Word: nhu
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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With a rustle of rich brocade and a swish of scented silk, Mme. Ngo Dinh Nhu swept into the U.S. last week. She was accompanied by her handsome, 18-year-old daughter, Le Thuy, and preceded by some of the worst press notices since Tokyo Rose. Although not even her bitterest critics would doubt her courage, the petite sister-in-law of South Viet Nam's President Ngo Dinh Diem did have some fears about her 21-day coast-to-coast visit. Going to the U.S., said she, would probably be like walking into "a cage of lions...
...Wayne Hays growled, "It's bad enough that every two-bit dictator around the world reviles and insults the U.S. at will, but it is too much to let this comic-strip Dragon Lady do it under our very noses." One high State Department official, noting that Mme. Nhu had been invited to appear before several press groups, had the effrontery to criticize the press for what he said would be "a triumphal reception...
...hardly that. Wherever Mme. Nhu went, large crowds gathered. There were, of course, the inevitable pickets toting such signs as: NO NHUS IS GOOD NEWS and PHU ON NHU. But for the most part the crowds were merely curious. As for the press, it was ready with plenty of loaded questions. No sooner did Mme. Nhu arrive in New York than one reporter asked if she were "power-hungry," as her father, Tran Van Chuong, recently resigned as Saigon's ambassador to Washington, had claimed. "If I am," she replied in her rapid-fire but often imprecise English...
Hardly a Housewife. Undoubtedly, Mme. Nhu was on her best behavior. One sobering influence was the fact that the U.S. has quietly begun trimming its economic aid to her brother-in-law's regime in hopes of forcing it to initiate reforms. After Diem's Special Forces raided the Buddhist pagodas last August, the U.S. suspended a $10 million-a-month commercial import program, sales of U.S. surplus commodities that ran to $2,000,000 a month, and part of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's $2,000,000 monthly payments to the Special Forces and blocked...
Even so, Mme. Nhu could contain herself only so long. At a television interview the day after her arrival, she managed to keep her inch-long fingernails sheathed for the better part of an hour, but finally began clawing about. The U.S. Information Service, she insisted, without producing any convincing evidence, had plotted to overthrow the Diem government, and Saigon's resident U.S. newsmen had helped out. "They just dislike us," she explained...