Word: phat
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Okamura most wanted to meet was Huynh Tan Phat, No. 2 man and chief strategist of the National Liberation Front, the political arm of the Viet Cong. After repeated messages, Phat finally arrived at the camp after Okamura had languished there more than a month. He was a short, wiry man with piercing eyes, a thin mustache and a crew cut, wearing a well-tailored khaki shirt and trousers, plus the standard "Ho Chi Minh sandals," cut from old tires. When Okamura complained that he had been robbed of his cameras, lied to and starved, Phat replied: "You have been...
...Phat, a onetime Saigon architect and, like Photographer Okamura, a Buddhist, insisted-for what it was worth-that he was a Socialist, not a Communist. He said that the Viet Cong had initially followed the guerrilla tactics of Nguyen Giap, the victor of Dienbien-phu, but "now Giap's lessons are outdated. Times have changed. American weapons are different. Now, except for tanks and planes, we have everything we need. Our weapons are as good as the enemy...
Most of the Viet Cong weapons seen by Okamura were either homemade or of U.S. manufacture, with a sprinkling of identifiable Communist bloc arms. Phat scoffed at sizable outside aid, saying, "You don't understand the logistics. If we needed to supply only small units, it would be easy to get enough from Hanoi. But we have to supply a million people-V.C. political cadres as well as soldiers. We grow our own food. We have ordnance depots in the jungle where we make weapons-crude but serviceable." Besides, as he put it, "we get stronger every time...
...Desperation Measures." The Viet Cong, Phat said, try to brainwash U.S. prisoners. "We talk to them repeatedly, try to convince them they are being used as cat's-paws of imperialism." He followed the regular Viet Cong line by dismissing U.S. bombing raids in North Viet Nam as "desperation measures" that have "no effect on us." As to the ground war, he upped the usual Communist propaganda: "If the Americans want to fight us on equal terms, they'll need at least...
...plot was purposely left unclear, but an army captain was gunned down "trying to escape," and more than 40 "dissidents" were arrested, most of them Catholic. Among them, according to one report: Colonel Trang Van Chinh, chief of military security. Still at large, however, were General Lam Van Phat and Colonel Pham Ngoc Thao, ringleaders of the February attempt, who are under sentence of death following trial in absentia...