Behind Saigon's Show Trials

...Some—by no means all— American officials have decided to look at the Vietnam question from a different perspective...

...He also is acutely aware that the Americans and Communists may attempt to exploit politicians like Chau, with important contacts on both sides...

...They were always concocting theories and "solutions" not at all in line with those of military and diplomatic officials...

...More to the point, although the diplomat did not admit it, was that Lansdale's "people" threatened the prestige and influence of conventional minds...

...The judge balanced his commentary on this subject by remarking that Chau had also dealt with American officials for ulterior motives—"American dollars, that's all...

...The government attempted to prove that Chau's position was more dangerous than that of just another "third force" politician because he had actively conspired with his brother at influencing the non-Communist Vietnamese elite, including some of his colleagues in the National Assembly, to work covertly for coalition and the downfall of Thieu...

...The assumption was that the government wanted to publicize his testimony, along with the judge's comments, in order to exploit his value as an example for other Saigon politicians—not to mention American "agents...

...The two had fought with the Viet-minh, later reorganized under the National Liberation Front (nlf), but Chau had opted out in 1949 and returned to business and legally sanctioned politics...

...Chau claimed to have conferred with Bunker and other officials for three hours in August of 1967...

...which Chau twice served as chief...

...Chau, who has made no secret of his taste for "reconciliation" with the enemy, might profit by winning a major position in a coalition government...

...But the mutual distrust between the Americans and the South Vietnamese, on an official level, was only one aspect of the most celebrated in a series of "show trials" staged over the past couple of years by the government of President Nguyen Van Thieu...

...The most often heard rumor was that the Americans were negotiating a peace treaty which they would present to Saigon as a fait accompli...

...It appear's likely they will repeat Diem's excesses before long...

...One of the principal reasons for their objections seems to have been simple jealousy and selfish intrigue...

...One of the aims of the Lansdale "people," as might have been expected, was to challenge the American "big war" policy and find a political "way out...

...The case against Chau, then, was a warning to Americans and Vietnamese who advocate a compromise solution to the war...

...You arranged to receive their votes after discussing the matter with your brother...

...In 1966, while running the training center for rd cadre near the coastal resort town of Vung Tau, Chau worked every day with cia advisers—or "counterparts," in the language of the war...

...They did not meet again until 1965, when Hien called on Chau to test his political allegiances...

...In view of the perceptions of Lansdale and Vann, it was not surprising that they cultivated Chau's acquaintance...

...Whether or not the cia—or the American mission in general—will repeat the part it played in overthrowing Diem is another question...

...they are examining ways to support a "third force" movement that might succeed Thieu if he were overthrown, or he voluntarily resigned, in an upheaval brought about by a combination of military defeat and political loss-of-face...

...Vann's relationship with Chau resulted partly from their mutual interest in the delta...

...Although Chau has long since departed, Vann gets to Kien Hoa still more often nowadays as senior pacification adviser for the entire delta...

...Chau's relationship with his brother, assigned to infiltrate the Saigon intellectual and political community and relay intelligence and other information, typified that of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese families broken by war...

...We have nothing to do with the cia," snapped the judge...

...No matter how Chau attempted to defend himself, he was damned from the start by the pervasive fear that he and his allies were selling the country to a combination of Communists and cia agents conspiring to "betray" the Saigon regime...

...It was inexplicable at the time why Loan, a stooge of Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky, should have publicized this improbable story, particularly since the Americans were then talking of "winning the war" and sending the men home in a year and a half...

...In building up its case the government opened a Pandora's box of rumors and gossip going back to 1965, when Henry Cabot Lodge was still ambassador here...

...military policy as he saw it from his vantage as an adviser to the floundering Seventh Division of the South Vietnamese Army in the upper delta region of the Mekong River...

...The chief judge further claimed that Chau won election in 1967 as a deputy from Kien Hoa, a traditional Vietcong area, by dealing with the Communists...

...The situation was quiet in Kien Hoa during the voting so the Vietcong followers could go to vote for you...

...The chief trial judge, a dour lieutenant colonel, interrupted Chau's testimony when he mentioned the cia...

...Chau's open cia connections may have been the most unnerving of all his American contacts from the viewpoint of the Saigon government...

...Perspicacious and independent-minded, Lansdale was considered a maverick by his colleagues in the U.S...

...If nothing else, Chau's testimony on March 5, the last day of his five-day trial, seemed to verify the long-standing Saigon joke, originally attributed to Ky, that "85 per cent of Vietnamese rumors turn out to be true...

...Local coffee shops have always buzzed with stories of "secret contacts...

...Vann's feeling, frequently expressed in the early 1960s to American correspondents, was that America was fighting the war "all wrong," that it should leave more of the responsibility to the Vietnamese...

...In fact, Vietnamese officials these days are almost nostalgic in their memory of the era of Diem, whom they praise for "administrative ability'' and forcefulness in dealing with the Communists...

...A curious facet of the military tribunal's performance was that only the week before, on February 25, it had sentenced Chau to 20 years hard labor following a one-hour trial that he boycotted...

...Chau explained he had "no specific details" but had inferred what he reported on the basis of hints dropped by his brother...

...Seized in the National Assembly building, Chau was granted the new trial after agreeing, as a prisoner, to appear in his own defense...

...Indeed, the value of Chau's case as an example of government policy was that it symbolized the fears not only of American pressure but of legitimate opposition from within the Saigon community...

...At the same time, he also quietly allied with politicians close to the Communists, and saw his brother, Tran Ngoc Hien, a North Vietnamese agent, at least eight times...

...The Chau case, however, cleared up the mystery...

...Equally important, the case illustrated Thieu's abiding fear of political opposition, and of any move toward ending the war on terms other than his own...

...He was opposed to the introduction of large-scale American combat units in 1965...

...First he said one thing, then another," observed Hien, sentenced in July by the same court to life imprisonment...

...embassy in Saigon, he had to tape all the hearings because American officials knew they could not rely on their South Vietnamese allies for a transcript...

...A political officer assigned to the U.S...

...Vann, who returned to South Vietnam as a civilian pacification adviser, was more intimate with Chau than was Lansdale...

...This rumor, prevalent in Saigon immediately after the offensive, was resurrected by Chau's admission that he had indeed told his American contacts in 1967 he suspected the enemy would launch an offensive...

...The Communists, despite efforts at forming various "fronts" of professional men, workers and so forth, have not been notably successful at proselyting among Saigon intellectuals...

...The most important of these Americans was Major General Edward Lansdale, now retired but then a top counterinsurgency expert in Vietnam...

...He was a tricky politician, I didn't know what to make of his views...

...The widespread acceptance of rumors about American complicity in the Tet debacle epitomizes the paranoia that has always afflicted Saigon in dealing with its American ally...

...But it is questionable that the government proved much, except its determination to repress all signs of real opposition to it policies...

...Have you ever seen the people who work for Lansdale," a political officer once asked me...

...The point of the case, as presented by judge and prosecutor, was that it should demonstrate the fate awaiting all politicians who attempted to bargain for Communist support...

...Tough, stocky, glib and popular, Chau was adept at talking to Vietnamese and Americans of widely differing views and persuasions...

...The judge's remarks harked back to the views expressed by government officials immediately after the 1967 Presidential election—that runner-up Truong Dinh Dzu won a startling 17 per cent of the votes because he was "the candidate of the Vietcong...

...He did not report these conversations to his superiors—the basis for the government's charges against him— because he thought the regime was "too instable" and "not interested" in what was happening in the countryside...

...With the collusion of the Vietcong you got the most votes,'' said the judge at one stage...

...but they seemed to have crested in late 1967 when Brigadier General Loan, the notorious police chief, spread the claim that Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker had met an enemy agent in his residence...

...Privately Donald Kirk reports from Southeast Asia for the Washington Star...

...The web of Chau's connections with Americans goes far deeper, though, than his friendship with Lansdale and Vann, both of whom described him as loyal and "anti-Communist" after Thieu earlier this year rammed a petition through the National Assembly waiving the constitutional immunity from trial normally granted a deputy...

...The inference that he suggested a meeting between Bunker and his brother could be accurate...

...They're not the type I'd want anything to do with...

...South Vietnamese officials believe the cia, in league with such operatives as Chau, might attempt again to change governments, particularly as political pressure builds up against President Nixon in the congressional campaign later this year, or, more likely, in his bid for reelection in 1972...

...As an adviser to the Seventh Division, Vann had frequently visited the upper delta province of Kicn Hoa...

...The prevailing, almost traditional attitude has been to "wait and see"—and hope somehow the war will end with a minimum of discomfort and dislocation...

...mission...

...Another, more bizarre, rumor inspired by the case was that Americans had actually cooperated with the enemy in the 1968 Tet offensive in order to find an excuse to withdraw from Vietnam...

...Chau also maintained independent ties with the Central Intelligence Agency through the Revolutionary Development program, financed and advised entirely by the cia until last year...

...Emotionally and ideologically, according to Chau, Hien was "a nationalist, not a Communist," but President Thieu does not recognize the twain may occasionally coincide...

...Even if it is not, it would not be illogical to conclude that other Vietnamese politicians with the same views and contacts arranged a similar conference...

...Although he would never admit it publicly, Thieu is the first to see this possibility...

...One reason for this sensitivity is that the cia was the agency primarily responsible for engineering the downfall in late 1963 of the dictator Ngo Dinh Diem...

...Thus Chau had close contacts with several top American officials in the middle 1960s, "the most chaotic period of the war," as he pointed out...

...Neither the judge nor the prosecutor produced a shred of evidence to support this argument, which was not one of the charges at the trial, but it was clear their suspicion would enter into the court's final ruling...

...And while Bunker himself has appeared as a confidant and sympathizer with both Thieu and Ky, other American "names" mentioned in the case might well have been anxious to open up a direct dialogue with the enemy without the knowledge— much less the participation or the interference—of South Vietnamese officials...

...Another American maverick who espoused this goal was John Paul Vann, a West Point graduate who retired from the Army with the rank of lieutenant colonel after opposing U.S...

...who tended to regard him as one of a number of ciphers in a rather schematic approach to ending the war...

...The current series of trials, which began with that of Truong Dinh Dzu in 1968, may culminate in a severe repressionist period before the final political and military crunch...

...In vain did Chau argue that he was popular because he was "nationalist," that he did not "need" Vietcong support, that he had turned down his brother's offer...

...He typified the predominant breed of Saigon politician: the intellectual and businessman who does not believe the Thieu government will survive yet does not deem it expedient to gamble on unadulterated victory by the Communists...

...ives BEHIND SAIGON'S SHOW TRIALS BY DONALD KIRK Saigon The oddest sight at the trial of National Assembly deputy Tran Ngoc Chau, held early this year, was the presence in the austere military courtroom of a young American diplomat carrying a tape recorder in his attache case...

...His sentence may have been reduced in the retrial to 10 years to show the government's mercy toward those who signified any willingness to cooperate in similar inquests...