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

86 THOMAS A. BASS
trade unionists, and Buddhists, until a hundred thousand people
were thrown in prison camps.
“Without U.S. support, Diem almost certainly could not
have consolidated his hold on the South during 1955 and 1956,”
wrote an unnamed analyst in the Pentagon Papers. “Without the
threat of U.S. intervention, South Vietnam could not have refused
to even discuss the elections called for in 1956 under
the Geneva settlement without being immediately overrun
by the Vietminh armies. Without U.S. aid in the years following,
the Diem regime certainly, and an independent South
Vietnam almost as certainly, could not have survived. . . .
In brief, South Vietnam was essentially the creation of the
United States.”
“Lansdale was very successful in the beginning, but the
Americans made a mistake,” An says. “They set up Ngo Dinh
Diem and a centralized government. They got rid of all the
private armies which had been created by the French to help
them, the Hoa Hao, the Cao Dai, the Binh Xuyen. Lansdale
eliminated all of them in a very short period, from 1955 to
1956. Diem turned himself from a prime minister into a president
and continued building up a symbolic government, a
supposedly democratic government, patterned on the American
government. This is when they considered that Lansdale’s
job was over. Unfortunately for the Americans, they didn’t
allow Lansdale’s people to continue their work. When Diem and
his family veered toward nepotism, the Americans found out
too late.”
What the Americans also failed to realize was the way Diem
played into the hands of the Communists. This is why Pham
Xuan An advised his colleagues not to topple Diem or work too
hard at destabilizing his government. Having grown up in colonial
Vietnam, An realized the effectiveness of the French administration.
It was corrupt, but it worked. It spread a
fine-grained network of spies over South Vietnam. It played to
people’s foibles and self-interest. It was lascivious and cynical,