Ngô Đình Cẩn

Template:Vietnamese name2 Ngô Đình Cẩn (1911– May 9 1964) was a younger brother, confidant and subordinate of South Vietnam's first president Ngô Đình Diệm and an important member of his government. Diem put Can in charge of the central Vietnam, stretching from Phan Thiet in the south to the border at the 17th parallel, where the latter ruled as a dictator. His base of operations was in the former imperial capital of Huế, from where he operated his private armies and secret police. In his youth, Can was a follower of the nationalist Phan Boi Chau. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he worked to organise support for Diem as various Vietnamese groups and international powers sought to establish control over the country. Can, who succeeded in eliminating alternative nationalist opposition in central Vietnam, became the warlord of the region when his brother became president. His involvement in smuggling, corruption as well as his autocratic rule earned him notoriety. He was also regarded as an effective leader against the Vietcong insurgency, which was much weaker in his region than in other parts of South Vietnam as it struggled to cope with Can's Popular Force militia.

Over time his influence waned as his elder brother Ngo Dinh Thuc was appointed Archbishop of Huế. Thuc overshadowed Can and desecularised the region, which came to a head with the banning of the Buddhist flag in 1963 during Vesak, the birthday of Gautama Buddha. Forces under the command of Can opened fire on the Buddhists protesting the ban, killing nine and precipitating the Buddhist crisis. Ongoing demonstrations intensified throughout the summer as the regime responded with increased brutality, sparking the toppling of the Diem regime in a coup in November 1963. Can had been offered asylum by the US Department of State, but the US ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. had him apprehended on arrival in Saigon by a CIA agent. He was turned over to the military junta and was tried and executed in 1964.

Rule

In his youth, Can had met with the renowned anti-French Vietnamese nationalist Phan Boi Chau, who spent his last years in Huế. Can regularly travelled to Chau's sampan on the Perfume River with gifts of food and listening to Chau's political lectures. After 1945, Vietnam was in chaos. The Japanese invaded during the Second World War and displaced the French. At the end of the war, the Japanese had left and France had been severely weakened and was unable to exert control. Ho Chi Minh's Vietminh declared independence under the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and battled other Vietnamese nationalist groups as well as the French forces while Nationalist China was also acting in a security role. During this time, Can was actively organising a clandestine support base for Diem in the central region as well as extending his personal support. He helped to crush other anti-communist nationalist groups such as the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang (Vietnamese Nationalist Party) and the Dai Viet (Great Vietnam Party).

Regarded as the least educated of his family, Can had never travelled outside Vietnam and was the only one to have not received a European education. With the ascent of Diem to power in 1955, Can's stock rose. Can held no formal position in the government but was regarded, in effect as the warlord of central Vietnam. He had almost unlimited power in the region, often interfering with army operations and against the Vietcong in a style described as "feudal". He ran his own personal army and secret police, which fought the Vietcong, as well as crushing and imprisoning other dissidents. He was regarded as the most oppressive of the Ngo brothers in crushing dissent, using torture and re-education camps. He accumulated great wealth by corrupt practices such as graft while seeking foreign aid contracts from the United States governments of Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, requiring a fee to the National Revolutionary Movement in return for the applications being processed. He was widely believed to be involved in illegal smuggling of rice to North Vietnam on the black market and opium throughout Asia via Laos, as well as monopolising the cinnamon trade.

Can was also often in conflict with his brothers on internal matters, with another brother Ngô Đình Nhu controlling the southern part of the country. The brothers competed with each other for US contracts and rice trade, but did not territorially interfere with one another. He had also once tried to set up an office for his secret police in Saigon, by showing Diem his high list of arrests of political opponents, but insisted that he not have to report to Nhu. Government appointed officials posted to central Vietnam from Saigon were sometimes vetoed by Can. Robert Scigliano, an academic from a Michigan State University advisory group hired by Diem, said that Can, along with Nhu, Madame Nhu and eldest brother Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc formed "an extralegal elite which, with Diem, directs the destiny of Vietnam today." Comparing him to his brothers, Scigliano said "He is also considered the most severe, some would say primitive, member of the family and he rules his domain with a strict and sometimes brutal hand." Referring to his autocratic style, a Vietnamese critic said that unlike Diem, Can's autocracy was consistent and left his followers in no doubt as to what he wanted:"They are not confused by double talk about democratic ideals and institutions." This trait of creating a well defined system of incentive and deterrence was one of the reasons to which his success was attributed.

In spite of his autocracy and iron rule, Can gained praise from US officials in Huế for his relative success in combating the Vietcong insurgency. Can's central region was much more peaceful than the restive areas near Saigon and the Mekong Delta. Can had created the "Popular Force" organisation to operate in the central region, which was an alternative to the Strategic Hamlet Program which was used in a much larger scale in the south by Nhu to move peasants into fortified camps in an attempt to isolate Vietcong cadres. Can assumed that around one third of the villagers in the countryside was pro-Vietcong. He reasoned that they were of a significant proportion so as to disrupt any hamlets from the inside and render the hamlets ineffective by intimidating other villagers. Can's Popular Force were a group of volunteers who underwent rigid training similar to that of US Marines in boot camp. Those who passed the training would be put into units of 150 men who were assigned to live and work in the villages by day. At night they would do defense patrols with hit and run tactics against the Vietcong. According to the report by US officials in the central region, the program had aroused villager support due to the integration of the Force's personnel into its daily life and the sense of security that it provided. The units were regarded as being successful in their six month deployments, allowing them to move onto the next troublespot. Officials in Washington disagreed with their men on the ground in central Vietnam, alleging that Can was mainly using the Popular Force for repressing dissidents.

Buddhist crisis

See also: Hue Vesak shootings

Can was considered the most secular of the four Ngo brothers who ruled Vietnam's domestic affairs. With the appointment of elder brother Thuc as the Archbishop of Huế in 1961, Can was eclipsed and became less influential as Thuc aggressively blurred the distinction between church and state. In early 1963 his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, Diem's chief adviser, sent an emissary from Saigon telling Can to retire and leave the country for Japan.

His elder brother Ngô Đình Thục served as the Catholic archbishop of Huế, and unrest erupted in the summer of 1963. After Catholic flags were permitted at an anniversary celebration for Thuc's appointment, Buddhist flags were banned from being flown at Vesak on June 8, the commemoration of the birth of Gautama Buddha. Can's subordinates ordered his forces to open fire on the unarmed Buddhist demonstrators, killing nine. Can thought that the US were responsible for the explosion during the Vesak shootings in order to destablise the regime, with which relations had become strained.

Another notable religious incident occurred under Can's rule of the central region in 1963. In a small pond near the central city of Da Nang, a hugely oversized carp was found swimming. Local Buddhists began to believe that the fish was a reincarnation of one of Gautama Buddha’s disciples. As pilgrimages to the pond grew larger and more frequent, so did disquiet among the district chief and his officials, who answered to Can. The pond was mined, but the fish swam on unhindered. After raking the pond with machine gun fire, the fish still lived. To deal with the problem, the Special Forces of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) led by Colonel Le Quang Tung under the direction of Nhu, were called in. The pond was grenaded, killing the carp. The incident generated more publicity as newspapers across the world ran stories about the miraculous fish. South Vietnamese army helicopters began landing at the site, with ARVN paratroopers filling their bottles with water which they believed had magical powers.

Downfall and execution

See also: 1963 South Vietnamese coup and Arrest and assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem

A staunch supporter of his brother's policies, Cẩn was tried and executed in a public square in Sài Gòn by the new administration following the deposition of his brother. During the summer, the Buddhists had organised protests against the religious bias of the Diệm regime. The protests were met with brutal crackdowns including ARVN Special Forces attacks on Buddhist pagodas which left hundreds missing, presumed dead. As public discontent heightened, a coup by ARVN officers was planned and executed in November. This came about after Tôn Thất Đính, a young 37 year old general who had risen quickly through the Army of the Republic of Vietnam as a protege of Cẩn, double crossed the Diệm regime and helped the coup when his division was expected to remain loyal. Diệm and Nhu were executed during the coup.

The White House came under public pressure from South Vietnamese to take a hard line on Cẩn. Mass graves containing 200 bodies had been found on his land. The US consul in Huế, John Helble, confirmed the existence of rows of 18th century style dungeons with filthy, dark cells in an old French arsenal. Although General Trần Văn Đôn, a member of the military junta publicly asserted that the compound predated the Diem era, the town's citizens believed that Can was a mass murderer. Two days after the coup ended on November 2, thousands of angry town people walked two miles to Cẩn's house on the city's outskirts where he lived with his aged mother, demanding vengeance. The junta had ringed the home with barbed wire and armoured cars, sensing that the populace would want Cẩn punished. Cẩn had already escaped to a Catholic seminary. The US State Department was faced with a dilemma: sheltering Cẩn would associate them with protection of a corrupt and authoritarian regime that had killed and tortured hundreds of thousands of its own people. On the other hand, allowing him to be attacked by angry mobs would damage the reputation of the new junta which the Americans were backing. It instructed that "asylum should be granted to Ngô Đình Cẩn if he is in physical danger from any source. If asylum granted explain to Huế authorities further violence would harm international reputation new regime. Also recall to them that U.S. took similar action to protect Trí Quang from Diệm government and can do no less in Cẩn case." A cable was sent to the US embassy in Saigon from the White House on November 4 agreeing that Cẩn and his mother needed to be evacuated. General Đổ Cao Trí, the commander of the First Corps of the ARVN who had repressed the Buddhists in Huế, privately told Cẩn that the junta would allow him safe passage. On November 5, Cẩn sought refuge at the US consulate with a valise crammed with US dollar bills. Trí was then told that Cẩn was not safe in Huế and that he was to send Cẩn to Saì Gòn immediately for his protection. Trí would only promise Cẩn's safe passage to Saigon in an American plane where embassy officials were to meet him. Cẩn was accompanied by four Americans: a vice-consul, two military policemen and a lieutenant colonel. He had intended to ask for asylum in Japan.

However, the US ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, who had abetted the coup had other ideas and sent CIA agent Lucien Conein, who helped the Vietnamese generals to plan the coup, to Tân Sơn Nhứt airport instead of embassy officials. Conein turned Can over to the junta. Lodge said that General Đôn had promised that Cẩn would be dealt with "legally and judicially". Lodge told Washington that asylum was unnecessary saying "It seems to me that our reason for giving him asylum therefore no longer exists" and the US could not interfere with justice, since Cẩn was "undoubtedly a reprehensible figure who deserves all the loathing which he now receives." Lodge reasoned that since Cẩn would not be killed, protecting him would give the impression that the US backed his activities. Lodge said that General Dương Văn Minh, who was the President, had implied that Cẩn would receive clemency even if sentenced to death despite Conein asserting that the feeling among Army of the Republic of Vietnam officers was that Cẩn should be executed. Cẩn's case was damaged with the release of tens of thousands of political prisoners, who recollected tales of torture at the hands of the Ngô brothers.

It was reported that General Nguyễn Khánh, who had displaced Minh in a coup in January 1964, offered Cẩn exile if Cẩn gave him the funds he had deposited in foreign bank accounts. Cẩn refused, saying he had no money. Đôn suggested that Khánh would have executed Cẩn anyway, since Cẩn would have known of the corruption that the generals, such as Khánh, who commanded a division in Cẩn's zone, were party to. Cẩn's lawyers used the provision in the legal code which allowed an appeal to the head of state for clemency. This placed Minh, who was still the titular head of state, in the position of approving a third death in the Ngô family, having already ordered his bodyguard Nguyễn Văn Nhung to execute Diệm and Nhu during the coup. By the time Cẩn was executed, his elderly mother had died and his diabetic condition had worsened during the trial. He suffered a heart attack while in jail and on May 9, 1964 was carried on a stretcher into the prison courtyard and assisted by two Catholic priests and some guards onto a post to which he was tied. He was blindfolded against his request and shot in front of approximately 200 spectators. Lodge later defended his conduct by saying that the US had done all that it could to prevent the executions. Lodge publicly claimed that Cẩn would have been allowed refuge at the US embassy, conveniently overlooking the fact that he ordered Cẩn to be intercepted at the airport by Conein. Father Cao Văn Luân, the rector of Huế University who had been fired for opposing the crackdown on the Buddhists had asked Lodge that Cẩn not be executed. According to Luân, Lodge had assured him that the execution would not occur. Cẩn left his personal fortune, which had been stored in foreign banks, to Catholic charities.

References

• Buttinger, Joseph (1967). Vietnam:A Dragon Embattled. Praeger publishers.
• Hammer, Ellen J. (1987). A Death in November. E. P. Dutton. ISBN 0-525-24210-4.
• Jones, Howard (2003). Death of a Generation. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505286-2.
• Karnow, Stanley (1997). Vietnam:A history. Penguin Books. p. 210. ISBN 0-670-84218-4.
• Langguth, A. J. (2000). Our Vietnam. Simon and Schuster. p. 99. ISBN 0-684-81202-9.
• Prochnau, William (1995). Once upon a Distant War. Vintage.
• Scigliano, Robert (1964). South Vietnam:nation under stress. Houghton Miffin.
• Tucker, Spencer C. (2000). Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War. ABC-CLIO. pp. 288–289. ISBN 1-57607-040-0. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)