A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (142 page)

Smuggling of heavy weapons by sea: Vann and Drummond received information in early 1963 of weapons being landed along the coast of the Mekong Delta by seagoing vessels, but the reports were not taken with sufficient seriousness in Saigon. The details of how the trawlers made their smuggling runs became known later in the war when several were intercepted by U.S. forces.

Halberstam-Vann relationship: interview with David Halberstam; Halberstam-Vann correspondence in Vann papers; personal recollections.

Vann’s February 8, 1963, memorandum on the Viet Cong units Cao and Dam refused to attack: Drummond and Ziegler interviews; Vann’s tape-recorded interview with the U.S. Army historian Charles von Luttichau; and correspondence in Vann’s papers.

Porter’s final report: Although Harkins suppressed the report, Porter remembered its general contents. Fred Ladd was also of assistance.

Vann’s canceled briefing for the Joint Chiefs: The correspondence and documents in Vann’s papers supported his version of the briefing incident. Col. Francis Kelly, Vann’s immediate superior in the Directorate of Special Warfare, and Maj. Gen. Frank Clay, who was stationed at the Pentagon at the time and in touch with Vann, remembered Krulak’s role. Clay also had friends on the staff of the Joint Chiefs and his brother, Lucius, an Air Force general, was in the Pentagon then and privy to JCS affairs.

The overthrow of the Ngo Dinhs: interviews with the Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.; Lucien Conein; and Maj. Gen. John M. Dunn, then a lieutenant colonel and Lodge’s executive assistant in Saigon; my UPI carbons; a memorandum written at the time with information from Col. (subsequently ARVN Brig. Gen.) Pham Van Dong, who was privy to the plot; the Pentagon Papers and particularly the secret cable traffic between Lodge and President Kennedy and others in Washington.

Clandestine warfare against the North—”Operation Plan 34A”: Krulak interview;
the Pentagon Papers and separate official documents. Colby admits the failure of his own smaller program and discusses his opposition to Krulak’s scheme and McNamara’s rejection of his arguments in his memoirs,
Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA
.

The creation of the second Viet Minh: The strength and level of organization of the Viet Cong army at the end of 1964 is based on retrospective U.S. military intelligence reports. The intelligence officers achieved a realistic estimate by reevaluating the data and utilizing subsequent information. A copy of a captured Viet Cong after-action report on the destruction of the entire company of M-113’s on December 9, 1964, was in Vann’s papers.

John Vann’s ancestry: interviews with Mollie Tosolini and William Arthur “Buddie” Tripp; for the Spry side with Lorraine Layne, a younger sister of Johnny Spry, and with John Paul Spry, Jr., Johnny Spry’s oldest son. Commonwealth of Virginia, Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics for birth, marriage, and death information. For published works consulted see in Bibliography:
Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England
, by Douglas Hay et al.;
Convicts and the Colonies
, by A.G.L. Shaw;
The Encyclopedia of Southern History; The Mind of the South
, by W. J. Cash;
Night Comes to the Cumberlands
, by Harry Caudill;
Beaufort County [North Carolina], Two Centuries of Its History
, by C. Wingate Reid;
Sketches of Pitt County [North Carolina], 1704–1910
, by Henry T. King; “Some Colonial History of Beaufort County, North Carolina,” by Francis H. Cooper;
North Carolina: An Economic and Social Profile
, by S. Huntington Hobbs, Jr.;
A Sketch of North Carolina; Origins of the New South, 1877–1913
, by C. Vann Woodward.

Character of Myrtle: Mollie Tosolini, Buddie Tripp, Lillian and George Dillard, Dorothy Lee Vann Cadorette, Aaron Frank Vann, Jr.

Character of Johnny Spry and his affair with Myrtle: Mollie Tosolini and John Paul Spry, Jr., the son to whom Johnny Spry talked most freely about his early life. John Paul Spry, Jr., also lent me photographs of his father in his younger years. Two other sons, retired CWO Clifford “Kirby” Spry and Col. Alfred Earl Spry, provided further insights into their father’s character and personality.

John Vann’s birth and infancy: Mollie Tosolini and Lillian Dillard.

Background of Aaron Frank Vann: Myrtle Felton, one of his sisters.

John Vann’s childhood and youth in Norfolk: Dorothy Lee Cadorette and Aaron Frank Vann, Jr., were vital to this section because of the extent of their memories as the older siblings and their willingness to be honest with me. Gene Vann also made valuable contributions. During a research trip to Norfolk in
1981, Dorothy Lee took me on a tour of the Lamberts Point neighborhood which, unlike Atlantic City, had not been torn down for urban renewal. We found houses in which the Vanns had lived, including the house described in the book. Dorothy Lee lent me her mother’s photo album, which she had preserved. Frank Junior had kept what few documents his father left behind. Among them were a birth certificate in the original name of John Paul LeGay and the 1943 adoption order by the Circuit Court of Norfolk. Vann’s cousins, George Dillard, Joseph Raby, Jr., and Melvin Raby, provided memories of their summer vacations in Norfolk. Rev. Robert Consolvo, a retired Methodist minister whom I originally interviewed because he was a friend of the late Garland Hopkins, had grown up in the Atlantic City neighborhood and was an extremely knowledgeable source on it and the Norfolk of Vann’s youth. Reverend Consolvo performed numerous follow-up research tasks for me, such as finding the records of the Boy Scout troops to which Vann had belonged and the news story of the raid on Johnny Spry’s bootleg whiskey still on the microfilm of the defunct
Portsmouth Star
in the Portsmouth library. John Paul Spry, Jr., had told me of the raid. Lloyd Miller, a retired police officer who was a contemporary of John Vann in the Atlantic City neighborhood, was another source on life there and on the Vann family. I am indebted to him for leading me to Edward “Gene” Crutchfield. For published works on historic Norfolk and the city of Vann’s youth see in the Bibliography:
Through the Years in Norfolk;
Norfolk: Historic Southern Port
, by Thomas J. Wertenbaker;
The City by the Sea;
and
Norfolk: A Tricentennial Pictorial History
, by Carroll Walker.

Garland Hopkins: Margaret Hopkins, his former wife; Rev. Robert Consolvo; Rev. William Wright, Jr.; Lloyd Miller; Gene Crutchfield;
Who’s Who in America
, 1964–65 edition.

John Vann at Ferrum: Margaret Clark, the assistant registrar in 1981, found Vann’s record there for me. When I drove to Ferrum after my research trip to Norfolk she also put me in touch with Nora Bowling Martin, a classmate of Vann’s. Mrs. Martin gave me her recollections of Johnny Vann and called a number of classmates to pass along their recollections too.

Vann joins the Army Air Corps: Vann’s Army enlisted record, which the Office of The Adjutant General provided me, supplemented by interviews with Melvin Raby and others. Frank Junior discovered Vann’s application for flight training with the letters from the teachers at Ferrum among his father’s documents.

Mary Jane Allen and Vann’s courtship of her: interviews with Mary Jane; Mary Allen, her mother; and Doris Moreland, her sister; news clippings and other memorabilia of her childhood and youth; photos of Vann and Mary Jane during their courtship.

Mary Jane’s marriage to John Vann: interviews with her and with Mollie Tosolini and Joseph Raby, Jr.; Mary Jane’s photo album of the marriage and the news clippings she had saved.

Japan period: Mary Jane; Vann’s Army efficiency reports and other material
in his record; a picture of the house on the hill near Osaka and other photos Mary Jane kept.

Vann’s aerial resupply of the rifle companies in the Pusan Perimeter: interview with Col. Silas Gassett; recommendation to award Vann the Silver Star submitted in 1958 by Colonel Gassett. Lt. Col. Dudley Parrish, who witnessed the flights as a major and intelligence officer with the 25th Infantry Division, could not be interviewed because he was deceased, but his eyewitness account was attached to the recommendation. Roy Appleman’s superb history,
South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu
, was also of help for the general battle situation.

Ralph Puckett’s fight on Hill 205: interview with Col. Ralph Puckett, Jr.; news clipping of the encounter found in Vann’s papers; S.L.A. Marshall’s
The River and the Gauntlet
. The newspaper clipping and Vann’s efficiency reports and other notations in his service record alerted me to the fact that he had not been commanding the Ranger company at the time of the fight. Puckett told me of the trouble Vann took to see that Puckett received the Distinguished Service Cross and that a number of the enlisted men were also decorated.

Other Korean War interviews that offered particular insights: Yao Wei; Col. Carl Bernard, a friend of Vann’s who won a Distinguished Service Cross as a lieutenant with Task Force Smith, the first American unit to encounter the North Koreans; Col. Joseph Pizzi, who was in Eighth Army intelligence at the time of the Chinese intervention and more than twenty years later served as Vann’s chief of staff at II Corps; Fred Ladd, who served as an aide to Douglas MacArthur and then to Lt. Gen. Edward Almond, MacArthur’s chief of staff, before managing a transfer to an infantry unit.

Published works consulted for Korean War period: In addition to Appleman and Marshall see Bibliography for Dean Acheson’s
Present at the Creation-
, Daniel Yergin’s
Shattered Peace;
Joseph Goulden’s
Korea, the Untold Story of the War;
James Schnabel’s
Policy and Direction: The First Year;
Trumbull Higgins’s
Korea and the Fall of MacArthur;
J. Robert Moskin’s
The Story of the U.S. Marine Corps;
and for Inchon also Krulak’s
First to Fight;
William Manchester’s biography of MacArthur,
American Caesar; Without Parallel, The American-Korean Relationships Since 1945
, edited by Frank Baldwin; and Edgar Snow’s
The Other Side of the River
.

Germany period: Photos given me by Mary Jane and Patricia Vann Stromberg were again of great assistance in portraying family life.

Statutory rape charge: the CID report that the Office of The Adjutant General located for me along with the rest of Vann’s record. The seventeen-page account Vann concocted to try to demonstrate his innocence was attached to the report. Interviews with Mary Jane; Brig. Gen. Frank Blazey, an Army friend stationed at West Point at the time in whom Vann confided; Col. Francis Bradley; Lt. Col. David Farnham, the executive secretary of Vann’s CORDS headquarters for III Corps in Vietnam to whom he also told the story.

Peter Vann’s illness and admission to The Children’s Hospital in Boston: I owe the truth of this episode to Samuel Schuster, M.D., who performed the
surgery, and Samuel Katz, M.D., then a staff pediatrician at the hospital who was assigned Peter’s case. They spoke to me and Dr. Schuster sent me, with Peter’s permission, a copy of his hospital record.

John Vann’s decision before he went to Vietnam to retire in 1963: Colonel Bradley; Vann’s correspondence with Colonel Bradley in his papers; his employment record at Martin Marietta, which the firm kindly provided me.

Suicide of Garland Hopkins: records of the Fairfax County Police Department; Hopkins’s will on file in Fairfax County Court House; Mary Jane, to whom Vann described the suicide; Margaret Hopkins; Rev. Robert Consolvo; Rev. William Wright, Jr.

Exact time of John Vann’s arrival back in South Vietnam: a diary he kept upon return.

Reunion dinner with Cao: the diary Vann kept intermittently, in a lined stenographer’s pad, during the first six months after his return, hereinafter referred to as Diary. Maj. Gen. Michael Healy, a brigadier general in 1972 and Vann’s successor as U.S. commander in II Corps, found the Diary in Vann’s former quarters in the advisory compound at Pleiku. He was kind enough to give it to me during my research trip to Vietnam that year.

Embassy bombing: Diary. Account by Peer de Silva, the CIA station chief who nearly lost his eyesight, in his book
Sub Rosa
.

John Vann in Hau Nghia: In addition to the Diary, the major sources of material for this period were my interview with Douglas Ramsey and a copy of an unfinished manuscript he let me have on his experiences in Vietnam and his captivity; Vann’s reports to his USOM superiors and similar records in his papers; his correspondence with General York and with Prof. Vincent Davis, Vann’s friend who was then teaching at the University of Denver and who subsequently became director of the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky; a tape-recorded lecture Vann gave for Davis at the University of Denver in October 1965; a twenty-nine-page memorandum by Daniel Ellsberg, entitled “Visit to an Insecure Province,” on three days he spent with Vann in Hau Nghia that October. Also helpful were a series of photographs of Vann and Ramsey living and working in Hau Nghia that were taken in 1965 by the late Mert Perry for the article in
Newsweek
that is mentioned in the text. The photographs were in Vann’s papers.

Corruption: The Diary contains details and incidents, including Vann’s conversation with Hanh on the subject, and his battle with the crooked contractor and the tainting of the former AID official in Hau Nghia. Vann preserved in his papers the file of his correspondence with the crooked contractor. The graft
demand levied on Hanh by the military regime presided over by Nguyen Cao Ky is described by Vann in a confidential memorandum dated July 26, 1965. Doug Ramsey was immensely informative on the workings of corruption in Hau Nghia and Ev Bumgardner and Frank Scotton provided further information and understanding on the subject in general. Sam Wilson was also of assistance on Vann’s struggle with the contractor and the graft demand placed on Hanh. The tax reportedly paid to the Viet Cong by the Hiep Hoa sugar mill is mentioned in Daniel Ellsberg’s memorandum.