"National Unity" And Stepped-Up War

From the way he buttonholed passers-by on Saigon sidewalks, the pint-sized Vietnamese officer in green fatigues could have been Nelson Rockefeller campaigning in the New Hampshire primary. He shook hands, introduced himself, asked, "Have you any suggestions about how we can do a better job for Viet Nam?" The politician was none other than South Viet Nam's strongman of the hour, Major General Nguyen Khanh, 36. Almost desperately, he was striving for the support necessary to safeguard his successful military coup.

The folksy style pleasantly surprised U.S. advisers, who have long urged grass-roots politicking on government leaders. Next day Khanh flew to address troops at guerrilla-beleaguered Ben Cat, 27 miles north of Saigon. "We cannot win the war by staying in Saigon," he said. "It is the countryside where the majority of the people live, people who need help, protection and security." At a village market, he questioned startled peasants about their health, housing and work. With flashbulbs popping, he handed out candy to squealing small fry, wisecracked: "A few more months of this and I will be ready for Hollywood."

Spoils for Generals. For all his efforts, Khanh has as yet made no great impression on the mass of the population, and has yet to prove the charge he invoked to justify his coup--a purported "neutralist plot" within the former junta. It is far from certain that all the military are behind him. But he has rewarded his chief collaborators hand somely. Major General Tran Thien Khiem, whose III Corps troops arrested former Junta Boss General Du ong Van ("Big") Minh, got the No. 2 military job as Defense Minister and commander in chief. But among the ranks of Khanh's new, expanded, 53-man junta (eight major generals, nine brigadier generals, 25 colonels, ten lieutenant colonels, one major), there was endless wrangling over the lesser spoils. Many a junior officer was disgusted.

Yet at week's end Khanh managed to put together a "government of national unity." His Cabinet was a mixed bag of politicians, bureaucrats and soldiers. He gave Big Minh his old title back as "Chief of State," and invited him to move into Gia Long Palace, once occupied by Diem. Minh, still popular with both the masses and the U.S. embassy, had already agreed to front for Khanh as "supreme military adviser." But Khanh, who plans to pull the strings, named himself Premier.

Rampaging Reds. While the political game went on, the Viet Cong--just as they did in the confusion after Diem's fall--lost no time stepping up the war. Unleashing their biggest offensive since November, the Reds increased small-scale harassments and terrorism, launched a rapid-fire series of battalion-size attacks. In Vinh Long province, the Viet Cong murdered the mother of the army's intelligence chief for the southern Mekong Delta. In Saigon, a Communist-planted bomb exploded in the Playboy Bar, killing five Vietnamese and wounding 40 other patrons, including six Americans.

U.S. intelligence reported Viet Cong assassination agents slipping into the capital, with U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge as a prime target. In a bold attack on a U.S. military compound, a four-man Red guerrilla squad slipped by night into a barracks in central Viet Nam occupied by 130 American advisers, bombed and burned a billet, wounding a captain. A Kansas corporal opened fire and killed two of the intruders.

The bloodiest battle took place 45 miles northwest of Saigon. A 500-man Red contingent, which apparently slipped in over the Cambodian border five miles away, overran five adjoining strategic hamlets and one Self-Defense Corps post. Refusing to let the hamlets' 4,000 peasants flee for protection, the Viet Cong fought off 500 counterattacking paratroopers and other government contingents backed by dive bombers, napalm and artillery. Finally the Reds withdrew toward Cambodia, having inflicted the worst government toll of any single action so far in the war: 94 dead, 32 wounded.

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