46. Despatch From the Ambassador in France (Houghton) to the Department of State1
REF
- Embassy Despatch No. 1005, December 4, 19582
SUBJECT
- Second Conversation with Nguyen huu Chau
In an attempt to elicit a more detailed type of information from former Vietnamese Cabinet Minister Nguyen huu Chau than he had seemed willing to convey in the conversation reported earlier, an Embassy Officer … met again with him on December 22. The conversation followed the same outline and covered some of the same subjects as previously but was primarily an attempt to probe more deeply into the question of why Chau, apparently an influential, respected member of the inner most circle of the Vietnamese Government and one of President Ngo dinh Diem’s confidants, had become discontented and angry and had broken with the Government to go into voluntary exile.
In reply to this question Chau said, first of all, he had never been a member of the so-called inner circle—only Diem’s brothers occupied such a position. He was only an executor. What the President and his brothers decided should be done became Chau’s task to carry out. Devoted and loyal he was, intimate he was not.
As Chau talked, it became apparent the forces leading to his break with the Government were set in motion in mid-1957. Up to that time he had through tactful suggestions been able to exercise a certain amount of influence on the President and within the Government. As “Ambassador” representing the ministries at the Presidency, he had enjoyed “prestige and self respect”, i.e., position and power. However, about July of last year his domestic difficulties, that is, his desire to divorce his wife, the sister of Mme Ngo dinh Nhu, apparently caused the latter to seek means of destroying his influence by turning the President against him and, incidentally perhaps, blackening his name. The instrument chosen for this task was, in Chau’s opinion, the Can Lao or Revolutionary Workers’ Party, which launched a large-scale gossip and slander campaign against him. Chau said he was accused of being both anti-American and anti-French and of doing all the immoral things his wife had done. [Page 115] This effort apparently achieved all its goals, for Chau said his position in the early part of 1958 had been deprived of all influence and reduced to that a simple functionary.
Other individuals were cited as having similarly been the object of Party attacks designed to undercut their positions or have them removed from office. Eight months or a year ago the then Minister of Agriculture, Vien,3 now Minister at Taipei, had been accused of mismanaging the forest exploitation program so that he would not be in a position to oppose the grant to a group of RWP members of several hundred hectares of forest lands along the Dalat Highway. The proceeds from the exploitation of these lands were intended to be used to finance Monsignor Ngo dinh Thuc’s pet project, the Dalat University. But Chau said a great deal of the money went into the pockets of those who received the exploitation franchise.
Thus, Chau was not the only one whose life was made unbearable by the Party. Many other government officials and cabinet ministers had complained to him of an inability to perform their functions because Party “spies” in their ministries, by reporting directly to Nhu and therefore to the President, could and did short-circuit them. The result of such a situation, he said, was a general demoralization of the administration and, within the Party, a constant jockeying for favor on the part of its rank and file. Sycophancy and slander, depending on circumstances, were the tools by which one achieved power and prestige, according to Chau. He had recently heard that because of the atmosphere in Saigon Vice President Nguyen ngoc Tho also desired to leave the Government and Viet Nam, and, while Chau did not doubt that this was true, he did not believe he would really leave.
Chau also said one of the factors in his decision to leave the Government and Viet Nam was his seeing and hearing things he could not condone. For example, early in 1956 the then Minister of National Reconstruction, Hoang Hung, showed him a deed to a villa on the far side of the Zoological Gardens next to the amusement center that was being purchased from its French owner as a gift to the President from the National Revolutionary Movement. The price was six million piasters. On being asked for his opinion as a lawyer as to the correctness of the title, Chau suggested it might be slightly impolitic to have the property in the President’s name. Subsequently it was registered in that of his brother, Monsignor Thuc. To conceal the transaction as much as possible, Chau said an old Vietnamese from Hue was sent to Saigon to carry the money to the seller’s representative.
[Page 116]More recently, another instance of this kind was called to his attention by a friend, Vu Tinh Huan, whom he said worked in the Social Affairs Bureau (“the secret police office”) at the Presidency. This involved a villa on Rue Miche which was being given to Ngo dinh Nhu by the RWP. In fact, Chau believed the Ngo-dinh family frequently benefited in this way from the RWP’s prosperity. He assumed the construction of the family tomb and the restoration of the family home at Hue had been done by the Party as a “gift”. However, when questioned he claimed to be unable to shed any further light on what the Party does with its money. Some of it was obviously spent abroad for purposes of which he was unaware, and some of it undoubtedly went into the pockets of the Party rank and file, he thought. He did not know of any of its overseas financial activities and said he did not recognize the name of Nguyen van Buu (one of its “business managers”. Despite the inability to cite direct examples of possible malfeasance on the part of the President, Chau believed he had permitted too many unethical things to take place or even be done in his name to continue to deserve to be called “honest”.
Reverting to the Party’s ubiquity and power, Chau said its discipline over its members was very strong, and those who joined were forced to take a personal oath to Diem and to Nhu. Pham dang Lam, the Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, had postponed joining for a long time but had finally bowed to pressure. With regard to the RWP “spies” at diplomatic missions, Chau ventured to speculate that the military attaché at Paris, Lt. Col. Tran van Tung, was the real power here, and he knew positively that the Party representative in Bonn was the second in command there. He could only say that “one of the younger members of the staff” at the Embassy at Washington was the Party watchdog. Apropos of other aspects of Vietnamese diplomacy, he said he had heard that Ambassador Ngo dinh Luyen, currently at London, would move to Paris soon, possibly because Chau was here. There were also rumors that Ambassador Tran van Chuong, Nhu’s father-in-law, would become an Ambassador for all North and South America and Nhu would be appointed a roving Ambassador-at-Large in the Far East.
In response to an inquiry as to whether he believed the activities of American officials in Saigon were subject to Vietnamese surveillance, Chau replied negatively but said those Vietnamese who had dealings with Americans were closely watched by their confreres, and one was expected not to have any contacts not required by one’s responsibilities. For this reason he had always refrained from inviting General Williams to his house, although he would have liked to have done so.
[Page 117]Asked what people around the President, that is his brothers, really thought of Americans, Chau said there was a Vietnamese expression that was frequently recited around Independence Palace: Ban chim duoc roi be na, which translates as “once you’ve shot the bird there’s no more need for the slingshot”. Allegedly on more than one occasion Nhu told Chau he would not hesitate to replace American aid with French if the former were withdrawn or even threatened. Nhu and Ngo Dinh Can were said to be capable of going to any extremes to maintain their positions of power, including negotiating with the Viet Minh, if their positions were threatened.
Chau said he was unable to disclose any real “secrets” because he had always refrained from interesting himself in things which did not concern him. He professed always to have acted honestly, but honesty was not appreciated. He wondered how the United States could continue to pour money into a country which made such poor use of aid funds and said for his part he had always refused to act in any way detrimental to American interests.
In response to a question he also said that after leaving Viet Nam he had come directly to France without visiting any other countries.
First Secretary of Embassy
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, 751G.00/12–3158. Secret; Limit Distribution; Noforn. Drafted by Robert E. Barbour, Second Secretary and Political Officer. Copy pouched to Saigon.↩
- See footnote 3, Document 39.↩
- Nguyen Cong Vien.↩