Revolution in the Afternoon

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The week in Saigon began and ended with death. At its start, another Buddhist, the seventh, chose the now notorious way of protest against President Ngo Dinh Diem's regime. Soaked in gasoline, he rode up to a crowded square, struck a spark, and went up in flames before anyone could stop him. At week's end, Diem himself lay dead alongside his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu. The two men who had fought so long and so stubbornly--against Communism, against their critics, against the Buddhist demonstrators--had been consumed by a fire more slowly and carefully prepared.

For months "coup" had been the loudest whisper heard in South Viet Nam. Coup is what correspondents and lesser U.S. officials talked in the bar at the Hotel Caravelle. Coup is what Diem and his guards feared in the palace. Coup is what the generals finally plotted in their headquarters.

A Bitter Chorus. They had been slow enough to move. Weeks ago, the word in Saigon was that, before risking an uprising, the military wanted assurances of U.S. support. Officially the U.S. denied all involvements, but it was perfectly plain that the reduction of U.S. aid to Diem and Washington's public disapproval of his repressive measures against the Buddhists set the scene for the coup (see THE NATION). As the news from Saigon unfolded, it was Diem's sister-in-law, Mme. Ngo Dinh Nhu, who provided a bitter chorus from Los Angeles, where she was winding up her U.S. tour. Said she: "There can be no coup without American incitement or backing." This time, even her severest critics, including the Moscow press, agreed with her.

The uprising was led by a Vietnamese soldier well known to the American military, a man of whom one U.S. general had said: "I would certainly like to have him in the U.S. Army." He is Lieut. General Duong Van Minh, 47, known as "Big" Minh, a blunt, burly, French-trained veteran. Obviously he had been able to rally, at least for the moment, the deeply divided Vietnamese army. This week he was in charge, along with a military junta of fellow officers--in charge of the army, of the war, and to a large extent of the heavy U.S. stake in his torn country.

A Bottle of Whisky. Diem's disaster struck on All Saints' Day. For the taciturn little President, the day had begun with normal business in the sprawling, cream-colored Gia Long palace; one visitor was Admiral Harry Felt, commander of U.S. forces in the Far East, who had arrived in Saigon for a "routine visit" and planned to leave for Hong Kong later in the morning. With Felt, and Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Diem chatted easily, showing no signs of concern.

At noon, Diem prepared to take his lunch, and so did the rest of Saigon. Shutters fell over store windows and the lovely tree-lined boulevards were suddenly choked with hordes of motor bikes, pedicabs, and buzzing little Renault taxis hauling people home for two hours of escape from the stupefying midday heat.

There had been some inklings of a coup, including rumors that generals had begun moving troops loyal to Diem away from the capital. New York Times Correspondent David Halberstam and another correspondent received a slip of paper the night before with the message: "Please buy me one bottle of whisky at the PX." It was a prearranged signal meaning that a coup might be imminent. While Saigon was still at lunch, thousands of men in combat garb were gathering just outside the city, buckling on equipment, checking their weapons, listening to last-minute instructions for the violent overthrow of the government.

Shortly after 1 p.m., the soldiers moved. Throwing roadblocks across the avenues leading from the city to Saigon Airport, army units quickly won over units of Ngo Dinh Nhu's crack "special forces" near the airfield, giving a free hand to air force pilots who were planning to support the coup d'etat with rocket-equipped dive bombers.

Truckloads of red-kerchiefed, insurgent marines were already racing toward the heart of Saigon. A primary target was police headquarters, where some troops surrounded the building while others rushed inside to put pro-Diem officials under arrest. Other groups of troops showed up at navy headquarters, on the banks of the Saigon River, and at the telegraph office and radio station.

At first, there was little shooting. But as word spread to pro-Diem forces, small-arms fire began to crackle along the shady avenues around the palace. By now, the little air force bombers were soaring high over central Saigon, peeling off now and then to make strafing runs at the navy headquarters, where defenders inside were putting up a spirited fight. Antiaircraft guns aboard Diem's naval vessels moored in the river barked back.

Not for Fame. At 4:45 p.m., Saigon Radio, which abruptly ceased broadcasting at the start of the fighting, returned to the air. "Soldiers in the army, security service, civil defense force, and people's force," blared the radio. "The Ngo Dinh Diem government, abusing power, has thought only of personal ambition and slighted the fatherland's interests . . . The army has swung into action. The task of you all is to unite . . . The revolution will certainly be successful."

This declaration was signed by 14 generals, seven colonels and a major who have what for Americans are some of the most unpronounceable names on earth--such names as Brig. General Pham Xuan Chieu, Brig. General Nguyen Giac Ngo, and Brig. General Tran Tu Oai. At the top of the list was Big Minh and Lieut. General Tran Van Don. Like Minh, Don has been close to the Americans--so close that he went to a dinner for Admiral Felt the night before the coup, calmly saw Felt off at the airport shortly before the shooting started. "We have no political ambitions," declared the generals' communique. "We act not for fame or benefit, but to save our beloved fatherland."

Early Risers. By now, word of the coup was reaching the world in fragments. Apparently, the first top official in Washington to hear about it was John McCone, chief of the Central Intelligence Agency, who had word flashed to him as early as 1:25 a.m. Secretary of State Dean Rusk was out of bed at 2 a.m., the President at 3.

Mme. Nhu heard the news when she awakened at 7:50 a.m. in Suite 843 of Beverly Hills' Beverly Wilshire Hotel. The day before, disguised in a blonde wig and slacks, she had slipped out to Doctors' Hospital for removal of a cyst. Before attending an All Saints' Day Mass at the Church of the Good Shepherd, she told reporters bitterly: "I believe all the devils of hell are against us, but we will triumph eventually." If the news of the coup was true, "it would be a shame for many Americans." The Diem regime, she claimed, had been nearing victory against the Red guerrillas, and now some people were trying to "rob the fruits of victory from the victors with the help of their little friends, whom we all consider as traitors to their fatherland." Would Mme. Nhu seek asylum in the U.S.? "Never!" she cried, trembling with anger. "I cannot stay in a country whose government stabbed me in the back."

Lucky Snake. Meanwhile, the U.S. ordered units of the U.S. Seventh Fleet into the waters off Viet Nam as a "precautionary measure" should it be necessary to protect the lives of Americans. Washington presumably also had in mind a warning to the Communist Viet Cong should it choose political uncertainty in Saigon as an opportunity to launch a major offensive.

There was little threat to U.S. lives; no American was even injured in the Saigon fighting. In fact, for all the flying lead, it was reported that only 100 Vietnamese lost their lives in the 17 hours of battle. As the afternoon wore on, one rebel bomber missed his target with a rocket that exploded on the building where a group of U.S. marines live; a hole blasted in the building merely freed one marine's pet boa constrictor.

A few blocks away from the fighting, life seemed strangely normal. G.I.s in civilians strolled the streets in search of bars and restaurants still open. Traffic flowed through the streets, though drivers cautiously detoured a few blocks to avoid the trouble spots. There were some grimly humorous sights: outside the Hotel Caravelle, a Diem policeman seated in a tiny European car struggling desperately to get out of his uniform before the rebels spotted him; a pedestrian dashing madly around a corner, bullets kicking up sparks at his heels; a man scooting into a sidewalk pissoir an instant before it was riddled with machine-gun fire (five minutes later he dashed out unhurt). As tanks whipped off bursts of ammunition, children would duck right under the smoking muzzles to pick up the brass cartridge cases.

Musical Interludes. With the coming of dark, a grey drizzle began to fall over the city, and the coup leaders moved in toward the most important target of all--the big Gia Long palace, sheltering Diem, his brother Nhu, and aides. Periodically, Diem's own voice blared out from loudspeakers in the palace grounds, exhorting loyal troops to keep up the fight. "We shall not give in," he cried, his messages interspersed with patches of martial music. Then an eerie silence fell over the huge estate with its seven-foot high fences topped by barbed wire. The rebels were moving their heavy guns into place for the big assault.

Abruptly, at 9:45 p.m., the barrage began--first against the palace guard barracks, where a mortar and artillery attack went on for hours. When it came time for the big push on the palace itself, there was a danger that Vietnamese and American families who lived in an adjacent residential neighborhood would be hit by shells. So, well after midnight, a force of 18 tanks supported by armored cars and 600 foot soldiers went through a complicated maneuver that brought them circuitously to the palace grounds.

At 4 a.m., from several side streets, the attacking columns began pouring point-blank fire--from tanks, cannons, machine guns and rifles--at the protective walls. Back came a murderous counterfire, everything Diem's defenders had left. First one Diem tank caught fire and exploded in a tower of smoke and flame. Then another was knocked out of action. Two of the rebels' tanks were also destroyed.

The Final Push. With huge holes now gaping in the fences, and the defenders scattering inside the grounds, the way was clear for the final push. Then suddenly, at 6:15 a.m., everything fell silent again. A rebel general, who throughout the battle had been in constant touch with Diem and Nhu by telephone, had called for a five-minute grace period to allow the besieged President and his party to emerge.

But no one came out, and the cannon firing resumed, smashing windows, splintering doors, knocking chunks off the palace walls. The riflemen, belly-flat on the ground, sniped happily at Diem's last-ditch supporters. The battle was clearly over, and 17 minutes later, by dawn's first light, reported TIME Correspondent Murray Gart, "I could see a white flag being waved from a first-floor window on the palace's southwest corner. But there was more shooting from the palace. Then the white flag waved again and firing stopped. At first cautiously, then freely, the camouflage-suited rebels began to stand up, and a chorus of cheers welled up from the streets. Western-style, they fired their guns in the air, and rushed into the sieved fortress."

After all their effort, the rebel soldiers decided that a little looting was in order. Merrily, they ran from room to room, ripping down curtains for souvenirs, grabbing pieces of china. One soldier grabbed a calendar that bore Diem's picture, stuffed it in his shirt. Another made off with a two-foot Japanese doll that he hugged fondly to his breast.

The Official Story. Forgotten for the moment were Diem and Nhu. A few hours later, the ugly facts began to emerge. First, there was the official story. A spokesman for the military junta announced that the pair had slipped out of rebel hands during the ceasefire, boarded a departing truck while wounded were being removed, and somehow reached a Catholic church in the Chinese quarter of suburban Cholon. There, according to the story, both killed themselves at 10:45 a.m.

It would have been an incredible end for such devout adherents of Roman Catholicism, which sternly condemns suicide. But, in fact, the President and his brother were obviously murdered. According to one version, Diem and Nhu should have been sent abroad by plane; but, instead, they escaped from the palace, were found in the Cholon church by a troop of soldiers who arrested the pair and drove them off in an armored car toward military headquarters. On the way, an order was given to kill them. When the armored car arrived at headquarters, both men were dead. "Unofficial" photographs showed Diem's bullet-riddled body lying next to a personnel carrier, with a soldier leaning over him. A picture of Nhu showed him on a stretcher, his body marked by bruises. According to the same report, he had been stabbed to death.

Again the accusing voice of Mme. Nhu was heard from Los Angeles: "Any crime committed against the Ngo family cannot be hidden under the label of suicide. I affirm that suicide has always been considered incompatible with our religion." She also worried over the fate of her three young children, 4, 11 and 15, but reports from Saigon suggested that they were safe. She added amid sobs: "If really my family has been treacherously killed with either the official or unofficial blessing of the American Government, I can predict to you all that the story in South Viet Nam is only at its beginning."

The Trung Sisters. The reports of Diem's murder that swept through Saigon left a cold chill among even the bitterest of his enemies. But for a while nothing could cool the exultant crowds in Saigon. Buddhist monks, quickly released from jail by the revolutionary regime, joined the throngs. Shouting students turned the town on end. The mob smashed bookstores that had been owned by Diem's brother, Bishop Ngo Dinh Thuc, and by Mme. Nhu. Another crowd toppled and broke up the statue of Viet Nam's revered Trung sisters, stalwart Vietnamese heroines who fought Chinese overlords in the 1st century A.D.; their monument had been sponsored by Mme. Nhu. At the National Assembly, a shouting anti-Diem crowd sacked the hall, then carried Diem's portrait onto the front steps and shredded it.

At first, the soldiers of the military junta let the excitement run its course, then troops nudged the mobs off main thoroughfares, urging them to quiet down. They obviously had orders from the nation's new boss, Duong Van Minh, to avoid the kind of tough measures that might make enemies for his regime.

Oriental Gulliver. Eight years ago, General Duong Van Minh made a triumphal entry into Saigon to the cheers of his countrymen. Minh's troops had hunted down the last guerrilla forces of the dreaded Binh Xuyen bandits, a sort of Oriental Cosa Nostra that pillaged the countryside and controlled vice in Saigon. Sometimes it was known as "the whorehouse sect." So moved was President Ngo Dinh Diem by Minh's victory that he kissed his general on both cheeks.

If sheer heft could help him run South Viet Nam, Big Minh would have no problem. A Gulliver among his country's Lilliputians, he stands just under 6 ft. and weighs around 200 lbs., has a pronounced slouch caused from constantly having to stoop over to hear his countrymen. American military advisers nicknamed him Big to distinguish him from a smaller-statured fellow officer who is not related to him, Lieut. General Tran Van ("Little") Minh. Vietnamese good-naturedly call Minh "Beo," or Fat Boy.

Prison to Prison. Born in Mytho, 35 miles southwest of Saigon, Minh graduated from a lycee run by the French, in 1940 enlisted in the French colonial army and was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant. He spent most of World War II serving under a Vichy colonial administration that did the bid ding of the Japanese invaders. But in March 1945, when Vichy surrendered the French colony to the Japanese outright, Minh joined a band of defiant, lower-echelon soldiers who organized heroic but futile resistance to the capitulation. Minh was taken prisoner by the Japanese, beaten and tortured by having most of his teeth yanked out. Minh is proud of his dental scars and today, when he neglects to wear his false-tooth plate, he smiles just the same, uninhibitedly showing off his half-empty mouth.

Released by the Japanese after two months, Minh duly reported back to the French--only to be jailed for his insurrection. He and several other prisoners were put in a crowded, reeking cell with neither light nor toilet, ankle-deep in human excrement. Minh "almost went crazy," was freed after three months, thanks to a fellow prisoner who was released before Minh and intervened on his behalf with the French commandant. The friend: Nguyen Ngoc Tho, Diem's Vice President and the military junta's choice last week for Premier. Although Minh is universally deemed anti-Communist and pro-West, the experience in jail heightened his nationalism. However, after his release, he accepted a promotion to 1st lieutenant in the French forces, spent four years attached to the puppet regime of Emperor Bao Dai.

In 1952, with independence only two years away, Minh transferred to the newly formed Vietnamese army with the grade of major. After a stint of advanced study at Paris' general staff school, he returned and, following Diem's installation in 1955, launched his guerrilla-style campaign against the Binh Xuyen bandits. He also helped Diem in his campaign to subdue two fanatic, rebellious religious sects, the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai. After a second training tour abroad--this one at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, where he picked up serviceable English--Minh in 1958 was chosen by Diem to be the first boss of a field operations command to coordinate the mounting war against Communist Viet Cong guerrillas.

Generals Without Commands. Like many of his brother officers, Minh was to become disenchanted with the President's rule, which often cut humiliatingly through their chains of command. Once, without so much as advising the area commander, the President's brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, ordered an entire battalion transferred 80 miles from Cantho to Saigon. Minh protested privately: "Generals do not have power of command, therefore I do not command." He was also concerned about lack of popular support in the war against the Viet Cong, but he took no part in the abortive 1960 coup.

In the end, however, Minh suffered for his views, which ultimately reached the palace. Last year, even though Minh was being pushed vigorously by General Paul D. Harkins, his field operations command was abolished, and Minh was assigned as "military adviser" to the President--a meaningless post in which he was under Diem's surveillance.

Talk with the Pentagon. The downgrading failed to diminish U.S. enthusiasm for Minh, who impressed them not only in military ability. He is one of his country's top all-round athletes, excels at tennis, soccer, swimming and boating. Minh used to delight in running his 16-ft. motorboat up and down the Saigon River by means of a remote-control steering system, terrorizing all other river traffic. One day, a few years ago, Minh was matched against visiting General Maxwell Taylor in a set of tennis doubles and later exulted: "We whipped the hell out of them."

In the angry aftermath of last August's "special forces" raids on Buddhist pagodas, eyes fell on Minh as a man who might lead a coup. Knowing that he was suspect, Minh took care not to implicate himself; as recently as two weeks ago, he showed up with Diem at a palace ceremony. But within the past month, Minh participated in an afternoon's talk with a visiting Pentagon official in which the possibilities of a coup were discussed. The Fat Boy suggested that he was not the man to lead it, if it came, because he considers himself a weak administrator. Minh evidently found his administrator in aristocratic, French-educated Lieut. General Tran Van Don, 46, acting chief of the Joint General Staff, co-leader of the coup, and the sharpest staff officer in South Viet Nam. Says one U.S. officer of Minh: "He is a very nice man and very tough, but General Don is more capable."

Big Minh may lack the political talent to become the leader his country needs, but he has several important factors going for him. For one thing, he is a career infantryman with a bulldog face and a top sergeant's bluntness, yet is popular in the ranks. Next, he is clean of corruption or a pro-Communist past. Finally, Big Minh is popular among civilians. He drinks so little that one joke has it that a quart of whisky would last him a year. He is married to a pretty Vietnamese wife, has three children. He is a Buddhist who eschews fanaticism. Said one Vietnamese last week: "Everyone knows General Minh. He fought the whorehouse sect. He is a good man."

Sharing a Cell. Big Minh's "Military Revolutionary Committee" decided it would look better to have a civilian at least nominally at the head of the government, but they did not want another President. Named Premier was Nguyen Ngoc Tho, Diem's figurehead vice president since 1956, the highest-ranking Buddhist in Catholic Diem's regime. Like Minh, Tho is a southerner in a nation where regional loyalties are strong, and has been a close friend of Minh since the two shared the French prison cell.

Born in Longxuyen province 55 years ago, Tho joined the French civil service at 22, entered the Diem government in 1954 as Interior Minister. A modest, easygoing type who habitually sits in the front seat of his official limousine beside the driver, Tho has a reputation as a negotiator. Last June Tho negotiated a compromise pact between Buddhists and Diem, but the regime spurned it. Chances are that Premier Tho will remain as much of a figurehead as was Vice President Tho.

The first acts of Minh & Co. were to declare martial law, with an 8 p.m. curfew and censorship of press messages abroad. Dispatches discussing the fate of Diem and Nhu were carefully cut, forcing correspondents--at least for a while--to use precisely the same ruse they had employed against Diem's martial law period last summer: smuggling their files out to the cable offices in Hong Kong and Bangkok via cooperative airline passengers.

The Best Weapon. Minh's junta also suspended the constitution, dissolved the National Assembly. Yet, declared Minh's men, they were well aware of the fact that the best weapon to fight Communism is democracy and liberty. But at the same time they were aware of the fact--which Diem also knew--that total freedom in time of war is impossible. So the junta added somewhat nervously that it had no intention of establishing a "disorderly democratic regime."

What Minh, like so many soldiers who had seized power in other nations, was looking for was a form of democracy within the discipline of war. Few doubted his intentions, but few forgot the paths of other soldier-leaders after the first pure bliss of revolution. "For a moment, imagine that another government replaced this one," Diem once ruminated in one of his endless soliloquies. "It could not help but result in civil war and dreadful dictatorship."

U.S. policymakers are not disturbed by such gloomy prophecy. "We know General Minh, and we think we can work with him," was the word in Washington last week. For better or for worse, Minh is now Washington's man, and his success or failure in the terrible war against the Viet Cong will be America's success or failure.

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