Dismissal Irks Americans

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31783, 13 September 1968, Page 15

Dismissal Irks Americans

(N Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) SAIGON, Sept. 11. “They’ve emasculated us . . . they’ve cut the ground from under us ... this couldn’t have happened at a worse time.” These were the bitter comments of American military and civilian advisers last week-end at Tay Ninh, home of the unwinking eye that symbolises the bizarre Cao Dai religion and now under fierce Communist attack for the second time in a month, writes Peter Arnett, of the Associated Press. The Americans were not talking about the enemy forces who last week-end were massing around Tay Ninh, a city of 200,000 people near the Cambodian border northwest of Saigon. Their anger was directed at President Nguyen Van Thieu’s decision to dismiss Lieutenant-Colonel Ho Due Trung, for three years the Chief of Tay Ninh Province and a man who had the complete confidence of the Americans there.

The order dismissing the colonel was received late last week. Within a few days he was scheduled to go to Saigon to be tried for corruption. “He was about the best province chief in the whole 3rd Corps,” a senior American commented. “He was the last one the United States Mission wanted to go. He was sacrificed for politics, for the Saigon intriguers. We’ll have chaos here, and with two Communist divisions just two days march away that is exactly what we don’t want.” The American civilian and military advisers at Tay Ninh not only regarded Trung as an efficient administrator and extremely co-operative, they also saw him as a powerful influence to win the total allegiance of the province’s 200,000 followers of Cao Dai, whose allegiance over the years has embraced the Japanese, the French, the Communists and the Saigon Government, all to varying degrees. There are one million Cao Daists in all of South Vietnam.

Colonel Trung is a Cao Dai resistance leader, a high member of the senior councils of the predominant proGovernment faction in the Church, ■ and in his three years running the province, ironed out most of its refugee problems and worked closely with United States military forces and the advisers.

Several senior Americans were particularly incensed that Colonel Trung was dismissed on charges of corruption.

“We were, of course, aware of some graft in the province, and we didn’t know the province chief’s cut of it. But it was certainly no greater than anyone else’s under the system used in this country.” “The charge of corruption is a convenient one for the Government to use. Saigon uses corruption like Senator Joseph McCarthy used the charge of communism in the early 19505,’” one of these officials said. Another said, “the Ameri. can Ist team in Tay Ninh has lined up pretty much solidly behind him (Trung). There would be a lot of red faces if the Government does produce evidence of corruption.”

The 43-year-old colonel and his supporters regard his dismissal as an attempt by Pre-

sident Thieu to kill two birds with one stone—further diminish the power of Vice-Presi-dent Nguyen Cao Ky, who appointed Trung, and re. establish Saigon control over the Cao Dai. The new province chief reportedly is a central Vietnamese Roman Catholic. The most immediate concern of Americans in Tay Ninh is that Trung is leaving with the province in its most critical state in five years.

The province chief was handling the security of the region, in which most of the population is under Government control but only a tiny percentage of the terrain. Most of Tay Ninh is wilderness, stretching to Cambodia. With the colonel gone, the Americans foresee the local militia forces responding less enthusiastically to their job of protecting the population. Late last week Communist propagandists entered the

eastern part of the city three times in three nights, screening Communist movies on a projector captured earlier in the year from the United States-aided Vietnamese Information Service. “How come the Communists can get that thing to go when your people always had trouble showing us movies?” one adviser asked. Another American concern is that there may be slippage in the loyalty of the Cao Daists to the Government. “We could get some disaffection. This could mean the rise of the neutralist or antiGovernment factions in the church,” one senior American commented. The Cao Dai elders who four times daily pray at the elaborately garish cathedral in Tay Ninh city are already grumbling about Colonel Trung’s dismissal. The Americans say they first had wind of the impending dismissal two months ago. “We thought we had it stopped at the highest level,” one American said. “Then this happens. It couldn’t have happened at a worse time. I’ll never understand what Saigon is doing. This was the most unnecessary and ridiculous bureaucratic decision I have ever seen in Vietnam.”