Finding the Dragon Lady Read online

  12. “Queen Bee,” Time, August 9, 1963.

  Chapter 6: The Crossing

  1. After World War II, the Potsdam Agreement had imposed Chinese peacekeepers on Vietnam. Not allowing the French to retake Indochina was a way of conceding to the American worldview and showed Chinese impatience with colonialism. The Chinese took over at the sixteenth parallel but didn’t last long in Vietnam; they had their own war to fight. So they struck a deal with the French that allowed the French back into their former colony in exchange for giving up French concessions in China.

  Chapter 7: A Mountain Retreat

  1. For details on the Chuongs’ escape from the Viet Minh and shelter at Phat Diem with Nhu, see CAOM, Tran Van Chuong Dossier, HCRT Non-Cotes, Bulletin de Renseignements, May 29, 1947; the bulletin of July 10, 1947, describes the Chuong family’s whereabouts since 1945. For Chuong’s fruitless donations to the Viet Minh, see Bulletin de Renseignements, March 3, 1946.

  2. Madame Nhu, Caillou Blanc, 90.

  3. Eric T. Jennings explores French notions of a “white island” and of Dalat as a “model city” in “From Indochine to Indochic: The Lang Bian/Dalat Palace Hotel and French Colonial Leisure, Power and Culture,” Modern Asian Studies 37, no. 1 (2003): 159–194, and Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 230.

  4. For the address, 10 rue des Roses, and Diem’s stay there, see CAOM, Haut Commissariat, carton 731, Ngo Dinh Diem.

  5. Descriptions of the villa are from Madame Nhu’s unpublished memoir, Caillou Blanc, and Hilaire du Berrier, Background to Betrayal: The Tragedy of Vietnam (Boston: Western Islands, 1965).

  6. Gene Gregory, publisher of the Times of Vietnam, the pro-Diem newspaper in Saigon and the Nhus’ mouthpiece, told this to Ed Miller in conversation; see Edward Miller, “Vision, Power, and Agency: The Ascent of Ngo Dinh Diem,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 35, no. 3 (October 2004): 433–458.

  7. A. J. Langguth, Our Vietnam: The War, 1954–1975 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000).

  8. Arnauld Le Brusq and Leonard de Selva, Vietnam: A travers l’architecture coloniale (Paris: Patrimoines et Medias/Éditions de l’Amateur, 1999).

  9. Higgins, Our Vietnam Nightmare, 70.

  10. Howard Sochurek, “Slow Train Through Viet Nam’s War,” National Geographic 126, no. 3 (1964): 443.

  Chapter 8: The Miracle Man of Vietnam

  1. Diem biographical overviews are drawn from Antoine Bouscaren, The Last of the Mandarins: Diem of Vietnam (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1965); Anne Miller, And One for the People (unpublished manuscript based on interviews with Diem and family, 1955), Douglas Pike Collection, Texas Tech University, Virtual Vietnam Archive, Box 5, Folder 2; Miller, “Vision, Power, and Agency”; Denis Warner, The Last Confucian: Vietnam, Southeast Asia and the West (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964).

  2. For a description of the airport arrival, see Miller, Misalliance, 1–4.

  3. For this book I have chosen to follow contemporary American convention in calling the country lying below the seventeenth parallel South Vietnam, despite the fact that the South Vietnamese government formally used the name Republic of Viet Nam (RVN) for the land it sought to control and administer.

  4. Diem’s political intrigue with the Viet Minh is from Miller, Ascent, 437–441. Diem’s conversation with Ho Chi Minh is retold in Higgins, Our Vietnam Nightmare, 157–158, and in Bernard Fall, The Two Vietnams: A Political and Military Analysis (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1963), 240. The detail on walking out the open doors is from Madame Nhu, Caillou Blanc, 74.

  5. Diem pronouncement of 1949 in Miller, Ascent, 441.

  6. Du Berrier, Background to Betrayal.

  7. Ellen J. Hammer, A Death in November: America in Vietnam, 1963 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 60–61.

  8. Hammer, A Death in November, 23.

  9. US Army Saigon to Department of Army, Washington, DC, October 23, 1954.

  10. Diem’s blind hatred of Bao Dai and the threat to the empoeror should he return are from Department of State secret file, July 4, 1954, from Saigon, document 44207.

  11. On Virginia Spence and Harwood’s friendship, see Thomas Ahern, CIA and the House of Ngo: Covert Action in South Vietnam, 1953–63, 2000, approved for release in 2009, http://www.scribd.com/doc/57818376/Vietnam-Declassified-Doc-1-CIA-and-the-House-of-NGO.

  12. Madame Nhu told this to Charlie Mohr during eight hours of interviews for her profile, “Queen Bee,” in Time, August, 9, 1963, 23.

  13. For the limo speeding by Lansdale, see Robert Shaplen, The Lost Revolution: The Story of Twenty Years of Neglected Opportunities in Vietnam and of America’s Failure to Foster Democracy There (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 103; for the story in Lansdale’s own words, see “Interview with Edward Geary Lansdale, 1979 [part 1 of 5],” January 31, 1979, WGBH Media Library & Archives.

  14. Miller, Misalliance, 5.

  15. Memo for the record, Gen. Joe Collins comments 4/22/55 DDE Library White House Office OSANSA NSC series, Briefing Notes Indochina 1954.

  16. SHAT Archives 10H 4195, Bulletin de Renseignements No. 8312, September 21, 1954.

  17. Madame Nhu, Caillou Blanc; “Queen Bee,” Time, August 9, 1963; SHAT Archives Bulletin No. 8312.

  18. SHAT Archives 10H 4198, Vincennes Bulletin de Renseignements, No. 96, May 10, 1955.

  19. Ed Lansdale letter to James Nach, second secretary of the American embassy, Saigon, June 1972, Box 9, Edward Geary Lansdale Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University.

  20. John Osborne, “Diem, the Tough Miracle Man of Vietnam: America’s Newly Arrived Visitor Has Roused His Country and Routed the Reds,” Life, May 13, 1957, 156.

  Chapter 9: A First Lady in Independence Palace

  1. Frederick Nolting, From Trust to Tragedy: The Political Memoirs of Frederick Nolting, Kennedy’s Ambassador to Diem’s Vietnam (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1988). Net budget expenditures for foreign economic and technical development in fiscal year 1955 were estimated at $1.028 billion, of which $150 million was used to “support further the effort of our friends combating Communist aggression in Indochina.” Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Annual Budget Message to the Congress: Fiscal Year 1955,” January 21, 1954, American Presidency Project, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=9919.

  2. Major Policy Speeches by Ngo Dinh Diem, 3rd ed. (Saigon: Press Office, Presidency of the Republic of Viet Nam, 1957), 34.

  3. For details on the 1955 elections, see Shaplen, The Lost Revolution, 201. Information on the National Assembly is in Robert Scigliano, South Vietnam: Nation Under Stress (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1964), 28.

  4. For more on proposal of Madame Nhu’s name, see Robert Trumbull, “First Lady of Vietnam,” New York Times Magazine, November 18, 1962, 33.

  5. John Pham recalled Diem’s menus in an interview with the author. His recollection conflicts with something that Diem’s brother Ngo Dinh Thuc wrote in his autobiography: Diem had a severe allergy to fish as a boy and would vomit after eating it. Perhaps he outgrew the allergy. “Misericordias Domini in aeternum cantabo: The Autobiography of Mgr. Pierre Martin Ngô-dinh-Thuc, Archbishop of Hué,” Einsicht 1 (March 2013): http://www.einsicht-aktuell.de/index.php?svar=2&ausgabe_id=180&artikel_id=1920.

  6. For General Tran Van Don’s details on Diem’s relationship with Madame Nhu, see Central Intelligence Agency Information Report: Major General Tran Van Don Details the Present Situation in South Vietnam; the Plan to Establish Martial Law; and, His Views on South Vietnam’s Future—August 23, 1963, Folder 11, Box 2, Douglas Pike Collection: Unit 1—Assessment and Strategy, Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University; on Diem’s chastity, see “South Vietnam: The Beleaguered Man,” Time, April 4, 1955.

  7. Source is General Tran Van Don; see note 6.

  8. Author’s notes on national archive documents about Nhu’s travel to Burma, December 20 to 23, 1957.

  9. Ahern, CIA and the House of Ngo,
114, and DDE papers of Christian Herter, Box 1, Chron File, March 1957 (3).

  10. Douglas Pike, Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front and South Vietnam (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966), 174.

  11. Scigliano, South Vietnam, 44–45.

  12. The Nhus took out advertisements in several Saigon newspapers to explicitly deny charges on August 24, 1957, but their denials fed the rumors instead of silencing them; Fall, Two Vietnams, 252.

  13. FRUS, Vol. 1, Vietnam, 1958–1960. For Chau’s devalued position in the government, see “Second Conversation with Nguyen Huu Chau,” December 31, 1958, FRUS, 1958–1960, 1:114–117

  14. For Diem on Le Chi “acting like a prostitute,” see “Ambassador Lodge’s Telegram from Embassy in Saigon to Department of State,” no. 805 (October 29, 1963), FRUS, 4:445. For Le Chi on suicide and saying that Madame regretted that she didn’t succeed, see Newsweek 62, no. 2: 41; “Younger Sister Bitterly Criticizes Madame Nhu,” Arizona Republic, October 27, 1963. For accounts of the suicide attempt, see Nguyen Thai, Is South Vietnam Viable? (Manila: Carmelo & Bauermann, 1962); Etienne Oggeri, Fields of Poppies: As Far As the Eye Can See (Bloomington, IN: Trafford Publishing, 2007).

  15. On Madame Nhu misunderstood, see “Interview with Edward Geary Lansdale, 1979 [part 1 of 5],” January 31, 1979, WGBH Media Library & Archives.

  16. Nhu confided in Richardson; see John H. Richardson, My Father the Spy: An Investigative Memoir (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 189.

  17. For accounts of the coup, see Langguth, Our Vietnam, 108; Malcolm W. Browne, The New Face of War (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968), 251. On Madame Nhu’s power, see Richard Dudman, “Intrigue Tantrums,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 14, 1963.

  18. As told to David Halberstam in David Halberstam, The Making of a Quagmire, edited with an introduction by Daniel J. Singal, rev. ed. (New York: Random House, 2008), 55.

  Chapter 10: Tiger Skins

  1. Martha T. Moore, “Interview with Jean Smith,” USA Today, September 26, 2010.

  2. LBJ quote in Richard Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1994), 118.

  3. For the Johnsons’ Saigon itinerary, see Howard Jones, Death of a Generation: How the Assassinations of Diem and JFK Prolonged the Vietnam War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 61–65.

  4. For Le Duan and the Viet Cong overthrow of Diem and colonial masters, see Langguth, Our Vietnam, 113–114.

  5. Langguth, Our Vietnam, 389, 393, 399; “Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in Vietnam,” FRUS, 1961–1963, 2:159–160.

  6. For verbal orders and falsified body counts, see Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (New York: Vintage, 1989), 123–125.

  7. Info on Viet Cong terror tactics from United States Mission in Vietnam, “A Study: Viet Cong Use of Terror,” May 1966, USAID, http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNADX570.pdf.

  8. Malcolm W. Browne, The New Face of War (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968), 27–28.

  9. Details of March 1961 bombing in Times of Vietnam, April 1, 1961.

  10. LBJ Saigon itinerary details and Karnow quote in Jones, Death of a Generation, 61.

  11. See memo of conversation between Elbridge Durbrow and Madame Nhu, Foreign Service Dispatch No. 28, July 8, 1960.

  12. On skepticism, see Elbridge Durbrow, Foreign Service Dispatch, July 15, 1960. On the diplomat remarking that it doesn’t make any difference if gossip is true, see Rene George Inagaki, W. Fishel Papers, Michigan State University, Archives and Historical Collections, Box 1223, Folder 40.

  13. Halberstam, Quagmire, 101.

  14. See Airgram A217 from Saigon, November 1, 1962, citing figures published in Thoi Boi Vietnamese news on October 24, 1962. Scigliano, South Vietnam, 173

  15. Shaplen, Lost Revolution, 157.

  16. Higgins, Our Vietnam Nightmare, 195.

  17. For LBJ’s “shit” comment, see Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Penguin Books, 1997), 230. On Bigart’s song, see William Prochnau, Once upon a Distant War: Young War Correspondents in the Early Vietnam Battles (New York: Random House, 1995), 48–49.

  Chapter 11: Young Turks and Old Hacks

  1. Clyde Haberman, “David Halberstam, 73, Reporter and Author, Dies” New York Times, April 24, 2007.

  2. Halberstam, Quagmire, 27.

  3. Lawrence Freedman, Kennedy’s Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 388.

  4. For a good summary of the tensions between the press and US intentions, see Jones, Death of a Generation, 208–210.

  5. On the political agenda of the press in Saigon, see Prochnau, Once upon a Distant War, 354: “It could bring down Diem, and they would help it bring down Diem. They did not delude themselves about their goals.”

  6. Madame Nhu is quoted in Wilfred Burchett, The Furtive War: The United States in Vietnam and Laos (New York: International Publications Company, 1963), 17; the CIA carefully watched this book’s publication because of Burchett’s professed communism and support of the Viet Cong.

  7. Halberstam, Quagmire, 28.

  8. Halberstam, Quagmire, 27.

  9. President Kennedy asked Henry Cabot Lodge to go to Saigon as the American ambassador in response to the Buddhist crisis. On Lodge’s conception of his duty and his first instincts that the “Nhus had to go” because they were deliberately provoking the Kennedy administration, see Anne Blair, Lodge in Vietnam: A Patriot Abroad (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 22, 37, 40; and Jones, Death of a Generation, 280, 304.

  10. Joyce Hoffman, On Their Own: Women Journalists and the American Experience in Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2008), 32.

  11. “The Gregorys of Saigon,” Newsweek, September 23, 1963, and “Mlle Readers in Saigon,” Mademoiselle, March 1957.

  12. Prochnau, Once upon a Distant War, 257.

  13. Dorothy Fall, Bernard Fall: Memories of a Soldier-Scholar (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006), 91–92, 117.

  14. Carl Mydans, “Girl War Correspondent,” Life, October 2, 1950, 51.

  15. Higgins’s luck finally ran out. On assignment in 1965, she contracted a fatal case of leishmaniasis, a tropical disease, and died at age forty-five. See also “1950: The Korean War,” Columbia Journalism School, http://centennial.journalism.columbia.edu/1950-the-korean-war.

  16. Higgins was quoted by Charlie Mohr, Time magazine correspondent in Saigon, in Prochnau, Once upon a Distant War, 350.

  17. For the description of Madame Nhu down to her pink nails, see Higgins, Our Vietnam Nightmare, 62.

  18. For the “Oriental Valkyrie” comment, see Higgins, Our Vietnam Nightmare, 63.

  19. Correspondence with Madame Tran Van Chuong is from the Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu folders in Marguerite Higgins Papers, Box 10, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library.

  20. Clare Booth Luce, “The Lady Is for Burning: The Seven Deadly Sins of Madame Nhu,” National Review, November 5, 1963.

  21. Box 223, Family and Personal Papers, Clare Booth Luce Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  22. On feminized descriptions of Asian leaders like Mao, Ho Chi Minh, and Diem, see Sheridan Prasso, The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls and Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient (New York: PublicAffairs, 2006), 53, 56.

  23. Michael Beschloss, ed., with a forward by Caroline Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, Interviews with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., 1964 (New York: Hyperion, 2011).

  Chapter 12: Burning Monks

  1. On there being no mistaking the identity of Ngo Dinh Thuc, see Hammer, A Death in November, 103.

  2. On Thuc getting concessions from the state, see “Secret Memorandum of a Conversation between Former Ambassador to Saigon Elbridge Durbrow and Vu Van Mau,” Paris, POLTO 361, October 1, 1963, 3.

  3. Hammer, A Death in November, 113–114.

  4. Browne, New Face,
175–180.

  5. On Diem and accommodating US demands, see “Edward Lansdale Secret Memorandum to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara,” January 19, 1961, National Archives, General Lansdale, Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs; see also “Telegram Number g-383 from the Saigon Embassy to Department of State,” March 18, 1961. For Diem’s misconception of what the United States wanted from him, see “Memorandum from the Chief Adviser, Michigan State University Group in Vietnam (Fox), to James B. Hendry of Michigan State University,” February 17, 1962, FRUS, 1961–1963, 2:152–155. For Diem’s quote on the United States only wanting to send troops to Vietnam, see Hammer, A Death in November, 151.

  6. Langguth, Our Vietnam, 493.

  7. On policy being a disaster, see Halberstam, Quagmire, 127.

  8. Halberstam, Quagmire, 130.,

  9. Madame Nhu, Caillou Blanc, 58.

  10. For descriptions of the attack on Xa Loi pagoda, see Prochnau, Once upon a Distant War, 372–373; Halberstam, Quagmire, 146; and Denis Warner, “Agony in Saigon: The Lady and the Cadaver,” The Reporter, October 10, 1963, 39.

  11. Halberstam, Quagmire, 146.

  12. “Secret Memorandum of a Conversation between Former Ambassador to Saigon Elbridge Durbrow and Vu Van Mau,” Paris, POLTO 361, October 1, 1963.

  13. On his meeting with Madame Chuong, see “Interview with Henry Cabot Lodge, 1979 [part 2 of 5],” 1979, WGBH Media Library & Archives.

  14. For details on the Chuong resignations, see “Saddened Diplomat; Tran Van Chuong Wife Devout Buddhist Lived in Saigon,” New York Times, August 22, 1963, 2; and Nan Robertson, “Ex-Saigon Envoy Starts Sad Exile: Mrs. Nhu’s Parents Take a House in Washington; Daughter a Stranger,” New York Times, September, 22, 1963, 3. On Diem recalling Ambassador Chuong before he quit, see “Secret Memorandum of a Conversation between Former Ambassador to Saigon Elbridge Durbrow and Vu Van Mau,” Paris, POLTO 361, October 1, 1963, 3.

  Chapter 13: Too Beautiful to Ignore

  1. For Madame Nhu’s quote that she was “caught by the skin of the neck,” see “Interview with Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu, 1982,” February 11, 1982, WGBH Media Library & Archives.