Shadow Warrior

by Randall B. Woods

  The Civilian Irregular Defense Groups in the Central Highlands and Father Hoa’s Catholic Youth in the Ca Mau peninsula were promising starts in the emerging counterinsurgency/pacification initiative envisioned by Bill Colby and his colleagues, but they did not address the political core of Vietnam—the Buddhist-Confucian majority. At one point, Nhu pleaded with Colby to provide a step-by-step plan to build a stable democracy in Vietnam; the trouble was, he said, that the communists had a plan, and the “Free World” did not. A charismatic strongman like his brother would serve only as a temporary stopgap. The West expected underdeveloped countries to move from colonialism to democracy in one step, he complained.53

  Nhu and Diem, it will be recalled, had very different ideas about how best to mobilize the Vietnamese-Buddhist peasantry, with Nhu committed to an essentially political stratagem and Diem to an economic-military one. Colby, of course, discreetly sided with Nhu. In October 1961, the counselor to the president convened a meeting of province chiefs and informed them that he wanted to launch a “social revolution . . . in which a new hierarchy should be established, not based on wealth or position.” The most important people in a village would be the model anticommunist fighters. The losers, he said, would be the “notables and gentry,” many of whom had been “lackeys of the imperialists and colonialists.”54

  Shortly thereafter, Colby persuaded Nhu to try going national with the CIDG model, adding a political component. The counselor was receptive, but his brother was not. Diem’s prime minister, Tran Van Huong, told Colby that weapons delivered to villagers could easily find their way into the hands of the Viet Cong. Colby replied that arms were not the primary issue; the real enemy was communist propaganda and political action. Huong did not say so, but what he and Diem were really afraid of was that weapons furnished to peasant groups could be used to fuel a noncommunist uprising against the regime.55

  In late 1961, the South Vietnamese president decided to hire his own counterinsurgency expert—Sir Robert Thompson. As usual, Colby adapted to the situation. As plans for what became known as the Strategic Hamlet Program evolved, it became clear that the main difference between Nhu and Colby, on the one hand, and Diem and Thompson, on the other, was that the American wanted development and political indoctrination—“winning hearts and minds”—to come first, and physical security to follow. Thompson, whom Nhu regarded as nothing more than a colonial administrator, favored fences, moats, guard towers, self-defense forces, and police first, and political and economic development second. Colby and Nhu eventually conceded the point, and the Strategic Hamlet Program was born. In February 1962, Diem announced an interministerial committee to manage it and named Nhu its chairman.56

  Colby got behind the Strategic Hamlet Program with a vengeance. In theory, it had everything—local self-defense, economic development, health care, and education—all leading to a sense of empowerment. It had been child’s play, Colby wrote, for a few armed communist cadres to enter a village at night, terrorize and propagandize the population, recruit soldiers, and impose taxes. Not so anymore. There were failures, fraud, and fakeries, he admitted, but the program marked the beginning of the first nationwide response to the Viet Cong. And, by Hanoi’s own later admission, the sheer volume of the military and economic activity of the program eliminated the Viet Cong presence from hundreds of villages, even in those where the local populace was hostile to the South Vietnamese government.57

  On the whole, however, the Strategic Hamlet operation was a failure, and, like the Agroville initiative, largely counterproductive. At Nhu’s insistence, arms were not given to village defense forces, but merely “loaned” for a period of six months. The provincial leadership, itself rich and well-educated, was supposed to support a new system that accorded no special status to wealth, social position, or education. That did not happen. There was no meaningful land reform. The assumption that the South Vietnamese peasantry was either anticommunist or neutral was erroneous. In some villages, there were families that had supported the Viet Minh and its successors for three generations. Finally, the man Nhu relied on to implement the program was Colonel Pham Ngoc Thao, a Catholic and a favorite of the Ngo family. He was also a communist agent. Thao used his position to see that as many strategic hamlets were built in communist strongholds as possible, thus exposing the settlements to maximum external attack and internal subversion.58

  Colby later recalled his first meeting with Thao:

  I arose at 4:00 A.M. one morning to meet National Assemblywoman Pauline Nguyen Van Tho, a graduate of Bowdoin College in Maine, and drive south with her to her constituency in Kien Hoa province, historically a redoubt of the Communists in the war against the French and once again beginning to stir with revolutionary fever. We were met there by the new province chief, Colonel Pham Ngoc Thao, who combined strong Catholic credentials with an active role in the Viet Minh rebellion against the French. . . . After describing the benefits of concentrated economic and social development programs in building up the villages, and then providing these viable communities with local security forces, he took us on a tour by motorboat. We went through the canals to an arm of the Mekong, meandering through the delta on its way to the sea, and stopped at a small village. The inhabitants greeted Colonel Thao as a frequent visitor, and I was further impressed by the fact that he needed no guards for himself or his Saigon visitors.59

  During his first two years as station chief, Colby had made a significant start toward his goal of seeing South Vietnam and the United States partner in an effort to win the support of the rural population. The CIA’s efforts—the CIDGs, the Fighting Fathers, and so on—were small and sporadic, and the Saigon government’s nationwide effort—the Strategic Hamlet Program—ended up with more failures than successes; but at least there were signs that some in authority were beginning to recognize that the conflict in South Vietnam was a “people’s war” rather than a conventional conflict. The events of 1962 and 1963 would conspire to sidetrack the pacification/counterinsurgency train with—to Colby’s mind at least—near disastrous results.

  10

  THE MILITARY ASCENDANT

  Bill Colby had a love-hate relationship with the military. He was a warrior and had immense respect for soldiers, but he did not trust the military as an institution. Though it was free of corruption, and for the most part apolitical, the US military was hidebound and inflexible. As an institution, it lacked agility, the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. And if there was ever a time and a place for pragmatism and imagination, it was the Cold War in the developing world. The Vietnamese military suffered from the same rigidities, but it was also in many places and at many levels incompetent and corrupt. One of the reasons Colby continued to support the House of Ngo was that it transcended the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. But then, in 1962–1963, to Colby’s great dismay, and to the detriment of the counterinsurgency/pacification effort, the military captured the flag in both Washington and Saigon.

  Early on the morning of February 15, 1962, the residents of Saigon were again awakened by the thud of bombs and the rattle of machine-gun fire. Stanley Karnow, an American journalist, recalled the scene: “Rushing to my hotel room window, I peered across the city to see smoke billowing above the presidential palace, nine or ten blocks away. I pulled on my clothes, ran downstairs, and sprinted up Tu Do . . . to the Boulevard Norodom, a handsome avenue that opened onto the palace, an imposing structure that dated back to French colonial days. It was now a flaming shambles. Overhead, beneath a low cloud cover, two fighter aircraft were circling in an almost leisurely racetrack pattern.”1

  Bill Colby was preparing to head for the office when he heard the roar of aircraft overhead, followed by explosions at the palace. “I quickly went to the porch to see another airplane coming in low and aimed at us,” he wrote in Lost Victory. “I saw its rockets release. I ducked into the house and herded the family and servants into a protected area under the stairs while some of the rockets detonated in the trees in front of
the house.” Carl Colby was already at school when the assault began. Naturally, the students were sent home, but that decision, with the Colby residence three doors down from the presidential residence, meant the child would be deposited into the heart of the battle. Government tanks and personnel carriers clogged the streets. “I was picking up shrapnel because I thought I could use it in show and tell,” Carl remembered. “Then I walked into the house and there was glass and some plaster on the floor. My heart sank. Then my father stuck his head around the door of the kitchen and said, ‘Sit down, sport. We’re having lunch.’”2

  The attack on the palace was not the harbinger of a coup but an attempt to assassinate Diem and Nhu by two South Vietnamese Air Force pilots. They had turned back from a combat mission against the Viet Cong and dropped their ordnance on the palace because they had been passed over for promotion and believed that the government was not prosecuting the war with sufficient vigor. One was shot down over the Saigon River; the other escaped to Cambodia. The Ngo brothers, their paranoia increasing, chose to view the attack as part of a multifaceted plot to oust them. This fear, coupled with the Bay of Pigs fiasco, spelled trouble for the Civilian Irregular Defense Group program as well as counterinsurgency and pacification in general.

  From its inception, Colby’s initiative with the Rhade had been plagued by hostility and jealousy on the part of the South Vietnamese military and the provincial governors. Even as it complained about American usurpation, the ARVN refused to supply the officers that Combined Studies had asked for. Layton later described the role of South Vietnamese government officials in the program as one of “obstructionism, jealousy, suspicion and continual concerted drive to get their hands in the till.” In the spring of 1962, two Viet Cong companies attacked the village of Buon Trap. With the defenders under siege, a strike-force relief unit had to fight its way through a large ambush before it could relieve them. While the battle raged, a company of ARVN marines sat on a hill overlooking the village and did nothing. Dave Nuttle, who was a CIDG adviser, subsequently learned that they were cheering for the Rhade and Viet Cong to kill each other.3

  Beginning in June 1962, Nhu started pressuring Combined Studies to turn over CIDG villages to local ARVN commanders. That same month, Colonel Le Quang Tung’s Special Forces began moving in and disarming the Rhade. The government then drafted strike-force members into the regular army and sent them to the Cambodian-Laotian border to guard the frontier. The Highlanders were, of course, interested in protecting their homes and families, not the Vietnamese, and they melted away into the jungle. As far as the Montagnards were concerned, the government in Saigon and the Americans had violated both the letter and the spirit of their original agreements. During the Vietnamese takeover, two Montagnard representatives petitioned Layton. Why have you abandoned us? they asked. “Mr. Dave” had come to the villagers and promised them that the weapons they were being given would belong forever to the Rhade. Without arms, the villagers would once again be at the mercy of the Vietnamese; it mattered not whether they were from the South Vietnamese government or the Viet Cong. Their appeals fell on deaf ears. In truth, the CIA was in the process of being pushed out of the paramilitary business in Vietnam.4

  If distrust and antagonism from Saigon were not enough, the CIDGs and other CIA-run covert operations in Vietnam were coming under attack from Washington. In October 1961, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Maxwell Taylor and Deputy National Security Adviser Walt Rostow arrived in South Vietnam to conduct a fact-finding mission for President Kennedy. Colby almost missed them; he had been summoned to Baguio, in the Philippines, together with other Far Eastern heads of station, to meet with newly appointed DCI John A. McCone. He arrived back in Saigon just as Taylor and Rostow were preparing to leave. “I had the chance for no more than a hurried exchange with Taylor and Rostow at the end of their visit,” he wrote in his account of the Vietnam conflict, “certainly not enough to give the rationale for our approach and to interest them in its potential.”

  Upon his return to Washington, Taylor advised the White House and the 303 Committee that the CIA was not adequately staffed or organized to carry out any but the smallest paramilitary operations. Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and MAAG smelled blood. Unlike the regular military, McNamara did not disdain unconventional warfare—he had vocally seconded Robert and Jack Kennedy’s enthusiasm for special forces—but he believed that any and all paramilitary operations should be controlled by the Department of Defense (DOD). The new DCI was not one to swim against the tide. On June 28, 1962, the 303 Committee met to consider the Agency’s request for a $10 million supplemental to support the CIDGs, the Sea Swallows (Father Hoa’s Catholic Youth), and other paramilitary operations. McCone spoke up: “It may be advisable for DOD to take the lead in CIA counterinsurgency programs, with the CIA in support, rather than the reverse situation.” Thus was “Operation Switchback” born. It would have a profound impact on America’s struggle to contain communism in Southeast Asia.5

  Colby would have an opportunity to monitor and, he hoped, influence Switchback directly. In the summer of 1962, Desmond FitzGerald, who had been named head of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs in the Directorate of Plans, summoned the former Jedburgh to Washington and asked him to become his deputy. Colby recognized a promotion when he saw one, but he asked FitzGerald for another year in Vietnam to see his various projects through to maturity. FitzGerald said no—and so the Colbys bid a fond farewell to Vietnam. Before leaving, in company with General Nguyen Khanh, Diem’s military aide, and General Tran Van Don, from whose father-in-law the Colbys had rented their second house, the station chief toured the Highlands. Bill accepted a tiger skin from the Corps Commander, General Ton That Dinh; visited Father Hoa in Ca Mau; and then met Barbara and the children (sans baby Catherine and the newly independent John) as they emerged from a drive over the picturesque Hai Van Pass separating Hue and Danang. The entire family attended an exit interview with President Diem. Smoking cigarette after cigarette, Diem reminisced from early afternoon until dusk. Finally, Bill interjected: “Mr. President, we would like to continue this conversation as long as you would like, but we are expected for dinner at the ambassador’s and your brother will be there.” Diem apologized and called in the photographer.6

  Colby was well-satisfied with his work in Vietnam: “For one thing, I could feel that CIA had played a key role in helping to find a proper strategy by which to fight the war,” he wrote. “Moreover, the station had contacts and influence throughout Vietnam, from the front and rear doors of the Palace, to the rural communities, among the civilian opponents of the regime and the commanders of all the key military units.”7 Following a leisurely trip halfway around the world that included stops to see the Taj Mahal in India, Jerusalem, Greece, Rome, Lourdes, and the bull rings of Spain, the Colbys arrived back in Washington in the summer of 1962. To Barbara’s delight, Bill bought a house in suburban Bethesda, Maryland, and equipped her with a station wagon.

  Colby found the atmosphere in Washington very different from when he had last worked there in 1951. The CIA was in turmoil on several levels. Throughout the 1950s, Americans had viewed their spooks and spies as unadulterated heroes. Even, and sometimes especially, to those on the political left, the Agency was exemplary. Had not Joe McCarthy himself targeted the CIA for a purge? “After all,” Colby wrote, “we were the derring-do boys who parachuted behind enemy lines, the cream of the academic and social aristocracy, devoted to the nation’s service, the point men and women in the fight against totalitarian aggression, matching fire with fire in an endless round of thrilling adventures like those of the scenarios of James Bond films.” In those halcyon days there had been no journalistic exposés or congressional investigations. The press accorded the Agency a privileged position, heeding its call to refrain from reporting on its activities in the name of national security and even allowing operatives to use jobs in the print and broadcast media as cover. Congressional oversight was superficial, at best. Th
e CIA director consulted periodically and vaguely with the chairmen of the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees as well as with a subcommittee of the latter that supervised the process by which the CIA’s budget was hidden among those of other agencies. The senators and congressmen, typified by Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, were patriotic, anticommunist, and discreet. All agreed that in the intelligence business, the need for secrecy trumped both the press and the public’s need to know. Russell told the director that though he was entitled to detailed information about the Agency’s activities, he didn’t want it “except in the rarest of cases.”8

  But the Bay of Pigs had tarnished the CIA’s image and opened a Pandora’s Box. Virtually every literate American became aware of the CIA, and not in a positive way. The botched invasion of Cuba made the Agency appear callous, incapable of secrecy, and, worst of all, inept. Contempt and respect are mutually exclusive. America’s James Bond had become a character out of Laurel and Hardy. Media coverage of the nation’s intelligence community intensified. News stories appeared on the CIA’s failed attempt to oust Sukarno in Indonesia, its use of ex-Nazis to build the West German intelligence service, the Gary Powers U-2 fiasco, and other failures.

  No one was angrier at the CIA and its humiliation of the president over the botched Bay of Pigs operation than Robert Kennedy, JFK’s alter ego and guardian angel (or devil, as some would say). The attorney general, with the White House’s approval, had decided to seize control of the intelligence community and do what it had not been able to do—get rid of Castro. JFK had wanted to appoint his brother DCI, but Bobby felt the White House needed to distance itself from covert operations. After six months, the Kennedys had settled on McCone, a deeply conservative Catholic from California who had made a fortune in the shipbuilding business. He had served in both the Truman and Eisenhower Defense Departments and as head of the Atomic Energy Commission. Robert Kennedy and McCone immediately bonded; the attorney general’s Hickory Hill home was adjacent to the brand-new CIA headquarters compound at Langley, Virginia, and he would often stop by to visit with McCone on his way to the Justice Department in downtown Washington.