Vision, power and agency: The ascent of Ngô cross D sign inh Dieirc;̧m, 1945-54

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

Volumn 35, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 433-458

  Miller, Edward ^a  

^a DARTMOUTH COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

LEADERSHIP; MODERNIZATION; POLITICAL HISTORY; STATE BUILDING;

ASIA; EURASIA; SOUTHEAST ASIA; VIET NAM;

EID: 27744588886     PISSN: 00224634     EISSN: 14740680     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022463404000220     Document Type: Article

References (135)

1. Both Diȩ̂m's admirers and his critics have portrayed him as an exponent of 'traditional' ideas and practices. During the 1960s, authors in both camps treated Diȩ̂m's devotion to Confucianism as proof of a premodern cast of mind; compare, for example, journalist Denis Warner's scathing account of his rule, The last Confucian (New York: Macmillan, 1963)
2. with Anthony Bouscaren's hagiography, The last of the mandarins: Diem of Vietnam (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1965).
3. According to some authors, Diȩ̂m's 'traditional' Confucian habits were reinforced by a Catholic identity which inclined him to favour ancient forms of government; see Bernard Fall, The two Viet-Nams: A political and military analysis, 2nd rev. edn (New York: Praeger, 1967), p. 236.
4. Scholars who have written about Diȩ̂m since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 have been more sophisticated in their analyses of him and his ideas, but their conclusions about the 'traditional' nature of his Confucian and Catholic convictions are strikingly similar to those proffered earlier. For recent critiques of Diȩ̂m in this vein, see Neil Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 235;
5. William Turley, The Second Indochina War: A short political and military history, 1954-1975 (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1986), p. 13;
6. George Kahin, Intervention: How America became involved in Vietnam (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1987), p. 93;
7. and Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A history, 2nd rev. edn (New York: Penguin, 1997), p. 229.
8. For examples of post-1975 accounts which portray Diȩ̂m's affinity for 'tradition' in a more sympathetic light, see Ellen J. Hammer, A death in November: America in Vietnam, 1963 (New York: Dutton, 1987), p. 52;
9. and Pham Van Luu, 'The Buddhist crises in Vietnam, 1963-1966' (Ph.D. diss., Monash University, 1991), pp. 102-3.
10. Philip E. Catton, Diem's final failure: Prelude to America's war in Vietnam (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2002), p. 2.
11. For claims that Diȩ̂m was politically isolated during the 1940s and 1950s, see John Mecklin, Mission in torment: An intimate account of the U.S. role in Vietnam (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), p. 31;
12. Robert Shaplen, The lost revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), p. 111;
13. and Frances Fitzgerald, Fire in the lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), p. 82;
14. George Herring, America's longest war: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975, 4th edn (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2002), p. 59;
15. and Ross Marlay and Clark Neher, Patriots and tyrants: Ten Asian leaders (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), p. 119.
16. Ronald Inden, Imagining India (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), especially pp. 1-48.
17. Consider the following statement by the author of a best-selling textbook on the Vietnam War: 'Not perceiving the extent to which the French and Vietminh had destroyed traditional political processes and values, [Diȩ̂m] looked backward to an imperial Vietnam that no longer existed. He had no blueprint for building a modern nation or mobilizing his people' (Herring, America's longest war, p. 59).
18. In the spring of 1946, a short-lived alliance of convenience between the Viet Minh and non-communist parties in northern Vietnam broke down, sparking a wave of fighting and a brutal Viet Minh elimination campaign. See François Guillemot, 'Au cœur de la fracture vietnamienne: L'élimination de l'opposition nationaliste et anticolonialiste dans le Nord du Viêt-nam (1945-1946)', in Le Viêt Nain depuis 1945 : États, marges et constructions du passé, ed. Christopher E. Goscha and Benoît de Tréglodé (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, forthcoming).
19. For Bài's maneuvers and Diȩ̂m's 1933 appointment and resignation, see Bruce Lockhart, The end of the Vietnamese monarchy (New Haven: Yale Council on SEA Studies, 1993), pp. 60-86.
20. Bruce Lockhart Ibid., The End of the Vietnamese Monarchy pp. 87-92.
21. For the Japanese intrigues involving Vietnamese nationalists during 1940-45 see Ralph Smith, 'The Japanese period in Indochina and the coup of 9 March 1945', Journal of Southeast Asian Studies
22. [henceforth JSEAS], 9, 2 (1978): 268-301;
23. Kiyoko Kurusu Nitz, 'Independence without nationalists? The Japanese and Vietnamese nationalism during the Japanese period, 1940-45", JSEAS, 15, 1 (1984): 108-33;
24. and Tran My-Van, 'Japan and Vietnam's Caodaists: A wartime relationship (1939-1945)', JSEAS, 27, 1 (1996): 179-93.
25. Diȩ̂m's involvement with the Japanese during 1943-44 is discussed in Vu Ngu Chieu, 'The other side of the 1945 Vietnamese Revolution', Journal of Asian Studies, 45, 2 (1986): 299, 306.
26. On Diȩ̂m's dispatch of an envoy to Cuòrng Dê, see Cuòrng Dê, Cuô̧c dòi cách ma̧ng (Saigon: Nhà in Ton Thất Lê, 1957), pp. 137-8.
27. For the founding and subsequent repression of the Da̧i Viȩ̂t Phu̧c hung Hô̧i, see François Guillemot, 'Révolution nationale et lutte pour l'indépendance au Viȩt-Nam: L'échec de la Troisieme Voie "Da̧i Viȩ̂t", 1938-1955' (Thèse de doctorat, École Pratiques des Hautes Études, 2003), pp. 206-7.
28. Diȩ̂m's escape from Huếin the summer of 1944 is in Nitz, 'Independence without nationalists?', p. 117.
29. For the planning and aftermath of the Japanese coup of March 1945, see Masaya Shiraishi, 'The background to the formation of the Tran Trong Kim Cabinet in April 1945: Japanese plans for governing Vietnam', in Indochina in the 1940s and 1950s, ed. Takashi Shiraishi and Motoo Furuta (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1992),pp. 113-41.
30. Shiraishi proves conclusively that Diȩ̂m received the second of two telegrams which Bao Dai sent to him after the coup, and also demonstrates that he turned down the Emperor's request of his own volition. However, the reasoning behind his decision remains unclear. Shiraishi cites Japanese sources which suggest that he was counselled by his idealist allies to reject the premiership on the grounds that original independence plans had been diluted. However, Stein Tonnesson uses French documents to argue that Diȩ̂m's refusal was a ploy to increase his leverage, and he shows that Diȩ̂m became angry when he realised that the offer would not be made again; Stein Tonnesson, The Vietnamese Revolution of 1945: Roosevelt, Ho Chi Minh and de Gaulle in a world at war (Oslo: International Peace Research Institute, 1991), p. 285.
31. The specific date and circumstances of Diȩ̂m's detention in 1945 are unclear. According to French intelligence, Diȩ̂m was seized in the city of Phan Thiết while travelling to Hanoi as a member of a delegation appointed to represent a coalition of Southern Vietnamese nationalist groups. See 'M. Ngo Dinh Diem, nouveau President du Conseil Vietnamien', June 1954, Archives de la Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Paris [hereafter MAE], Série Asie-Oceanie, 1944-1955, Sous-série Indochine, dossier 157.
32. Karnow, Vietnam, pp. 232-3;
33. see also Marguerite Higgins, Our Vietnam nightmare (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), pp. 157-8;
34. and Shaplen, Lost revolution, p. 110.
35. One of Hồ's aides later claimed that the Viȩ̂l Minh leader feared that keeping Diȩ̂m in detention might alienate nationalists in his native Central Vietnam; George Boudarel and Nguyen Van Ky, Hanoi: City of the rising dragon, tr. Claire Duiker (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), pp. 90-1.
36. A claim that Diȩ̂m's release was secured by Catholic Bishop Lê Hũu Tù is in Doàn Dô̧c Thu' and Xuân Huy, Giarn mu̧c Le Hūu Tìe và Phát Diȩ̂m, 1945-54:Nhũng nǎm tranh dấu hào hùng (Houston: Xuân Thu, 1984), p. 117.
37. Diȩ̂m had earlier acknowledged that he would have joined Hồ's government in exchange for a measure of control over Viȩ̂t Minh security policy; see Ellen J. Hammer, The struggle for Indochina, 1940-1955 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966), pp. 149-50;
38. and Memorandum of Conversation, Edmund S. Gullion, 8 May 1953, Foreign Relations of the United States
39. [henceforth FRUS] 1952-1954, vol. 13 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1982), pp. 553-4.
40. The relevant French sources are described in Trần Thi Liên, 'Les catholiques et la République Démocratique du Viȩ̂t-Nam (1945-54): Une approche biographique', in Goscha and de Tréglodé ed., Le Viêt Nain depuis 1945.
41. On the establishment of the Front, see Guillemot, 'Révolution nationale', pp. 474-8;
42. for its collapse, see Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam, pp. 210-13.
43. Guillemot, 'Révolution nationale', pp. 488-91.
44. Lockhart, End of the Vietnamese monarchy, pp. 165-71;
45. Hammer, Struggle for Indochina, pp. 208-16.
46. Philippe Devillers, Histoire du Viêt-Nam de 1940 à 1952 (Paris: Seuil, 1952), p. 420.
47. Bao Dai's account of the meeting is in Bao Dai, Le dragon d'Annam (Paris: Plon, 1980), p. 190.
48. For Diȩ̂m's views of the French proposals and his concern about Bao Dai's attitude at the time of this meeting, see Telegram, Hopper to Sec. State, 20 Dec. 1947, FRUS, 1947, vol. 6 (Washington: GPO, 1972), pp. 152-5.
49. Devillers, Histoire du Viêt-Nam, pp. 425-9.
50. Ngô Dinh Diȩ̂m, 'Lòi tuyên bố cua chí-sĩ Ngô-Dinh-Diȩ̀m ngà 16 tháng 6 nǎm 1949', reprinted in Con diròng chíh tigliĩa: Dô̧c lâp dan chu: Hiêu triêtt va diêu vǎn quan tro̧ng cua Tông thống Ngô cross D sign inh Diȩ̂m, vol. 1 (Saigon: So Báo chí Thông tin, Phu Tông thống, 1956), pp. 221-2.
51. Ibid. Ngô Dinh Diȩ̂m, Con Diròng Chíh Tigliĩa: Dô̧c Lâp Dan Chu: Hiêu Triêtt Va Diêu Vǎn Quan Tro̧ng Cua Tông Thống Ngô cross D sign inh Diȩ̂m
52. Significantly, the 16 June 1949 statement seems to have been the only document authored by Diȩ̂m prior to 1954 which was re-published by his government after he became leader of South Vietnam.
53. The assassination orders were intercepted by the French, who then informed Diȩ̂m that they would be unable to protect him; see Telegram, Heath to Acheson, 28 July 1950, United States National Archives II, Record Group 59, State Department Decimal File 751G.00/7-2850. References to USNA2 materials are from this record group and will be cited by their Decimal File number only.
54. Translation of Letter, Ngô cross D sign inh Diȩ̂m to Wesley Fishel, 3 June 1951, Michigan State University Archives, Wesley R. Fishel papers, Box 1184, Folder 33. Fishel is not specifically identified as the recipient of the letter, but the content and date strongly suggest that Diȩ̂m wrote it to him.
55. Telegram, Gullion to Sec. State, 24 Jan. 1951, FRUS, 1951, vol. 6 (Washington: GPO, 1977), pp. 359-61; see also Telegram, Heath to Sec. State, 28 July 1950, USNA2, 751G.00/7-2850. According to Gullion, who was the Chargé d'Affaires at the US Embassy in Saigon in 1950 and who knew Diȩ̂m and Thuc, the Bao Long scheme envisioned a joint regency shared by Cuong Dê and the Empress Nam Phxrng, who - unlike her husband - was Catholic.
56. Cuong Dê's final effort to end his exile is described in Hammer, Struggle for Indochina, p. 275.
57. For his acknowledgement that he and Diȩ̂m had discussed how the Prince might play a political role in Indochina, see Memorandum of Conversation, Dallas Coors, 8 Jan. 1951, USNA2, 794.00/1-851. The repatriation of his remains in 1956 is in The Times of VN Weekly, 21 Apr. 1956, p. 8.
58. Interview with Professor Ralph Smuckler, Washington DC, June 2001.
59. For Fishel's account of his Tokyo meeting with Diȩ̂m and Thu̧c, see 'Memorandum on Ngo Dinh Diem', 28 Aug. 1950, included as an enclosure to Report, Spinks to Dept. of State, 2 Sept. 1950, USNA2, 751G.00/9-250.
60. (Thanks to Joseph Morgan for providing a copy of this document.) This memorandum is unsigned, but other State Department records make it clear that Fishel was in fact the author; see the January 1951 memorandum cited in note 26. The Japanese contact who arranged all the meetings in Tokyo involving Diȩ̂m, Cuòrng Dê and Fishel during the summer of 1950 was the liberal writer and adventurer Komatsu Kiyoshi; see Fishel's memorandum cited here and Demaree Bess, 'Bright spot in Asia', Saturday Evening Post, 15 Sept. 1956, p. 130.
61. Telegram, Acting Secretary of State to Saigon Embassy, 28 Sept. 1950, FRUS 1950, vol. 6 (Washington: GPO, 1976), pp. 884-6.
62. Telegram, Acheson to Saigon, 16 Jan. 1951, FRUS, 1951, vol. 6, p. 348. A slightly different version of the exchange between Diȩ̂m and Bao Da̧is representatives is recounted in Memorandum of Conversation, William O'Sullivan, 15 Jan. 1951, USNA2, 751G.00/1-1551.
63. Diȩ̂m's explanation of why he decided to return to the US in late 1950 is in D. M. Coors, 'Conversation with Mr. Ngo Dinh Diem, prominent Vietnamese Catholic leader', 26 July 1951, USNA2, 751G.00/7-2651.
64. Ibid.; Conversation with Mr. Ngo Dinh Diem, Prominent Vietnamese Catholic Leader, see also the telegram of 28 Sept. 1950 cited in note 29.
65. Joseph Morgan, The Vietnam lobby: The American Friends of Vietnam, 1955-1975 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), pp. 1-14.
66. For example, in a 1951 memorandum Diȩ̂m wrote to a Catholic member of Congress, he described the Catholic dioceses of Phát Diȩ̂m and Bùi Chu in northern Vietnam as a 'Third Force zone' populated by people who 'understand true Western values' and who 'are not anti-West but anticolonialist'; Ngo Dinh Diem, 'Indo China', memorandum of July 1951, enclosed in letter, Rep. Edna Kelly to Sen. Mike Mansfield, 20 July 1951, University of Montana Mansfield Library, Mike Mansfield Archives, Series IV, Box 221, Folder 14. (I am grateful to Don Oberdorfer for providing me with a copy of this memorandum.)
67. In the 1960s, it was often alleged that US support for Diȩ̂m had been orchestrated primarily by the powerful Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York; Robert Scheer, How the United States got involved in Vietnam (Santa Barbara, CA: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1965), pp. 20-5.
68. More recent arguments along these lines have been less conspiratorially minded, but they still maintain that religion was the core of Diȩ̂m's appeal to Americans; see, for example, Seth Jacobs, '"Sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diȩ̂m": Religion, Orientalism and United States intervention in Vietnam, 1950-1957' (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 2000).
69. For example, in two speeches delivered towards the end of his stay in the US, Diȩ̂m made only one passing reference to Christianity; Ngo Dinh Diem, 'Recent developments in Indochina' (Address delivered to the fifth Annual Meeting of the Far Eastern Association, Cleveland, Ohio, 1 Apr. 1953)
70. and 'Talk by Mr. Ngo Dinh Diem before Southeast Asia Seminar, Cornell University' (20 Feb. 1953). Copies of both of these speeches are available in the Cornell University Kroch Library.
71. For an overview of the US technical assistance programme to the Associated States, see the Mutual Security Agency pamphlet entitled 'US technical and economic assistance to the Far East: A part of the Mutual Security program for 1952-1953" (Washington: MSA, March 1952).
72. (A copy of this pamphlet is contained in USNA2, RG59, US State Department Lot Files, Box 1, Entry 1393.) The classic account of Point Four and its consequences is Robert Packenham, Liberal America and the Third World: Political development ideas in foreign aid and social science (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973).
73. Paul L. Dressel, College to university: The Hannah years at Michigan State, 1935-1969 (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1987), pp. 276-7.
74. Letter, Wesley Fishel to MacDonald Salter, 14 March 1952, MSUA, Fishel Papers, Box 1184, Folder 14.
75. Fishel's letter describing the proposal seems not to have generated much interest at the MSA in 1952; however, the ideas Diȩ̂m and Fishel outlined were eventually realised in the technical assistance programme that Michigan State set up in South Vietnam after Diȩ̂m came to power in 1954. See John Ernst, Forging a fateful alliance : Michigan State University and the Vietnam War (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1998).
76. William O. Douglas, North from Malaya: Adventure on five fronts (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1953), pp. 147-210; see pp. 180-1 for Douglas' sympathetic representation of Diȩ̂m as an 'honest and independent' alternative to the French. Like Douglas, Mansfield and Kennedy had also travelled to Indochina and become converts to the Third Force cause. Other Americans present at the lunch meeting included: Bill Costello, a reporter for CBS News; Ray Newton, an official of the American Friends Service Committee; Edmund S. Gullion of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, who had met Diȩ̂m during his earlier stint as Chargé d'Affaires at the US Mission in Saigon; and Gene Gregory, who had also served in the Embassy in Saigon and had arranged to introduce Diȩ̂m to Douglas after the patter's return from Indochina. The luncheon was also attended by Hoàng Vǎn Doàn, Bishop of Bǎ́c Ninh in northern Vietnam. This information is from author's interview with Gene Gregory, Ho Chi Minh City, Mar. 2002 and letter, Douglas to Diȩ̂m, 8 May 1953, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, William O. Douglas Papers, Box 1716.
77. Don Oberdorfer interview with Mike Mansfield, 28 Aug. 1998. (I am grateful to Mr Oberdorfer for permission to use this quotation here.) Mansfield likely meant to say 'Vietnam' rather than 'South Vietnam', since the latter did not exist as a distinct political entity in May 1953. On the dinner see Memorandum of Conversation, Edmund S. Gullion, 8 May 1953, FRUS 1952-1954, vol. 13, pp. 553-4. The date on this document (both the published version and the original in the US National Archives) is 7 May 1953. However, based on other documents produced at the time, I believe that the luncheon actually took place on 8 May, see the letter from Douglas to Diȩ̂m, cited in note 41, which dates the meeting on the eighth.
78. See also the enclosures in Letter, Kennedy to Dulles, 7 May 1953, USNA2, 751G.00/5-753, which show that Kennedy's office made an urgent request to the State Department on the morning of 8 May for immediate answers to questions about the current US policy on Indochina.
79. See the Memorandum of Conversation cited in the previous note.
80. Telegram, Dillon to State Dept., 24 May 1954, FRUS, 1952-1954, vol. 13, pp. 1608-9.
81. Times of Viet Nam Weekly, 17 Mar. 1956, p. 7;
82. Georges Chaffard, Indochine: Dix ans d'indépendance (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1964), p. 30.
83. Georges Chaffard, Indochine: Dix ans D'indépendance, Ibid., pp. 27-30;
84. and 'Ngo Dinh Luyen", undated biographical summary, MAE, série VLC, sous-série Sud-Vietnam, dossier 22. On Cân, see Cao Vǎn Luâ̧n, Bên giong li̧ch sw, 1940-1965 (Saigon: Trí Dũng, 1972), pp. 180-9.
85. 'Ngô cross D sign inh Nhu', in Souverains et notabilités d'Indochine (Hanoi: Éditions du Gouvernement Général de l'Indochine, IDEO, 1943), p. 62;
86. 'Curriculum Vitae of Mr. Ngo Dinh Nhu', undated, Texas Tech University, The Vietnam Archive, John Donnell collection, Box 2, Folder 22, Box 2 [hereafter 'Donnell papers']. Nhu seems to have retained his job at the National Library during the period in which Hanoi was under the control of the Viȩ̂t Minh;
87. see 'Li̧ch-su dầy du vềgia-cross D sign inh Cu Ngô-D.-Diȩ̂m', Saigon Mói, 23 June 1954.
88. Author's interview with Gene Gregory, Ho Chi Minh City, Mar. 2002. One of Nhu's associates later recalled accompanying him on a visit undertaken on Diȩ̂m's behalf to a Catholic region near the Lao border in 1946; A. J. Langguth, Our Vietnam: The war, 1954-1975 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), p. 87.
89. A Catholic source reports that Nhu was forced to flee by sea from Hanoi to the diocese of Phát Diȩ̂m upon the outbreak of war in December 1946, and from there managed to travel overland to Huế; Doàn Dô̧c Thu' and Xuân Huy, Giám mu̧e Lê Hũu Tìe, p. 116.
90. Emmanuel Mounier, Personalism, tr. Philip Mairet (London: Routledge and Paul, 1952), pp. 17-19 (individualism) and 103-5 (social order).
91. The views of Mounier and other French Personalists can be distinguished from American Personalism, which flourished in Boston in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries under the intellectual leadership of Borden Parker Bowne. Although both brands of Personalism drew inspiration from Roman Catholic theology, American Personalists tended to be more staunchly idealist than their French counterparts, who acknowledged the independent existence of material reality even as they argued it should not be overemphasised. See 'Personalism' in The encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards, vol. VI (New York: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 106-9;
92. and 'Personalism' in The Cambridge dictionary of philosophy, ed. Robert Audi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 575.
93. In translating Personalism as nhân vi̧, Nhu was following the lead of Father Bu-u Duong, a Catholic priest and scholar who coined the term in lectures he delivered during the 1940s. See Nguyen Trai, 'The government of men in the Republic of Vietnam' (unpublished manuscript, 1962), p. 139;
94. a copy of this document is available in Widener Library at Harvard University. It is not clear whether Nhu actually studied with Mounier in France; some of his Vietnamese associates claimed he had, but he denied it on at least one occasion. See 'Nhu and Personalism', undated notes, Donnell papers, Box 3, Folder 14.
95. Ngô Dinh Nhu, 'Su' góp súc cua ngu-òi Công-giáo vào hòa-binh o Viȩ̂-Nam' (Speech delivered on 18 Apr. 1952 at Dalat Military Academy),
96. reprinted in Xã Hô̧i [henceforth XH], Feb. 1953, pp. 5, 14, 18-22.
97. Xã Hô̧i, Ibid., p. 21.
98. The precise date and circumstances of the formation of the Cần Lao party remain mysterious, but it seems certain that the party was established prior to Diȩ̂m's return from his exile in 1954; he told Wesley Fishel in 1955 that it had been formed sometime around 1952. See Memorandum, Fishel to Collins, 7 Mar. 1955, FRUS, 1955-1957, vol. 1 (Washington: GPO, 1985), p. 111.
99. The syndicalist inclinations of the Can Lao party and its founder were later explicitly acknowledged by party officials: 'The program of the Can Lao Nhan Vi follows syndicalist lines, advocating co-management of national industries by representatives of capital and labour and workers' participation in the profits and technical development of industries. The party has taken a strong position of support for agrarian reform for the same reason, namely that possession is a right of the worker'; Times of Vietnam Weekly, 25 Feb. 1956, p. 9.
100. Edmund S. Wehrle, '"No more pressing task than organization in Southeast Asia": The AFL-CIO approaches the Vietnam War, 1947-1964', Labor History, 42, 3 (2001): 277-95;
101. Times of Vietnam Magazine, 4 Mar. 1962, pp. 18-19. Significantly, the Confederation's Vietnamese name (Tông liên doàn Lao dô̧ng Viȩ̂t Nam) did not indicate the group's Christian affiliation; this undoubtedly reflected Buu's determination to attract non-Christian workers as well as Christians, and also his own identity as a Buddhist.
102. 'Tông-liên-doàn Lao-dô̧ng V.N.', XH, Feb. 1953, pp. 31, 34;
103. 'Ban kiến-nghi cua Liên-hiȩ̂p Nghiȩ̂p doàn Trung-Viȩ̂t goi Tông- liên-doàn Lao-dông V.N.', XH, July 1953, p. 16;
104. Dân Sinh, Tim hiêu tô-chúc ho-p-tác- xā, XH, 15 Sept. 1953, p. 23;
105. Dan Sinh, 'Muc-dích và phuo-ng-pháp huan-luyȩ̂n', XH, 10 Nov. 1953, pp. 33-4;
106. and Dan Sinh, 'Màu sǎ́c tô-chirc ho-p-tác-xã các nuóc, in the same issue, pp. 28-9.
107. Hammer, Struggle for Indochina, pp. 281-6, 300-1.
108. For the planning of the September Congress, see Guillemot, 'Révolution nationale', pp. 628-32.
109. A detailed account of the Unity Congress is contained in Telegram, Kidder to Dept. State, 22 Sept. 1953, USNA2, 751G.00/9-2253. For published accounts, see Tiếng Dô̧i, 8 Sept. 1953;
110. Le Monde, 8 Sept. 1953;
111. and Donald Lancaster, The emancipation of French Indochina (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), pp. 275-7. Bao Da̧i did not mention the September conference in his memoirs, but he did acknowledge rebuffing a request for a Congress made by Nhu and others during the summer of 1953;
112. Bao Da̧i, Dragon d'Annam, pp. 312-13. For the announcement of the creation of the Movement for National Union and Peace,
113. see Phong Thuy, 'Ý-nghĩa và giá-tri cuô̧c Dai-hô̧i Doàn-kết ngày 6-9-53', XH, 15 Sept. 1953, p. 2.
114. For details on the October Congress proceedings, see Vietnam Presse, 31-36 (12-17 Oct. 1953)
115. and Le Monde, 17-20 Oct. 1953.
116. See Diȩ̂m's letter published in Le Monde, 25-6 Oct. 1953.
117. The efforts of Nhu and his allies to stake out a distinct political position in advance of the October Conference are detailed in Sturm to Dept. of State, 'Press conference held by protagonists of "National Congress" of early September 1953", 16 Oct. 1953, USNA2, 751G.00/10-1653.
118. Telegram, Dillion to Dulles, 14 Oct. 1953, USNA2, 751G.00/10-1453; the meeting took place on 12 October. As early as September, Diȩ̂m was described by an American source as confident that he and Bao Da̧i were about to reconcile (Smith to Saigon and Paris, 14 Sept. 1953, USNA2, 751G.00/9-1453).
119. The circumstances of the second meeting were reported in Vietnam Presse, 45 (27 Oct. 1953);
120. see also Le Monde, 28 Oct. 1953.
121. Bao Da̧i's query about Diȩ̂m's willingness to serve was reported to US officials by a member of the imperial entourage (Telegram, Dillion to Dulles, 28 Oct. 1953, USNA2, 751G.00/10-2853).
122. Guillemot, 'Révolution nationale', pp. 627-34.
123. Bao Dai, Dragon d'Annam, p. 328. Bao Dai implied that this exchange with Diȩ̂m took place in June 1954;
124. however, contemporary sources show that Diȩ̂m had accepted Bao Dai's offer during an earlier meeting in mid-May (Telegram, Dillion to Dept. State, 24 May 1954, FRUS 1952-1954, vol. 13, p. 1608).
125. Early formulations of this theory are found in Chaffard, Indochine, pp. 19-20,26-9
126. and Robert Scheer and Warren Hinkle, 'The "Vietnam Lobby"', Ramparts, July 1965, pp. 16-24. In his memoir on Vietnam, US official Chester Cooper noted that some Americans had concluded that the CIA was backing Diȩ̂m as early as the spring of 1953;
127. Chester Cooper, The lost crusade: America in Vietnam (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1970), p. 120.
128. Allegations of US influence also appear in Townsend Hoopes, The devil and John Foster Dulles (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), p. 251;
129. Marilyn Young, The Vietnam wars, 1945-1990 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), p. 44;
130. Kahin, Intervention, p. 78;
131. and Jacobs, '"Sink or swim'", pp. 100-16.
132. David Anderson, Trapped by success: The Eisenhower administration and Vietnam, 1953-1961 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), pp. 41-64, especially pp. 52-5.
133. Bao Dai, Dragon d'Annam, p. 329.
134. Ngô Dinh Diȩ̂m, 'Tuyên bố khi nhâ̧n lâ̧p Chánh-phu (Ba-Lê, 16-6-1954)', in Con duong chính nghĩa, vol. 1, p. 13.
135. Ngô Dinh Diȩ̂m, 'Hiȩ̂u-triȩ̂u quoc-dân khi về tói Saigon, ngày 25-6-1954', in ibid., p. 16.