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Ex-South Vietnam President Dies

BOSTON - Former South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, who led his nation in the war that tore apart his nation and bitterly divided the United States, has died. He was 78. Thieu collapsed at his home in suburban Foxboro on Thursday, and died late Saturday at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, hospital spokesman Jerry Berger said Sunday.

Thieu was in a coma and had been kept on a respirator until family members could gather in Boston, said a cousin, Hoang Duc Nha. Nha said the family had contacted many members of the Vietnamese expatriate community. "Most of the expatriates now, with the more than 35 year of history, can see his role in a much clearer way, how he contributed to Vietnam," he said.

Thieu assumed power in 1965 and presided over the U.S.-backed South Vietnam until the fall of its capital city, Saigon, in 1975, to Communist-led troops from North Vietnam. He then largely disappeared from public view and lived quietly in exile, first in London, then in the Boston area. He remained, however, an enduring symbol of the futility of a war in which nearly 60,000 American troops died. With North Vietnamese closing in on the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon, and the war all but officially lost, he still declared: "We will fight to the last bullet, the last grain of rice." Even with the assistance of 500,000 U.S. troops and massive amounts of military aid, he was never able to turn the tide against the Communist North. He left power defeated, despised and bitterly denouncing the superpower nation that had befriended him for more than a decade.

He claimed the United States broke a promise to continue to provide military support after pulling out its combat troops in 1973, and that, he said, "led the South Vietnamese people to death." When the end did come, his resignation was demanded by all sides, including his former allies in the United States, to make way for peace talks with the North Vietnamese. Thieu reluctantly stepped down on April 21, 1975, and left the country, but the talks never came. South Vietnam was overrun shortly after his departure. A shrewd politician and brilliant military strategist, Thieu maneuvered himself from the bloody battlefield to the highest seat of power in his country. Born in a southern coastal fishing village, Thieu became involved as a youth in the national liberation movement led by Ho Chi Minh, who went on to become president of North Vietnam. Thieu, however, grew disillusioned and eventually switched sides. He established himself early in his career as a cautious, yet reliable, combat officer. He was one of the key participants in the overthrow of the Diem regime during the early 1960s. The same year that he rose to the nation's highest office in 1965, holding the ceremonial post of chief of state, President Johnson ordered the first major escalation of the war, sending more than 100,000 U.S. troops to Vietnam.

In September 1967, Thieu was elected to the presidency after pulling off a stunning switch with his rival, Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky, who had previously wielded the most influence in the South Vietnamese military regime. Thieu's entry into office initially brought stability and unity to a country in political chaos. In the years that followed, Thieu ruled with an iron hand, moving with the same caution as he had on the battlefield. He made decisions alone or with the advice of only one or two trusted aides and swiftly crushed any dissent. Several years later, his country's deteriorating economic situation, as well as corruption charges against his regime, but not necessarily against Thieu himself, left him scrambling to stay in power. What proved most costly, however, was a series of costly military mistakes that left the South Vietnamese army on the run and the fall of South Vietnam imminent. Soon, the clamor was that only Thieu's resignation would appease the North Vietnamese and stave off the impending blood bath.

In the years after the war, Thieu shunned almost all requests for interviews. He re-emerged nearly two decades later in 1992 to denounce rapprochement between the United States and the Communist government in Vietnam. But a year later, his tone had changed. Thieu spoke of his willingness to take part in national reconciliation talks that would allow members of the Vietnamese exile community to go home. The Vietnamese showed no interest in having him act as a go-between.

By Theo Emery - The Associated Press - September 30, 2001.


Thieu was embittered by defeat

In some ways, Nguyen Van Thieu epitomized South Vietnam. Born a southerner, he was a fervent anti-communist, a military professional leading an army often vilified as unwilling to fight, and a crafty practitioner of the intrigues that typified Saigon politics. Thieu died on Saturday in Boston, 26 years after fleeing into exile as his regime was about to fall to the North Vietnamese. He left unexplained his own version of the history of that turbulent era.

Early in life an adherent to the revolution led by Ho Chi Minh, Thieu switched sides to become an ardent South Vietnamese nationalist: one of a cadre of military officers committed to defending their country against a communist takeover from the North, but beholden to the United States for support. Thieu was a background participant in the coups and machinations that marked Saigon's political scene in the early 1960s. In 1965 he seized power from his longtime archrival, the flamboyant air marshal Nguyen Cao Ky, putting an end to the revolving door leadership and stabilizing the government, much to the delight of his American backers. He was elected president in 1967 and again four years later, in voting that was hardly a model of democracy.

In many other countries, Thieu might have been seen as a dedicated, courageous patriot. In Saigon, he never managed to overcome the image of corrupt wheeler-dealer, and had no broad political support in the countryside, where the battle for the peasantry's ``hearts and minds'' was being fought between his forces and the communist Viet Cong. While Hanoi and his own adversaries at home called him a U.S. ``puppet,'' Thieu was a fiercely stubborn leader, who frequently exasperated U.S. officials and balked at their proposals. ``He was very difficult (for the U.S.) to deal with. People called him a puppet, but if he was a puppet he pulled his own strings,'' said Stanley Karnow, a leading historian on the Vietnam War.

When then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho reached a cease-fire accord in Paris in early 1973, Thieu angrily denounced its provisions for a coalition regime and for allowing 140,000 enemy troops to remain on South Vietnamese soil as ``tantamount to surrender.'' Tran Van Don, another senior South Vietnamese leader, said Thieu bitterly told Kissinger, ``We are scarcely more than a dot on the map to you... for us the choice is between life and death.'' The U.S. withdrawal in 1973 left South Vietnam to fight on its own against an increasingly powerful north, though it still depended on American financial and logistical support.

In early 1975, as Hanoi's final offensive rolled almost unchecked toward his capital. Thieu asked the United States for a new infusion of money and military equipment, and was infuriated when Congress refused President Gerald Ford's $300 million supplementary military aid bill for Saigon. In a strategic victory, the North Vietnamese on March 11 dislodged South Vietnamese troops from the provincial capital of Ban Me Thuot, the anchor of Saigon defenses in the Central Highlands.

Thieu then made the decision that would spell doom to his government. He ordered his generals to withdraw to the more easily defended coastal cities. It was a move long urged by U.S. strategists, but the orderly pullback became a chaotic rout that surprised even the North Vietnamese. ``Why such a retreat?'' Gen. Van Tien Dung, Hanoi's chief of staff, would ask later. ``The enemy had again made another grave and strategic mistake.'' As the Communists drove toward Saigon virtually unopposed, Thieu pledged that his troops would defend it ``to the last bullet, the last grain of rice.''

But after enemy forces attacked a radar facility on the edge of Saigon itself, one of Thieu's generals advised him that the war was lost, adding the cruel news that Thieu's own family graveyard at Phan Rang had been destroyed by the advancing foe, an unspeakable insult in ancestor-faithful Vietnam. Even as the situation deteriorated, some senior U.S. and South Vietnamese leaders held out hope for a cease-fire type of settlement that would avoid total defeat. But Hanoi made clear that Thieu's removal from office was a prerequisite for any agreement, and Thieu himself finally reached that conclusion. He resigned on April 21 and in a secretive departure four nights later, flew to Taiwan, leaving his disintegrating government in the hands of Gen. Duong Van ``Big'' Minh as president. In a tearful farewell, Thieu accused the United States of leading the South Vietnamese people to death, saying Washington had broken a promise to help Saigon if the Communists violated the 1973 peace accords.

Nine days later, communist tank units burst through the gates of Saigon's Independence Palace, ran up their victory flag and arrested Minh. Thieu lived for many years in self-imposed obscurity in London, where he steadfastly refused to give interviews, or publicly discuss the last days of Saigon. Later he moved to Boston to be near members of his family, still shunning the spotlight but keeping in touch with old cronies. They often talked about returning to Vietnam to regain what had been theirs.

By George Esper and Richard Pyle - The Associated Press - September 30, 2001.