VIETNAM COUP HAS ITS PRICE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP65B00383R000200170011-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 24, 2003
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: December 18, 1963
• Content Type: OPEN

d For Release 2003/10/10 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000200170011-2
1963
Vietnam Coup Has Its Price
EXTENSION OF REMARKS
OF
HON. EDNA F. KELLY
ONGRESSIONAL RECORD - APPENDIX A7701
OF NEW YORK
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Wednesday, December 18, 1963
Mrs. KELLY. Mr. Speaker, a report
by Marguerite Higgins entitled, "Viet-
nam Coup Has Its Price," needs to be
read and reread by the largest number
of people possible. It is to show the
"wrong" to those who condemned the
good Premier of Vietnam, Ngo Dinh
Diem, that I place this article in the REC-
ORD. Ngo Dinh Diem's murder was a
catastrophe not only for the people of
Vietnam, but also for the people of the
Orient and the entire free world.
Marguerite Higgins needs no acclaim
as a first-rate news reporter. She is well
known for reporting the truth and the
facts. Her article follows:
VIETNAM COUP HAS ITS PRICE
(By Marguerite Higgins)
SAIGON.-President Johnson has inherited
Vietnam's problems at a time when the sit-
uation is likely to get worse, in terms of bat-
tles and terroristic attacks, before it gets
better.
There already has been a setback in the
war against the Communist Vietcong since
the coup d'etat occurred November 1. But
this was predictable.
Those Americans who felt that the coup
d'etat was in the interests of the United
States were fully warned that a price would
have to be paid for getting rid of President
Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother, adviser, Ngo
Dinh Nhu.
For example, it is impossible to replace
nearly 40 province chiefs who are the back-
bone of the war effort without creating un-
certainty and a hiatus in authority that
amounts to an invitation to the Communists
to increase their pressure.
MORE TERRORISM
The price paid for the coup d'etat in-
cluded a sharp rise in terroristic bombing at-
tacks in Saigon. President Diem's police and
special forces may have been guilty of bru-
tality, but they did manage to reduce ter-
rorism inside Saigon to almost nothing.
In the crucial and rich Mekong River Delta
area, there have also been important losses
of real estate. On a visit to the 21st Division
area near Mytho in August of this year, I was
able to drive in a single unarmed jeep
through a large strategic hamlet complex of
which Maj. Olen O'Connor, the sector ad-
viser, was very proud.. The area had been
virtually immune to Vietcong harassment
for the entire year.
But in revisiting the area this month, Ma-
jor O'Connor said the entire hamlet had been
completely infiltrated by the Vietcong in
operations begun November 3, 2 days after people-and the press-of Vietnam need
the coup d'etat.
discipline for more than the people of
will be reversed, when the new military junta
has a chance to put its mind back on the
war.
Despite the sadness -of any setback, the
stepped-up tempo of the Viet Cong could be
of use if it dispelled the myth that dancing
in the streets cx Saigon and the popularity of
the military junta would work some magic
on the war. This is misleading nonsense.
If popularity or democracy really were
"the best weapon against communism,"
Czechoslovakia's Jan Masaryk would not be
dead today and Czechoslovakia would not be
Communist, Czechoslovakia's democratic
GAINS TEMPORARY Malaya." "'
1
ways could not save it from the Commu-
nist coup d'etat of 1948.
In talking of popularity in Vietnam, the
question must be asked, "Popularity with
whom?"
CRITICAL INTELLECTUALS
The military junta's popularity is with the
citified, educated students, particularly those
of Saigon and Hue. But these intellectuals
form a small percent of the population in
the city which in turn represents less than
10 percent of Vietnam's largely peasant
population of 14 million.
Further, the Intellectuals of Vietnam al-
ways have been undisciplined, driven by fac-
tionalism and jealousies and convinced that
constant criticism is a mark of intelligence.
In six different trips to Vietnam, this re-
porter has found students and intellectuals
markedly uninterested in fighting or winning
the war against the Communist Vietcong-
if it means a contribution from them.
Now, many students are hailing the death
of Mr. Diem, in contrast to peasants who take
a wait-and-see attitude. And none of the
students showed any change in their aver-
sion to help the war effort.
COURTS DANGER
In its earnest efforts to be liberal and
please the Americans with its democratic
image; the military junta has begun to court
the same danger of mobocracy that brought
on a crisis in such Asian countries as Korea.
Just last week in Hue, 10,000 students
demonstrated to demand the firing of teach-
ers who had failed to denounce Mr. Diem
vigorously enough to suit them. There have
been similar demonstrations in Saigon and
the Provinces.
This Asian version of on to the guillotine
has been encouraged by the excesses of the
Saigon press.
Even the most anti-Diem Vietnamese of
them all, the Buddhist leader, Thich Tri
Quang, a militant onetime member of the
Communist Viet Minh liberation movement,
complained about the Saigon press over an
interview which quoted him, but which he
said he had never given.
The targets of some of the Saigon press
smear. campaigns include Gen. Paul Harkins,
head of the American military mission.
The Saigon press, even at one point, set up
a cry for the blood of President Diem's 94-
year-old mother.
HANDICAPS GENERALS
Under pressure of this extremism, the
military junta has arrested many persons
without confronting them with any legal
charges and merely on the suspicion of hav-
ing been "excessively loyal."
These pressures from the mob, and the
Vietnam press, are clearly handicapping the
generals from getting their minds off the
political aftermath of the coup and back on
to the war.
Said. a British official currently in Vietnam,
who was instrumental in winning the anti-
Communist guerrilla war in Malaya.
"A certain degree of authoritarianism is
necessary to win this type of war. When I
see what license and scurrility result from
the so-called new freedoms here, I think
EXTENSION OF REMARKS
OF
HON. ANCHER NELSEN
OF MINNESOTA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Wednesday, December 18, 1963
Mr. NELSEN. Mr. Speaker, a resident
of Minnesota's Second Congressional
District, Mrs. Dana Anderson, was so
moved by the. events following the
assassination of our late President Ken-
nedy that she composed an excellent
poem entitled "The Eternal Flame."
I insert Mrs. Anderson's poem, written
using her pen name Elsa Romberg, in the
RECORD at this point in my remarks:
THE ETERNAL FLAME
Think ye now that my light is out
That assassin hands have dealt a blow?
Think ye that all my lips have formed
Now lie with me in earth below?
Ideals that have their life from God
Die not at all when flesh is spent;
Philosophy the Bible gives
Lives on and to the world is lent.
See now the flame marking my grave,
Its voice is louder far than speech
For from its leaping tongues are heard
The ideals all the world would reach.
"Ask not," it says, "what should be done
For self or nations o'er the sea
But together ask how to attain
The best today-the best to be!"
My light burns on; my flame unspent
Leaps higher to declare my way!
Take from its energy some strength!
My light burns on for you today!
Manpower Development and Training
Act (H.R. 8720)
SPEECH
OF
HON. ELMER J. HOLLAND
OF PENNSYLVANIA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Wednesday, December 18, 1963
The House in Committee of the Whole
House on the State of the Union had under
consideration the bill (H.R. 8720) to amend
the Manpower Development and Training
Act of 1962.
Mr. HOLLAND. Mr. Chairman, I
want to reassure the Members of this
body that the observations of Mr.
O'HARA regarding the intent of the pro-
gram are correct. We recognized from
the beginning that existing public and
private training efforts should be main-
tained. In fact, special attention is giv-
en to this principle in the act.
Therefore, Mr. O'HARA is correct when
he states there are some situations such
as the apparel and garment industries
where it would not be appropriate to use
the manpower development program. In
these instances it has been traditional for
the employer to provide training on the
job and prejob training has never been a
precondition of employment. Moreover
firms in these industries are highly mo-
bile and compete vigorously with one
another in a nationwide market. Train-
ing assistance to new firms, for example,
in such an industry can have the effect of
disrupting competitive relationships and
end by forcing other firms to seek similar
assistance. If assistance is not extended
then unemployment may be created in
one area offsetting employment being
created elsewhere. And if training as-
sistance is extended then the result can
only be a shift in the training function
from the industry to the Government.
Certainly we want to avoid these possi-
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A7702 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD - APPENDIX
bilities since either would be contrary to
the purposes of the act. This is an im-
portant matter and I am delighted that
Mr: O'HASS has brought this to our at-
tention. I think he should be compli-
mented for the admirable clarification
he has provided.
EXTENSION OF REMARKS
OF
HON. ABRAHAM J. MULTER
or 515W Tt13K
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Wednesday, December 18, 1963
Mr. MDLTER. Mr. Speaker, I com-
mend to the attention of our colleagues
the following article by Wolf Von
Eckardt, part VI of his series on "Urban
Renewal and the City." This part ap-
peared in the October 26, 1963, edition
of the New Republic and recommends
the new towns plan developed in the
early part of this century by Ebenezer
Howard. The new towns idea is some-
thing which the Congress should take
into serious consideration when urban
renewal legislation comes before it.
The article follows:
URBAN 7zwzwAL AND nix Crrv, VI-NBW
Towns in AKMICA
(By Wolf von Eckardt)
(This is thelast of six articles on urban
renewal. During the 3 months he was pre-
paring these reports, Wolf von Eckardt vis-
ited Boston, Providence, New Haven, Hart-
ford, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore.
Washington, Chicago, St. Louis, San Fran-
cisco, and Los Angeles.)
The vivacious Lady Jackson, better known
as Barbara Ward, stepped briskly Into the
center of the ancient theater. In the Dick-
ering light of torches held by young Greek
peasants, she proclaimed that the failure of
our time "to adapt human settlements to
dynamic change may soon outstrip even dis-
ease and starvation as the gravest risk, short
of war, facing the human species."
Then, out of the dark, they stepped for-
ward one by one, 33 "citizens of a worldwide
city," distinguished intellectual leaders from
a dozen nations. Among them were Charles
Abrams, Edmund Bacon, Leonard Duhl, Mar-
garet Mead, and Buckminster Fuller from the
United States, S. Giedion (Switzerland), Ei-
ichi Isomura (Japan), W. Ostrowski (Po-
land) and Sir Watson-Watt (Great Britain).
Each spoke a few words in his own language
and then signed the solemn Declaration of
Delos. It was the culmination of a 4-day
floating symposium, cruising the Greek is-
lands this summer. Courtesy, Constantinos
Doxiadis who thus added dramatics to his
"ekistics."
Doxiadls is the fabulous Greek city plan-
ner.who operates around the globe, building
and rebuilding cities from Louisville. Ky., to
Peshawar, Pakistan. "Eklstice" is a word he
Invented based on the same Greek root as
"economics" and "ecology." It denotes just
exactly the "new discipline of human settle-
ments" the sages of Delos called for. It
would combine the research and labors of
sociologists, economists, meteorologists and
a host of others with that of the planners
and architects. The gist of the Delos Declar-
ation is that "the torrential expansion" of
the modern city is too serious a matter to be
left to city planners alone.
This is true, of course, but not enough,
We need, as Walter Gropius has said, search
more than research- There is, furthermore,
no dearth of constructive concepts which, in
this country at least, could use some drama-
tic torchlight ceremonies to expose them
to public discussion and action-govern-
ment action. For only government is pow-
erful enough to avert "the gravest risk short
of war" and safeguard the welfare of the
7 out of 10 Americans who now live In
urban areas.
The much-heralded White Souse Confer-
ence, scheduled for this November, was sup-
posed to do just that. But somewhere be-
tween the Housing Agency and the White
House it vanished without a trace. It is mad
and symptomatic of the New Frustration on
the New Frontier that our urban philosophers
must cruise to Greek Islands to discuss the
city, while at home, what with civil rights
unrest, growing opposition to urban renewal
and other headaches, a national conference
seems at the moment too hot to handle.
The most promising not-so-new urban con-
cept that should urgently be molded into a
workable government program is what the
British call New Towns. The British now
have 15 and other countries, notably Can-
ada, are building them, too. New Towns,
alias Garden Cities, are comprehensively
planned, self-sufficient new communities
which offer their residents employment as
well as pleasant dormitories in which to raise
children.
The idea originated at the turn of the
century with the enventive English Court
Stenographer Ebenezer Howard. To arrest
further crowding of the London slums, he
proposed Garden Cities around London's
periphery, each surrounded by a green
belt which would provide both food and
recreational space. But the gardens and the
open space were not his only, nor even his
central idea. His central Idea was the Greek
one that any organism or organization has a
natural limit. Bees do not build megalo-
politan hives. When their hive population
reaches 80,000 at most, they breed a new
queen and the old one starts a new colony
on a site her scouts have found for her.
This notion is as valid for people as for bees.
Howard's Garden City, with 32,000 people of
different vocations, was to provide a variety
of enterprises and a thriving social life.
Howard died in 1928, a knighted and be-
loved leader of an international movement.
But he lived to see his proposal realized at
Letchworth, constructed in 1903, and at
Welwyn, built in 1920, both close to London.
The gravitational pull of the city pre-
vented Letchworth and Welwyn from at-
tracting all the Industry and the amenities
they need to become as self-sufficient and
lively as their planners have hoped, The
English New Towns, too, are said to be a bit
dull, lacking specialty shops, theaters, and
that sort of thing which, of course, no small
town, old or new, can sustain. But then the
"Blurbs, the sloppy, sleazy, slovenly slip-
shod semlcltles," as California housers have
called our sprawling suburbs, lack urban
amenities, too. And they ruin the country-
side to boot.
American urbinlsts, notably Lewis Mum-
ford, Clarence Stein, Catherine Bauer-
Wurster. Henry Churchill. Carl Feiss, and
others, have therefore long advocated Gar-
den Cities or New Towns. The first attempt
to build them in this country became part
of Franklin D. Roosevelt's economic recov-
ery effort. The resulting three towns
(Greenbelt, Md., Oreendale, Wis., and Green-
hills, Ohio) are still shining examples of
intelligent planning. The program was
abandoned, however, partly because of now
resolved constitutional questions, before
these towns could attract sufficient employ-
ment so people could stay put.
This, too, was the fate of Clarence Stein's
beautiful Radburn. N.J., built in 1929, and
December 18
still a model of the Ideal suburban com-
munity In the motor age. But there are no
Industries or offices. Like the Levittowns
and other suburban developments that fol-
lowed, Radburn ? remained a bedroom com-
munity, though with better and more con?
genial community facilities than most.
In this country, the idea has since re-
mained dormant, in part because the new
generation of planners became fascinated
with the dynamics of Megalopolis, and part-
ly because the Federal Government turned
its attention to the limited solution of ur-
ban renewal. The younger planning experts,
such as Kevin Lynch at MIT insist that
Megalopolis can be made livable and efficient
with superhighways and bold regional plan-
ning, though there is little to show as yet
to justify this faith. The Federal Govern-
ment is hesitant to go beyond what is still
billed as a-mere slum clearance program.
Very recently, though, the New Town idea
has again intrigued private developers with
apparently more investment money at hand
than they ever had before. Private attempts
to build self-sustaining communities have
been launched at Beechtree, near Atlanta,
Irvine Ranch in California, Columbine near
Denver, and Reston near Washington, D.C.
The ultimate test of these efforts, of course,
is not their 18-hole golf courses and country
club atmosphere. It is whether they will
actually attract employers and whether their
entrepreneurs are willing and financially able
to create balanced communities which in-
clude poor people with dark skins.
But we cannot rely on the profit motive
alone to promote the general welfare. A
still more promising development, therefore,
is the recent recommendation of Governor
Brown's advisory commission on housing
problems urging California to adopt the
New Towns idea under State sponsorship.
The commission, headed by Edward P. Eich-
ler, one of the Nation's most enlightened and
successful builders, drew heavily on the
advice and experience of such housers as
Catherine Bauer-Wurster and Charles
Abrams. It considers it a manifest need and
mandatory that the State be empowered to
acquire land and make it available at low
Interest for properly planned urban and sub-
urban development. It cites that Alberta,
Canada, under Its New Town Act of 1956, can
declare any area of the Province a New Town
and set up a corporation to plan and finance
it. After providing the necessary improve-
ments, the land is sold to private industrial,
residential and commercial developers who
are given Government loans. After develop-
ment, the town becomes a municipality.
Six Alberta New Towns are now underway.
Long before F.D.R.'s Greenbelt Towns,
George Washington set the first precedent
for governmental land acquisition when he
bought the swamps on which Jefferson and
L'Enfant planned the National Capital. Its
proposal, the Eichler report points out,
should not be associated with governmental
utopias but rest, rather, "on the realistic
need for assembling fragmented land and
providing well-placed schools, streets, and
utilities in advance of homebuilding rather
than after the fact." As Charles Abrams
said, "The developers will go where the Gov-
ernment puts the sewers."
Though the American New Towns would
never be ideal cities, simply because our fickle
Ideas change before utopias get built, they
could be proper and livable cities rather than
slurbs. That means they would have enough
land for schools and roads, shops, and home-
sites, and all the things necessary for proper
functioning. Most of all, they would reserve
land for growth and green space for recrea-
tion, an objective the Federal Government
now tries to achieve with disappointing suc-
cess by contributing 20 percent of the pur-
chase cost of open space cost, with an extra
10 percent bonus if the space is part of a
master plan. New Town residents could
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