Laughter in the Shadows (20 page)

After eighteen months, there were almost two thousand Mountain Scouts on the rolls. I worked the thirteen provinces alone at first, then with two other case officers.

A program the size of the Mountain Scouts, however, was not without its problems. We uncovered a number of abuses and financial irregularities such as province and district chiefs using the teams to provide for their own security, padding the payroll with relatives, phony names, or even “dead souls.” These abuses were not unlike those that plagued most programs in Vietnam.

My close ties with the montagnards got me in serious trouble with the Vietnamese commander for the highlands Second Military Region, General Vinh Loc. At one of the U.S. Special Forces’ camps, montagnard tribesmen had massacred ten Vietnamese Special Force soldiers. Although our Mountain Scouts were not involved, Vinh Loc held me responsible and summoned me to his headquarters.

When I arrived, General Vinh Loc called me over and threw a set of photographs on the table in front of him, gruesome pictures of the mutilated and decapitated bodies of the massacred Vietnamese soldiers. He pointed to the photographs and started lacing into me. “This is what comes of your meddling with the montagnards and stirring them up against the Vietnamese!”

The general didn’t mention the trouble that had been brewing for months, trouble stirred up by FULRO (the Force for Liberation Highlands), an intertribal organization agitating for independence. I was a more convenient target, and after another tirade about “interference in Vietnamese affairs,” Vinh Loc said he was going to report me to General Maxwell Taylor, the American ambassador in Saigon.

He was true to his word. The next day I was summoned to the ambassador’s office in Saigon along with General William Westmoreland, the American military commander.

I led off the briefing, beginning with a rebuttal of Vinh Loc’s accusation that the Mountain Scouts were involved. Vinh Loc was venting his spleen for the massacre of his Vietnamese Special Force soldier. While no one condoned the massacre of Vietnamese troops, I said the ambassador should be aware the incident was indicative of growing hostility between the montagnards and the Vietnamese. I gave him a brief rundown on the activities of FULRO, pointing out that a rebellion was brewing in the highlands against the Vietnamese, and FULRO might soon declare independence.

The ambassador, a former four-star general and Westmoreland’s commander in World War II, was visibly upset but directed most of his anger at Westy, whose Special Forces, claiming to have such close rapport with the montagnards, slept through a massacre in their own camp.

He then turned to me and said the last thing he needed in the middle of a war that was already hard enough to justify and explain was a “tribal rebellion,” a war within a war. He then gave us our marching orders, which were to rein in FULRO and ask them to tamp down, at least for the time being, this call for independence, and to make sure there would be no more massacres in our Special Forces camps!

There were no more massacres, and the FULRO rebellion fizzled, but this was not of our doing. The war suddenly escalated in the highlands as North Vietnamese regulars began pouring into the highlands to engage South Vietnamese and American troops.

In late 1964 I was told to turn over the Mountain Scout program to the U.S. military command. With the United States now engaged in an all-out war in Vietnam, it was decided that large paramilitary programs such as the Mountain Scouts should be amalgamated into the overall military program for South Vietnam.

This decision taught me a lesson. Large and successful programs like the Mountain Scouts are tempting takeover targets. Keep your operations small.

Sister Rose

Please forget about the crusty scurf discoloring my sickly skin, Pay no attention to my shriveled flesh.

—DANTE ALIGHIERI,
Purgatorio
, Canto XXIII

Although some of our operations in Vietnam were reruns of Cham, one was not. Sister Rose was a Vietnamese Roman Catholic nun who ran a leper colony near Zone D, a no-man’s-land and primary Viet Cong base for operations in the South.

It wasn’t clear why the Viet Cong had not overrun Sister Rose’s colony. At one time the VC had captured Sister Rose and sent her off to a reeducation camp, but they sent her back when they discovered she had been organizing volleyball games between the guards and their prisoners.

Colonel Do Van Dien, the Vietnamese military commander of the area bordering Zone D, was a highly decorated officer and, like President Diem, he was also an ardent Roman Catholic and admirer of Sister Rose.

I had met Dien earlier when working with the Mountain Scouts. Two highland provinces were part of his military jurisdiction, and I often stayed with him
when I was in his area. During one of my visits, Dien told me he was worried about Sister Rose’s colony. Dien had received intelligence reports that the Viet Cong were planning to attack the leper colony, but he couldn’t spare any troops to help defend it. He asked if I could offer Sister Rose some carbines and ammunition. It would be a token gesture but would bolster her colony’s morale and maybe buy her some time.

Like all U.S. government organizations, the Agency is required to respect the constitutional separation of church and state. There were some rare exceptions, however, such as sharing intelligence with Israel and the Vatican, and I didn’t think there would be objections to helping a genuine freedom fighter who happened to wear a nun’s habit.

Colonel Dien provided an armed escort for my visit to Sister Rose. The gate was opened by a sentinel whose face was covered with pockmarks. Inside the compound, lepers with scaly skin and running sores walked or limped around the compound and, surprisingly, were all smiling, seemingly indifferent to their afflictions.

When I entered the compound, a bell in the chapel tower started ringing. Sister Rose was apparently staging an “alert” for my benefit. Lepers in various stages of the disease hobbled past to take up their positions on the colony’s perimeter. Even those with only one arm or leg limped or crawled over to shallow foxholes, where they crouched or lay down, aiming their wooden rifles in the direction of Zone D. Women with flaking skin took up positions around a plywood mortar in the center of the compound. It had taken less than a minute for the colony to brace for an attack.

When the “all-clear” sounded, Sister Rose led me to the dispensary and poured out two glasses of “medicinal tea,” which tasted suspiciously like Beefeaters gin. She told me about recent Viet Cong probes against her compound that had recently increased in both frequency and intensity, adding that the only reason they hadn’t stormed the compound was out of fear of becoming infected. It was only a matter of time, however, before they mounted a major attack.

I told Sister Rose that Colonel Dien had asked me to help her. I said we could provide thirty M-2 carbines, one Browning automatic rifle (BAR), and ten cases of ammunition, not enough to hold off a sustained Viet Cong attack, but maybe enough to buy her some time and possibly raise the morale of the defenders. She thanked me in advance for any “donation” I could provide.

I returned a week later with the thirty carbines, the BAR, and the ammunition. Sister Rose blessed each weapon as it was removed from the crate and then gave me a blessing as well. She also hung a crucifix around my neck and called me “the Father Damien of Zone D,” after the Belgian missionary who died ministering to the lepers on the Molokai colony in Hawaii.

I heard from Colonel Dien later that Sister Rose’s colony had fended off several Viet Cong attacks before being overrun. She was taken prisoner and sent to another reeducation camp, probably one without a volleyball court.

Coup #2

On November 1, 1965, a cabal of Vietnamese generals led by Duong Van Minh, “Big Minh,” staged a coup d’état against South Vietnam’s President Diem. Air force planes strafed the presidential palace neutralizing forces loyal to Diem, forcing the president and his brother, Nhu, to flee to the Cholon district of Saigon. Shortly afterward, they decided to give themselves up, and General Minh, guaranteeing them safe conduct, sent an armored car to Cholon to escort the president and his brother to coup headquarters. When the armored car arrived, the bullet-riddled bodies of Diem and Nhu were inside, the two having been assassinated by the captain charged with bringing them back safely.

The day of the coup, air force planes flew over our house, diving and strafing the barracks of troops loyal to the president. I had gone into the embassy, but my family and the visiting wife of a CARE official took shelter under the stairs until the planes flew off and the bombardment stopped.

An hour later Joy phoned me at the embassy, telling me that the “special radio” was squawking and I should come home. The special radio had been installed in my house before the coup, with instructions that it was not to be touched except in an emergency. The radio was still squawking when I got home, so I picked up the hand receiver and immediately knew it was my friend, Colonel Lou Conein. He barked at me to “bring him some scotch whisky,” and when I told him to get off the phone, he repeated his request, yelling at me to relay his message to the embassy. I learned later that “scotch whisky” was the signal indicating the coup was in progress.

I phoned the Station with Conein’s message, and the acting chief of station told me to go immediately to coup headquarters, which was located in a military compound a little over a mile from my house. I was to tell Conein to contact the Station immediately.

I jumped in my jeep and drove out to coup headquarters, where the armored car with the bodies of Diem and Nhu had arrived. The entire press corps was standing around the armored car, and then several journalists began to leave the compound to file their stories. They were heading in the direction of my jeep, which I had parked near the gate of the compound. I jumped out, ducked down behind the jeep, and, using my radio, called my station chief in the embassy. I told him that I couldn’t get to Conein without passing a phalanx of reporters.

Dave Smith, the acting chief, told me to forget Conein and get out of the compound, saying, “If those correspondents see you, it will confirm their suspicions that CIA is behind the coup. And you and I will be on the next plane home!”

I jumped in the jeep and got away without being observed. In the end my exit didn’t make much difference, because the press accused the CIA anyway of being behind the coup.

The coup, which even the communist journalist Wilfred Burchett described as a “colossal American blunder,” destabilized the country. A succession of “general’s coups” followed the one against Diem, until finally Nguyen Van Thieu, the only general left standing, took over and became the last president of South Vietnam.

“Clear the Decks”

After the coup, the situation in Saigon remained tense. Our family’s life went on, but not quite as before. Kent and Gray, wearing green berets and cut-down camouflage uniforms given them by a Special Forces “A Team” commander, played war games and built sandbag revetments in the yard. Laurie was at a movie when a Viet Cong terrorist lobbed a grenade into the theater. Laurie, having been told to lie on the floor in the event of a bomb explosion, did as instructed but was trampled by other moviegoers running out of the theater. The bombing left Laurie with permanent ear damage and recurring nightmares.

A Viet Cong car bomb exploded in front of the American embassy, killing a CIA secretary and leaving the CIA station chief, Peer de Silva, with permanent eye damage. On Christmas Eve the same year an explosion rocked the Rex Hotel, an American officers’ billet, and with the security situation worsening, U.S. military police were assigned to ride shotgun on school buses and stand guard on the roof of the American School.

The situation in Saigon continued to deteriorate with a series of plastic explosive and grenade attacks, the self-immolation of Buddhist monks, civil unrest, and a rash of assassination attempts. A magazine photo of a South Vietnamese police colonel executing a blindfolded prisoner and the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk received wide play in the United States.

President Johnson decided it was time to “clear the decks.”

Evacuation #2

Another evacuation. Cham déjà vu. Families were put on notice to be prepared for evacuation by military aircraft from Tan San Nhut airport. Joy and the wives of two other case officers who also didn’t like flying wondered if they could be
evacuated by ship. We looked around and learned that a Norwegian freighter was in port. The three of us went down to the port to the office of the shipping line, where we were told the ship’s next port of call after leaving Saigon was Bangkok. We asked if the freighter could “evacuate” three American families.

The Norwegians were very helpful and relayed the request from “the American embassy” to assist in the evacuation of three families from Saigon. The company immediately authorized the ship to take the three families and their pets to Bangkok. Three days after leaving Saigon, the three families walked down the gangplank in Bangkok.

The second time around was easier. The families bypassed the Erawan this time and rented houses scattered around the city. Picking up where they had left off, Joy went back to work for the
Bangkok World;
Laurie, Kent, Gray, and Megan reenrolled in the international school; and they all resumed their riding lessons, eating off noodle carts, and hopping on three-wheeled samlors.

Bangkok was elevated to status as a “safe haven.”