Word: thies
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...uprising began in earnest on March 10 when Ky's junta dismissed Lieut. General Nguyen Chanh Thi, long considered Ky's chief rival for power within the Directory. Administration experts are convinced that the ambitious little general was only Tri Quang's pawn. "Thi's dismissal simply gave the movement a little more whammy," said a top State Department expert. In Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy's view, Tri Quang's men want to "accelerate the timetable" for a change in government in order to set up "a constitution and elections that would...
Seized Spark. It was, in fact, the dismissal of a member of this ten-man Directory that precipitated the crisis. In a bold bid to strengthen the national government and with the near-unanimous support of the Directory, Premier Ky on March 10 sacked Lieut. General Nguyen Chanh Thi, the canny and insubordinate warlord of the five northernmost provinces that comprise the I Corps. Though Thi had carefully cultivated the Buddhists in his domain, notably ambitious, extremist Thich Tri Quang of Hué, Ky reportedly had Tri Quang's approval for Thi's removal. When some...
Danang, headquarters for 20,000 U.S. Marines and a major airbase, was hardly in Communist hands, although demonstrators had taken over the radio station and some government buildings, on occasion assisted by Thi's Vietnamese troops. The U.S., which had tried to stay out of the swelling crisis, even to the point of ordering U.S. troops to stay off the streets of Danang and Saigon, suddenly found itself forced to take sides. To "liberate" Danang, Ky needed U.S. planes to move his troops. Next day he got them: six U.S. C-130s, provided on the direct order of Ambassador...
...troops, aircraft carriers, huge bombers, poison gases and napalm." He promised continued aid to North Viet Nam and the Viet Cong, and was rewarded-doubtless to Peking's chagrin-with warm speeches from Hanoi Party Secretary Le Duan and the Viet Cong's female representative, Nguyen Thi Binh, who praised the Russians as "the true combat friends of the people of South Viet...
That seemed to be the Ky government's solution last week for the demonstrations triggered by the firing of I Corps General Nguyen Chanh Thi last month. A harsh crackdown on the demonstrators-mostly students-would only play into the hands of the waiting Buddhists, who first rose to power when the Saigon government invaded their pagodas three years ago. Moreover, the anti-Ky groups had only the vaguest of aims-and the mildest of manners...