INSIDE SAIGON: EYE-WITNESS REPORT

...A non-communist member of the Committee to Reform the Prison System told me that the Committee was well aware that members of the Committee were in fact cadres...

...The NLF-third force cooperation points rather to a fact that the U.S...

...For the next few hours we sat on the grass within earshot of the ARVN trucks moving along Highway 1 and talked politics...

...On April 30, at 11:00 a.m., Minh surrendered...

...As one friend active in both organizations remarked...

...Face to Face was quickly followed by a new Catholic weekly, Catholic and Nation...

...The former chairman of the Committee, Father Phan Khac Tu, is now deputy chair-man of the new Federation...

...Madam Ngo Ba Thanh, Buddhist nun Huynh Lien, Catholic deputy Nhuan, Catholic priest Truong Ba Can, Buddhist lay person Vo Dinh Cuong, all were elected to positions on the Central Committee of the Front...

...NLF cadres were often senior officials of their move-ments, like Mme...

...When our talk was over, and we returned to the pagoda, we signed the visitors' book...

...Though such an explanation would undoubtedly come easily to the lips of many Americans-including those who so enthusiastically prosecuted the war in Viet Nam for so many years-this does not seem to be the case...

...This was Tin Sang, the most famous of all Saigon oppo-sition papers which had been firebombed and confiscated out of existence in 1972...

...Kontum and Pleiku were evacuated, and the Saigon regime began to fold so fast that the Communists complained that they had difficulty keeping up the pace...

...Although paralyzed from the waist down by childhood polio, he was inter-rogated, tortured and imprisoned...

...They kept their own counsel and made their own deci-sions...

...At Van Hanh Buddhist university we watched Buddhist monks and hitherto apolitical students work side by side with NLF student cadres at the immense task of disarming and registering the Saigon army and police...

...Several eerie days passed, senators talked long and loud about "legality," rockets fell on the capital, and it seemed that Saigon's politicians had taken complete leave of reality...

...In 1971, a young journalist and translator then, in his own words, "ardently third force" was arrested...

...From my con-versations, however, they merged as a radical nationalist grouping which had frequent contacts with the NLF, and was aware that many NLF cadres were active in third force movements...

...For six hours the two men and their hosts hid underground, water up to their chests, while the G.L's moved overhead, looking for "V.C...

...We shall attempt to broaden the Front (NLF) as much as possible, and include as many different view-points as possible," said Huynh Tan Phat, one of the leaders of the PRG shortly after the PRG takeover...

...But, like the nuns, theirs was not any ordinary reeducation or study session...

...Does the extent of NLF third force contacts before April 30 and the ease with which they were assimilated afterwards mean that the "third force" opponents of Thieu were nothing more than pawns of the PRG...

...When the G.I.'s finally left, the two bedraggled and shaken visitors were pulled out of their hiding places to meet their host: Tran Bach Dang, senior Party official for the Saigon Gia Dinh area...

...The greed and brutality of the regime is forcing people to choose between the PRG and Thieu-they are choosing the PRG...

...Ho Ngoc Nhuan, Ly Qui Chung and other third force figures who had briefly served under Minh and whose insistent appeals to Minh to surrender unconditionally had pre-vailed over the advice of some of Minn's more conserva-tive advisors, climbed into their cars and drove home...

...As the Saigon regime crumbled, leaders of the "third force"-as the loose coalition of Buddhist and Catholic organizations in opposition to Thieu was normally called -began to talk more freely about their secret contacts with the National Liberation Front prior to the PRG takeover in Saigon...

...During the last days of the old regime, distinctions between the more militant of the third force and the NLF urban underground began to fade away...

...More importantly, the Assembly marked the election of several of the most prominent third force leaders to the NLF...

...I noticed that other recent visitors to the pagoda had included a delegation of Saigon opposition newsmen and politicians...

...Many of the stu-dents working in Buddhist social welfare groups in the Anti-Hunger Front were members of the NLF or of the youth wing of the People's Revolutionary Party, the Communist Party of South Viet Nam...

...Thieu hesitated, procrastinated, but finally handed over power-to his vice-president Huong, an obstinate, blink-ered old man who seemed prepared to see Saigon go up in flames rather than sully his own constitutional in-tegrity by retiring in favor of "Big" Minh, the only person the PRG was prepared to negotiate with...

...As for the students, normally considered the backbone of the urban opposition to Thieu, non-NLF leaders seem to have been the excep-tion rather than the rule...

...At the height of the October demonstrations against Thieu, a young Buddhist monk told us he frequently went to the "other side" in his home province of Ben Tre south of Saigon...

...Third force deputies, too, had their own "reeducation" sessions...

...Left-wing Catholic priests had for days been distributing the PRG's policy on newly liberated areas as well as a letter from the Archbishop of Saigon calling on the faithful to stay calm and not be panicked into evacuation...

...In the months that followed that takeover, conversations I had with third force represen-tatives and NLF cadres formerly active in the under-ground, revealed a picture of the third force different from any previously drawn...

...Inside the assembly hall delegates from the "patriotic bourgeoisie" rubbed shoulders with student leaders, guerrilla fighters and even a "patriotic (ARVN) officer" in the person of Nguyen Huu Hanh, deputy commander-in-chief of the Saigon armed forces at the moment of surrender...

...Others who might have preferred another course than that offered them by the NLF were forced to watch as corruption and brutality of the Saigon government de-stroyed any hopes they had of putting that course into practice...

...A jeep from the Committee to Defend Workers' Rights drove to a now deserted USAID installation and triumphantly planted one of their banners on the front gates -a moment of particularly sweet triumph for the Committee which only weeks before had been champion-ing the cause of the striking USAID guards...

...Dressed in her gray robes, she was standing beside a Saigon police jeep, now decked out in the blue and yellow Provisional Revolutionary Government flag, and with a long banner reading "Movement of Progres-sive Buddhists" draped along the side...

...Jeeps of the Young Catholic Workers and the Anti-Hunger Front joined the NLF in the impromptu victory parade...

...We were neither sur-prised nor shocked," he said, "we were, after all, all working for the same end-peace and independence...

...One of the most radical of all third force groups, the Committee to De-fend Workers' Rights, was in fact formed with PRG support, and many of its members were immediately in-corporated into the Liberation Trades Union Federation after the PRG takeover...

...Several weeks after the PRG takeover, a leftist Catholic priest told me about one such trip he had made in mid-1968...

...As the PRG added Bien Hoa, Saigon's northern neigh-bor, to its list of liberated provinces, Minh was finally appointed and the third force deputies who had been grooming the General for years found themselves in office, with the ephemeral titles of Minister of Social Welfare, Minister of Information, Director of the National Police...

...Though the radical Catholics and others were in contact with the NLF, they were not subordinate to the Front...

...For many members of the third force, the process of voluntary assimilation into the Front began quickly...

...government...

...Some 20 miles south of Danang we ate lunch in a pagoda a few yards off Highway 1, Viet Nam's main north-south artery...

...As I drove the streets that day myself, I saw not only armed NLF but also armed third force...

...the committee was in many ways the embryo of the Liberation Trades Federation...

...He emerged from prison convinced that the organizational discipline of the NLF offered "the only successful way of struggling for the freedom and independence of Viet Nam...

...Not all of what they had to say came as a surprise...

...Undoubtedly, the strongest and best-organized of the students' movements was the secret NLF Student and Youth Federation, which formed the secret core of any legal students' movements in Saigon's high schools and university faculties...

...The NLF never tried to give us any instructions or offer any suggestions," said one third force represen-tative, "and we wouldn't have taken any notice of them if they had...

...raid in response...

...She grinned happily...

...The third segment looked favorably upon the NLF sim-ply because they felt they were in the end working for the same thing...

...It was during these heady days that the third force leaders and their representatives began to loosen up and talk more openly about their contacts before the PRG takeover...

...For some of them, one imagines, this is a prelude to a position in the new civilian government, which is ex-pected to replace the Military Management Committee within the next few months...

...government preferred to ignore for many years: the broad appeal that the National Liberation Front had for non-communist nationalists...

...His words were echoed this year by Duong Van Ba, a former deputy who had been in hiding in Saigon for the past few years: "All the good people are going to the other side," he remarked, "and they're right...

...The atmosphere was re-laxed, "more like a seminar," as one participant put it, and the cadre in charge of the week-long course was a senior Party official, Le Due Xuan, younger brother of Le Due Tho, and a high-powered intellectual...

...After lunch the nun in charge of the pagoda invited us to go to the village situated just behind the pagoda to meet "local people who can tell you about living condi-tions here...

...Although it was not unusual to see her in the proximity of a police jeep, it was the first time I had encountered her in legal pos-session of one...

...The regime had gained the upper hand: the oppo-sition press was banned, the militant Buddhist "beggar" nuns were blockaded into their own convent...

...At the end of July, the National Assembly building in downtown Saigon, which had in recent months been restored to its old function of an opera house, reverted temporarily to a more political role...

...The three of us set off, guided by two small schoolgirls...

...As we left Viet Nam in late July of this year, our friend was preparing to join the Party.ring to join the Party...

...Their trip down was unevent-ful until they reached the village where they were due to meet their contacts...

...Presum-ably some of them had also made the trip out back...

...The first to appear was the Catholic in-tellectual monthly, Face to Face, which for years had been underground...

...It was decorated in red, yellow and blue banners, and became the site for the NLF Assembly for the Saigon area...

...The NFL surfaced, took over the jeeps and weapons of the Saigon army, and drove round the city, in part to keep order and guide in the arriving troops, but in part simply to celebrate victory...

...His crime: translating material published by the American peace movement...

...She was now driving around the city with a group of militant young monks and nuns, calling on the people to cooperate actively with the new government, and dis-tributing copies of the PRG's "Policy with regard to newly liberated zones...

...Third force publications were quickly authorized by the new Mili-tary Management Committee although it had been previously announced that only official NLF publications would be allowed during the interim period of military rule in Saigon...

...Tran Ngoc Lieng, a moderate force leader and himself a "drop-out" from the Saigon government pre-dicted in 1974 that 1975 would be the last year in which the non-PRG opposition would have any hope of playing an independent part in the future of South Viet Nam...

...We noticed that our hosts were well informed about Saigon politics, and occasionally quoted statements put out by the small opposition in the National Assembly...

...involvement, the student or teacher who did not have the relative immunity offered by a religious order or an international reputation, the NLF provided a far more effective means of pursuing the struggle...

...A little more than a week after Minh's surrender, a study course was organized for young Buddhist monks and nuns by Budd-hists who had long been active in PRG zones...

...The last time I had seen her, she was being driven away in the back of a police truck after the special police, as they were euphemistically called, had crushed a small Buddhist demonstration demanding the release of some recently-arrested high school students...

...Sometimes our contact would be an elegant lady who drove up to the church in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes, sometimes it would be a more discreet visitor who dropped by in the middle of afternoon," the priest said smiling...

...Tran Thi Lan, who was officially Secretary General of the Women's Movement for the Right to Live, and secretly was secretary-general of the NLF women's movement...

...Many foreign observers had portrayed the third force as a neutralist coalition leaning neither towards Communism nor the U.S...

...After a few minutes walking we sensed some-body behind us, turned around and saw a few yards behind us a middle-aged NLF cadre and a young guer-rilla escort, both wearing white shirts over their military green ones...

...Contacts between the third force and the NLF were made particularly easy in Saigon by the fact that the leaders of some of the most militant third force move-ments knew that some of their more active members were in fact NLF cadres...

...For the third force, the last four seasons have been seasons of violent contrast...

...The three men talked for several hours, discussing the situation in Saigon, and exchanging views on recent political developments...

...After this meeting the radical Catholics were in frequent con-tact, though normally through less adventurous channels...

...Things have certainly changed, haven't they...

...NLF cadres later told us that Father Tu had had better luck finding loudspeakers than they, and in fact, lent them a few...

...Suddenly in mid-spring when it seemed that Thieu was safely ensconced in office for the foreseeable future, provincial capital Ban He Thuot fell...

...The com-bination of informal atmosphere and Le Due Xuan had its effect: the participants came away from the course enthusiastic about the new regime, and eager to get down to work...

...Then an inexperienced young guerrilla fired at a passing helicopter, provoking a full-scale U.S...

...We had for several months been aware that there were points dotted around the country where visit-ors to the PRG zones could cross over with comparative ease...

...The most interesting of the newly authorized publications was being widely discussed but was not due to appear in Saigon until early August, a week after my departure...

...The visit, in Quang Nam province, central Viet Nam, was arranged for us by the local National Assembly representative, and we were accompanied by a member of the Danang Buddhist "Forces for National Reconcilation...

...The course was entirely voluntary-indeed, those who were chosen to participate considered this a great honor...

...The cadre bade us a laconic "good after-noon," then led us to meet several more cadres and guer-rillas...

...The radical Committee to Defend Workers' Rights, led by the worker priest Phan Khac Tu was, like the NLF, hunting for the most sought-after commodities of those days-guns and loudspeakers, both vital to assure order should there be a delay in between the collapse of the Saigon government and the arrival of the PRG...

...When the Anti-Hunger Front (one of the more radical third force movements) attempted to hand out food to the poor, the police moved to slash car tires and threaten would-be recipients of the rice with arrest...

...He and a U.S.-trained professor who was also active in the radical opposition to Thieu traveled to Ben Luc, southwest of Saigon...

...A few months later an American journalist and I made our own such trip...

...In the autumn of 1974 they were out in the streets spearheading a series of demon-strations which rocked the Thieu regime, and made it clear once and for all that any government of Saigon depended ultimately, not on the support of the Viet-namese people, but on the U.S...

...The new Tin Sang was due to reunite three prominent members of the opposition: the two Catholic National Assemblymen, Ngo Cong Due and Ho Ngoc Nhuam, the former just back from his Euro-pean exile...

...For some of their colleagues in the extra-parliamentary opposition, however, work was just beginning...

...and the Buddhist Ly Qui Chung...

...Other groups were collecting medicines in preparation for expected fighting in the city...

...For the average anonymous opponent of Thieu and U.S...

...I looked around and recognized a Buddhist nun friend...

...INSIDE SAIGON: EYE-WITNESS REPORT PAUL QUINN-JUDGE Events after the takeover In early May, a few days after the Provisional Revolu-tionary Government (PRG) takeover, I was walking past our local market in Saigon when I heard my name called out...

...Winter brought them swift reverses as police arrested hundreds of rank and file members of the "struggle movement," and sent many of its leaders into hiding in fear for their lives...