Word: coups
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Viet Nam rest on a stable, representative South Vietnamese government, able to carry an increasing burden of the fighting and, within reason, hold its own politically once peace comes a chilling hours last week, those hopes seemed about to be dashed to bits. Rumors of a military coup against the elected government of President Nguyen Van Thieu swept through Sai gon and the Vietnamese armed forces were ordered on full alert. All the night marish instability of 1960-65, with all its coups and coup attempts, seemed about to begin again. While the rumors eventually proved false, the scare...
Confusion Compounded. At once, the capital's rumor mills, always idling, started to whirr in high gear with the message that there had been a coup and that key officers had been arrested. Riot police carrying wicker shields and tear gas began to cruise around the city, on guard for demonstrations; there were none. The confusion was compounded when a high-ranking government official leaked word that a coup attempt had been thwarted. Other officials denied there had been such an attempt, and President Thieu felt it necessary to go on nationwide radio and television to announce that there...
...Thieu nipped a real coup in the bud? Or had he perhaps raised the specter of a coup to weed out men potentially dangerous to his regime? The U.S. mission dismissed the crisis as "a case of rumor feeding upon rumor." But the Americans in Saigon were troubled by the events, or nonevents, of the week. All summer, U.S. officials have been reporting home that the Vietnamese army and political climate have been improving. To make those reports stick, they have told the Vietnamese in no uncertain terms that one more coup will be the coup...
...main factors were behind the coup. For one thing, even though the Guard had supported him during the election, Arias reawakened the officers' longstanding animosity by trying to weaken the Guard's grip on the country's political life. He threatened to transfer, and in one case exile, a number of the leading officers. In addition, after he won a landslide victory over former Finance Minister David Samudio, Arias outraged many Panamanians by undertaking a series of unsavory political maneuvers designed to give his followers a majority in the 42-seat National Assembly...
...officers decided to strike first. The co-leaders of the coup were Lieut. Colonel Omar Torrijos, the Guard's executive officer, who had been ordered to leave Panama, and Major Boris Martinez, who is the commander of Chiriqui province military zone. At their bidding one evening last week, their brother officers quietly dispatched units from the 3,900-man force to shoo civilians off the streets of the country's two main cities, Panama City and Colón, seize the radio stations and close the international airport. Arias, 67, who is experienced in such matters, at once...