450 ChaPter^9
country, the Republic of Vietnam, or RVN. It was created and paid for by the
U.S. Americans would establish a government there, pay for it, build an army,
and have to find someone to run the “country” it had just created. But all the
Vietnamese leaders who were popular and had credibility were associated
with the nationalist Viet Minh, so the Americans had to find someone to lead
“South Vietnam” and finally decided upon a Vietnamese politician who had
been spending the previous years in France and the U.S.–Ngo Dinh Diem
[prounounced “Ziem”].
Diem ran Vietnam like he owned it. He established the Can Lao, or
“Personalist” Party, to be run by his family. His brother and sister-in-law, Ngo
Dinh Nhu and Madame Nhu, were the power behind the throne—he as sec-
retary of the interior, and she, the stereotypical Asian “dragon lady,” as the
head of the Vietnamese Women’s Movement. Madame Nhu’s father was in the
cabinet also, and her uncle was Diem’s foreign minister, while another relative
was minister of education. Diem’s brother Ngo Dinh Canh ran the northern
provinces around Hué without any official title and another brother, Bishop
Ngo Dinh Thuc, was head of the Vietnamese Catholic Church. Although less
than 10 percent of Vietnam was Catholic, they held huge power inside this
Buddhist country, a major point of conflict already and one that would wors-
en in the coming years.
Under the Ngos [the family name came first] the state was steadily milita-
rized, and the army’s responsibility was not to fight the Communists but to
protect the first family. Thus secure, Diem went after his enemies, both real
and imagined. He closed newspapers, made it illegal to criticize his govern-
ment, and made it a capital offense to be a “communist.” By 1958, he had
jailed over 40,000 political prisoners and executed over 12,000 dissidents. By
1961, those numbers had tripled. The United States apparently had little
trouble with Diem’s behavior: Washington supplied the South, the RVN with
85 percent of its military budget and two-thirds of its overall budget. Despite
American rhetoric about building a better life for the Vietnamese people, 78
percent of all American monies were used by Diem for military purposes, and
that meant that it was being utilized to keep the regime in power, not to fight
the enemy. Diem also put friends and supporters in charge of all the village
councils, increased taxes, and intimidated and arrested those criticizing his
land policies. In May 1959, in Law 10/59, he authorized his military-political
forces to arrest any “subversives,” which was a blank check for roving bands