Word: diem
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Weekends with Diem...
...Huong still clung stubbornly to the presidency. But it seemed clear that Saigon would have to replace him or risk destruction. The almost certain successor: General Duong Van ("Big") Minh, the neutralist Buddhist who, in a still-remembered moment of glory, helped overthrow the dictatorial regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 (see box page...
...regime's principal architects: General Duong Van ("Big") Minn. Nearly twelve years ago, Minh helped usher in the period of South Vietnamese history that is now rushing to a close. He and a group of fellow officers began it all by toppling the unpopular, autocratic President Ngo Dinh Diem. If Minh is now chosen to preside over the transfer of effective political power to the Communists, it will be largely for one reason: the past dozen years have left him relatively untainted by either the fervent anti-Communist politics of the Saigon leadership or too close an association with...
Under the Diem regime, Minh gained renown as a brave "soldier's soldier" in the campaign he led in the 1950s against the notorious Binh Xuyen bandits, a kind of Vietnamese Cosa Nostra (also known as the "whorehouse gang") that pillaged the countryside and controlled vice in Saigon. Blunt, athletic and honest, he was given the sobriquet "Big" by U.S. military advisers because he was unusually large for a Vietnamese-nearly 6 ft. tall and 200 Ibs. Minh impressed Diem and in 1958 was appointed the first boss of a field-operations command that coordinated the mounting war against...
...After Diem was executed in the 1963 coup, Minh became chief of state. He was ousted a mere three months later, having proved himself to be an ineffective administrator, and went into exile in Thailand. When he attempted to return in 1965, the tower at Saigon's Tan Son Nhut airport refused to grant his plane landing clearance; he had to return, humiliated to Bangkok. Three years later, Thieu-in what he described as part of a move toward national reconciliation-invited Minh back to Saigon. There Minh bided his time, tending the orchid garden at his spacious villa...