Word: nhu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...made noises designed to encourage opposition to Diem. But South Viet Nam being what it is, potential rebels did not want to move without virtually a written contract for U.S. support. Meanwhile the U.S. tried to place the odium of the crackdown on Diem's brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu (Libra),* and new Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge (Cancer) managed to suggest, without saying anything publicly, that he did not like what was going...
...charge and in a cable to the New York Herald Tribune's Marguerite Higgins he declared, "I trust in the army and in fact I maintain control over the situation." But it looked increasingly likely that the key figure behind the government's move had been Brother Nhu, head of the 10,000-strong special forces and secret police. For weeks there had been hints that he might try a coup of his own-supposedly to forestall the anti-Diem coup that he kept predicting unless the Buddhists were put down. Any change in government policy...
...Nhu's special forces that sacked the pagodas; regular army troops were only called in after the job was done to help keep order. Theoretically, under the martial law proclamation, it is now the army that runs the country, and, again theoretically, Diem placed top authority in Major General Tran Van Don, 46, a highly respected, onetime corps commander who has had great military success against the Viet Cong. But Don may merely be a figurehead. Hostile to the government, he was pulled out of his field command last December and kicked upstairs to a staff job, where...
...Diem and Nhu evidently intended to vest real military power in another, very different officer, whose loyalty the Ngo family can count on, Colonel Le Quang Tung, commander under Nhu of the special forces. A devout Catholic, Tung comes from central Viet Nam, birthplace of the Ngo family, apparently has no political ambitions, and was once a top official in Nhu's secret organization, the Can Lao Party. As long as a month ago, large units of special forces were moved into Saigon under Colonel Tung's command. The big question is whether Tung can keep control...
...much authority slip from its hands under the martial law proclamation. Taking over the functioning of all government ministries, the army for the first time has a viable power structure of its own. It may well stay loyal as long as Diem remains in the presidential palace, but Nhu is vastly unpopular with most of the military commanders except Tung. The army immediately tried to dissociate itself from the Buddhist crackdown. All official bulletins from the army-controlled government information center pointedly mentioned that Nhu's special forces, and not the army, had wrecked the pagodas...