The Cold Six Thousand - James Ellroy [117]
Wayne said, “You shouldn’t have sent me to Dallas.”
October 1964–July 1965
DOCUMENT INSERT: 10/16/64. Pouch communiqué. To: Pete Bondurant. From: John Stanton. Marked: “Hand Pouch Deliver Only”/“Destroy Upon Reading.”
P.B.,
Here’s the summary you requested. As always, please read and burn.
First off, there’s a consensus among Agency analysts: we’re in Vietnam to stay. You know how far the trouble goes back—with the Japanese, the Chinese and the French. Our interest dates to ’45. It was shaped by our commitment to France and our desire to keep Western Europe out of the Red Bloc, and was spurred by China going Red. Vietnam is a key chunk of real estate. We’ll lose our foothold in Southeast Asia if it goes Red. In fact, we’ll risk losing the entire region.
Much of the current situation derives from the Viet Minh defeat of the French forces at Dien Bien Phu in March, ’54. This led to Geneva accords and the partitioning of what is now “North” and “South” Vietnam, along the 17th parallel. The Communists withdrew from the south and the French from the north. A nationwide election was called for the summer of ’56.
We installed our man Ngo Dinh Diem in the south. Diem was a Catholic who was pro-US, anti-Buddhist, anti-French colonialist and anti-Communist. Agency operatives rigged a referendum that allowed Diem to succeed Premier Bao Dai. (It wasn’t subtle. Our people got Diem more votes than the actual number of voters.)
Diem renounced the ’56 Geneva Accord elections. He said the presence of the Viet Minh insured that the elections could not be “absolutely free.” The election deadline approached. The U.S. backed Diem’s refusal to participate. Diem initiated “security measures” against the Viet Minh in the south. Suspected Viet Minh or Viet Minh sympathizers were tortured and tried by local province officials appointed by Diem. This approach was successful, and Diem managed to smash 90% of the Viet Minh cells in the Mekong Delta. During this time Diem’s publicists coined the pejorative term “Vietnam Cong San” or “Vietnamese Communist.”
The election deadline passed. The Soviets and Red Chinese did not press for a political settlement. Early in ’57, the Soviets proposed a permanent partition and a U.N. sanctioning of North and South Vietnam as separate states. The U.S. was unwilling to recognize a Communist state and rebuffed the initiative.
Diem built a base in the south. He appointed his brothers and other relatives to positions of power and in fact turned South Vietnam into a narrowly ruled, albeit stridently anti-Communist, oligarchy. Diem’s brothers and relatives built up their individual fiefdoms. They were rigidly Catholic and anti-Buddhist. Diem’s brother Can was a virtual warlord. His brother Ngo Dinh Nhu ran an anti-Viet Cong intelligence network with CIA funds.
Diem balked at land reforms and allied himself with wealthy landowning families in the Mekong Delta. He created the Khu Tru Mat, i.e., farm communities to buffer peasants from Viet Cong sympathizers and cells. Peasants were uprooted from their native villages and forced to build the communities without pay. Government troops often pilfered their pigs, rice and chicken.
Diem’s actions created a demand for reform. Diem closed opposition newspapers, accused journalists, students and intellectuals of Communist ties and arrested them. At this time, the U.S. had a billion dollars invested in South Vietnam. Diem (dubbed “a puppet who pulls his own strings”) knew that we needed his regime as a strategic port against the spread of Communism. He spent the bulk of his U.S.-donated money on military and police build-up, to quash Viet Cong raids below the 17th parallel and quash domestic plots against him.
In November ’60, a military coup against Diem failed. Diemloyalist troops fought the troops of South Vietnamese Army Colonel Vuong Van Dong. Diem rebuffed the coup, but his actions earned him many enemies among the Saigon and Mekong Delta elite. In the north, this internal dissent emboldened Ho Chi Minh. He embarked on a terror campaign in the south and