Word: thao
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...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...
...visible instigator of last week's events was one Colonel Pham Ngoc Thao, a Catholic with a checkered political career-he fought with the Communist Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh, now President of North Viet Nam, then swung to the right, served briefly as a public-relations man for General Nguyen Khanh after Khanh seized power a year ago. One day last week, troops appeared in the streets of Saigon, and Colonel Thao popped out of a tank turret, explaining: "This operation is to expel Nguyen Khanh from the government." With Thao was Catholic ex-General...
...real mover behind it all, declared Thao, was General Tran Thien Khiem, South Viet Nam's ambassador in Washington. But the timing of the revolt evidently came as a surprise to the ambassador, who was sound asleep in his Maryland home at the time. Hurriedly, Khiem cabled Thao pledging "total support." He should have stayed...
...Thao's forces failed to catch Khanh, who had departed 30 minutes earlier in his Alouette helicopter for Cap St. Jacques. They also missed Air Force Commander Nguyen Cao Ky, as well as Ky's wife, who roared off seconds ahead of them in a sports car with her mother. Khanh ordered three battalions of loyal troops to move on the capital, while Ky dispatched a loudspeaker plane, which droned overhead, pleading, "Brother must not fight against brother." Next morning the rebels fled before a volley of three rifle shots that whizzed harmlessly overhead; not a drop...
Disillusion. Each unit was made up of men from the same area, and once back in South Viet Nam, they headed for their home regions. Some went to fight alongside or instruct the local Viet Cong, but others had more specialized tasks. Nguyen Thao actually built a complete small-arms factory under the South Viet Nam army's nose...