Finding the Dragon Lady (36 page)

15
. Tai,
Radicalism,
93.

16
. Madame Nhu told her story to Associated Press reporter Malcolm Browne in 1961 interview.

17
. Madame Nhu,
Caillou Blanc,
2:14–15.

Chapter 4: Portrait of a Young Lady

1
. CAOM, Tran Van Chuong Dossier, HCRT non-cote.

2
. Crosbie Garstin in Mark Sidel,
Old Hanoi
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 22.

3
. Nicola Cooper,
France in Indochina: Colonial Encounters
(Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers, 2001), 43.

4
. Tu Binh Tran,
The Red Earth: A Vietnamese Memoir of Life on a Colonial Rubber Plantation
(Athens: Ohio University Press, 1985), 30.

5
. Cooper,
France in Indochina,
150. There was a differentiation between the high status of the Indochinese over the African blacks in racial hierarchies. However, there was also a blurring between colonial territories. Medical experts on the effects of racial integration drew comparisons between the Indochinese and African populations, indicating a lack of distinction between nonwhite populations. “Imperial France blurred all native populations into one indistinguishable morass of disease and filth” (Cooper,
France in Indochina,
152).

6
. Cooper,
France in Indochina,
93–94.

7
. Tai,
Radicalism,
30.

8
. Nguyen Ky, “The French Model,” in
Hanoi,
ed. Georges Boudarel and Nguyen Ky (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 62.

9
. CAOM, Haut Commissariat Indo, carton 375, Surveillance of Nippo-Indochinese Relations by the Sûreté, CAOM Indo Rstnf. 6965.

10
. SHAT Archives 10H 80, Note du Général Aymé sur les événements dont il a été témoin en Indochine du 10 mars au 1 octobre 1945.

11
. Edward Miller,
Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 42.

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.