Wanted: A New Commissar

General William Westmoreland's Communist equivalent, General Nguyen Chi Thanh, 51, commander for Hanoi of all North Vietnamese and Viet Cong political and military activity in South Viet Nam, died last week of a heart attack, said Radio Hanoi. A stocky, dour, pro-Chinese Annamese, Thanh directed the war for the most part from a redoubt in Tay Ninh province near the Cambodian border, operating under the pseudonyms of Ann Sau and Sau Di.

Educated in Hue, he started his career as a teacher, acquiring skills that he put to work when he joined the Communists in the 1930s and helped to create Ho Chi Minh's party youth organization. He learned his soldiering in Mao Tse-tung's military "academy" in Yeman from 1941 to 1943, then fought with the Chinese Communists until the end of World War II. From 1950 to 1961 he was chief political officer for Ho's army in Hanoi; in 1964 he was sent to South Viet Nam, where he had since directed, with considerable craft and imagination, all Communist efforts against the Allies. The Communists will not announce Thanh's successor, of course, but intelligence men will be watching carefully for signs of his appearance in the next few months.

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