Word: thang
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Surprising Turndown. Last week the government responded to a reform long urged by the U.S. by finally doing something about the blatant corruption that has traditionally attached to the powerful and tempting "warlord" posts of the corps commanders. It appointed as IV Corps (the Delta) commander General Nguyen Due Thang, the country's onetime pacification chief, who is generally regarded as one of the ablest, brightest and most honest officers in the Vietnamese army. He replaces General Nguyen Van Manh, a portly, indecisive officer who has presided over the steady disintegration of the government's Delta position...
...poor but educated landholder in what is now North Viet Nam, he was sent to an exclusive college in the old imperial capital of Hué, got a law degree from the French-run University of Hanoi and finally emerged as a history teacher at Hanoi's Thang Long School. His idol, even then, was Napoleon. "He could step to the blackboard," one of his former students recalls, "and draw in the most minute detail every battle plan of Napoleon." But his admiration for the French stopped there. A fervent Vietnamese patriot, he had joined an anti-French clandestine...
...look up to him as their teacher. His entree into politics came in December, 1962, when Diem assigned him to the command of the 5th, or Anti-Coup, Division, strategically positioned just north of Saigon. Thieu was put there because Diem did not trust the previous commander, Nguyen Due Thang, now Thieu's Minister for Revolutionary Development and one of the ablest Vietnamese officials around...
...ballot stuffing, the government watched the polls closely. Premier Ky stepped in twice to halt ballot rigging by province chiefs, and indeed his own nephew, running for a seat in coastal Vung Tau, was defeated. Clearly, the generals paid heed to the warning of Major General Nguyen Due Thang, who heads the "revolutionary development" (pacification) program, and also was in charge of running the elections. Thang said: "We have to do this right, or we may never have another chance. The people will never believe us again if this is not a free election...
...where once the programs were fragmented under provincial control, the activities of all the "revolutionaries" today are coordinated from Saigon under able, energetic General Nguyen Due Thang, the Minister of Revolutionary Development, with the aid and advice of the U.S. For 1966, Saigon has allotted Thang nearly $9,000,000, and the U.S., through AID, plans to spend some $400 million. The year's tangible targets: securing 987 hamlets, building 2,500 classrooms, resettling 41,000 families, building 150 bridges and 600 miles of road, and adding an additional 14% of South Viet Nam's population...