Word: coups
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...which so far has accounted for nearly 1,500 Communists killed, continued in smaller-scale, company-size operations by the 1st Air Cav. Though Double Eagle and White Wing failed to make contact with the four Communist regiments operating in Binh Dinh, the 1st Air Cav scored a notable coup last week. Its men captured Viet Cong Lieut. Colonel Dong Doan, who obligingly led them straight to a regimental headquarters defended by a token force. The 1st Air Cav took it in fierce hand-to-hand fighting, killing 150 of its garrison. And only 60 miles south...
...found himself with a power base that inevitably drew him into Saigon's politics. He became a protege of goateed General Nguyen Khanh, who promoted Air Commodore Ky to the Anglicized altitude of air vice-marshal. In return, Ky twice scrambled his Skyraiders over Saigon to stave off coup attempts against Khanh's 'government-once even resorting to the cold threat to flatten Saigon with bombs if the rebels refused to cease and desist. Ky probably would not have carried out the threat, but the plotters could never be sure. They ceased and desisted...
...Premier (now $6,500 a year). He severed diplomatic relations with France over Charles de Gaulle's continued mugwumping with Hanoi and Peking. He also refused resolutely to yield his command of the air force, well aware it was his best protection against yet another coup-as well as the prime source of his influence in the directory of generals...
...Corps. A sound tactician, charismatic speaker and careful planner, Thi is the one man in the Directory thought to covet Ky's job. Dapper and mustachioed, favoring fierce badges and gaudy scarves, he even resembles Ky. Thi, who was exiled by Diem after an abortive 1960 coup, could probably take the job any time he chose. Among his other assets, he can count his hand-picked head of the nation's 50,000-man police force. So far, to the benefit of South Viet Nam, which needs stability in Saigon as much as victories on the battlefield...
Some U.S. officials in Saigon fear that Ky's flair, and above all his rapport with Americans, may well prove his undoing. It was probably no accident that yet another spate of coup rumors began to float through Saigon behind the news of Ky's impressive confrontation with Johnson in Hawaii. "We killed Khanh that way," ruminates one U.S. old hand in Saigon, recollecting how the U.S. Mission backed Khanh even when it was clear that the Young Turks had lost faith in his leadership. "And we are in real danger," he adds, "of killing Ky the same...