Truth by Night

One of the reasons for Diem's election success in the hinterland is a lean exCommunist named Colonel Pham Ngoc Thao, 39. Last year he accosted President Diem, told him that the reason the Communist Viet Cong guerrillas were scoring success after success lay in the shortcomings of Diem's own soldiery. "Our soldiers need social and political education," said Thao. "Their discipline is poor. They have no consideration for the people." Their "bad habits"--stealing rice, pigs and girls --were driving the villagers to the Communist cause.

Election Toll. Diem responded by handing Colonel Thao command of vital, rice-growing Kienhoa province in the Mekong River delta, where previous commanders had failed. There Thao has cut the guerrillas down to size with skill and daring at their own nighttime jungle tactics. "When there is too much light, you can see nothing," says Thao. "The truth is in the night."

Last week Thao grimly counted an election-week total of 60 Communist dead, killed in some dozen jungle skirmishes. Though the Communists warned that they would shoot any "traitor" who voted, Thao got 83% of his voters to the polls. "We tried a little propaganda of our own," he admits. "We told the people that if they did not vote, they would have trouble getting jobs or help from the government."

Educated as a civil engineer in Saigon, Thao fought nine years with the Communist Viet Minh against the French. But he quit the Viet Minh shortly after the Geneva peace conference in 1954, partly because he is a Roman Catholic (his brother is still a Communist and currently North Viet Nam's Ambassador to East Germany). And when his former comrades-in-arms started terrorizing South Vietnamese villages, Thao joined the army against them.

Quick Action. In Kienhoa, Thao found the local security chief had been extorting money from the villagers by threatening them with prison. Thao arrested him. He also freed 1,200 political prisoners held in the local jail without evidence. Said Thao: "If a peasant sabotages a road, he's obviously under Communist pressure, and if he's under Communist pressure, that means he's not getting government protection. Why should he go to prison?" Dismayed to learn that Kien-hoa's 1,500 crack troops waited days for orders before going to the help of besieged villages. Thao led them into action himself in his Jeep. Where the roads ended, Thao and his men paddled off by canoe in silent search of the enemy. Thao set up a Communist-style intelligence network, paying peasants liberally for information on guerrilla moves.

In just four months, Thao has recaptured about half of the 75 villages once controlled by the Communists in Kienhoa. He has driven the surviving 800 guerrillas into a 130-sq.-mi. pocket and hopes to have them cleaned out within a year. He has torn down most of the jails in the province, built hospitals and schools, and he is now training 370 schoolteachers to replace corrupt village officials. Says Thao: "It is a long, slow process. We cannot win unless the people are on our side."

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