper treatment of prisoners. The sole result Vann could discern was that Cao let his officers know he did not wish the Americans to see these regrettable acts. Some of the units took to committing the atrocities when they thought the advisors were not looking. Most, including Thuong and his men, carried on as usual.

  Vann had reported this loathsome business to Porter and Harkins in the hope that Harkins would take action against it at the Saigon level. He had planned to keep mention of it to a minimum with Taylor, because to do otherwise could be self-defeating. A visiting general would not welcome tidings of torture and murder. There was an understandable tendency to recoil because of concern about a scandal in the press. Vann had intended to save his words for another horror that troubled him more because it was harming a lot more people. This was the indiscriminate air and artillery bombardment of peasant hamlets. The bombing and shelling were alienating the population by killing and wounding large numbers of noncombatants and destroying farm homes and livestock. Vann also had a particular reason to want to raise this issue with Taylor. He had become convinced that only someone at the top in Washington could put an end to the evil. Harkins and the senior U.S. Air Force officer in South Vietnam were part of the problem.

  Porter had alerted Vann to this killing of noncombatants in a conversation shortly after Vann’s arrival in March. Porter was haunted by his own first encounter with these deaths a week after he had landed in Vietnam in January. He had joined a helicopter raid out of Moc Hoa against a cluster of thatched houses on the Plain of Reeds. He had been told the place was a “Viet Cong hamlet.” Shortly before the helicopters set down, the fighter-bombers made a “prestrike” to demoralize the expected guerrilla resistance. The tactic, also known as a “preliminary bombardment,” was a traditional one, reemphasized in the positional fighting of the last phase of the Korean War.