The Spy Who Loved Us_ The Vietnam War and Pham Xuan An's Dangerous Game ( PDFDrive )

The Spy Who Loved Us 81
Among Lansdale’s less heroic feats was the organization of “a
small English-language class conducted for mistresses of important
personages.” His students included the “favorite mistress”
of the army chief of staff. Lansdale tried to destroy
Vietnam’s largest printing press, which had fallen into the hands
of the Communists in the north, and he conducted “black psywar
strikes,” which included printing fake government decrees
to be distributed in the north. He was particularly proud of the
work done by Vietnamese astrologers, who were hired to predict
disasters for the Communists and good omens for the south.
When his work as a wrecker became hampered by political
constraints, Lansdale engineered another covert operation in
which he blanketed the north with propaganda saying “Christ
has gone to the south” and “the Virgin Mary has departed from
the north.” One leaflet showed Hanoi at the center of three concentric
rings of nuclear destruction. Operation Passage to Freedom
worked so well in convincing Catholics that they were in
imminent danger that eight hundred thousand refugees fled
from North to South Vietnam on American ships and airplanes.
The south had a population at the time of seventeen million
people, mainly peasant rice farmers and plantation workers.
This huge influx of Catholic refugees provided the newly
formed government of South Vietnam—which was run by a
Catholic—with apparatchiks who quickly installed themselves
as overseers and informants in the predominantly Buddhist
south. Over half the high officials in the Diem government
were Catholic, in a country that was ninety percent Buddhist.
Loyal to the Americans who had “saved” them from the Communists,
these refugees from the north were the perfect material
for shaping into the new citizens of a new country.
Lansdale had finally found his “third force,” and it was not Cao
Dai but Catholic.
The refugees flowing out of North Vietnam were also useful
for highlighting Communist perfidy. Aiding Lansdale in this