Word: diem
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Image to Spare. The personal weaponry, the guards and the barbed wire are no mere theatrical props. Last August, on his very first evening in Saigon, a top embassy officer insisted that the regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem planned to invite him on a field trip, stage a fake Communist Viet Cong attack and kill Lodge in the confusion...
Lodge got to Saigon just as the Diem regime was afflicted with what Mme. Nhu rather indelicately referred to as the "Buddhist barbecues." There are those today who argue that Lodge, as the chief instrument for carrying out the policies of a Democratic Administration in South Viet Nam, cannot reasonably be the Republican presidential nominee. If that is the case, Lodge does not want the nomination, for he fully associates himself with the Kennedy and Johnson policies. Says he: "My attitude was and is exactly the same as that articulated by President Kennedy, which is to say that...
...even heavier than those of Saigon-up to 50% of the rice harvest. The Reds preached class war, urging the poor peasants to hate the rich in a village that had no rich peasants and very few poor. The Communists also repeated the familiar line that helped bring down Diem: Roman Catholics discriminate against Buddhists. Since the few Catholics in the village lived just like everyone else, this argument got nowhere either. Next, the Reds closed the village school and carted away the desks, benches and blackboards. Over a hundred young men were drafted into the guerrilla band. The Viet...
...some, Ngo Dinh Can seemed to be the ablest of the ill-fated Ngo brothers. Although he never held an official position in the Diem regime, he was the overlord of central Viet Nam. A rural Rasputin in high-collared mandarin robes who wenched and swindled lustily, he nevertheless ran his fief so effectively that it had less trouble from the Viet Cong than any other area. Can in vain advised his brothers, President Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu, to ease the measures against the Buddhists-not out of idealism but to avoid rocking the boat...
After last November's coup, in which Diem and Nhu were murdered,* Can sought asylum in the U.S. consulate at Hué, but was turned over to the military junta. Vietnamese newspapers splashed lurid accounts and dubious photographs alleging that Can ran a private dungeon and torture camp on his thousand-acre estate near...