Another Sort of H-Bomb

As an off-duty Air Vietnam stewardess, Mrs. Nguyen Ngoc Quy expected to be waved through customs as usual when she stepped off her flight from Bangkok last month at Saigon's Tan Son Nhut airport. Instead, officials opened her baggage, revealing 19.8 lbs. of heroin and an ugly new quirk in American-South Vietnamese relations.

Her arrest provided the first lead in an unfolding scandal that has already embarrassed the regime of President Nguyen Van Thieu. Mrs. Quy, 26, turned out to be a very well connected young woman. She is the daughter of a senior civil servant who works for South Viet Nam's Senate chairman, and is the girl friend of an army major. She lived in a house owned by Vo Van Mau, a deputy in the National Assembly, who is loyal to Thieu's regime. When police searched another of Mau's properties, they found vials that bore traces of heroin--about which Mau claimed to know nothing. A week later, Pham Chi Thien, another pro-administration deputy, was caught red-handed smuggling 8.78 lbs. of heroin from Laos, and now awaits trial. Thien's comely, 20-year-old travelmate slipped by airport police, but was arrested a few days later as she entered one of Saigon's main heroin "drops," a three-story cement apartment building on Le Thanh Ton Street.

She carried an intriguing address book. Among the names (Thien's included) and lists of transactions were initials police believe belong to another deputy who had been engaged in smuggling heroin. Former General Huynh Van Cao, who headed the pro-government Senate slate in last fall's elections, charged that at least two senators were also involved in heroin traffic and then promptly retracted his statement.

Tempting Buy. Drugs are rapidly becoming as great a threat to American forces as the enemy (TIME, March 1). During a sample period last year, military investigators found that confirmed or suspected heroin-connected deaths were occurring at a rate approaching one daily. Marijuana accounts for three-quarters of G.I. drug offenses in Viet Nam, but cheap (1/36th U.S. cost), extremely pure Laotian or Thai heroin is a tempting buy for men seeking temporary escape from the boredom and terror of war. It is less easily detected than pot. Moreover, G.I.s have developed the disturbing myth that if smoked--"snorted"--the drug is nonaddictive.

There are major political implications to the heroin problem. One of Saigon's leading opposition papers, the Tin Dien, asked sarcastically: "Who wants to kill this regime? The rulers or the Communists?" The fact that some of Thieu's supporters are implicated in the heroin trade does not mean that the government either condones or encourages the illegal trafficking. Nonetheless, the paper pointed out that if Thieu failed to cope with the heroin scandal, it would be a major defeat for his regime. There is also considerable speculation that Hanoi may be facilitating the flow of cheap heroin into South Viet Nam as a means of demoralizing American forces while picking up considerable foreign exchange. With the exception of a few teenage "cowboys" and bar girls, Vietnamese shun heroin, which they regard as declasse and crass compared to opium. Virtually all of it goes into American bloodstreams. In efforts to get Saigon to clamp down on traffickers, the U.S. has already offended the sensitive pride of Vietnamese sovereignty by insisting on stricter customs inspections.

The heroin scandal only heightens already tense relations between Washington and Saigon. After the mauling of ARVN troops in Laos, many South Vietnamese are blaming the U.S. for sending in their troops to do an American job. "At a time when relations between the two countries have sunk to an all-time low," reports TIME Saigon Bureau Chief Jonathan Larsen, "the heroin scandal ticks away like a time bomb in the corner." Since politicking is already beginning for next October's presidential elections, the heroin smuggling will clearly be a major campaign issue.

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