The Road Not Taken

by Max Boot

  What happened during those six critical hours to make Dulles change his mind? Edward Lansdale had learned what was in the offing and had acted to stop it. At 8:48 a.m., Wednesday, Saigon time (7:48 p.m., Tuesday, in Washington), Lansdale sent a telegram to CIA headquarters arguing “that the Diem government represented a better chance for success than any non-Vietminh government it would be possible to form in South Vietnam. Failure to support Diem would cause great damage to American prestige and would doom any successor government to Diem’s to failure. The only winners would be the Viet Minh.”45 Lansdale’s messages prompted the “stay order” from Dulles, along with a request for Lansdale to provide a full report that could be discussed at a National Security Council meeting on the morning of Wednesday, April 28, Washington time. With this insubordinate intervention, Lansdale had won Diem a stay of execution—much to Collins’s consternation.

  WHILE POLICYMAKERS in Washington were going to bed on the evening of April 27, events in Saigon were moving at tsunami speed. In his memoir, Lansdale recounted getting a phone call from Diem at his Cholon office at noon on Wednesday, April 28, asking him to come to the Norodom Palace. He and Joe Redick set out immediately in Lansdale’s new car, a big, black Citroën sedan that had been smuggled out of Haiphong by Lou Conein.46 As they were approaching Place Khai-Dinh, they saw bicyclists falling in the street while cars were stopping and their occupants were sprawling on the pavement. At first it looked like a “massive slapstick scene,” but then they heard the sound of machine-gun fire, which had previously been muffled by surrounding buildings. A number of the bicyclists had just been killed. Lansdale and Redick stopped their own car and joined the others lying flat on the pavement. A few minutes later the firing died away, and they resumed their journey.47 The war between the government and the Binh Xuyen, which had started and stopped a month before, had just resumed.

  Lansdale and Redick found Diem on the porch of the palace. According to Lansdale’s memoir, Diem had heard that “Ambassador Collins had obtained President Eisenhower’s approval for a change of U.S. policy toward Vietnam.” Diem wanted to know whether it was true that he was being “dumped.” Lansdale supposedly responded that he didn’t believe this report and asked Diem where he got his information. This account makes no sense, given that just a few hours earlier Lansdale had been sending cables to stop Diem from being dumped. He was dissembling when he claimed in his memoir, “None of these high-level deliberations in Washington were known to me in Saigon at the time,”48 probably to protect his CIA sources, possibly even Allen Dulles himself. As for how Diem found out about the decisions being made in Washington, that information was either shared by Lansdale himself or by the prime minister’s American friend Wesley Fishel, who was back in the United States.

  Just as Lansdale and Redick were returning from the Norodom Palace at 1:30 p.m., they heard a “series of loud explosions from the direction of the palace.” Binh Xuyen mortars had opened up on the prime minister’s residence.

  Who fired the first shots? The French blamed Diem, and the most careful reconstruction of events, by the historian David L. Anderson, supports that conclusion.49 On April 26, 1955, Diem had resumed his efforts to replace the Binh Xuyen–appointed chief of police with his own man, knowing that the Binh Xuyen would resist by force. Not waiting for the gangsters to strike, Vietnamese army troops had gone by truck to Cholon on April 28 and gotten into a firefight with the Binh Xuyen. The mortar attack on the presidential palace was a response. The French were convinced that this armed confrontation was all Lansdale’s fault for encouraging Diem to “take armed action.”50 In reality, having told Diem how close he was to losing U.S. support, Lansdale did not need to do much to spur him into action. Diem must have realized that he had nothing to lose by launching an attack against the Binh Xuyen. If the offensive succeeded, Diem would give the Eisenhower administration no choice but to support him. And if it failed, he would lose power and possibly his life. But he would lose power anyway if he did nothing and waited for Washington to oust him. The time for action was all the more propitious given that Collins was in transit from Washington and therefore unable to intervene, as he had done a month earlier.

  LANSDALE TAPPED into his wide network of friends to keep track of the fighting. Early on the afternoon of Wednesday, April 28, for example, shortly after his return from the palace, Lansdale received a call from the Time-Life correspondent John Mecklin. He and a photographer were in a police station where a company of Vietnamese National Army troops was being besieged by a Binh Xuyen battalion. Mecklin was worried that they would all be killed. But then the army troops counterattacked and put the Binh Xuyen to flight. The gangsters were running away as fast as they could, shedding their uniforms as they ran. “Who said these army guys wouldn’t fight!” Mecklin shouted before hanging up.51

  Lansdale set out for the embassy to share his information. He was astonished to discover that the diplomats “were debating which adjectives to use to describe the low morale of the Vietnamese Army troops who now had to stand up to the high-spirited Binh Xuyen.”52 They were getting their reports from the French, and they did not believe Lansdale’s more optimistic assessment. Lansdale seethed about desk-bound diplomats—“the precious lads who sit in offices or make the cocktail circuit and know the surface of a country so brilliantly.”53 But he knew that if the president accepted the State Department’s gloomy estimate, Diem was done.

  Urban warfare has always been a grim, confused, ugly business. From the fighting in Jerusalem in AD 70 between Jews and Romans to the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, close-quarters combat in cities has always led to extensive casualties and property damage. The Battle of Saigon in the spring of 1955 would be no different. As Lansdale drove around on Wednesday afternoon, he could see “dense clouds of smoke” darkening the skies above Cholon. A large section of the city was on fire, with both sides blaming the other for starting it. Because fire trucks could not get through the front lines, at least a hundred people died in the blaze and many more were injured or rendered homeless. In front of his team’s “pool house” on Rue Taberd, Lansdale found “burned-out and shell-shattered vehicles,” which gave “the street outside a junkyard look.” Even the hard-bitten Lou Conein had been shaken when he saw a mortar shell fall right on a Renault taxicab, killing a family inside, including three children.54

  Given that the “pool house” was packed with explosives due to be shipped to agents in the North, a hit from a mortar shell would have been a catastrophe, setting off secondary explosions that would have killed everyone inside. The possibility of the house being taken in a Binh Xuyen ground assault could not be dismissed either. Some of the team members asked for permission to abandon the building. Lansdale refused. He thought the house was defensible, with walls thick enough to withstand an 81-mm mortar round. Inside, Lansdale noted approvingly, “all files were fixed for instant destruction, automatic weapons and hand grenades distributed to all personnel.”55

  Once Lansdale had determined that all his men were safe, or at least as safe as they could be under the circumstances, he returned to his own house and sat down at a typewriter to produce the report for the NSC meeting that John Foster Dulles had requested. Rufus Phillips marveled at how Lansdale was able to bang out a single-spaced, twenty-page cable in a single sitting “without pause and without changing a single word.”56 (Another team member noted that Lansdale was “one of the best typists in Saigon.”)57 Lansdale’s cable gave a firsthand account of what he had seen, namely, that the army was winning, and concluded with a warning that “no nationalist aspirant for power in Vietnam had as much to offer as Diem and no pro-French leader could succeed against the Viet Minh.”58 This report reached Washington at 7:44 a.m. on Wednesday, just in time for the NSC meeting. It was nighttime in Saigon, and Lansdale was so exhausted that he went to bed, not knowing whether he had saved Ngo Dinh Diem or not.59

  At the NSC meeting in the Cabinet Room, Lightning Joe Collins reiterated his conviction that “Diem’s
number was up.” For the first time, however, President Eisenhower was beginning to question the judgment of his “personal representative.” He “commented that it was an absolute sine qua non of success that the Vietnamese National Army destroy the power of the Binh Xuyen.” When the meeting broke up, the participants had tacitly moved away from Collins’s plan to get rid of Diem. Lansdale had succeeding in buying Diem yet another reprieve. Now much would turn on how the fighting went. As John Foster Dulles told his fellow NSC members, “The developments of last night could either lead to Diem’s utter overthrow, or his emergence from the disorder as a major hero. Accordingly we are pausing to await the results.”60

  THE NEXT morning, Thursday, April 29, Lansdale got an angry reception from French officers at TRIM headquarters. One of them was holding a Vietnamese girl who had suffered a shrapnel wound. “Look what Lansdale has done,” he declared dramatically. “He makes war on children!” Unfazed, Lansdale handed the girl to another American officer and left for MAAG headquarters with Rufus Phillips and Colonel Le Van Kim. They were in town to request additional support for the pacification campaign in central Vietnam, Operation Breaking Chains, which had started a week earlier. Thus Lansdale had to simultaneously manage both pacification in the countryside and an urban battle in Saigon—challenges that dwarfed anything he had experienced in the Philippines. He wrote to Pat Kelly, “While it has been an extremely trying time, I’ve got about a thousand tigers by the tail and I’m afraid to let go of any single one of them right now or there will be a big snarling mass of tigers gobbling me up—which I understand a number of people would enjoy but am still doubtful that I would.”61

  The carnage of conflict was apparent everywhere. The road through Cholon, Rufus Phillips noted, “was littered with burned out buildings and cars,” as well as a few corpses.62 Just as they were sitting down with Iron Mike O’Daniel in his office, a battle broke out around the MAAG building. The officers had trouble making themselves heard “over the din of machine gun fire and exploding grenades.”63 When Lansdale excused himself for a bathroom break, he could see through a window above the urinal Binh Xuyen troops on a nearby rooftop firing at army forces. By the time they walked out of their conference with O’Daniel, however, the Binh Xuyen were gone, their green berets strewn on the sidewalk. This was another sign that low morale was more of a problem for the gangsters than for their government adversaries.

  The situation was fraught with peril. Back home on Rue Duy Tan, Lansdale got an unexpected visitor: his old acquaintance Jean Leroy, the half-French, half-Vietnamese Catholic warlord who was now allied with the Binh Xuyen. He arrived with a heavily armed squad of troops to escort Lansdale to “meet” the Binh Xuyen leader, Bay Vien. As the Binh Xuyen were broadcasting grisly threats to disembowel him, Lansdale declined the invitation. Lansdale’s Filipino bodyguard, Proc Mojica, was asleep after having stayed up on guard duty the entire night, so Lansdale’s hand was edging toward a hand grenade he had hidden nearby. The situation was saved only by the unexpected arrival of Charles “Bo” Bohannan and another Saigon Military Mission officer. Bohannan, visiting from Manila, teased Lansdale about all the troops lounging in front of the house, saying he didn’t really need that many bodyguards. Ed introduced Jean Leroy and told Bo that he was just leaving. Seeing that they could not take Lansdale without a fight, Leroy and his gunmen roared off. “You couldn’t have picked a better time to come,” a grateful Ed told Bo.64

  No venue was immune to the disfiguring toll of war. Late that afternoon, Diem summoned Lansdale to the Norodom Palace. He found “shell holes and martial litter in the gardens, walks, and driveways and great gouges cut in the palace walls. Windows were shuttered, sandbagged defense positions could be seen throughout the palace grounds, and heavily armed troops were very much in evidence.” Diem was showing the strain of the crisis as much as his residence was. He had gone without sleep the night before, and now his body slumped, there were “strain lines” around his eyes and mouth, and his speech was slower than normal.65 The prime minister was cheered by the progress his troops were making against the Binh Xuyen, but he was upset about a telegram he had just received from Bao Dai. After accusing Diem of plunging the Vietnamese people into “the horrors of a fratricidal conflict,” Bao Dai demanded that Diem leave for France immediately and turn over the government to General Nguyen Van Vy, the pro-French army commander.

  Diem asked Lansdale what he should do, although in truth there was not much doubt that he was going to ignore this appeal from a man that most patriotic Vietnamese viewed as a French puppet; his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu had already said as much to his own CIA contact, Paul Harwood.66 Diem was more interested in hearing from Lansdale what stance the U.S. government would take. A professional diplomat would have cabled back to Washington for instructions. But like Wild Bill Donovan and other OSS veterans, Lansdale did not believe in awaiting orders from headquarters. He told Diem that Washington would “accept a legal action” to remove him as prime minister, but the telegram from Bao Dai was not a “legal proceeding.” Then Lansdale told Diem to do as his conscience dictated, knowing that there was no way Diem was going to leave the country. 67

  That night, back at home, Lansdale had one more meeting. His friend Trinh Minh Thé stopped by to say that he had slipped into town with thirteen hundred of his guerrillas to support the army in its assault on the Binh Xuyen. Thé was, in fact, emerging as one of Diem’s staunchest defenders.

  The following day, Friday, April 30, American diplomats and reporters witnessed an extraordinary scene at the presidential palace. General Nguyen Van Vy, the army commander, was standing in the center of the room holding in his hands a statement repudiating Bao Dai and supporting Diem. In front of him was a microphone and a tape recorder. Next to him was Trinh Minh Thé. Vy was perspiring profusely and his hands were trembling. He was stalling for time, refusing to read the statement. Finally Thé lost his temper, whipped out a Colt .45 pistol, and put the muzzle to Vy’s temple. Time seemed to stand still as everyone waited for the hammer to drop. Ashen and sweating, Vy finally read the statement. Thé demanded that he speak up. Only when he was done did Thé put the automatic away.68 With Vy’s coerced blessing, the Vietnamese army was now free to press its assault on the Binh Xuyen.

  The heavy fighting continued into the new month. Lansdale saw Thé for the last time three days later, on Monday, May 3. Blood dripping from a flesh wound on his hand, Thé arrived at 5 p.m. to tell Lansdale that his troops were pinned down at the Tan Thuan bridge by Binh Xuyen gunboats. His men were taking heavy casualties and could not cross the bridge, because they had no artillery with which to fight back.69 As soon as he heard this, Lansdale sped over to the Norodom Palace. He found Diem in a conference with several officers. They were jubilant because the army had put the Binh Xuyen to flight. Lansdale was furious that they were celebrating while Trinh Minh Thé’s men were getting slaughtered. He demanded they do something to help the diminutive guerrilla—an indication of how freely he was willing to involve himself in what other American officials would have viewed as internal Vietnamese affairs. Shamefaced, Diem told a colonel to get some artillery over to Thé.

  The officers then left while Diem, as was his wont, delivered a two-hour exposition to Lansdale on Vietnamese politics. He included some derisory comments about Thé, who “he pointed out was only a peasant and presumably not as worthy as present company,” Lansdale recalled. Ed was “pretty sharp” in his retort. Their colloquy was interrupted at 8 p.m. by Ngo Dinh Nhu, who walked in to announce that Trinh Minh Thé had just been killed. Both Diem and Lansdale were shocked and grief-stricken. Diem asked Lansdale “to forgive what he had just said” and began crying. Lansdale held him in his arms as great sobs racked his body—the only time Lansdale ever saw him cry.70

  Thé had been shot in the back of the head. The culprit could have been French, Binh Xuyen, one of Thé’s own men, or even an agent sent by Ngo Dinh Nhu to eliminate a potential challenger to his brother.71 The mystery would n
ever be solved. Lansdale grieved over the loss, describing Thé in a letter as “a little guy who was becoming a very close friend.”72 As if sensing a shift following Thé’s death, Lansdale’s poodle, Pierre, chased away the two mongooses that Thé had given his master.73

  Thé was far from the only casualty; the Battle of Saigon left five hundred dead and two thousand wounded. In the process, however, the sect forces had been routed.74 Bay Vien and his remaining followers fled Saigon to seek refuge in the swamps and canals where they had gotten their start decades earlier. Before long, Bay Vien would retire to Paris. The Cao Dai pope fled to Cambodia. Most of the Hoa Hao leaders were either captured or surrendered. One of the last holdouts was Ba Cut, the Hoa Hao general whom Lansdale and Diem had once plotted to kill. He was finally arrested in the spring of 1956 and, despite Lansdale’s entreaties for mercy, executed by guillotine a few months later.75

  The American information officer Howard Simpson joined Vietnamese troops to search Bay Vien’s deserted and once luxurious villa, now a wreck wreathed in the smell of putrefaction. Opium-packaging equipment and Binh Xuyen identity cards were strewn on the floors. The stench came from the “rotting, fly-covered” carcasses of Bay Vien’s exotic zoo animals. “His tiger looks like an outsize deflated child’s toy; and the python, its coils ripped and torn by shrapnel, resembles a thick, discarded electrical conduit,” Simpson noted. “In one cage a black monkey, stiff with rigor mortis, lies on its back, its two long arms extended.”76

  DIEM HAD won a resounding victory—not only in the noisome and cacophonous streets of Saigon but also in the hushed corridors of power in Washington. On May 1, 1955, John Foster Dulles sent a telegram to the U.S. embassy in Saigon saying that it was impossible to stop supporting Diem at a time when, “rightly or wrongly,” he was “becoming [a] symbol of Vietnamese nationalism struggling against French colonialism and corrupt backward elements.” The U.S. government would continue “supporting Diem Government to maintain its authority and to restore law and order.”77