South Vietnam 1966

“South Vietnam 1966: War Within A War,” published in the journal Archive, May 2002

Preface
In March 1966 an internecine conflict erupted in South Vietnam that plunged America’s vulnerable ally into a state of “de facto anarchy.” The Saigon monk Ho Giac issued a dire, nearly delirious prediction: “If [the situation] continues, Vietnam will come to a tragic end, and we lose the country and everybody will become a slave and we don’t want to be slaves.”

Ironically, the statement was issued on March 16, less than a week after the crisis began and more than two weeks before South Vietnam’s prime minister, Nguyen Cao Ky, dispatched government forces to Danang to smash the rebellion. Belatedly concluding that he was confronted with “a political problem” that “must be solved by political means and not by force,” Ky ordered a retreat and subsequently conceded the Buddhist-led opposition virtually all of its demands. These measures failing to defuse a highly volatile situation, Ky again resorted to force, releasing the considerable (U.S.-subsidized) wrath of loyal government forces on dissident civilians and soldiers, first in Danang and then in Hue, where Buddhists had recommenced the galvanizing and polarizing practice of self-immolation.

By mid-June the crisis had been resolved, Ky having incarcerated some 4,000 people, many “jailed without being charged with anything.” National elections came and passed, revealing a “new spirit of optimism” in the country, and pundits warmly extolled the prime minister’s “maturity” and increased “stature.” Important lessons had been imparted. For Premier Ky – and the Buddhist opposition – the crisis “made it clear that the United States would support the military junta against all opposition …. in effect they were giving the Vietnamese the choice between the generals and the N.L.F.”

Fortunately in the end, the Buddhist warning of a “civil war that will take tens of thousands of lives because of the shortsightedness, irascibility and irresponsibility of the present government” proved unfounded. But considerable damage had been done. “In the fall of 1966,” Robert Shaplen reflected in the New Yorker magazine: “The Buddhist crisis passed into history. It had disrupted the war effort for some months and disabled the Vietnamese government in the critical area of First Corps.”

More important, the crisis had shown U.S. policy to be self-serving, hypocritical and utterly contemptuous of basic democratic principles. George Kahin concluded dryly: “The nature of U.S. objectives precluded the acceptance by American officials of any significant movement toward the development of a genuinely representative Saigon government.”

Frances Fitzgerald offered a more scathing appraisal: “[During the Buddhist crisis of spring 1966] the United States found itself backing [the Saigon government] against the biggest popular movement ever to arise out of the Vietnamese cities, and opposing what they had more or less favored all along – elections and a constitutional civilian government. What was more, they had counseled the use of force against a civilian population. What was more, they lost.”

In this paper, I will demonstrate how four major factors precipitated and prolonged the spring crisis: Premier Ky, in Frances Fitzgerald’s words, the “titular head of [a] collection of autarchic baronies” that ruled South Vietnam; the Honolulu Conference of early February 1966; the dismissal of General Thi as I Corps commander and its role in provoking the crisis; and the enigmatic but decisive role of the Buddhists, particularly that of the nominal Buddhist leader Thich Tri Quang.

Ky
Upon assuming command in June 1965, Ky instilled little confidence in Washington. He was not an unknown commodity among administration officials. As commander of the South Vietnamese Air Force, Ky exercised a decisive influence over South Vietnamese martial enterprises. Just as decisive, however, was the influence his command exerted on the political machinations of Saigon. As one reporter wryly observed, Ky’s command of the air force was “an indispensable element in any coup attempt,” the implication being that Ky, unlike his numerous predecessors, would be able to deter any future military gambit to depose him. Likewise, the observation was apt from the counter-perspective that found Ky staging coups in the months and years preceding his assumption of the prime ministry.

Bernard Fall, writing in 1967, called Ky “the stormy petrel” of the Vietnamese army (a.k.a ARVN), who was “deeply implicated in the rebellion of November 11, 1960, in which the ARVN’s parachute brigade tried to murder Ngo Dinh Diem.” Further down the undistinguished – and virtually indistinguishable – line of South Vietnamese leaders, Ky was intimately involved in a September 1964 coup attempt orchestrated by a group of ARVN infantry generals to overthrow Major General Nguyen Khanh’s regime. As a top aid to Khanh, Ky harbored the premier and instructed his pilots to fly “their bomb-laden planes low over the rebellious troops.” The generals surrendered and Ky was elevated by Khanh to the rank of brigadier general. The episode earned Ky a certain notoriety in Washington when government officials had to persuade Ky to abstain from dropping napalm on the dissident generals who were holed up in Saigon.

In October, Khanh, under pressure from Buddhists, stepped down as premier, and a new civilian legislature, the High National Council (HNC), came to power. Ky, frustrated by what he perceived to be a lack of resolve on the part of HNC “to fight the Communists,” participated in an effort undertaken by the “Young Turk” generals to dissolve the HNC. More than 20 officials and politicians, including five of the nine members of the HNC, were arrested; according to Ky, the “bad members of the HNC, bad politicians, bad students leaders.” Tran Van Huong, the new civilian premier, appointed a reluctant Ky to his cabinet. Another military coup at the end of January 1965 returned Khanh to the prime ministry. Khanh’s regime, following an unsuccessful coup attempt abetted by Ky, was supplanted by another civilian premier, Pham Huy Quat, who held on until Catholic street demonstrations chased him from office in June. A new ruling “triumvirate” headed by Major General Nguyen Van Thieu turned the South Vietnamese government over to the military once more, with the triumvirate expanding to a 10-man military junta – formally designated the National Leadership Committee – on June 19. Following two days of deliberations by the 50-member Armed Forces Council and the government cabinet, Ky, no one’s first choice (including his own), was named prime minister.

As a political neophyte, news of Ky’s appointment naturally startled Washington. But there were other, more ominous considerations that beclouded his appointment. Ky, despite having earned incontestable prestige as commander of the South Vietnamese Air Force and serving in the Huong cabinet, was not taken seriously. But while General Maxwell Taylor reviled Ky as “immature” and “irresponsible,” Henry Cabot Lodge, Taylor’s successor as U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, reserved for the new premier such cheerful qualifiers as “colorful” and “charming.” The popular press seems to have sided with Lodge. Newsweek called him a “swashbuckling man about town,” so lithe and dashing as to draw “Beatle-like squeals when he appears in public.” Ky himself affirmed that it was his public obligation to act as a “military man, a politician, and a movie star.” Known familiarly as the “Cowboy,” Ky was portrayed as a “lady killer” who frequented nightclubs and coffee houses, recited “long, tearful poetry” and carried a pistol “with the name of his latest mistress carved on the pearl handle.” But that same story referred to a darker side (if those descriptions did not already suggest one), calling Ky an “overeager, unstable young man.” This was the side that most alarmed Washington observers – and would almost prove his undoing in the spring of 1966.

Ky took a hard-line against both Communism and neutralism, the most basic prerequisites for winning Washington’s favor. But his hawkish pronouncements did little to comfort even those in Washington – and Saigon – who promoted an aggressive approach to the war. Often several months (or years) out in front of American policy, Ky had pushed for bombing the north “with his own aircraft a good six months before it was American policy to do so.” Once this was U.S. policy, Senator Robert Kennedy maintained in 1966, Ky wanted an extension of it. In early February 1966, The New York Times reported that Ky was expected to ask President Johnson to “blockade Haiphong harbor, intensify the bombing of North Vietnam and greatly increase the number of American troops in South Vietnam.”

In July, upon advocating an allied invasion of North Vietnam, Ky declared that the United States and its South Vietnamese ally would “sooner or later … as free men have to face the Chinese Communists.” One source reports that a group of 47 U.S. congressmen issued a statement in August 1966 expressing opposition to “the spiral of escalation being advocated” by Ky. According to another source, Ky “kept pressing for action against Cambodian sanctuaries,” while encouraging what the Pentagon Papers refer to as a “Khmer Serai expedition, which would cause a flare-up with the Cambodian government.” More publicly damaging was a 1964 statement – “we need four or five Hitlers in Vietnam” – which came back to haunt Ky in July 1965 when The New York Post published the quote. Ky attempted to mitigate the damage; he later claimed to have “never presented [Hitler] as my hero.” But the impression that the new prime minister was prone to rash, ill-advised statements persisted, sustained in large part through subsequent gaffes. Even Lodge, who was directed by the State Department to keep Ky on a “tight leash,” acknowledged the prime minister’s defects, observing: “His unprepared statements always worry me.”

Ambassador Taylor went further; he “thought Ky absolutely dangerous,” and opposed his nomination as prime minister. “Much to the ambassador’s chagrin,” Frances Fitzgerald writes, “Ky not only became premier, but then refused to follow his predecessors into the obscurity they no doubt deserved. The young general showed an extraordinary capacity for survival.”

Of course, Ky owed much of his “capacity for survival” to the United States. “The presence of 317,000 American troops in the country has made a mockery of its sovereignty and the military junta in Saigon would not last a week without American bayonets to protect it,” Neil Sheehan cynically observed in October 1966. But the presence of those 317,000 troops, and the escalation in the war that that number entailed, produced a relationship of mutual dependence between Ky and Washington. While official Washington may have regularly flinched at Ky’s priapic outbursts, when the premier announced as one of his 26 priority projects “a nationwide campaign in which all the people will enthusiastically strive to kill the enemy,” the rhetoric, while provocative, expressed a central imperative of the war effort.

Military and political goals being entwined as they were, Ky moved precipitously to put South Vietnam on a “war footing.”   As the ninth government in power in two years, the new prime minister could not have been expected to act in a decisive manner; but immediately Ky revealed himself to be the inexperienced politician that he was, displaying what Taylor called “an almost frightening zeal in setting about his proclaimed task of awakening an apathetic nation to its peril.” Declaring an official state of war, Ky moved quickly to establish price controls, censor the press and root out corruption, threatening to personally “shoot all corrupt officials, cowardly soldiers and speculators.” Autocratic as his rule might have appeared, Ky “made it a point never to make any critical decisions on my own,” adding: “I was prime minister of Vietnam, not a dictator.”

His 17-person cabinet was dominated by civilians, bringing together “the most representative elements of Vietnam’s social spectrum.” According to one source, “the government’s most immediate emphasis would be on ‘rural pacification’ and reconstruction,’ aimed at rooting out the Vietcong, improving the lives of peasants, and re-establishing government control.” Ky put it more succinctly, insisting that his government’s only objective was “to restore peace and return prosperity to the country after defeating the Communists” [emphasis added]. Such statements created a set of priorities that blunted the impact of Ky’s declaration in December 1965: “Vietnam needs a revolution. We need land for the landless, schools for the children, houses for the poor. We need social justice.” It was clear that the revolution would take a backseat to the war, just as Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty would ultimately be subsumed by the war in Vietnam. Ky’s intentions spoke to similar priorities vis-a-vis democratic elections. “I put first things first,” he recalled in 1976. “A victory march had to come before American dreams of free elections.” Still, in January 1966, Ky promised South Vietnam a new constitution and national elections by 1967.

By his own account, Ky’s government “achieved many successes.” “I can proudly say the majority was satisfied.” While these claims are undoubtedly inflated and self-serving (Stanley Karnow labeled as “hollow” Ky’s “effort to stamp out fraud,” concluding “corruption spread wildly as the war escalated” ), Newsweek magazine observed among U.S. officials as early as September 1965 a “moderate” optimism concerning Ky’s government, which demonstrated “encouraging signs that for the first time in years” the South Vietnamese government and the United States “see eye-to-eye on most major issues.” In February 1966, the South Vietnamese government and the United States would literally see eye to eye, at the Honolulu Conference.

Honolulu
By February 1966, the United States had committed itself so extensively to the war in Vietnam that casualties reported for that month amounted to the highest monthly figure of the war yet – an increase of 1,000 wounded over the previous high-casualty month of November 1965. In all, U.S. News and World Report disclosed, 2,622 Americans were wounded that month, 433 killed. In its March 14 issue, the magazine reported that the war had reached “a new peak of sustained intensity,” adding prophetically: “the outlook is for a still-hotter war – and rising casualties.” Just 12 days earlier, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara authorized an increase of 235,000 men; 215,000 Americans were there already.

1966 would also be the year that U.S. soldiers first outnumbered ARVN personnel and that America’s dead would first outnumber South Vietnamese fatalities. This trend began in April, near the height of the Buddhist crisis. Newsweekreported that the war was now claiming 100 Americans per week, and costing taxpayers $33 million per day. Moreover, little progress was being evidenced by such expenditures. It was estimated that under Ky the Saigon government controlled “just over 50 per cent of the nation’s total population, and perhaps a third to a fourth of its territory.”

The political costs of these figures were beginning to reveal themselves in the polls. A March 21 Gallup poll found Johnson to have a 50% public approval rating, down from 57% in February; his 33% disapproval rating was up from 28% in February. Johnson now confronted his lowest job approval rating since taking office. What’s more, he faced the daunting prospect of increased congressional scrutiny. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had on February 4 commenced hearings “that attracted widespread public attention generated by unprecedented live gavel-to-gavel coverage from the three television networks.” Senator William Fulbright, chairman of the committee, stubbornly probed the administration’s Vietnam representative, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, with hard questions pertaining to the administration’s Vietnam policy. Stanley Karnow writes: “Johnson had improvised the Honolulu Conference on the spur of the moment in order to divert media attention away from Senator Fulbright, [whose televised hearings,] Johnson feared, would heighten public doubts about the war.”

Arriving in Honolulu February 5th, Johnson welcomed Thieu and Ky to Honolulu for a two-day conference that began February 7, declaring at its outset: “Our stand must be firm as ever.” Johnson equated the Vietnamese war to U.S. efforts previously undertaken in Europe “to protect the freedom of those threatened by aggression.” Thieu, receiving word of Johnson’s remarks, revised a prepared speech in order to fully express his gratitude to Johnson for articulating “a renewed determination on the part of the United States to draw a line and stop Communist aggression in Vietnam now.” The following day Washington and Saigon found common cause in recognizing social and economic reform as a “key element” in winning the war.

More important, however, were Saigon’s solemn pledges to prosecute the war. Endeavoring to widen U.S. commitment to the Vietnamese conflict, the Saigon delegation evinced a tenacious devotion to the war that Johnson was increasingly hard-pressed to find on the mainland. Ky demonstrated his staunchness by stressing “his Government’s belief that there must be no negotiations with Communist forces from a position of weakness,” pledging South Vietnam’s “determination not to surrender or to compromise with the Communists.”

While Johnson and his South Vietnamese counterparts offered hopeful talk of a “just and honorable peace,” the administration undoubtedly found Ky’s pledges reassuring. The prospect that the Saigon government would adopt a neutralist stance – negotiating peace and asking the Americans to withdraw – was, at least for now, deferred. But military concerns – as reported by the contemporary press, as remembered by its participants, or as recognized by historians – were not the thrust of the conference. “The thrust of the Honolulu Conference,” in the Pentagon’s dispassionate analysis, “was clearly to stimulate non-military pacification efforts.” In LBJ’s more lively vernacular, the objective was to do no less than create the foundation for a “social revolution” for the people of South Vietnam. In more pragmatic tones, Johnson advised Ky to “talk about building schools instead of beheading teachers.” Johnson grafted Great Society gospel onto the war in Vietnam, determined, in Ky’s recollection, “not only to achieve victory over aggression, but to win victory over hunger, disease, and despair.”

The final outcome of the conference, the Declaration of Honolulu, reflected this conjunction of goals, placing “a new emphasis on winning the war through a combination of military action and expanded civic reform programs.” Ky avowed on February 8 that the conflict was both “a military war [and] a war for the hearts of the people,” acknowledging, “we cannot win one without the other.” He went further, adding: “The war for the hearts of the people is more than a military tactic. It is a moral principle. For this we shall strive as we fight to bring about a true social revolution.”

Of course, such rhetoric would have rung hollow had Johnson not committed his new protege to a concrete program of reform. Foremost among the reforms to which Ky committed was a promise to “formulate a democratic constitution in the months ahead, ” “to take that constitution to our people” and “to create, on the basis of elections rooted in that constitution, an elected government.” Ky had already made public his intentions to commit South Vietnam to constitutional government, and ease the military junta out of power. As Bernard Fall noted, Ky had on December 8 made a “promise to appoint a constitution-drafting committee” that was to comprise 70 to 80 members. “But since the [Ky] government seemed particularly weak at that moment, there seemed no particular hurry among South Vietnamese politicians to commit themselves to such a body.” Fall concludes, “Honolulu changed that.”

Johnson had undoubtedly profited from his trip to Honolulu. The joint communique the conference produced was to become for Ky “a kind of Bible that we are going to follow.” And Ky, more or less, would follow it (in fact, it was his agreement to appoint a constitution-drafting committee, rather than having such a body popularly elected, that would engender conflict back home in the months to come). Johnson was given a free hand to prosecute the war as he and his most ardently anti-Communist advisers saw fit, with the confidence that the present Saigon government would not only eschew a neutralist resolution to the war but would steadfastly adopt the hard-line. Furthermore, he now had the Saigon government on record, articulating in the most vivid language the most basic imperatives of U.S. intervention in South Vietnam:

We are the victims [the Declaration of Honolulu read] of an aggression directed and supported from Hanoi. That aggression – that so-called ‘war of national liberation’ – is part of the Communist plan for the conquest of all of Southeast Asia. The defeat of that aggression is vital for the future of our people of South Vietnam.

Finally, with Ky’s pledge to conduct a social revolution – to lead “an attack on ignorance and disease,” while moving toward “a goal of free self-government” – Johnson could justify the war as an extension, albeit a distant one, of his Great Society program. While the war in Vietnam might be draining funds from Johnson’s broad social agenda at home, the war was making it possible to bring its glimmering promise to the “backward” people of South Vietnam. “When you talk about defeating … social misery and establishing a stable economy and a democratic government, you speak our platform,” Johnson told Ky at the time.

But the perils of Johnson’s endorsement of Ky were just as readily apparent. One Vietnamese politician complained at the time: “Ky came back from Honolulu acting as if he were an adopted son of President Johnson.” This obviously was an instance of bitter hyperbole, but the comment accurately conveyed Ky’s subsequent posture vis-a-vis South Vietnamese politics. Frances Fitzgerald observed in 1972: “Ky returned to Vietnam, his vanity inflated, to upset the country’s delicate political balance.” Fitzgerald continues: “Ky owed his titular authority to a tacit accord with the generals who commanded South Vietnam’s four military regions. They backed him as prime minister because he was acceptable to the United States … and because he rarely meddled in their areas, where they ruled as virtual warlords.”

One of those warlords was General Nguyen Chanh Thi, a 43-year-old ARVN general who had command of the five northernmost provinces of South Vietnam, or I Corps.

Thi
According to Tom Wicker: “After the fall of Diem there were visible signs in South Vietnam of a growing ‘neutralist’ sentiment and … the generals who had come to power were probably in the best position of any government before or since to make a political arrangement with the VC and through them, Hanoi.” Of course this “neutralist” sentiment ran counter to U.S. objectives. Yet it goes a long way in demonstrating why the United States would back a military regime manifestly detached from American constitutional orthodoxy. It is true that the United States promoted national elections; but even on that count, high-ranking officials, notably Ambassador Lodge, were ambiguous. New York Times correspondent R.W. Apple reported that Lodge “himself has evidenced very little real enthusiasm for the election plan. One man who knows him well says that every time the subject comes up, he smiles like a small boy taking castor oil and extols the splendid virtues of democracy.”

Emmet John Hughes elaborates on this point: “Despite their public pieties, the United States Embassy … privately dread[s] the prospect of national elections. The fear is not quixotic: Who can guess how a people so scarred by war, and so impoverished in leadership, will practice sovereignty?”

Over the course of 18 months between the fall of Diem and the appointment of Ky as prime minister, the United States, with its unwitting Buddhist and Catholic allies, wielded scarcely concealed influence in “the vertiginous rotation of generals and politicians in and out of the seats of power.”     George Kahin in a 1979 article, demonstrates that even the military regimes – namely those of Generals Duong Van Minh (“Big” Minh) and Nguyen Khanh – betrayed neutralist tendencies. “Only with the instillation of Ky,” Kahin writes,
did the Johnson administration remain satisfied that it had as cooperative an instrument as was available for furthering its military and political goals. Once this had been achieved, ‘political stability’ again became the watchword of American policy makers as it had been until almost the end of the regime led by Diem. No more coups were to be permitted, and if one threatened –
as when … the Buddhist activists marshaled sufficient power to unseat Ky and Thieu – the U.S. threw its weight on the side of its proteges to ensure their continuing ascendancy.”

It would not be entirely accurate to depict the Buddhist insurgency in the spring of 1966 as a “threatened” coup. While there was a serious rebellion in the ARVN ranks, including among several prominent generals; and while the Buddhists did demand that Ky relinquish power; and while the government did temporarily forfeit its writ over a sizeable segment of the South Vietnamese commonwealth, the military junta continued to back Ky, the Buddhists never posed any serious threat to his primacy, and there apparently was no bodily threat to Ky that would have removed him from power. Furthermore, with the United States as an ally – only at times an explicit ally but at all times a tacit one – Ky could remain reasonably assured that not only was his authority secure but that he could take decisive action to consolidate that authority. On March 10, 1966, Ky took such action, dismissing General Thi as Commander of I Corps.

As early as September 1965 Newsweek reported that Directorate meetings were being “dominated” by Thi, mentioning the I Corps commander as the principal rival to Ky. Thi reportedly had the support not only of the troops but of “militant” Buddhists and students in the important I Corps cities Danang and Hue. The I Corps area was the “most densely populated” and “the poorest and the most intensely nationalistic” region of South Vietnam. Controlled at the time of the 1954 Geneva Accord by the Communists (Vietminh), I Corps was never fully pliable to Saigon’s rule. It was in this region where South Vietnam’s most influential political opposition leader, Tri Quang, was ensconced, and where Buddhist agitation was most vigorous, disciplined and easily mobilized. The mayor of Danang, Dr. Nguyen Van Man, expressed openly – and quite often – his disapproval of the ruling junta and appears, like Tri Quang, to have been waiting for the pretext to launch a new wave of mass demonstrations.

Demonstrations had in fact been organized by students in Hue in the fall of 1965, protesting Thieu’s Catholicism; but asNewsweek reported, the demonstrations did not reach the “peak of hysteria witnessed during the closing days of the Diem regime.” (Still, Newsweek concluded, the demonstrations were an “ominous sign.” ) The students in Hue and Danang had made common cause with the Buddhists; in a country where 80% of the population was nominally Buddhist, many of the students, of course, were Buddhists. Their increasing militancy had not escaped the notice of the press, or presumably Washington, which, to overstate the point only somewhat, made no meaningful distinction between the two groups, regarding them collectively as quasi-communist rabble who threatened to undermine the war.

And then there was General Thi. The Pentagon Papers corroborates the suggestion of conflict between Ky and Thi intimated by the September 27 Newsweek story. The Pentagon record for August 28 reads in part: “General Thi told Lodge he thought he could do a better job running the government than Ky was doing. He spoke at some length on Ky’s political weaknesses, with particular emphasis on his lack of support in I Corps…. As was his usual practice, Lodge politely brushed aside this approach.” Lodge plausibly “brushed aside” Thi’s comments because Ky was Washington’s man (even if at that point grave reservations about his capacity to run the country had not yet dissipated), and he saw no use in disrupting the (relative) political equanimity. Furthermore, Lodge, despite his high-ranking position and close distance to previous GVN intrigue (specifically the coup and assassination that terminated the Diem regime to which Lodge was a notable accomplice), may not have had sufficient influence to do anything to accommodate Thi’s ambition. But these explanations presume that Lodge wanted to accommodate that ambition.

By late 1965, Bernard Fall writes, “Thi had acquired the reputation of being in sympathy with those elements who were in favor of a negotiated settlement of the war. The facts themselves are far from clear, as no concrete evidence to that effect was ever presented.” Still, just the impression of neutralist sympathies would have been sufficient to preclude the possibility that Thi would supplant Ky. Ky added this indictment a decade later: “Many people also believed that [Thi] had picked up left-wing inclinations in Cambodia.”

“Left-wing inclinations” were easily – and quite often – conflated with neutralist inclinations. But Ky did not stop there. “Now, apparently, Thi was nursing ambitions to become an old-fashioned warlord, for I was receiving daily proof that instead of helping to maintain order in the highly sensitive Hue-Danang area, he was helping the Buddhists. So I decided he must go.” Contemporary press accounts, such as those found in the pages of The New York Times and Newsweekmagazine, readily made this same accusation – that Thi ruled I Corps as a “fiefdom, taking advice from Saigon only when he pleased” – submitting it as justification of Ky’s sudden dismissal of Thi, on March 10.

There would not have been demand for such a defense had Thi’s dismissal run a more “routine” course. Complicating matters, was the dearth of official information being publicly divulged; and what information was divulged was often distorted by incongruity or innuendo. Thi was reported to have been relieved of military and political command of I Corps on grounds “of insubordination and attempting to rule with virtual autonomy in his area.” Yet the official reason proffered by the National Leadership Committee (the military junta) claimed that the directorate had “considered and accepted General Thi’s application for vacation.” This was recognized, for good reason, as a transparent “face-saving device,” but the impression that the circumstances were unclear was itself quite clear.

The New York Times offered conjecture (that Thi had “refused to execute, or accept” government orders; that Thi had recently threatened “that unless Ky took ‘real’ action against corruption in government and business, the people of I Corps would consider themselves independent), but nothing unequivocal or even especially credible surfaced. Moreover, Thi himself was strangely silent on the matter. When he was quoted, on March 13, he refused to provide any explanation, commenting obscurely: “You will understand very soon.” Reporters could not even agree on the general’s exact whereabouts. Reports in subsequent days variously located Thi in Saigon under house arrest; in Danang, either rallying support or urging calm; and in the United States receiving treatment for an apparent sinus infection. On March 16, Thi was reported to be “showing no bitterness,” affirming that the “bonds of friendship,” presumably between himself and Ky, had “certainly not decreased in any way.” The following day, in Danang, Thi was making “ironic statements” about the junta, “reflecting his anger.”

The New York Times story that first reported Thi’s dismissal, offered the intelligence that Ky and other junta officers “had made careful soundings and had concluded that Thi’s political strength [in the northern provinces] was greatly overrated.” The Pentagon Papers confirms this. On March 9, Ky informed Lodge of the junta’s intention, assuring the ambassador that Thi could be dismissed without “ill effects” (though “he admitted that he could not prove his charges” that the general had been “culpably insubordinate” ). On March 16, The New York Times was reporting that “unnamed diplomats” had expected the demonstrations, making it reasonable to conclude that either Ky’s optimism was not taken seriously or that the U.S. embassy anticipated the dissent would be relatively benign and well-contained. Washington was satisfied that a “favorable step against ‘warlordism’” had been taken, and was persuaded, moreover, that “warlordism” had been the common practice of Thi, ignoring the inconvenient possibility that the General was not alone in exerting such autonomy.

There appear to have been a number of factors at work in transforming a relatively insignificant expulsion into a crisis that confronted South Vietnam with “the greatest possible disaster – a complete disintegration.” Pentagon records observe that “Thi had a considerable base of support in his connections with the Buddhist leadership and in his identification with Annamese sensitivities.” “Annamese sensitivities” are certainly difficult to demonstrate. Thi’s “connections with the Buddhist leadership,” while theoretically much easier to demonstrate, is also problematic, as the record produces contradiction and ambiguity. Numerous statements, official and otherwise, support the premise that Thi, if he did not enjoy any intrinsic affinity with the Buddhists, was at least in league with the Buddhist leadership. Taylor contends that “it was apparent” that Thi “together with Tri Quang and his political bonzes were likely to make common cause against Ky.” Ky, typically, adopted a cynical view of Thi’s intentions, reporting to have had “no doubt in my mind that [Thi] was actively using the Buddhists to promote his own power.”

But the relationship between Thi and the Buddhists was tenuous at best. During the early days of the crisis, before it had yet been identified as a crisis, newspaper accounts reveal a striking ambivalence about linking Buddhists in Hue and Danang to the incipient demonstrations and work stoppages precipitated by Thi’s dismissal. The earliest reports, however, displayed no diffidence in making the connection. New York Times correspondent Charles Mohr reported as early as March 11 that there was already speculation that Thich Tri Quang (“Thich” is a religious title meaning “the venerable”) would lead agitation on Thi’s behalf. When protests were launched in Danang that same day, the several thousand demonstrators gathered in Hung Vuong Square “cheered speakers calling for [Thi’s] return.”

Thi’s “close ties with the Buddhists” could readily account for both a manifesto issued by Buddhists in Saigon calling for Thi’s reinstatement (and election of civilian leaders) and the elation reportedly felt among Catholics, who vowed to “cause trouble if the Buddhists did.” By March 14, however, Neil Sheehan, covering events in Danang, observed: “It is difficult … to determine how widespread the sympathy for General Thi actually is and to what extent he enjoys the support of the inhabitants of the … cities.” Sheehan goes on to question the motives of the “shop owners and dock workers” who stayed away from work, suggesting that they “had been told to do so by local officials.”

The role of these local officials is an important one and perhaps more closely approaches the reality of the circumstances. In both Danang and Hoian, Sheehan continued, “most crowds at the demonstrations have shown little enthusiasm.” The story identifies as the leaders of the agitation “proteges of General Thi” who have “avoided as much as possible being identified in public,” even going so far as to hide “behind a banner” while addressing the crowd. As demonstrations and strikes continued in both cities, R.W. Apple was more direct, contending that the agitation was “being led by military and civilian officeholders who fear they may lose their jobs with Thi’s dismissal.” Unnamed American diplomats substantiated this argument, as they expressed mounting concern over the “official sponsorship of the agitation.”

Still, the presence – indeed, the collusion – of Buddhist leaders was unquestioned. “Reliable sources” informed The New York Times that work stoppages were being enforced by “local Vietnamese military, civilian and police officials” who appeared “to have allied with the Buddhists.” Day after day thousands turned out for demonstrations in Danang and in Hue where students and Buddhists were increasingly joining protests led by “officials.” “Until today,” Sheehan reported on March 18, “the general population in Central Vietnam showed only mild concern over Thi’s dismissal.” Likewise the student leaders, who “until today showed no desire for reinstatement.” But with Thi’s arrival in Hue (where he had been dispatched by Ky to appeal for an end to the agitation), the assembled throng, estimated at 20,000 “clearly display[ed] considerable affection” for the general. As Sheehan’s reporting suggests, the rallies and street demonstrations were being increasingly exploited by student and Buddhist leaders who, despite their belated embrace of Thi, were to advance an anti-government campaign whose demands would eclipse and finally eliminate the call for Thi’s reinstatement. Upon returning to Hue in triumph Thi “soon slipped into the background, outmaneuvered by Tri Quang.”

Tri Quang
Soon after becoming prime minister in 1965, Ky told Newsweek, “I’m ready anytime to accept advice … but not with a gun pointed at me.” The gun to which he referred was a clear allusion to the street demonstrations that had been instrumental in bringing down Ky’s GVN predecessors. Ky told Nguyen Khanh in 1965 that as prime minister Khanh “was dividing the country by deliberately stoking the fires of discontent.” “You are prime minister of Vietnam, and you must do everything to unite our country,” he urged Khanh.

Ky had a simple prescription: he advised the prime minister to “take strong measures to stop demonstrations that are against the national interest.” Later, confronted with the grim prospect that Buddhist demonstrations would not only sink his own government but would derail the war effort and possibly consume South Vietnam in civil war, Ky promised “very, very strong measures” against unrest. Yet he initially proved so reluctant to apply such measures that American officials were said to be puzzled by his inaction, one official assailing the Ky government for lacking “the guts” to impose its authority . (Newsweek had a different opinion, commending the government for having “conducted itself with exemplary restraint.” )

Though cautious in doing so, Washington urged Ky to put down the anti-government demonstrations with armed force. Ky demurred. “I did not want to create any martyrs,’ he said. On March 22, Ky minimized the significance of the imbroglio, concluding in a meeting with Lodge that the “Buddhists were divided among themselves,” an analysis Lodge shared. They agreed that “Tri Quang simply has not got the powerful psychological factors working for him now that he had in October ’63” (when the Buddhist monk played a decisive role in upending the Diem government). But by March 29, Ky was ready to intervene. In both Hue and Danang, the prime minister enlisted the services of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) in airlifting two battalions of Vietnamese rangers to Danang. Lodge, though careful to restrict any direct U.S. involvement , was satisfied with Ky’s decision, calling Buddhist demands “a naked grab for power.” Ky concurred, apparently concluding that martyrs could now be tolerated.

Martyrs were one thing. Tri Quang was quite another. “South Vietnam’s High Priest of Disorder,” in Time magazine’s glib appraisal, Tri Quang was the director of the Institute of Religious Affairs of the Unified Buddhist Church. Regarded as “the main figure behind the opposition to the Ky regime,” Tri Quang in the spring of 1966 “again demonstrated that he is one of South Vietnam’s most powerful leaders.” During the spring crisis, Tri Quang and his influence appeared to be everywhere, yet his pubic appearances were relatively few. Preferring to conduct political business in small conclaves – “a new kind of backroom bonze” was one magazine’s apt phrase – Tri Quang exerted undeniable influence on the events that spring; but the extent of that influence is less certain. As we have seen, the early demonstrations were initiated not by the Buddhist leadership but by anxious civil servants loyal to Thi. The Buddhists quickly seized control of the unrest, using it as a “lever to restore civilian government to Vietnam.”

While the Buddhists wasted no time, issuing on March 13 a manifesto demanding national elections and making their presence known through newspaper interviews, the leadership quickly split on critical issues. As the Buddhists pressed their demands, they encountered possibly unforeseen resolve from the government. On March 19, The New York Times reported Saigon’s refusal to “yield to” Buddhist pressure, the government disclosing that no concessions would be made “as long as Buddhist pressure is exerted.” Ky, according to government sources, “hoped to drive a wedge between Buddhists.” The junta met that same day, deciding to “concede nothing under duress.” And temporarily at least, it seemed that they would not have to.

On March 19, the threat to the Saigon regime “evaporated,” as the moderate wing of the Unified Buddhist Church led by Thich Tam Chau, head of the Buddhist Institute for Secular Affairs, made a statement that, in contrast to the tenor of recent events, seemed unexpectedly, even excessively conciliatory. Speaking to a rally of 10,000 people, Tam Chau, who had met earlier with Ky in an “exploratory session,” insisted: “We have no essential differences with the present junta. Some people think we want to force the generals out of office. This is not true. We are very grateful to the generals [of the ruling military junta]. Ky brought about some stability in the last eight months, and his government has made a tremendous effort to bring the religions together.”

While Tam Chau’s attitude toward supplanting the government did not differ from that of Tri Quang’s, as expressed in a March 19 interview – the Buddhists “don’t want to overthrow this government,” Tri Quang said – Tam Chau made no allusion to the junta’s “promises” (to hold elections) or showed any inclination to “urge [the junta] to carry them out in due season,” as Tri Quang did. Morever, Tam Chau’s statement was strikingly different from the menacing comments made earlier in the week by Tri Quang. “If we want to do something,” the Buddhist leader threatened, “we have plans and the means to do it. Just wait and see.” Tri Quang went on to say that Ky was hated, calling the premier “too ‘show-offy’.” Ky, he contended, “made grandiloquent statements for no good at all” and was “indulging in a cult of personality.” But most ominous of all was his statement, “I should say in all seriousness that if the United States relies on the present government to implement such plans, everything will be doomed to failure. If the Americans would like us to kill each other, would like us to undermine our armed forces and disrupt our country, then let them continue to rely on the people of the present government. If they want their plans to help us in a social revolution to be carried out for good, then they should rely on other people.”

Ensuing events would show Thich Tam Chau’s statement to be the more anomalous of the two; but a split had been established between the country’s two most important Buddhist leaders that would persist until the end of the crisis in June, mitigating somewhat Tri Quang’s influence and his ability to control events. Furthermore, the Johnson administration was said to be “openly supporting” the Tam Chau faction, considering it “more moderate,” while shunning Tri Quang as a “divisive element.”

In 1963, Tri Quang had enjoyed the advantage of U.S. backing during the Diem crisis, even seeking sanctuary for two months in the U.S. embassy in Saigon. “This advantage,” Maxwell Taylor reflected in 1972, “was [in 1966] neutralized by mounting evidence that Tri Quang had lost his standing with the Americans, who by now had come to know him as a dangerous conspirator who, if not actually controlled by Hanoi leaders, often conducted himself in strict conformity with their interests.” (The connection with Hanoi and Communism is one that I will explore momentarily.)

Another illustration of Tri Quang’s uncertain influence is the curious sequence of events that occurred in the days and weeks following Tam Chau’s statement of March 19. On March 20 a “series of political accords – apparently tentative rather than final” were revealed, the presumed medium in the Buddhist retreat. When an improvident threat voiced publicly by Ky on March 19 was published in the Saigon press on March 21, the compromise began to unravel. Ky proffered “a warning to those who by reason of personal resentment and dissent are scheming to betray and sell out the nation,” angering the Buddhists who nonetheless reiterated their policy of “moderation, nonviolence and constant patience.”

After nearly a month of escalating demonstrations, Ky’s abortive Danang offensive, and finally a tentative truce, a national political congress was convened by Ky on April 12. But the Buddhists boycotted the congress. As a consequence, the Buddhist leadership exerted no direct influence on its outcome (even if it essentially satisfied their demands) and further antagonized the government, which “appeared to have left itself some room [to] maneuver” at a later date by conceivably refusing “to accept the recommendations of the congress.” Most portentous of all, Buddhist leaders – including Tri Quang – failed to curb the anti-government agitation that continued virtually uninterrupted until May 14 when government forces moved into Danang and subsequently crushed the insurgency, producing a political and military crisis of nearly calamitous proportions. “Only in the last dark days of dictator Ngo Dinh Diem had South Vietnam teetered so perilously close to total anarchy,” observed Newsweek magazine.

It is worth emphasizing that Tri Quang’s tour of Hue and Danang – where he urged an end to the demonstrations and discouraged listeners from “paying too much attention to overthrowing the government” – proved wholly unavailing, further weakening the hypothesis, so often propounded in 1966, that Tri Quang exercised absolute “control” over his followers.

In those appearances in Hue and Danang on April 18 and 19, Tri Quang played on an overt theme of anti-Americanism. This had become a component of the demonstrations as early as March 30 when a banner raised at a Saigon demonstration declared “Down with U.S. Obstructionism.” As the crisis deepened, especially after six United States Air Force C-130 transports were used in delivering 1,500 South Vietnamese marines to Danang on April 5, crowds of Vietnamese civilians bearing signs declaring “Vietnam For Vietnamese” and “Down With American Imperialism” became a regular feature of news reports. Increasing in both frequency and fury were incidents involving anti-American vandalism and violence, incidents that included the burning of two American jeeps and attempts to “beat up a number of American soldiers and newsmen.”

The Associated Press reported on April 9 that “a dozen Americans were beaten, manhandled, or pursued” while “five United States servicemen were injured by a grenade.” An American civil engineer, Newsweek reported, was driving a motorcycle though downtown Saigon when he and his Vietnamese “girlfriend” were attacked; their assailants subsequently burned the bike. The next day more than 12 American civilians and GIs were “manhandled” “in a nightlong orgy of rioting and destruction.”

But a sign displayed prominently in a Roman Catholic demonstration in Saigon demonstrates the ambiguities involved in this anti-American sentiment. “We Are Grateful To American Friends,” the top line read, concluding: “Kick Out C. Lodge.” Tri Quang, at least initially, exhibited similar ambivalence. “I never said the U.S. should leave,” he reminded a reporter in April. In Time magazine, the Buddhist leader elaborated on the point: “One should not ask whether Americans should remain in Viet Nam. It is agreed by all that the struggle against Communism here must be made with the assistance of the Americans. So the problem is really how to enhance the value of that assistance.”

On April 19, Tri Quang, addressing a crowd of 5,000 in Hue, condemned American “interference” in Vietnamese affairs, pledging the prospective national assembly to help South Vietnam stand against colonialism. By June, Tri Quang, demoralized by what he (correctly) perceived as American indifference, if not outright hostility to his cause, denounced President Johnson on a clandestine radio station broadcast to the pagodas of Hue. “Your crime and your plot can only be compared to a century of French colonialism,” he alleged. Later, addressing American religious leaders by letter, Tri Quang carried his malediction further, calling the situation in Vietnam “a tragic carnage of the Vietnamese people” that had “deteriorated to a point where it is comparable with, if not worse than, a Communist domination.”

Taking such pronouncements into consideration, it is not difficult to see how Washington (including its representatives in the U.S. Embassy in Saigon) would disdain and finally isolate Tri Quang. Ambassador Taylor referred laconically to Quang as “a political opportunist and an unreliable ally.” Nor was this aversion to the Buddhist monk confined to Washington officials. Time called Tri Quang “devious” and “contradictory,” while further characterizing him as “fiercely nationalistic and xenophobic” (with some justification it would appear). Premier Ky, going even further, denounced Tri Quang as a “pseudo-pious humbug” who “imagined himself to be a second Gandhi, but in fact was nothing more than a politically motivated intriguer.”

What is more difficult to understand, in any objective sense at least, is the connection consistently made linking Tri Quang (and by extension the militant Buddhist faction he represented) to communism (and by extension, Hanoi). It was widely reported that spring that Tri Quang had been arrested twice by the French “for associations with the Communist Vietminh.” Moreover, Tri Quang’s brother was, according to Newsweek magazine, a Communist official in Hanoi. But Tri Quang’s numerous public pronouncements on communism were uniformly unflattering – and remarkably compatible with those made by Premier Ky. Arnaud de Borchgrave, writing in Newsweek, maintained that “leaders of Buddhists [have] said over and over that no Communist party in Asia can live in harmony with other political parties.” And, despite the credible premise that Viet Cong had to some degree infiltrated the Buddhist protest movement (U.S. intelligence reports in April 1966 were said to confirm this), there is no reason to believe that the Buddhists and the Communists, “like two roads meeting … were now treading the same path, thanks to the skillful Communist exploitation of Buddhist disturbances.”

Max Frankel, while conceding that “some Vietcong agents were undoubtedly active among the anti-junta, anti-American demonstrators,” argued in a New York Times editorial that “the protests and riots could be adequately explained without injecting the question of Communist influence. R.W. Apple concurred, noting: “There is a quasi-agnostic streak in Vietnamese Buddhism, but it still has enough religious content for its followers to fear the atheism of Communism.” Tri Quang confirmed Apple’s assertion (“we don’t not like Communism because it is atheistic,” he told a reporter ); but went much further: “The Communists are against us because our religion is tied to the Vietnamese nation – because it has always had a nationalist character. The Communists always want to be a mass organization, but Buddhism is the mass.”

Even on the question of the national assembly, Tri Quang adopted the position being advocated by Premier Ky, preferring to exclude Vietcong from participating in the upcoming elections. “As for the Buddhists,” he affirmed, “we will try to inform all the faithful of the danger of such elements,” adding: “As far as I am concerned, as a religious man, the ideology [the Communists] possess is much more dangerous than the guns they possess.”

What was troubling to Tri Quang’s critics, especially those most determined to fight the Communists, was the perception that his continuing influence would seriously impinge upon, if not actually end, the war effort. The New York Times characterized him as a “nationalist who ultimately hopes to achieve a neutralist solution for Vietnam,” and this possibility, the paper concluded, “is a very grim one.” What was more, Tri Quang was on record, commenting (in a statement superficially at odds with his anti-Communist convictions): “The Buddhist people do not want war on either side.” While this apparent ambivalence might be comparable to Trotsky’s improbable dictum “neither war nor peace,” Tri Quang’s definitive position on the war, that any peace in Vietnam “should be the result of a victory over the Communists and a victory for the Vietnamese people,” conformed with that of both Washington and Saigon. Moreover, the former statement – “the Buddhist people do not want war on either side”– was most likely an expression of the humanitarian impulse for peace, an impulse expressed formally by President Johnson and Premier Ky at the Honolulu Conference.

Tri Quang, then, represented a serious threat to Washington and Saigon in his insistence on accelerating the timetable for planned reform (Tri Quang “wants to accelerate the timetable very, very much indeed” William Bundy, assistant secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, said on the NBC program “Today” in early April ). But perhaps more damaging was Tri Quang and the Buddhists’ vexing (and most militant) manner of exposing the hypocrisy of Washington/ GVN policy. An April 13 resolution adopted by the Southern Christian Leadership Coalition, headed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., implored the Johnson administration “to desist from aiding the military junta against the Buddhists, the Catholics, and students of Vietnam, whose efforts to democratize their Government are more in consonance with our traditions than the policy of military oligarchy.” The resolution went on to point out the “immorality and tragic absurdity of [a] position” that required the United States to “protect our nationals from the population and army we were told were our cherished allies and toward whom we were benefactors.”

Tri Quang, and the “flash-fire outbreak of riotous domestic political attacks” with which he was identified, made it abundantly clear in the spring of 1966 that this position was also dangerously untenable.