The Queen Bee

The history of Viet Nam is full of heroines. Women often served as gen erals. In the 1st century A.D., the Trung sisters raised an army and started a rebellion against Viet Nam's Chinese overlords; one of their female com manders gave birth to a child on the battlefield, then strapping her infant on her back and brandishing a sword in each hand, led her troops against the Chinese. In 248, a 23-year-old girl put on a suit of golden armor, climbed on the back of an elephant, and led her army into the field against Viet Nam's foreign invaders.

Today the most formidable and in some ways the bravest woman in South Viet Nam wears tapered satin trousers and a torso-hugging ao-dai, split from ankle to waist, and rides to meet her foes in a chauffeur-driven black Mer cedes. Instead of swords, her weapons are bottomless energy, a devastating charm, a tough, relentless mind, an acid tongue, a militant Roman Catholi cism -- and, most important, the power of the family into which she married. She is Mme. Ngo Dinh Nhu, wife of President Ngo Dinh Diem's younger brother and closest brain-truster. In ad dition to acting as official First Lady for the bachelor President, she is in her own right one of the two or three most powerful people in the country and in a sense embodies all its problems.

In any Western nation she would be a political force to be reckoned with. In an Oriental country burdened with cen turies of ignorance and bloodshed, she is probably more feared than any other man or woman -- and fear under such conditions can mean power beyond ei ther respect or popularity.

American Ivanhoes. A fragile, ex citing beauty who stands only 5 ft. 2 in. in high heels -- who has kept her girlish grace though she is the mother of four -- Mme. Nhu does not look the part. To her critics she symbolizes everything that is wrong with the remote, authoritarian, family-dominated Diem regime. But if she is vain, arbitrary, puritanical, imperious and devious, she also exudes strength, dedication and courage. To some it seems that she belongs in an intrigue-encrusted 18th century court, or that she should wear the robes of a Chinese empress -- or both.

Her only official positions are those of Deputy in the National Assembly and chief of South Viet Nam's women's movements, but Mme. Nhu orders around army generals, Cabinet minis ters, and even the President. Though he is often reluctant to go along with her, Diem regularly yields to her when she bursts imperiously into his study, and even allows her to countermand his own orders, because he desperately fears a public display of family friction.

When a group of disaffected South Vietnamese paratroopers attempted a coup against Diem three years ago, one of their first demands was that Mme.

Nhu be removed from the presidential palace. She was flattered by the attention, and also brags that the U.S. has tried unsuccessfully for years to get Diem to curb her power. She bitterly attacks the anti-Diem U.S. press corps in Saigon and accuses Americans generally of being a lot of "Ivanhoes"--perpetually in love with the underdog but confused about just who the underdog is.

In the country's current, festering religious crisis, as she sees it, the Buddhists are certainly not underdogs but "provocateurs in monks' robes." She has consistently opposed the U.S. counsel of moderation and Diem's own halfhearted efforts to temporize. Her recommendation for dealing with Buddhist demonstrators: "Beat them three times harder." When the Buddhist monk, Quang Due, burned himself to death in protest against the regime six weeks ago, Mme. Nhu was unimpressed. The Buddhists "barbecued one of their monks, whom they intoxicated," she savagely told a CBS reporter last week. "And even that burning was not done with self-sufficient means, because they used imported gasoline."

In Washington, the South Vietnamese embassy formally repudiated Mme. Nhu's statement as representing only her views and not that of the government. The disclaimer was particularly intriguing, because the ambassador, Tran Van Chuong, is Mme. Nhu's father, who violently disapproves of her --and only partly because the government expropriated his vast property seven years ago. She in turn disapproves of him, once called him a coward.

The Brothers Four. The U.S. is deeply committed to hold South Viet Nam against the Chinese-backed Viet Cong guerrillas, because--according to the old "falling domino theory"--Laos and Cambodia would be outflanked, Thailand caught in a vise, and the Malay Peninsula severely threatened if South Viet Nam were to fall. The U.S. is pouring $1,000,000 a day into the country and has sent 14,000 tough, savvy military "advisers" to sharpen the government's war effort against the Red guerrillas. Amid the frustrating military ups and downs, the overriding questions are two: Can the war be won with President Diem and his relatives in control? Can it be won without them?

Part of South Viet Nam's closely knit Mandarin aristocracy, the President's family commands little popular support but firmly dominates the country's political and economic structure. For all its faults, it also represents an order of sorts in a place that has been on the brink of chaos for decades. The remarkable quartet of Diem's brothers:

sb Ngo Dinh Thuc, 66, the eldest, is Roman Catholic Archbishop of Hue (pronounced Whey), controls large amounts of property in the name of the church, and has placed several favorites in Diem's Cabinet. Diem repeatedly tried to get Thuc transferred to the vacant See of Saigon, but the Vatican, which is distressed by the extent to which Diem's repressive measures have tarnished the image of Catholicism in South Viet Nam, vetoed the suggestion. It has also ignored all hints that Archbishop Thuc might become a cardinal. Thuc is the only one of the brothers whom Mme. Nhu does not criticize, and he often arbitrates family disputes.

-- Ngo Dinh Can, 50, technically holds no government post at all, but in fact runs the city of Hue and surrounding central Viet Nam. Although, unlike his brothers, Can has never been abroad, did not go to a university, and runs his fiefdom like an old warlord, the war in the central highlands is going far bet ter than anywhere else in South Viet Nam. An inveterate ao-dai chaser, Can has incurred Mme. Nhu's wrath: "He is stubborn and touchy, and unbearably obsolete concerning women." But, she concedes, "we all feel safer to have him in Hue."

sb Ngo Dinh Luyen, 48, has been abroad since 1954, serves as South Viet Nam's Ambassador to Great Britain and several other European countries, Mme. Nhu is openly contemptuous of Luyen's ability and sneeringly calls him "a dilettante."

sb Ngo Dinh Nhu, 52, functions as political counselor and theoretician for President Diem. From his soundproofed palace office, surrounded by books and stuffed animal heads, he tirelessly preaches the merits of "personalism," an abstruse amalgam of Confucianism, autocracy and Catholic morality that Diem calls his "formula" for government. Nhu controls the secret police and advises Diem on army promotions, government appointments and business contracts. On the side he runs the Revolutionary Labor Party, whose 70,000 members throughout the nation spend most of their time informing the police about their neighbors.

Falling Out. Mme. Nhu's criticism --she has even suggested that President Diem is not as forceful as he might be -- is a frequent irritant. Yet despite occasional bickering, Mme. Nhu fiercely defends Diem and the others. "I have never met anyone as human, warmhearted and chivalrous as the Ngo Dinh brothers," she says extravagantly. "The world is not made for them. They would not hurt a mosquito."

The basic bond between her and the brothers is intense, and very Asian. In the past, South Viet Nam's women deliberately gave their husbands money to dissipate on opium and prostitutes in order to control them better. During the Indo-China war, thousands of men worked openly for the French, but cases of women collaborators were rare. Today women control much of South Viet Nam's wealth, and in her home a wife is called noi tuong, or "general of the interior." Matriarchal strength is compounded by the traditional Vietnamese view of the family as monolithic and united against all outsiders, but in Mme. Nhu's case, her family by marriage takes precedence over her own blood. She has fallen out with her father, mother and sister. It is in Diem's clan that Mme. Nhu finds the place and the power she craves.

Beautiful Spring. She was born "about 38" years ago into one of the wealthiest, most aristocratic landowning families in Viet Nam. Her maiden name was Tran Le Xuan, which means Beautiful Spring, and at her family's home in Hanoi she was waited on by 20 servants. Tutored at home, she never finished high school, took ballet lessons, once danced a solo at Hanoi's National Theater. She learned to speak French fluently, today mostly converses in that language, writes all her speeches in French before having them translated into Vietnamese.

As a child, she remembers herself as unhappy, unloved, and in rebellion against her mother, a celebrated local beauty who kept the Hanoi equivalent of a salon. "If you are unjust," the young girl told her fiercely, "I will ignore you." When Beautiful Spring was 16, she met Ngo Dinh Nhu, chief archivist at the Indo-China Library and an admirer of her mother's. To Beautiful Spring's distress, Mother forced her to address herself to Nhu as "your little niece." Nhu lent his little niece books, helped her with her Latin lessons. Constantly in her mother's shadow, Mme. Nhu wanted to marry and get out of her house. Her mother's list of selected young men held no interest for her. "Then," she recalls matter-of-factly, "I said to myself, 'Why not that man, Ngo Dinh Nhu?' "

The Nhus were married in 1943. She converted from Buddhism to her husband's Catholic faith, today says that "the sacraments are my moral vitamins." Her daughter, Le Thuy, was born in 1946, and was followed by sons Trac and Quyhn, and daughter Le Quyen. Candidly Mme. Nhu admits that she has "never had a sweeping love. I read about such things in books, but I do not believe that they really exist. Or perhaps only for a very few people."'

Rice Diet. Three years after the Nhus were married, the Indo-China war broke out. All the Ngo Dinh brothers were militantly anti-Communist and anticolonialist. Their father, Ngo Dinh Kha, had been an officer in the old imperial court but quit in a dispute with Viet Nam's French overlords, despite being virtually penniless, and went out and farmed his rented rice fields side by side with his peasant neighbors. Diem himself left politics before World War II rather than work with the French. In that tradition, Nhu, his wife and family were opposed both to the Red Viet Minh "army of liberation" and to the French with their puppet Emperor, Bao Dai. When the Viet Minh overran Hue, they shot Diem's oldest brother and the brother's only son, for months held Diem himself captive before turning him loose. Nhu and Can both escaped from the Reds, but Mme. Nhu, her infant daughter and her aged mother-in-law were taken prisoner in December 1946.

For four months, Mme. Nhu lived on only two bowls of rice a day in a remote Communist-held village. She had only one blouse, one pair of pants and one coat. "I got to hate that coat," she says. "It was wasp-waisted and very fashionable. But for months it was my only blanket. After that, I always said I would only own loose, practical coats, just in case." Mme. Nhu's smooth, well-kept hands were a constant source of contemptuous amusement for her tough peasant captors. "I cannot bear the Communists," she says. "They considered me a child, I don't know why. They seemed to have some indulgence for me."

When the French army began moving out into the countryside, Mme. Nhu's captors prepared a hasty retreat north. But because her mother-in-law was incapable of making such an arduous trip, Mme. Nhu was granted a safe-conduct pass to a nearby village. With her child and the old woman, Mme. Nhu holed up in a convent in the village until the French forces arrived. Shortly afterward she was reunited with Nhu.

The Happy Time. The anticolonialist views shared by the whole Ngo Dinh family made the French regard the Nhus with suspicion. Settling in the resort town of Dalat, the Nhus quietly set about organizing popular support for the return to Viet Nam of Diem, who was in exile in the U.S. Nhu ran a paper and worked to develop his philosophy of personalism; to win favor among poor, potential supporters, Mme. Nhu turned down her family's hefty allowance, shopped for her own groceries, pedaled around Dalat on a bicycle.

In 1954, after their disastrous defeat at Dienbienphu, the French in desperation met the exiled Diem's demand for Vietnamese independence and sent him back to Viet Nam to try to rally his war-shattered people and to salvage something from the Viet Minh. Two weeks after Diem was installed in Saigon as Premier, the weary and discouraged French sliced Viet Nam in half at the Geneva bargaining table; the Viet Minh took the north with its coal and iron, and Diem was left with the south, including Saigon and the rice-rich Mekong River delta.

First Notice. The South Viet Nam that Diem inherited was in a state of anarchy. The economy was in shreds, and there was no functioning executive or administrative machinery to run the government. The army was run by a French puppet, General Nguyen Van Hinh, who was constantly plotting against Diem, and the police and security forces were controlled by the notorious Binh Xuyen river pirates, who had bought the "concession" from puppet Emperor Bao Dai for $1,000,000. In the countryside, two religious sects with well-armed private armies, the Cao Dai and the Hoa Hao, ran two virtually independent fiefs.

At Saigon cocktail parties, Army Boss General Hinh used to threaten a coup almost daily and joke that when he overthrew the government he would exile every member of Diem's family except Mme. Nhu, whom, he said, he would keep as a concubine. One day Mme. Nhu finally met Hinh face to face at a party. She walked over to him, recalls an observer, and said: "You are never going to overthrow this government because you don't have the guts. And if you do overthrow it, you will never have me because I will claw your throat out first."

That was when Saigon began to take serious notice of Mme. Ngo Dinh Nhu.

In the face of superior odds, hers was the first--and for a long time the only --voice to demand a showdown with the government's foes. She called her own husband "cowardly" for recommending a compromise with the Binh Xuyen gangsters. Once, arranging a demonstration against them, she was surrounded by a hostile crowd of Binh Xuyen. She jumped into her car, cried, "Arrest me, if you can!" and drove straight through the ring of tommy-gun-toting toughs. Finally, the family shipped her out to a convent in Hong Kong to keep her quiet during a period of attempted conciliation. "It was just like the Middle Ages," she says, "but that's where I learned English." When she returned to Saigon three months later, she was still spoiling for a fight. Finally, Diem smashed the Binh Xuyen, forced General Hinh into exile, and sent his troops into the countryside to crush the dissident sects.

Mandate from Heaven. Diem's consolidation of power over all odds was his finest moment. But the strain of constant intrigue had increased his distrust of all outsiders. He seldom ventured from his palace in Saigon, was almost completely out of touch with his people. The gap between Diem and the masses was widened by his militant Catholicism. The "Catholic Mandarin" believed that he ruled by a "mandate from heaven" and that it was the people's "duty" to honor the President.

But it was Mme. Nhu's flaming feminism that most antagonized the traditionalist Vietnamese. In 1956 she was elected to the National Assembly, immediately began a campaign to upgrade the status of Vietnamese women, who had no legal rights and could be dis carded by husbands at will. In these circumstances, said Mme. Nhu, a Vietnamese woman was "an eternal minor, an unpaid servant, a doll without a soul." In 1958 she rammed through the Assembly her controversial Family Bill, which made adultery a prison offense and outlawed polygamy, concubinage, and--except by special presidential dispensation--divorce.*

With tiny tears at the corners of her eyes, Mme. Nhu recently sighed that she had trouble at first appreciating "that I made many people unhappy with my Family Bill--people who were in illegitimate liaisons but who were strongly in love." Pulling herself together, she adds: "But society cannot sacrifice morality and legality for a few wild couples. I have chosen to defend the legitimate family."

"My Darlings." In a succession of bills, Mme. Nhu banned prostitution, contraceptives, abortion, organized animal fights and taxi dancing. Referring to the war, she said, "Dancing with death is enough." In Saigon, "twist easies" began to spring up, and criticism mounted that Mme. Nhu was trying to impose rigid Catholic standards on South Viet Nam's easygoing sexual mores. She herself used to go swimming at the fashionable Cercle Sportif. but stayed away when she saw too many bikinis. Even some government officials privately said that the morality crusade resulted only in increased and unnecessary public hostility toward the Diem regime.

Sure of her infallibility and contemptuous of her critics, Mme. Nhu set up a women's paramilitary corps, a parade ground force whose members ("my darlings") get paid twice as much as army regulars. Snapped Mme. Nhu: "The women are officers, not simple soldiers." She also organized the Women's Solidarity Movement, a sort of Oriental Junior League whose 1,200,000 members supervise workers' nurseries and welfare centers--and serve as a political intelligence network throughout the country.

Calumny Instead of Courage. The First Lady often treated Diem like Petruchio; she would write down a list of the direst predictions of what would happen if he did not follow her advice and then make him sign it so that she could crow if she were borne out. She also patronized Pope John XXIII. "Poor Pope," she said after John's encyclical Pacem in Terris called for more social welfare. "He pleases everyone with this encyclical. But if something pleases everyone, it can be exploited." She can even take quite a firm line with God. In praying for her projects, she says, she often makes a list of promises; when she has carried them out, she tells God: "I have fulfilled all the conditions," and asks to be helped further.

Mme. Nhu denies that she is antimale. "I have no reason to dislike men," she says. "They have always been so nice to me." She is a born actress, and a gentle rap of her delicate ivory fan has the effect of a roll of kettledrums. At a diplomatic party several years ago, U.S. Admiral Arthur Radford, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, locked his arm around her waist and said: "What do you really want, little lady?"

Considering the little lady's tremendous power, Saigon gossip has inevitably linked her with stories of corruption, but there has never been any supporting evidence. "After those charges," she says, "I predicted that next I would be attacked on my sentimental life." She was right. Saigon's cafes abound with tales of palace dalliances. But even some of her worst enemies dismiss the reports as rumors circulated by people who are afraid to attack her any other way.

The Crab's Claw. The attacks on Mme. Nhu grow more bitter as the Buddhist crisis intensifies, for she has made herself the country's leading anti-Buddhist polemicist. Superficially, the controversy shapes up as a simple religious dispute between the Buddhist majority and the nation's 1,500,000 Catholics. But the struggle transcends the charges of religious persecution and inequality. Instead it has developed into a political conflict that illustrates the gulf between the people, who have no natural affinity for a government that has done little to win their support, and Diem's ruling family. In this situation, the Catholic angle can be greatly exaggerated.

Viet Nam's Buddhists and Catholics have long been enemies. Even today, the Buddhists claim that the Catholics were "the claw that enabled the French crab to occupy Viet Nam." Mme. Nhu says that her own Buddhist ancestors used to butcher Catholics and that, dec ades ago, a Buddhist mob burned most of the Ngo Dinh family alive in a church. But since he took over the government in 1954, Diem has gone to great lengths not to offend the Buddhist majority. Less than one-third of his 17 Cabinet ministers and 19 army generals are Catholics; the heavy percentage of Catholics in the civil service and the 123-seat National Assembly is largely the result of a superior and far-reaching Catholic school system. Whenever there is a whisper of opposition, however, the government treats Catholics like anyone else; two Catholics involved in the 1960 coup were sentenced to long prison terms, and three priests have been jailed or forced to leave the country for criticizing the government.

But most Vietnamese still maintain that Diem has shown a definite pro-Catholic bias. Unfortunately for Diem, the simmering Buddhist discontent boiled over at the worst possible spot--in Brother Thuc's diocese at Hue. At a church celebration honoring Thuc, Diem grew furious that in violation of a government edict, Catholic pennants were flying and no South Vietnamese national flag, ordered government officials to prevent similar occurrences. Three days later, government troops forbade Buddhists to unfurl their flags at a rally celebrating the 2,507th birthday of Gautama Buddha. When the Buddhists protested, the government soldiers stupidly shot down nine demonstrators. That was the beginning of the Buddhist protests, which in turn provoked more police repression.

Circle with Corners. The Buddhist demands center around freedom of assembly, abolition of real or fancied inequalities, above all--and most galling to Diem--public government acceptance of responsibility for the Hue tragedy. These demands seem oddly minor to create so much trouble, but they are merely a catchall for myriad often ill-defined grievances.

With her husband, Mme. Nhu is against yielding an inch to the Buddhists, for fear that backing down will be-interpreted as a sign of weakness and lead to new and more sweeping political demands. In a speech to her girl soldiers last week, she called Buddhist agitation "an ignoble form of treason," which reduced Buddhism to the "despicable rank of phariseeism." She called Buddhist leaders "eternal slaves, if not to others, at least to their own folly." Above all, she charges that the Buddhists are organized by the Reds. While U.S. authorities reject this accusation, it is true in a more general sense that many Buddhists are open to Marxist influences.

The grass-roots religion in South Viet Nam's villages, a branch of the easygoing Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) tradition of Buddhism, is a peasant potpourri of animism and ancestor worship, magic charms and chanted sutras. But the saffron-robed monks of Saigon and Hue are more sophisticated. Many Buddhists, says U.S. Scholar Holmes Welch, believe that Buddhism and Communism have many points in common. "They practice some things that the Communists so far have merely talked about--no personal property, a communal life, and devoting oneself to the service of the people and world peace," he says. "It may be true that Buddha differs from Marx, but such differences can be rationalized." As of last week, to Mme. Nhu's disgust, Diem seemed bent on letting the Buddhist situation calm down. "The President too often wants what the French call 'a circle with corners,' " she says scornfully. He would like to conciliate "as the Americans desire, smooth, no bloodshed, everyone shaking hands." But the Buddhist crisis could flare up again at any moment. U.S. officials in Saigon fear that government intransigence can only have a divisive effect in the war against the Communist Viet Cong, in which political unity is the key to victory.

Too Fast, Too Thin. The war is as ugly and indecisive as ever. The more bullish predictions emanate from Saigon. General Paul Harkins, commander of the U.S. forces in South Viet Nam, says that the war will be over in December; statistics show that the Viet Cong launched an average of 120 attacks weekly last year, and for the first seven months this year the average was down to 74. But statistics are meaningless in South Viet Nam. Despite losses of 1,000 men a month, the Reds have increased their hard-core regular troops from 18,000 to 23,000 men.

There are some reasons for optimism. Substantial progress has been made in the central highlands, where U.S. Special Forces teams have molded 150,000 montagnard tribesmen into a tough, well-trained jungle force that is effectively harassing Viet Cong supply lines from Communist North Viet Nam. The government has embarked on a crash program to construct some 12,000 "strategic hamlets." fortified villages where the peasants will be guarded against Viet Cong attacks by trained, well-armed militiamen. Already 9,750,000 people--65% of the population--have been settled in the 7,500 hamlets that have been built so far.

U.S. officials fear that the hamlet program, headed by Mme. Nhu's husband, is spreading too fast and too thin, and that too many of the strongholds are not really defensible against determined Red attack. In the strategically important Mekong River delta, moreover, the well-armed Viet Cong operates with near impunity. For the first time in months, the Reds are consistently raising attacks in battalion-size strength, are showing an increasing tendency to stand and fight against government forces instead of fading away into the paddies.

Evidence Intrigue. All the Vietnamese military commanders are fighting with one eye cocked on Saigon. Generals are reluctant to commit troops to a large role, because Diem disapproves of generals who have heavy casualties. Always in fear of another coup against his regime, Diem also distrusts successful generals and shifts them about constantly to keep them from developing a power base.

In Saigon, intrigue is endemic. A new plot is hatched or at least talked about daily. Diem and his family are aware of most of the talk, and their nerve is good. Suggesting that there will be a coup unless the Buddhist crisis is brought under control, Nhu keeps his elaborate secret police network constantly on the alert. In government "reeducation centers" throughout the country are an estimated 20,000 political internees. According to one report, the new contingency plan against a coup is to draw regiments from the worst Viet Cong areas to the capital, a "deliberately dangerous" plan designed to make the Americans fear that a coup would only lead to Communist advances.

That is precisely what the U.S. does fear.

Superior Subordinates. The chief U.S. objection to Diem is not so much that he is a dictator, but an inefficient dictator. The proper democratic standards of the League of Women Voters cannot be applied to a deeply war-torn country, and Mme. Nhu has a point when she defends the regime's intolerance of opposition: "We consider Communism opposition enough in wartime, but we will have open declared opposition as soon as peacetime allows." The trouble is that Diem rules not so much by firmness as by confusion; deliberate disorganization is his way of keeping possible enemies off balance. Cabinet ministers are undercut by a system of "superior subordinates." who actually outrank their nominal bosses because they get orders direct from the palace. But there is serious doubt whether any of this would change after a coup.

Any number of army commanders, few of whom are truly loyal to Diem, would presumably be ready to take over, and they might conceivably be more ready to accept U.S. advice than Diem. Should his brother be eliminated, it is also generally assumed that Nhu himself would make a bid for power, and some Americans think that he might be more efficient, having shown administrative ability in the strategic-hamlets program. But the U.S. still doubts that any of the available alternatives to Diem would be a real improvement. American policymakers also suspect that a coup would only set off a chain reaction of other coups until some strongman finally emerged, and that in the meantime there would result a power vacuum in which only the Viet Cong could operate.

Into this pit of war, fear and intrigue, the U.S. is sending tough-minded Henry Cabot Lodge to replace Ambassador Frederick E. Nolting, who in 2| years in Saigon has been totally committed to Diem. The U.S. is hopeful--but not overly confident--that Lodge can make Diem more receptive to U.S. advice. Whatever Diem does, there is at least one South Vietnamese leader who will listen to advice with a ravishing smile, and probably refuse to accept it. Mme. Nhu is eagerly awaiting Lodge's arrival. Noting his middle name, she says: "We hear that in his family, they talk only to God." Told the same was said of her family, she replied: "In that case, I hope we will talk together, with God in the middle."

*Opponents of the bill said that Mme. Nhu sponsored it only to prevent the husband of her somewhat restless sister from divorcing her, but the First Lady indignantly denies this. Says she soothingly: "I well knew that my sister would want a divorce herself when she found someone more appropriate." Today the sister does indeed want a divorce, but it is doubtful that President Diem will grant it.

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