Associated Press and The New York Times, by Malcolm W. Browne and David Halberstam

By David Halberstam

SAIGON, Vietnam, May 9—Most of the engagements in this war are small and isolated, at best nothing but small anws on a giant briefing map. If there is an American killed you heard about it. If there are more than 20 Vietnamese killed, you hear about it.

If, as in the Camau Peninsula last week—traveling the interior of Camau Peninsula is, in the eyes of most Americans, like traveling In North Vietnam—there is a massive Vietcong assault that costs nearly 200 lives (the Communists mutilated the bodies and put them on a barge with widows and children of the dead men and 200 weapons, including 15 Browning automatic rifles) then the war Is almost tangible.

Then it is suddenly indistinct again: small engagements in strange places, places Americans never learn to spell or pronounce or find on the map, Vietnamese killing Vietnamese.

Yet Americans are learning about Vietnam now in the same bitter way they have had to learn about much of Asia. They are going back and studying books about an obscure war in Korea; searching for rare English-speaking authorities on the war to teach United States officers—even when these authorities disagree bluntly with Washington's policy.

Distant and Obscure

A young American here dashes off an angry letter to a stateside company that has billed him in "Saigon, French Indonesia." A favorite and true story making the rounds about the pilot who was back home during a battle near here in which five helicopters were shot down. He was talking with a businessman in an airport lounge and the the businessman asked him where he was stationed.

“Saigon," he answered.

“Well, good for that!" said the businessman. “You can thank your lucky stars you’re not in that Vietnam.”

Americans are learning because there is a growing feeling that in Vietnam they have made and are continuing to make their foremost commitment in Southeast Asia. Here they are attempting to draw the line on the Communists, and have stationed 12,000 Americans in advisory and support roles. Here where they have an ally whose people are dying daily, they are committed to a limited war.

It is a deep commitment, but as many Americans here realize, it could become deeper. For the Americans do not, by a long shot, have control over the pace and price of this war. For instance, if the more ambitious Chinese decide to put the price up, where will the Americans be then who have promised emphatically that they will not let this country slide away?

Peasant’s War

Here the United States has made its commitment in what is essentially a peasants’ war. The first thing a young American officer learns when he arrives is that this is a real war and that, for the first time in his career, he may need his rifle. The next thing he learn is the inherent limitation of the rifle In this war—the limitation of killing.

Here the French, the Vietnamese and the Americans after them have found that, no matter how successful their military alterations, no matter how many Vietcong guerrillas are killed, the war continues. In one large area recently, a Vietnamese division found that it had nearly 7,000 guerrillas in its area. It conduct. an unusually successful series of operations that killed nearly 7,000 of them in a year and then found that it still had nearly 17,000 guerrillas left.

This has become a war in which the peasant Is caught in a shuttle, the Vietcong forces visiting him at night, the Government’s in the daytime. He lives alongside agents from both sides. He may, if he lives in a contested area, pay times to both sides.

Recently a United Stales aid representative was in the field trying to find out from a peasant which side he favored and which gave him the most. The answer was, “It is not a question of which side gives me the most, it is a question of which side takes away the least.”

The general impression in that both sides have a considerable task before them in winning the peasant, for he gives the strong impression of being uncommitted and mute after more than two decades of war here, suspicious after an endless stream of promises from the French, the Communists, the Americans and the present Government, and almost cynical about events.

Shifting Loyalties

In a country that is naturally rich, he is not going to starve. His loyalty seems to go, in limited degree, to whoever controls his village at a given time. If the control brings abuses with it, then he is known to be willing to fight.

In the past the Vietcong have been credited with being far more effective with peasants, capitalizing on local grievances—perhaps a bad landlord or a government that sent only tax collectors.

To answer this and to win the peasant war, the Government and the Americans have initiated the strategic-hamlet program to separate the people from the Vietcong and to enable the peasants to defend themselves. The idea is simple: Give the peasant security and, at the same time, prove that you can give him more and dm mend less than the guerrillas. In a much larger sense that is what the United States commitment In Vietnam is about for the benefit of other Asians: an attempt to show that the Americans can protect this area and help its peoples but not run them.

Delta Problems

Building a complicated program like that in the hamlets is extremely difficult. So far in the area north of Saigon, the sparsely populated mountain regions and the narrow coastal plains, the signs are fairly good. In these areas the program is generally older, more troops are committed and the opinion of some Vietnamese, the structure of the communities lends itself better.

Just as there is considerable private concern here over military progress in the Mekong Delta, the vast, rich, rice-growing region south of Saigon, where more than half the population lives and where the pace of war is much tenter, so there is also considerable concern about the hamlet program there. Part of this is the complexity of the area itself, vast reaches of rice land where no legal government has ever extended its authority and which pose immense physical as well as social problems. But there is a familIarity in the other problems: a lack of planning from province to province, uncertainty over whether to commit weapons to certain areas, in all a subtle feeling that the population has not yet really committed Itself to the hamlet idea.

Nothing is more important at present than the hamlet program. Americans see it as a basic answer to all rural ills, and any question about peasant problems is answered by noting that the program is just the answer. Right now this is the major Impact of the program. Americans frankly acknowledge that they have few alternatives if it fails to cure present ills.

Military Effort

On the military side signs are raised. Certainly the situation is better than it was 15 months ago, but the improvements many military observers here feel are necessary for what they considered a truly viable effort—more night flying, more actions by small units, more counter-ambushes, greater willingness of Vietnamese commanders to get into tough fights that may cause them as well as the enemy sizable casualties—are still not forthcoming.

In Vietnam finding and understanding problems is not the same as solving them. The Government of Ngo Dinh Diem is very much in command and not any man’s puppet. It Is acutely sensitive about its prerogative and openly suspicious of the American presence and intentions here, clearly worried over Americans trying to run things and not about to give them the extra leverage they often feel Is needed.

Just how much the United States mission has been able to move the Government toward what it considers as mutual objectives is a point of controversy. High officials in the mission say slow and gradual progress, barely detectable to the eye, is being made both in American-Vietnamese relations and, more important, in solving problems.

Cautious View

Private sources are more cautious, however. They feel that It is too soon after a massive build-up that Included a virtually complete changeover in aid programs to tell who is winning and who is losing. They are less concerned with statistics—Vietcong defections up, Government weapons losses down—than with what they consider the ground mike: Are the Americans and the Vietnamese working out their mutual difficulties? Is the Government becoming more responsive to its people, as concerned with a high officers' ability as his loyalty?

If there is considerable division within the United States mission over the emcees of current programs, there is little division over the immense extent to which the United States has committed Its International prestige. It le a difficult and demanding situation. Then is nothing simple about Vietnam. With all of Southeast Asia watching, the United Slates stands to win big—or to lose on on equal scale.

By David Halberstam

SAIGON, South Vietnam, Aug. 30 - The United States appears to be moving deliberately toward a direct confrontation with the Ngo family Government.

Highly informed diplomatic sources say Americans have decided that no government that includes Ngo Dinh Nhu and his wife can win the war against Communism and that the Nhus cannot be separated from the Government.

Therefore, these sources say, the United States is ready to initiate action that might lead to the overthrow of the Government.

The Americans, led by Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, are not accepting the Government account of action against Buddhist leaders—that it was forced by generals.

Nor are the Americans interested any longer in recent steps that are suspected to have been taken primarily for their benefit, such as the release from detention of a large number of students and Buddhists and the easing of curfew restrictions.

[Two United States helicopter pilots in Vietnam were killed when Communist guerrillas shot down their craft, and three other Americans were injured when the helicopter crashed.]

The Americans are believed to be adhering to the position that those responsible for the

Aug. 21 attacks on the Buddhists—the Nhus—must go. The most likely form of American action, the diplomatic sources say, will be a demand to President Ngo Dinh to get rid of the Nhus immediately. The Americans do not believe that there Is a chance this will happen. One high source said that the Americans were past the point of negotiating and that they had decided on action.

Mr. Nhih, the President's brother, is political adviser and leader of the secret police. The diplomatic sources say that the controversial Voice of America broadcast that threatened a curtailment of aid was in fact a clear statement of policy and that the only thing wrong with it was that it was too early and thus weakened Ambassador Lodge's position.

The broadcast, last Monday, said that officials in Washington had decided to withdraw aid to South Vietnam unless the leaders responsible for the attacks on the Buddhist pagodas were removed from the Government. The State Department disowned this indication of policy the next day, saying that a policy had not yet been formulated.

Most observers here believe that Americans will give a signal to key elements of the military and say in essence that they want a new government, that their support Is not for the Ngo family but for the Vietnamese cause, and that a new government will enjoy continued United States aid.

In the past, some dissident elements have been frightened to move against the Government for fear that the Americans believe, as they often said, that President Diem was the only possible anti-Communist leader for South Vietnam.

The United States is the main base of support for the anti-Communist war. More than $1.5 million a day is spent in South Vietnam, the United States has more than 15,000 troops based in the country in support and advisory capacities, and there are many Americans working in rural economic aid programs.

Some sources expect a change' within 48 hours. Timing is now considered extremely important.

There is fear on the part of Americans that the Government, led in effect by Mr. Nhu, might try to act against Americans and dissident elements if it senses a serious threat to its power.

Thus in recent days there has been a conscious effort by the American mission here not to disclose fully just how serious American intentions are. An attempt has been made, as one American said, "to give the palace the idea that we are sections but also to play into their preconceived ideas about Americans—that when we say we are serious it is just another joke land that they can hand Americans just about anything they want and we will go along."

Americans are known to have been contacting key people in the military recently. The United Mates has provided support for President Diem for nine years, and in fact helped put him in power in 1954. But Americans have watched with apprehension the increasingly isolated and repressive nature of the regime and the increasing influence of Mr. Nhu and his wife.

President’s Position Weighted

For the last two years, they have been emerging as the dominant forces in the palace. Many observers believe that President Diem is totally dependent on Mr. Nhu for information on political and military events.

The diplomatic sources believe that Mr. Nhu solidified his power in the events of last  week, with what appears in essence to have been a palace  coup and action against the Buddhist leaders at the same time. By these acts, Mr. Nhu made It clear that future Government policies would be largely his and that he was the man to deal with.

To Americans, the idea of a Nhu government is disturbing. Mr. Nhu is seen as being an advocate of repressive measures, of extreme methods of controlling the population, being at heart anti-American and being perhaps the biggest influence against unity in South Vietnam. He and his wife are considered highly unpopular.

Few Americans here believe that a government dominated by the Nhus could rally the population in a difficult war. The Americans are Inclined to believe that the existence of a Nhu government for even two months would have disastrous results and that it would insure a political victory for the Vietcong, the Communist forces infiltrating South Vietnam.

Americans see President Diem as a far more sympathetic figure. They believe he is better-intentioned than the Nhus but that he and his government have lost all popularity and that he is no longer a serious political figure.

By David Halberstam

SAIGON, South Vietnam, Oct. 5 - There was, in the midst of the whirlwind McNamara-Taylor visit here, a moment of restlessness when the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman the Joint Chiefs of Staff were late and reporters waited at a tiny boondock airstrip for their arrival. An American officer was there and he was talking with the reporters about how tough it was in his area, a real see-saw battle where the Vietcong seemed to be increasingly formidable.

Just the other day, he noted, 80 Vietnamese youths deserted from a hamlet.

Why was that? Asked the reporters.

Well, the officer said, the youths in this area weren't very happy.

Why? said the reporters.

Well, because on Palace Orders, much of the effort and many of the troops in the area were going into the building of four land development centers. But only Catholics are permitted in centers and most of the people in the area are Buddhist, he said.

Not Mentioned

The anecdote, as Arthur Sylvester noted later, did not come pp at the main V.I.P. briefing.

South Vietnam is like this, a complex country where there is usually on the surface no sign of political trouble at all. Even the war is nominally a war against the Communist insurgents. Yet it is also Vietnamese against Vietnamese, a highly political war in which the problem is certainly not lack of Government force or air might, certainly not lack of Government loudspeakers.

Robert S. McNamara and Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor are gone now, and the prediction for victory is 1965.

Despite the optimistic date for the American departure from this country, the V.I.P. visit is regarded here as having been somewhat of a victory for Ambassador Lodge. For it is believed here that Mr. Lodge impressed deeply on Secretary McNamara the extreme seriousness of the political situation, the fact that political and military aspects could not be separated, and that even the military outlook was not overly bright.

Risks Known

From now on, according to  sources here, Washington knows full well what it is walking into  and what risks it is taking. It knows just how tough the political-military situation is and that the political part is omnipresent. 

There was one moment in the  briefings by Mr. Sylvester, a  moment of great importance in  discussing this war. It came in the first two days when Mr.  Sylvester was most optimistic and had just said that all indices were favorable.

If that were so, asked a reporter, perhaps there was an  explanation for one baffling statistic—that each year the Government wiped out about half the hard-core Vietcong estimated to exist at the beginning of that year, only to find at the end of the year there were more Vietcong than ever before?

Mr. Sylvester said he did not know the answer, but at any rate it was a good question.

It is a good questions one that has eluded many American senior advisers here now, just as in considerably different days it eluded the French. It is one reason that this war grinds on and why even the finest helicopters and finest advisers and finest rifles have their limitations. For to some degree, probably a large degree, this remains a fight for men's minds as well, a subtle Asian game in which the enemy is practiced and cunning.

One View

There is, of course, one way to look at Vietnam, and that is that the enemy is the Commu-nists, and, therefore, the idea is to kill. Communists; Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu are anti-Communists and their troops are fighting the Communists. All this is true, but it is not the way the Vietnamese look at it. Nor do the Vietnamese. even anti-Communist ones, feel that the war is going well.

Rather, and this is coming from sophisticated anti-Communists who are actively engaged in this war, there is now a fear that this can turn into a ugly meat-grinder war, where one side’s military superiority is matched against the other side's political superiority. South Vietnam's Vietcong do not call themselves Communist; they are only the critics of the Government's mistakes, albeit mistreatment of Buddhists or a greedy local official.

The sophisticated anti-Communist Vietnamese now feat that the Americans may be setting the stage for a frustrating elusive type of war where more American prestige is involved than American control.

Just how much the political affects the war is difficult to tell. It is not a country when entire regiments throw down their weapons, as long as they are paid and are not harassed unnecessarily. Nor is it a country where the Vietnamese are likely to turn to Americans and note that they will not take risks because they are Buddhists and do not love the Government. Sometimes Vietnam seems to be more a country of impressions than of facts as Westerners know facts.

Icy Reminders

Yet in evaluating the political impact on the military, here are some icy reminders:

(1) As a general rule, the longer a person stays in Vietnam the more he becomes convinced that the political aspect is very real and very important, that there is a direct relationship between the way the Ngo family government operates and some very basic problems in this war. This is not simply exposure to an admittedly unhealthy and neurotic political atmosphere in Saigon, but in fact a product of regular visits to the countryside and a tracing back of problems there to political origins.

(2) The more a man stays here, the more he is apt to become concerned with what he considers the basic problem of the Government's reaction to its challenges, and come to feel that the flexibility and responsiveness needed for complex and cruel challenge are simply missing, as is perhaps an ability to place the best possible personnel in the most difficult situations. There is considerable pride at stake here, and, be it removal of the small outposts in the Mekong Delta, which actually serve the Vietcong as weapon supply points—or admission of responsibility for the incident in Hue last May that started the Buddhist crisis, there is, in the view of many observers, a des-perate absence of some of the qualities needed to win. There is around the Palace today a vast cocoon of intrigue, suspicion, distrust, separating the family from what it needs to be told and the people who are willing to tell it.

Two Aspects

There are in a war like this two aspects of the political situation which are important. First is the popularity of the Government itself. In this situation, the Government is considered extremely isolated and has created a situation where its main and perhaps only remaining claim to power is through police-state methods. This is certainly true of governments throughout the world, particularly in under-developed areas, but most such governments are not faced with a situation where, because of the nature of the war, police techniques may be something of a handicap.

There has been relatively little tangible evidence of any effect of the Buddhist crisis. Yet knowledgeable Vietnamese say effect cannot be underestimated, that it has already affected the morale of officers and civil servants.

Serious Situation

They are reporting, and so are some American intelligence and political officers, that the feeling in the countryside is extremely serious, that the people are more susceptible than ever to Vietcong propaganda. According to these sources, it is already affecting the civil servants and it is becoming harder to get civil servants to go out in the field. Similarly, Vietnamese are warning that there is a subtle change in feeling among young officers and less willingness to take risks.

These Vietnamese are warning that, if Americans are aware of the Government's shortcomings and police methods, then the Vietnamese themselves are even more aware of these shortcomings. The Vietnamese are warning not to underestimate the rural political consciousness, even though for Westerners there may be few evident signs of it.

Voice of America

There are people in the villages with radios—often given by the United States and agencies—and the peasants listen to the Voice of America and hear reports of the Buddhist and political crises. They also hear about the crises from the Buddhists, themselves, and from the Vietcong, who make propaganda from Saigon's troubles.

A second aspect of the political problems of this country is the way the Government itself reacts:. The way it names com-manders in vital sections for political reasons; the way it, stamps its own tactical doctrines on these commanders, inhibiting enterprise, creating in them a fear of taking risks and of casualties in the field. The way it starts programs in one area only to change its mind midway and shift resources to another area.

Heavy Fighting

It is a blunt fact of this war that most of the fighting is now in the Mekong Delta region, where the Vietcong are becoming increasingly aggressive and well-armed. Similarly, it Is a blunt fact that the Government's commander of the Delta is a man generally looked down on by his Vietnamese military contemporaries as a political officer sensitive to the Palace winds and militarily cautious. It is also a blunt fact that, in the past, American leverage in a situation of this sort has been minimal, either in changing commanders or changing tactics.

It is also a fact that, while some of the political problems of Saigon do not reach to countryside, a Government such as this does not necessarily create 42 provincial chiefs all with an instinct for the needs of the people. There are provincial chiefs who have that instinct, and in these instances the military and political program often goes well. But too often these men are the exception, and too many of the provincial chiefs have their jobs chiefly because they are loyal and only secondly under a merit system.

By David Halberstam

SAIGON, South Vietnam, Sept. 10-The scene has changed sharply In South Vietnam since the conflict between the Government and the Buddhists erupted four months ago.

Last May, when Buddhist protests were beginning, a Vietnamese professor told a foreigner:

"You Americans look around and see the Vietnamese orderly and quiet, and you think everything is all right here. But this is not so. We Vietnamese have been living under oppression for centuries. When the time is right, the people express themselves in one way or another."

"Today," the professor added, "they dare not make outright political protests. So they express their feeling through religion."

Few Americans would now consider Vietnam calm. Out of a seemingly orderly state a crisis exploded—first as a religious quarrel, then as a political dispute, then as a national emergency. Finally it grew into an international conflict reducing the Vietnamese Government’s relations with its greatest ally, the United States.

Upheaval in 4 Months

In these four months unknown Buddhist priests rose to power and then went to jail. The President's brother and sister-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Ngo Dinh Nhu, long considered powers behind the scenes, came into full public view and accomplished what some observers consider a palace coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem.

Finally, some United States civilian officials fear that the present Government can no longer wage a successful war against the Communist guerillas of the Vietcong.

What caused the Buddhist crisis? How political was it? What were the issues? What went wrong? Through months of protests, statements and demonstrations, two political aspects of the crisis have stood out.

First, the Buddhist protest, observers say, could not have taken place unless the climate for some sort of dissent had been ripe, unless there had been deep and latent dissatisfaction in many areas of the country. second, the lasting impact of the crisis will stem not from who was right and who was wrong, not from the merits of the Buddhist demands, but from

Second, the lasting impact of the crisis will stem not from who is right and who was wrong, not from the merits of the Buddhist demands, but from how the Government handled events. Most observers say the key question centers on the regime’s ability to unite the population at a time when it is engaged in a shooting war with a real enemy.

10 or 11 Million Buddhists

That there was any trouble at all between Buddhists and the Roman Catholic leadership of Vietnam came as a surprise to most Americans stationed here. Americans, preoccupied with the guerrilla war, their reason for being in Vietnam, had rarely seen evidence of religious discrimination.

Even politically alert foreigners had had little contact with the Buddhists.

Yet, as most Americans knew, Vietnam is a predominantly Buddhist country. The Asia Foundation, a nonprofit American group that has devoted considerable research to the country, estimates that 10 or 11 million of South Vietnam's 14.5 million people consider themselves Buddhists.

Of these, five or six million are practicing Buddhists. The rest, particularly the poor and the peasants, are closer to simple ancestor worshipers, but their sects profess Buddhism.

Catholics number close to 10 per cent, Including many who fled from North Vietnam in 1954, when the country was partitioned. Many of the most cultured and best-educated people here are Catholics. They include the powerful and aristocratic Ngo family, which governs the country.

Many Discerned Unrest

Though there had been ne great religious outburst in Vietnam before May 8, many observers felt that beneath the surface there was considerable unrest and growing dissatisfaction. In recent years, some ob. servers felt, the Government, which had made a popular start here, had become increasingly isolated from the people and increasingly repressive.

Many observers believed that the changes coincided with the growing power of Mr. and Mrs. Ngo Dinh Nhu and that the President saw events more and more through their eyes.

High American officials had seen these same omens and had suggested that the Government become more responsive. Although there was little change, American aid continued. Some observer suspected that the aid was being used to make the Government's security and police network more powerful and less dependent on the backing of the people.

These warnings were voiced by many visitors, including Western correspondents and a Senate committee headed by Mike Mansfield, Democrat at Montana, who cited his long friendship with President Ngo Dinh Diem.

As recently as last March a high State Department official on a visit said, “The thing that bothers me about this government is that the only people who are for it are Americans.”

In this atmosphere the Buddhist question arose. It started with the Buddhists' wish to fly their patchwork flag in Hue on the Buddha's birthday, reckoned here as the 2,587th.

The Government, citing an old regulation, replied that only Government flags were permitted in public. Thousands of Buddhists demonstrated, and the Government broke up the demonstration by firing Into the crowd and killing nine.

Why did the Buddhists suddenly demonstrate and choose the flag issue? "This," said Thich Tri Quang, a Buddhist leader, "was the last straw. Whatever happens now, we will stand no more."

Most observers believe the Buddhist affair began as a religious protest with primarily religions objectives. Symbolically its birthplace was Hue. the central coastal city where religious feeling is particularly strong.

Feeling in Hue Strong

Hue is the see of Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc, a brother of the President. There Catholicism has become closely identified with the Government. The city was also the imperial capital of the old state of Annan, center of Buddhist learning and a symbol of a time when Buddhism was the favored religion of Vietnam.

In Hue religious feeling is strong on both sides. This is atypical in Vietnam. Where Buddhist leaders were often to find their Saigon followers sympathetic but cautious. Hue was to be a center of militant feeling. Buddhist leaders there often had to run hard to stay in front of the parade.

Most observers believe that if the Government had moved quickly, acknowledging responsibility for the May 8 incident and paying reparations, the entire issue would have ended then and there. Had President Ngo Dinh Diem made a dramatic gesture at a pagoda, they say, or delivered a few warm and magnanimous words, he could have emerged stronger than ever.

American Counseled Peace

One foreigner, recalling the episode, said he had suggested to high Saigon officials that reparations of 500,000 piasters (about $7,000), plus a quick public statement, would settle the affair.

His friend, a high Vietnamese official, said quickly: "The money is all right, but we can't admit we did it. We can’t have the admission."

So in spite of eyewitness accounts and photographic evidence, the Government stuck resolutely to its story: Nine died at the hands of the Vietcong.

When a delegation of Buddhist high priests visited the President at this time, he told them they were “fools” to ask for religious freedom since it was guaranteed in the Constitution.

At this point, the outlines of the Government's attitude gan to take shape. The Buddhist protest was regarded as an affront to the Ngo family, and the kind of dramatic reply that Americans were urging on the Government was seen as a sign of weakness.

The Ngo Dinh Diem of earlier years, many observers believe, would have been able to move toward a quick settlement of the dispute. Throughout Vietnam he became known for toughness, courage and strong anti-Communism. But the Ngo Dinh Diem of today is considered an isolated man, removed further and further from the population, hearing finely sifted reports about his people.

One officer who had been traveling through the country found himself being questioned by Ngo Dinh Diem about popular feeling. Again and again the President asked what the people were thinking. Several times the officer, sensing trouble, hedged.

Finally Ngo Dinh Diem asked again: "What do the people think?"

"Well, Mr. President," the officer said, "the people are very unhappy."

At this point, according to the officer, Ngo Dinh Diem became enraged, charged out of his chair and said, "It is all Communist propaganda.”

Ngo Dinh Diem does not see himself as the type of leader Americans envision. He sees himself representing God to the people and believes that it is the duty of the population to honor him. In this situation, observers say, the President’s hand was tied by his family. There were times, it is said, when he would have liked to see the entire issue settled. But the Ngo Dinh Nhus opposed a conciliatory approach, as did Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc.

Church and State Blur

The President is not considered anti-Buddhist as such. Most observers agree that Buddhists were persecuted in some alas of the central coastal region and that in these areas the Catholic Church and the Government had become entwined.

Some sources believe that the Ngo family did not consider Buddhism a serious religion and that the Buddhists sensed this. There is no doubt that Ngo Dinh Diem, an extremely suspicious man, trusted primarily Catholics and In particular Catholics from the central region. Once he told a high officer, forgetting that he was a Buddhist: "Put your Catholic officers in sensitive places. They can be trusted."

At vital centers of the Government power was held by Catholics—positions In the secret police and the command of troops in areas around Saigon. Thus, on purely religious stands, the Buddhists could document their claims, although many of the claims were vague and some were exaggerated.

Though the Buddhist movement was not always political, observers assert, it was, to the Government, political from the start. The Government's political flaws, and not its religious beliefs, would later haunt it.

By June the protest born In Hue began to spread to other cities in the central coastal region and to Saigon. Buddhist demonstrations continued. In Hue one student demonstration was stopped by Government forces throwing gas grenades. Sixty-seven persons went to the hospital with blister-gas burns.

Slowly the protest began to take form. Priests became adept at calling correspondents, and mimeograph machines began to reproduce Western press coverage.

Priests also began to show increased organizational ability; warned in Saigon that they would not be able to assemble, they quietly hired four buses, filled them with monks, pulled the shades down and drove around the city until precisely 2 P.M. Then all the buses arrived In front of the National Assembly. The priests filed out and began a sitdown hunger strike.

Others Join Buddhists

Early in June the Government swan to worry about the implications of the Buddhist movement. People in Saigon and in other cities were becoming aware of a new force in Vietnam, a force standing up to the Government as no one had in years. It appeared that the Buddhists were becoming a spearhead for other dissident elements. 

At this point, the United States Embassy here became concerned over the potential effect of the crisis on United States and world opinion, and on the anti-Communist war effort. The war was costing the United States $1.5 million a day.

The embassy began to pressure Ngo Dinh Diem to settle the issue and to settle it quickly.

Then, on June 8, Mrs. Ngo Dinh Nhu's Women's Solidarity Movement issued a bitter statement implying that the Buddhist were infiltrated by mu ts. Embassy officials were stunned. "If that statement is policy, it's a disaster." one official said. "Otherwise it’s simply an aberration."

Americans then let the Government know that if the matter was not settled the United States might have to dissociate itself. Americans also suggested that silence from Mrs. Ngo Dinh Nhu might be welcome. Later she was to describe this suggestion as a State Department attempt to blackmail her into silence.

Then, on June 11, an aged Buddhist priest, Thich Quang Duc, sat down at a major intersection, poured gasoline on himself, took the cross-legged “Buddha” posture and struck a match. He burned to death without moving and without saying a word.

Thich Quang Duc became a hero to the Buddhists in Vietnam, and he dramatized their cause for the rest of the world. "When pictures of Quang Duc burning himself to death went around the world," an American said, “if this Government was not discriminating against Buddhists it might just as well have been."

Under considerable United States pressure, the Government and the Buddhists negotiated a five-point settlement. On June 15 they signed a joint communique, a strange statement of the views of both sides. It gave in to the Buddhists on some points, but it did not admit Government responsibility for the Hue incident. Instead, It appointed an all-Government committee to investigate it.

The joint communique pleased neither side, and It radically changed the complexion of the contesting forces.

Mrs. Nhu Deplores Pact

Reliable palace sources say Mrs, Ngo Dinh Nhu was furious when she heard that her brother-in-law was about to sign the communique.

“You are a coward," she is reported to have told him.

Witnesses recall that Ngo Dinh Diem answered: "You do not understand this affair. It has international implications. We must settle it."

At almost the some moment, in Xa Loi pagoda, a young priest was threatening: "If I tell some of the other Buddhists what has been signed they will be very angry."

In days, there were reports that the Government and particularly the Ngo Dinh Nhus, had no intention of carrying out the accord. On June 26 Ngo Dinh Nhu Issued a secret memorandum to his Cong Hoa (Republican) youth, calling the Buddhists rebels and urging the Cong Hoa to tell the Government not to accept the joint communique.

According to diplomats and other sources, reliable reports from the palace said the Government planned to wait until interest and attention had slackened and then seize some Buddhist leaders.

Early in July Vice President Nguyen Ngoc Tho, a Buddhist, announced that a preliminary investigation of the Hue incident showed that the Vietcong were responsible for the deaths.

Monks See An Omen

To the Buddhists, this and continued attacks from a newspaper supporting Ngo Dinh Nhu had an ominous sound. They were partly responsible, observers say, for a major change in the Buddhist leadership.

Up to then, the leaders had been conservative; though there were powerful young members, the older leadership had managed to control them.

Some observers believe that at this point the younger priests, realising that they were probably in the movement his deep for an easy retreat, that they were marked men, took over. They represented a new force in Vietnamese politics, for by now they were deep in politics.

These priests are In their thirties and early forties, men clearly affected by 30 years of political revolution and political war in Vietnam. Highly skilled politically, they have keen insights Into the psychology of their people.

One, Due Nghiep, remarked, "On his way to the next world, a Buddhist priest has responsibilities in this one."

At first these new leaders, essentially political in their instincts, seemed to represent vague Buddhist political ideas: better education for their people, more recognition for their religion. Later, as the lines became more sharply drawn, they became increasingly open in their attacks on the Government and the leading family.

Soon they were clearly trying to create an atmosphere in which the Government would fall. Most observers say they very nearly accomplished this.

Were they Communists? The Government has repeatedly charged that they were.

Some, like Tel Quang, had participated in the nationalist fight against French rule. These had had some contact with the Communists. But the analysis of high American political officers was that the movement was anti-Communist as well as anti-Govemment.

Some leaders would probably have been more susceptible to a neutralist solution than to partition a few years ago, but the general feeling of observers now was that Buddhism had had a difficult time in North Vietnam and that Buddhists were no longer apathetic about Communism.

As a climax to the crisis drew near, the protest was a complicated force. It was in small part Buddhist against Catholic; it was in much larger part the protest of a large segment of the people who happened to be Buddhist against an authoritarian Government that happened to be Catholic-dominated.

It was also, in small part, have-nots protesting against haves; it was in much larger part 20th-century Asians protesting against older Asians molded from a mandarin past.

Surveys Find Discontent

Weeks passed, and the Buddhist protests seemed endless. Always formidable in the major cities and in the central coastal region. the dimension was seeping by August into the army and into the countryside.

An American survey, carried out by Vietnamese, showed that the people in the countryside were aware of the crisis, were worried by it, were more sympathetic to the Buddhists than to the Government and had little confidence in the Government's ability to solve the dispute.

Similarly the army showed growing unrest and a growing. consciousness of religion, particularly among young officers. Some officers had believed before that the way to get ahead was to be converted to Catholicism, and the Buddhist crisis had underlined this feeling. Though American military officials said the crisis had not affected the war effort, private Vietnamese readings were sharply different: that it was affecting morale and having an effect on individuals' efficiency.

In the countryside, there was acute consciousness, even In smaller communities in the coastal region. By August the word had reached the Mekong delta, where the Vietcong were making a major propaganda effort. Voice of America broadcasts were carrying Western news reports on the events.

Provocation a Goal

Now the Buddhists hoped to provoke the Government into rash acts. “We will throw the canons peels for them to slip on," one Buddhist leader said.

Now, too, the protest leaders were storing up human resources for demonstrations to impress the new United States Ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge, when he arrived.

The Government, while less repressive than it had been earlier, appeared to have lost its initiative.

Ngo Dinh Diem was caught between powerful and conflicting forces. One was Mr. and Mrs. Ngo Dinh Nhu, who wanted to crush the movement and get the matter over with. The other was the United States, urging as strongly as it could a conciliatory approach.

Yet the steps Americans were rging were alien to the Government, which felt that concessions now would be a sign of weakness. The result satisfied neither side. The Americans were able to urge Ngo Dinh Diem into a radio address, heralded in Washington by State Department spokesmen but ignored in Saigon. His brief, cold statement added little new to the situation.

In the end, one Government official said, "we had no policy at all and most of our decisions were whether to let the Buddhists bury their own burned martyrs or to take the bodies away."

The protests were clearly out of control, and there were reliable reports that at least two groups were moving toward a coup. A general fear of disintegration gripped the country.

Into the vacuum Ngo Dinh Nhu moved on Wednesday, Aug. 21.

Just how much President Ngo Dinh Diem knew of the plans is la matter of controversy. On Tuesday night, Buddhists were alerted by friends that a raid was imminent. They tipped off reporters that the combat police were coming.

Priests Stay in Pagodas

At the headquarters of the operation, a high official received a telephone call shortly before midnight. Then he put his head in his hands and said, “The priests have been alerted. They know we are coming."

But for some reason, most of the priests decided to stay in their pagodas. Only Tri Quang, it appears, left. Why they re-mained is not certain—perhaps they thought the Americans could still protect them, and perhaps they thought Ngo Dinh Nho would fall.

Reporters were already in the area when the strike came about at 12:30. Due Nghiep managed to call one newspaper office. Usually Due Nghiep speaks English to reporters, but this time his voice was shrill and terrified, a reporter recalls, and he spoke in Vietnamese. His message was repeated again and again like a phonograph record with the needle stuck: "The combat police are breaking into Xa Loi! The com-bat police are in Xa Lot!"

It was, in a sense, the end of the Buddhist affair and the beginning of an international crisis.

By David Halberstam

SAIGON, South Vietnam, Oct. 26 - Earlier this year a large Government force cornered a Vietcong hard-core battalion in a tiny hamlet in the rice-growing area of the Mekong Delta.

The Vietcong were well armed and that day, trapped in hamlet, they stood and fought inflicting heavy casualties on the Government troops and preventing the regulars from taking the hamlet until the next morning, when the Communist had already departed. During that morning an American walked through wet paddies, helping to pick up the Government dead. Later he was to recall it as “the day the Americans began to learn just how tough these Indochinese rice paddies can be."

It is 10 months later now, and they are just as tough, easier to get into than out of. Since that battle on Jan. 2 at Ap Bac there have been some victories and some defeats and the war is as difficult and hitter as ever.

Better Reaction

Last weekend another large Government force, again acting under near-perfect intelligence, cornered another hard-core battalion in another rice paddy and again failed to overrun. This time, the Government troops reacted better and, under brutal conditions, caught in an open paddy by heavy armament, they again took heavy casualties. It was a bloody nose. There was nothing disgraceful about it. A rice paddy deals an awesome advantage to a well-armed defender, particularly an enemy highly motivated, well disciplined and too often underrated by high American military officials.

Thus it was that, hardly had the four days passed, than an American general was telling a reporter that the bloody nose in Chuong Thien was not really a bloody nose at all; it should be considered a victory. After all, said the general, the Government forces took the objective. This was, in fact, wrong. The Government took a small piece of real estate but the objective, the Vietcong guerrillas, was gone.

Hard to Believe

Here and now, it is hard to reconcile the American military's optimism with this struggle, it is hard to see a pattern of victory or success so sure that by 1965 the United States advisory and support role will be ended. It is hard to believe that in the last twelve months there has been really significant progress. Rather, those things which appeared difficult a year ago still appear difficult. There is too much talk about winning and losing, too much dependence on artificial statistics, too little emphasis on what a slow and difficult struggle this is against guerrillas who are fighting on their own terms.

This is an intensely political war, and the unhealthy political climate in this country aside you cannot, of course, put it aside—there are still vast difficulties in the military field, many of them political in origin, which have yet to be answered. Government troops have yet to prove they can consistently out-fight the Vietcong. The Government side has yet to prove it and match the Vietcong in psychological—political—warfare. The Americans have yet to prove they have the patience and understanding for the long struggle ahead.

The American military command here for a year has been talking about outposts coming down in the Delta, troops corning off static security, more small unit actions by the Vietnamese regulars, more night fighting.

But a year of this gives a reporter the uneasy feeling that these are still major problems, that progress is still the exception in bringing down outposts, and that two wars go on side by side, the Government's war in the daytime and the Vietcong war at night.

There is feeling that much of this war has not even begun. It is a war of Vietnamese against Vietnamese, of one side supported and aided by the Americans and the other fighting a shoe-string war. It is also a war that to both sides is seemingly endless in a country where peace is a forgotten luxury and a young man grows up knowing the army is ahead.

The enemy: The enemy is not to be underrated. He is not so formidable as the enemy the French faced here. But much of his tactics and his planning and technique stem from that time. Indeed, in parts of the country such as the Delta, much of the population still vaguely sees the Vietcong as something of an extension of the Vietminh, still regards the Government troops who come and fight during the day and often leave at night, as similarly an extension of the Vietnamese troops who fought under the French. It is an image being cracked, but this, too, Is hard work.

Enduring Warfare

The shock troops of the enemy are his math force, an estimated 25,000 men. They are well armed, 300 or 400 in a battalion, often with back-up men in case a weapon is lost. Weapons are more important than men.

They are disciplined and highly motivated! "I love you," one once wrote his girlfriend, according to captured documents, "almost as much as I love Ho Chi Minh." And in their schools they are taught what one American referred to as "reading, writing and McNamara." They fight primarily at night and they try few tactics. Americans consider them expert in their specialties, the ambush and the nighttime attack on an outpost, or preparing their own defensive positions in their stopover bases. They have neatly prepared positions, almost perfectly camouflaged, and  attacking them, as one American said, is "like attacking the Japanese or Germans."

By overrunning small undermanned Government outposts for the last year, the Vietcong have steadily built up their weapons stores. Although lacking mobility in the American sense—no helicopters or trucks—they are in the Delta in local sense by the use of sampans through the net of waters courses and are extremely mobile.

The Vietcong see this as primarily a political struggle, and their main emphasis is on political indoctrination and psychological warfare. Terror is used in a subtle way, turned only against one man in a hamlet while the rest of the village is treated gently. Above all, they rarely make the same mistake twice.

The Vietnamese Soldier

Although much of the articulation for their war and their tactics and their trained cadres comes from Hanoi, this is primarily an indigenous war. The Vietcong manpower is locally recruited. One senses that much of the point of the war is to keep the guerrillas lean and hungry and give them the kind of bitter pride that goes with their type of life.

The Government side: The soldier of the Republic of Vietnam is good, good enough to win this war if properly used. He is usually as good as his leadership; too often his leadership is handicapped by Government politics.

In the elite units such as the airborne or marines, he is a fine fighting man. At the general level he is competent, brave enough to win if well led, cautious if cautiously led. Basically the Government soldier is an extremely sympathetic figure, willing to bear extreme hardship with no complaint, durable and resilient. There are few Americans who have ever seen a wounded Vietnamese cry. It is hard not to feel affection for these troops.

There is an acute shortage of N.C.O.’s. The young officers, in American military opinion, are an improving breed and have had the benefit of increased training both here and in the States.

Among older officers there is still a tendency to think as the French thought and a distrust on the part of some of American tactics, such as that a mobile, patrolling defense is better than a static defense.

But even in the military there remain political factors that too often officers are promoted on the basis of political loyalty; that the Palace regularly interferes in tactics, shifting troops back and forth, that, for political reason, there is still a fear of running heavy casualties, and an overdependence on air and artillery in what is essential a rifleman's war.

A Clever Foe

For reasons of face, outposts that should be pulled down are left up, officers who should be sacked are left in command, mistakes that should be rectified are often repeated. There may be good reasons for all these things, as far as the Palace is concerned, for political survival here is an extremely chancy thing. Nevertheless, the result is an army severely inhibited, while it is fighting an extremely clever enemy. So the overall picture seems not to justify any real optimism. In some areas, the programs, which are theoretically good, are working out well and there are encouraging results. But there are no easy answers or solutions, nor have there been since the end of World War II when the French stubbornly turned an anti-colonialist force into an anti-colonialist Communist force as well. As in many other places in the underdeveloped world, by time responsibility passed to the United States there were few options left.

Great Danger

Yet somehow the most dangerous thing here is to underestimate the problems which still exist and which have not yet been answered, even militarily. For two months now, the weapons-capture ratio has been running against the Gov-ernment at an alarming rate, around two to one. Just today it was announced that in the last week the Vietcong had taken 225 weapons from the Government while the Government had captured only 100 from the Vietcong.

Anyone who knows what the guerrillas can do with 125 weapons or who has tried to take 125 weapons away from the Communists will know why there is a disquieting feeling. If, as they say, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, then it is hard to tell from this end whether it has been turned on vet.

By David Halberstam

SAIGON, South Vietnam, Nov. 5 — Plot and counterplot in a complex pattern of intrigue culminated in the military coup d'etat in South Vietnam Friday.

The vanity of an ambitious young general, Ton That Dinh appears to have been a key factor in the train of events that led to the overthrow of the Ngo family regime and the deaths of President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu.

Buddhist dissatisfaction with the Ngos, which had long been simmering, erupted into demonstrations and violence during the summer and the climate was ripe for a coup. Generals who had been considering a coup at various times began to plan seriously.

One of the first allies they needed was Ton That Dinh.

Ton That Dinh, at 38 years of age, had risen meteorically to the rank of brigadier general. He owed much of his success to the fact that the Ngo family trusted him as it trusted only other general, Huynh Van Cao.

The family gave Ton That Dinh a command to the north of Saigon so that it could block any attempt to overthrow the Government from that direction. Defense to the south of Saigon was in the hands of Huynh Van Cao in the Mekong Delta area.

Thus, when other generals who were disaffected with the Ngo family persuaded Ton That Dinh to join the plot, the Ngo family's carefully planned system of self-protection was left with a big hole. The Ngos did not know the hole was there, so great was their faith in Ton That Dinh.

Ton That Dinh shows the marks of vanity and driving ambition. He likes to wear a tightly tailored paratrooper's uniform, a red beret at a jaunty angle and dark glasses. Behind him there usually is a tall, silent Cambodian bodyguard. Newspaper photographers who take pictures of Ton That Dinh have always been warmly treated.

The dissident generals played upon his vanity to bring about his defection.

What follows is a recapitulation, as complete as can be obtained today, of what actually went on at the secret meetings of the plotters and the secret meetings of Government officials from the beginning of the critical period.

The Buddhists' discontent with the Ngo family, which is Roman Catholic, became overt in the spring when the Government forbade the Buddhists to fly their religious banners along with the national flag. The Buddhists drew up a list of demands to remedy what they considered the Government's repressions. The Government promised action, but there was none.

The Buddhists began to demonstrate for what they considered their rights, and nine Buddhists were killed in one protest, at Hue. This city, the capital of the central region, is a strong Buddhist center as well as the see of Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc, another brother of the President.

The Buddhist centers of worship, the pagodas, then became centers of political as well as religious unrest.

Three generals began to plot in June, when the Buddhist crisis began to grow from a religious dispute into a full-scale political crisis.

One of the three was Duong Van Minh, known as Big Minh, who had a distinguished record as a combat leader, but who had been shunted aside because of Ngo Dinh Nhu's jealousies.

The second was Tran Van Don, a suave, aristocratic graduate of St. Cyr, the French West Point.

The third was Le Van Kim, virtually an unemployed general who was called by one military man the shrewdest of generals.

Generals Foresaw Crisis on Buddhist Issue

These men felt that the Government was provoking a major crisis and that its refusal to meet some of the Buddhist demands was arrogant and self-defeating.

They brought in other key officers step by step. In all this early planning, Duong Van Minh's prestige gave the plot respectability.

The officers moved slowly and gained the consent of Gen. Nguyen Khanh of the II Corps and Gen. Do Cao Tri of the I Corps.

They had no set plan and too few troops. Their main problem would be to get troops into Saigon.

The Ngos, however, had prepared a military structure to guard against such threats. Great emphasis was placed on loyalty among the high officers, particularly those in and directly north and south of Saigon.

There were two reasons for this: First, a disloyal commander could turn his troops around and head up the highway and storm the Presidential Palace. Second, if other troops rebelled, then Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu could call in their loyal commanders. This had happened in the past.

In 1960, when paratroopers had all but scored a coup d'état, they began negotiating with Ngo Dinh Diem only to find that the President had moved in tanks and loyal units from the Seventh Division.

The palace also depended on two elite units. These were the Special Forces and the Presidential Guard, with about 24 tanks. Their main job, if there was a rebellion, was to hold off rebel units until a loyal force could arrive.

Such loyal forces were the troops under the command of Ton That Dinh to the north and Huynh Van Cao to the south of Saigon. The latter, perhaps the most vigorous prosecutor of the war against the Communist guerrillas, the Vietcong, was known as the most political of the generals. He also had advanced quickly in the military because of his personal loyalty to Ngo Dinh Diem.

The Dissident Generals Hatch a Plot

In August the secretly dissident generals hatched a plot to circumvent the careful protection set up by the regime. They suggested to Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu that martial law be declared and that troops be moved into the town from the distant areas where the three had supporters.

The three generals planned to stage the coup the moment the troops were in the city.

Ngo Dinh Nhu, however, had been planning to raid the pagodas with his Special Forces and the police. When he heard the generals' suggestions, he decided to work it into his plan.

He went ahead with the raid, but he declared martial law to make it look as if the army had forced him to take action and to make it appear that the anti-Buddhist move had enjoyed wide popular support.

Ngo Dinh Nhu brought his trusted general, Ton That Dinh, to Saigon and let him plan the raid on the pagodas. They were carried out Aug. 21, with international repercussions.

The raids were violent and they scarred Saigon's relations with the United States — the chief support of South Vietnam in the war against the Communists. The military, which had been growing progressively uneasy about the progress of the war, was angered further by the fact that the army had been used as a front for violent attacks on civilians.

After the pagoda raids, however, Ton That Dinh felt that he was the hero of the republic. In private he told other officers that he had "defeated" the United States Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, who had arrived to take up his post just as the raids occurred.

"He came here to hold a coup," Ton That Dinh said, "but I,. Dinh, have conquered him and saved the country."

Soon afterward, Ton That Dinh held a news conference. That conference, in effect, sealed the doom of the Ngo regime by opening the way for the dissident generals to woo Ton That Dinh. The generals played upon his vanity.

At the news conference, Ton That Dinh spoke of plots by "foreign adventurers," indirectly called the United States Central Intelligence Agency "crypto-Communist," and assailed the Buddhists as Communists.

Ton That Dinh was questioned sharply. He is a man with a quick temper and he became angry. On several occasions newsmen — including Vietnamese reporters for Government-controlled newspapers — broke into laughter at some of the general's accusations. This added to the general's fury.

When Ton That Dinh left the news conference he was in a rage. He thought of himself as a "hero of the republic," but he had lost face before Westerners and before his countrymen.

This was just what the three dissident generals wanted — an angry Ton That Dinh. The three generals did not have troops in positions from which a successful attack could be staged, but Ton That Dinh did. They needed him. So they began to play on his wounded pride.

Plotters Decide to Try Discrediting Regime

The plotters decided to try to discredit the regime in Ton That Dinh's eyes, undermine his loyalty to Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu, and convince him that he had been used.

They told him that he was a great national hero and that the country looked up to him. They said he was being badly treated by Ngo Dinh Nhu. They told him that his military moves against the pagodas were a good start but that political moves must follow, that the tired, ineffectual Cabinet of the Ngo family was unable to do these things and that young, active military men were needed in the Cabinet.

The generals said they needed to get up momentum in the war against the guerrillas to maintain the morale of the troops. They suggested that Ton That Dinh talk with Ngo Dinh Diem and use his influence. For he, after all, the advice continued, was now the foremost hero of the republic.

The generals believed that these ideas would outrage Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu, and that the brothers would turn on Ton That Dinh.

Ton That Dinh believed the generals and went to see Ngo Dinh Diem. He demanded new roles for the military officers, and the Ministry of the Interior for himself.

Ngo Dinh Diem, extremely sensitive both about police control and about the role of the military, was stunned. The last thing he wanted was members of the military in the Cabinet, and in particular Ton That Dinh as Minister of the Interior.

The President gave Ton That Dinh a blunt rejection and lectured him angrily. He told him he was, in effect, temporarily relieved and to go to Da Lat and rest.

"Stay out of politics and leave the politics to me," Ngo Dinh Diem said. Ton That Dinh left the office and went to Da Lat, humiliated now in front of the other generals, too.

He did not follow Ngo Dinh Diem's order to leave politics to the palace. He became a plotter.

When Ngo Dinh Diem inadvertently turned Ton That Dinh into a dissident, he destroyed the arrangement for the protection of the palace. And he did it at a time when he already had too many enemies, when he and Ngo Dinh Nhu were in what amounted to a twilight struggle for survival.

For most of the rest of the military, and in particular for the younger, more aggressive officers, the time for a coup seemed to be overdue. For months before the moves moves against Buddhists, there had been great concern over the war effort and after the Buddhist crisis, this concern began changing into despair.

Junior officers were becoming disaffected.

"The police techniques of the Ngos," one Vietnamese officer said, "which used to reach mostly into the homes of people we considered political, were more and more reaching into our own homes."

There was, as one officer said privately at the time, a strong feeling that the regime had become so preoccupied with its own survival that the war against the Communists had become secondary.

The army, the plotters believed, was increasingly being twisted into something that fitted the Ngo family's requirements for loyalty first.

Ironically, it was the Ngo family's preoccupation with possible plotters that turned men like Duong Van Minh and Tran Van Minh and Tran Van Don, soldiers, into plotters.

The Generals Are Handed a Ready-Made Coup

When a rebellion was decided upon by the generals and these young officers were approached, it was almost as if the generals had to run to catch up with the parade.

"We handed the generals a ready-made coup on a platter," one young major said.

The United States policy in South Vietnam, which had never been clear to the military leaders, was becoming clear, along new lines.

President Kennedy indicated that he felt South Vietnam would be a happier place without Mr. and Mrs. Ngo Dinh Nhu. John Richardson, the C.I.A. chief in South Vietnam, who was believed by the Vietnamese military to be close to Ngo Dinh Nhu, was recalled to Washington.

It was known in South Vietnam that the new United States Ambassador neither admired the Ngo family nor thought it could win the war. Large amounts of American aid to South Vietnam were suspended.

Then the Americans told Ngo Dinh Nhu that the Special Forces, led by Col. Le Quang Tung, would receive no more United States aid if they remained on security duty instead of fighting the Vietcong.

For a time, in September and early October, the dissidents became frightened and disorganized. The Government made mass arrests in Saigon and tightened its control of the troops. The plotters, fearing discovery, became confused and stopped their planning.

But the Government's repressions began to let up in mid-October and the dissidents resumed their work.

According to extremely reliable sources, about two weeks before the coup, after several weeks of working on Ton That Dinh, the generals said to him, in effect, "You should carry out the coup. It is time to save your country."

Ton That Dinh began to draw up plans, discarding many before finally settling on one.

The generals then set about recruiting units to join them.

Three days before the coup, Ton That Dinh sent his deputy, Nguyen Huu Co, to My Tho to talk to some officers.

My Tho is a key city, 40 miles south of Saigon along a main highway. It is the seat of the Seventh Division, which sent the tanks up the highway in 1960 to break up the paratroopers' coup.

Nguyen Huu Co, according to reliable sources, talked to the deputy divisional commander, to two regimental commanders, the armored unit commander and the My Tho province chief. He told them that the army should overthrow the Ngo family, citing many reasons including possible loss of the war against the Vietcong.

Nguyen Huu Co said that all the generals had joined in the plan except Huynh Van Cao. He said that Ton That Dinh had not yet joined but was expected to.

The entire episode was reported to the President.

The next day the President called in Ton That Dinh. Reliable sources believe that at this point Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu did not entirely trust Ton That Dinh but felt he could be used against the other generals because he was not fully committed.

Ngo Dinh Diem showed Ton That Dinh the report of the conversation in My Tho.

According to the story, Ton That Dinh put on a show of weeping.

"This is my fault," the general was reported to have said. "Because you have suspected me. I have not really gone to work for the last 15 days but have stayed at home because I was sad. But I am not against you. I was sad because I thought I was discredited with you. So Nguyen Huu Co profited from my absence to make trouble."

Then Ton That Dinh was reported to have suggested that he arrest his deputy and have him shot. Ngo Dinh Nhu was against this; he wanted him arrested and interrogated to find the names of the other plotters.

The President and his brother said they had not really distrusted Ton That Dinh, but had been preoccupied with other matters. Indeed, Ngo Dinh Nhu said, he had been thinking of promoting Ton That Dinh to major general, and would take care of it quickly.

Then the three men decided they must have a plan for a counter-coup.

Ton That Dinh suggested they make a massive show of force, moving troops and tanks into Saigon to crush the plotters. Ngo Dinh Nhu agreed and suggested that Ton That Dinh get together "with the other two members of the party," Lieut Col. Nguyen Ngoc Khoi, commander of the Presidential Guard, and Col. Le Quang Tung.

The President told Ton That Dinh, according to these sources, "You have full authority to get what you need. I approve what you need."

The next day Ton That Dinh met with the two other officers and told them a major show of force must be made, and tanks must be used "because armor is dangerous." The two others, who are considered by many Vietnamese officers to be armchair soldiers, readily agreed.

According to the account, Ton That Dinh said that if they brought in all the reserves, the Americans would become angry and charge that the Vietnamese were not prosecuting the war.

"So we must deceive the Americans," Ton That Dinh said, ordering Le Quang Tung to send his four Special Forces companies out of Saigon and ordering him to tell the Americans that the forces were going into combat.

The following day, the day before the coup, Le Quang Tung moved the four companies out with the approval of the President and his brother.

Ton That Dinh then drew up plans that were presented to Ngo Dinh Diem as plans for Operation Bravo, a show of force, and that were to the other generals the start of moves for the coup.

When he signed and approved the plans for Operation Bravo, Ngo Dinh Diem legalized the groundwork for a coup d'etat.

Reliable sources here believe that some of the generals privately saw some key Americans before the coup and let them know that a coup might take place. All they were reported to have told the Americans was that they wanted no interference.

The insurgents' plans involved three main task forces. The first consisted of two marine battalions and a company of M-113 armored personal carriers. The marines were brought in from Binh Duong Province and two battalions of airborne troops considered loyal to the President were moved out to take their places.

This first task force was the spearhead of the coup.

The second task force consisted of the Sixth Airborne Battalion from Vung Tau and a battalion from a training camp, assisted by 12 armored vehicles from the school at Long Hai.

The third task force consisted of the Second Battalion of the Seventh Regiment of the Fifth Division and the Second Battalion of the Ninth Regiment of the Fifth Division.

These Troops Employed to Occupy City

These were the troops that occupied various parts of the city, and guarded the four 155 howitzers and the headquarters of Col. Nguyen Van Thieu, who directed the attack on the Presidential Guard barracks.

Some troops from the Quang Trung training camp were used to occupy the security police headquarters. These troops were commanded by Mai Huu Xuan, who is now director general of the national police.

Ton That Dinh also had 20 tanks brought to his headquarters at Camp Le Van Duyet. Fifteen were used during the coup. All told, the plotters had more than 40 tanks and armored personnel carriers and they were a decisive factor in the showdown around the palace.

When these movements began, the security police called Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu. They were reassured by Ngo Dinh Nhu that the movements were legal and part of a palace plan.

The coup came shortly before noon on Friday when the navy commander, Capt. Ho Tan Quyen, was assassinated while he was driving along the Bien Hoa Highway.

At 1:30 P.M. marines began occupying the central police headquarters, the radio station and the post office. Shortly afterward, the central police called Ngo Dinh Diem and told him the marines were there and they were not friendly.

Ngo Dinh Diem immediately ordered his military aide to call Ton That Dinh's headquarters. An aide to Ton That Dinh answered and the President took the phone at his end.

The President said that the marines were at the police station and told the aide to tell Ton That Dinh to send troops there immediately. The aide said Ton That Dinh was not in.

In the meantime, a group of high-ranking military men were having luncheon at the officers club of the general staff. The luncheon had been called nominally for a discussion of changes in corps boundaries.

At 1:30 P.M., Gen. Tran Van Don announced that a coup was on and arrested all of those at the lunch.

At about this time, there was some fighting between some of the Special Forces and troops from General Headquarters. The plotters forced Col. Le Quang Tung to get on the phone and tell his troops to surrender.

President Was Deceived on Leader's Loyalty

Half an hour after his first call, the President's aide again called Ton That Dinh's headquarters, and was again told that Ton That Dinh was not there.

In the background, according to the report, President Ngo Dinh Diem could be heard saying that Gen. Ton That Dinh must have been arrested by the other generals.

Fighting was developing between some of the Presidential Guard units and marines near the post office. Insurgent troops were also moving up on the Presidential Guard's barracks and firing.

At this point, the President and his brother began broadcasting on a palace transmitter. The first broadcast called on all division commanders and province chiefs to send troops to protect the President.

The message asked for acknowledgment and there was none.

As time passed, the palace receiver got messages from division commanders pledging loyalty to the military leaders.

The Presidential Palace became lonelier and lonelier. Ngo Dinh Nhu began calling the provincial chiefs to send irregular units to protect the President. The last of these messages, at 4 o'clock the next morning, called on the Republican Youth and paramilitary women's groups to move into Saigon to save the Government.

One of the insurgents' vital goals was to keep the Seventh Division from attempting to save Ngo Dinh Diem as it had before.

This division was to be transferred on Friday to the III Corps under Ton That Dinh's command.

Ngo Dinh Diem had ordered Col. Lam Van Phat to take command of this division Thursday, but according to tradition, he could not assume command until he had paid a courtesy call on Ton That Dinh, his new corps commander. Ton That Dinh refused to see him and told him to come back at 2 P.M. Friday.

In the meantime Ton That Dinh got Gen. Tran Van Don to sign orders transferring the command of the Seventh Division to Nguyen Huu Co, his deputy.

Nguyen Huu Co went to My Tho by helicopter, locked the staff officers in a room and took command.

Then Nguyen Huu Co called Huyhn Van Cao, who, like Lam Van Phat, is a southerner. Nguyen Huu Co is from the central region and he was afraid Huyhn Van Cao would detect the difference in accent, but he did not.

Word of what was happening in Saigon reached Huyhn Van Cao in midafternoon, but he told the Seventh Division officers that Ngo Dinh Nhu had assured him this was a false coup and that the idea was to turn against the dissident elements before they could act. Huyhn Van Cao, however, ordered one regiment and some armor to prepare to move if necessary.

By early Saturday, Huyhn Van Cao realized it was a real coup. When he radioed My Tho, Nguyen Huu Co identified himself and taunted him, "Didn't you recognize my accent?" Nguyen Huu Co then told Huyhn Van Cao that he had pulled all the ferry boats to the Saigon side of the Mekong River anD that Huyhn Van Cao should not attempt to cross the river unless he wanted to die.

This left no one left to help the President and his brother.

By this time the coup was going by clockwork; the radio station, the telephone office and police headquarters were sealed off.

After Col. Le Quang Tung was captured, most of his Special Forces were through. Then the insurgents moved to sell off the Presidential Guard's barracks.

The fighting there was heavy and there was stiff resistance. The barracks were heavily mortared for several hours and then surrounded by tanks. At midnight the barracks fell.

Then Ton That Dinh began to plan the attack on the palace itself. During the entire evening, the generals kept asking the President and his brother to surrender to save Vietnamese lives. If they surrendered, the generals pledged, the two brothers would be protected and sent out of the country, but if they did not, they would be killed.

The President asked the commanders to send a delegation to the Palace to talk. The rebels feared this was a repetition of 1960 and did not agree.

It was reported that at 4 A.M. Ngo Dinh Diem called Ambassador Lodge. Mr. Lodge was reported to have told the President that he was concerned for the President's safety and would do all he could to insure that he and his family were honorably treated.

The coup, in the view of one observer, went slowly because the rebels made every effort to talk troops into surrendering to avoid killing Vietnamese.

The attack on the palace was scheduled to start at 3:15 A.M. with a heavy artillery barrage.

In the early morning, civilians watching the struggle from roofs noted the flashes of double flares that can be used in gauging artillery fire. At 4 A.M. the President's military aide called Ton That Dinh for the last time and asked for troops to save the palace. This time, according to the story, Ton That Dinh came on the phone "and cursed, using insulting phrases to describe the family." According to one source, he told the brothers, "You are finished. It is all over."

"I saved them on Aug. 21, but they are finished now," he said after the conversation.

Most of the real fighting was done around the palace by opposing armored units. One observer described the maneuvering as "two boxers fighting in a closet."

Atop the United States Embassy a cluster of staff members watched. Early in the morning one decided to go downstairs and tell Thich Tri Quang, the buddhist protest leader who had taken refuge there.

"Reverend," the American said, "there is a coup d'etat taking place."

The priest replied: "Do you think I am deaf?"

When the rebels brought in flamethrowers, the issue was decided. For the rest of the early morning, the tanks blasted at the palace. At 6 A.M., the firing ceased and then marines stormed and took the palace.

But Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu were gone.

They Wait at Church but Are Arrested

There are said to be three main tunnels leading from the palace but the rebels knew and guarded the exit of only one. According to one report, Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu escaped through a tunnel leading to a park north of the palace where they were picked up by a vehicle.

The vehicle, reported to have been a Land Rover, took the brothers to a church in suburban Cho Lon where they apparently hoped to wait for rescue.

Armored vehicles were sent to the church where the brothers were arrested. It was reported that they had a large sum of money with them. They were placed in an armored personnel carrier.

When the news was telephoned that they were dead, Ton That Dinh grabbed the phone and made the officer repeat what he had said.

Then Ton That Dinh slowly let his arms fall.

At this point the others contended that the Ngos had committed suicide. One of Ton That Dinh's aides demanded how they could have committed suicide. The officer answered that they had grabbed a rifle from an enlisted man. Then Ton That Dinh's aide asked why only one officer was guarding them.

"Someone was careless," was the answer.

Then all was over. Duong Van Minh became Chairman of the committee. Tran Van Don became Minister of Defense and Ton That Dinh became, as he had wanted, a major general and the Interior Minister.

The Government had fallen, the Ngos were dead and the military leaders had won all they had sought.

The war with the Vietcong, the questions of subversion, loyalty, poverty and religious conflict at this point became theirs to deal with.

This article is by a New York Times correspondent who recently completed a 15-month assignment in South Vietnam.

The long and bitter struggle to keep South Vietnam from being taken over by Communism has reached a critical point.

For a year the war there has been going poorly for the anti-Communists, and the tough, well-armed Communist guerrillas are stepping up the conflict. Facing them is a new and uncertain military government. The Communist guerrillas, known as the Vietcong, hold the initiative, militarily and psychologically, in rural areas. In regions they effectively control, they levy taxes, obtain food, redistribute land and recruit reinforcements. They are strong in the Mekong River delta, the country's rice bowl, stronger than they ever were during the French Indochinese war, some experienced Vietnamese observers believe.

Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara paid his most recent visit to Vietnam last week and the seriousness of the situation there is said to be acknowledged now at the highest American military and civilian levels in Washington and Saigon.

A thousand United States servicemen, their specific jobs completed, came home this month, but plans to end the rest of the 16,500-man American military advisory and support mission by 1965 are reported to have been abandoned.

Despite this, experienced Western observers in South Vietnam warn that unless the new military junta in Saigon takes drastic action in the coming dry season, it may lose a last chance to turn back the Communists. The dry season, which begins in January and lasts about four months, makes operations against the guerrillas, particularly pursuit, easier.

Some observers believe that the Ngo Dinh Diem regime, which was toppled by the junta at the beginning of November, never adequately employed its military strength and the mobility represented by such United Staton equipment as transport helicopters and armored personnel carriers.

The resources to turn back the Vietcong are available, these observers say, but what is in doubt is the nation's willingness to pay the price for victory. If the junta is to win, they say, it must wage a bitter and costly war in the next six months, it must actively seek out, engage and pursue the guerrillas; and it must accept casualties far heavier than the Diem regime would accept, testing to the utmost the strength of the nation in fratricidal conflict.

Yet the junta has not shown the sense of urgency that some Westerners believe is required.

True, the heavy political atmosphere of recent years has lifted. Gone are the rigid pride and vanity of the Diem machine, which induced subordinates to tell the late president what he wanted to hear.

For example, while the situation in the two provinces south of Saigon was deteriorating alarmingly, the commander there was reporting that Government forces controlled 95 per cent of the area.

The new junta, moreover, seems willing to discuss serious problems seriously, and the inability of the United States to get a real hearing for its view may have ended. But the problems, particularly the immediate military problems, are immense.

With considerable skill the Communist guerrillas have expanded their control in rural areas, particularly in the delta, pressing their military and political initiative, slowly driving the Government forces back into district capitals. In recent weeks there hu been a sharp increase in mine-laying and sabotage incidents along main rooms right outside district headquarters.

As to the increase in mine-laying, one knowledgeable Vietnamese province chief said, “They have us back in the caves and want to keep us there.”

A prolonged trip through the lush delta these days is a sad journey for someone who also traveled there more than a year ago. Those earlier trips took place in an area where the government had a good chance of victory. Now the sign of Government neglect and the Vietcong’s presence are everywhere.

There are district capitals where government troops do not move from their posts and where they face the night uneasily. There are villages, formerly Government-controlled, where children look away when Government troops arrive. There are Government airstrips where light planes land through Vietcong sniper fire. In one village an American officer and a newsman found a Vietcong flag flying from the roof of a small Roman Catholic chunk.

The officer asked the young priest to explain.

“It is very simple, Captain," the priest said. "You and the Government come here once every three or four months and you have tea with me and then you leave. But the Vietcong are here every night and this is the price they exact for the survival of my church. They are very clever, I think."

When the Government troops left, the flag was still on the church.

One aspect of the situation in the delta is this: The government must fight to wrest initiative and control from the Vietcong before it  can persuade the villagers that it offers them a better deal than the Diem regime did.  In the delta and elsewhere, with the dry season approaching, the Vietcong cannot afford psychologically to have the Government smash their main units and force them into a less effective type of guerrilla war.

Rather there is evidence that the Vietcong guerrillas see themselves at a point of no return. There are reliable reports of an increase in cadres for main-force units infiltrating the country. Also there are reports of heavier weapons, such as 75-mm recoilless rifles, and large amounts of ammunition being brought into the country through Cambodia and down the Mekong River into the delta.

The key question remains how deeply the South Vietnamese people want to win the war and how heavy a sacrifice they and their new leaders art prepared to make. The Western, particularly non-American, observers in Saigon who doubt the will of the people and their leadership believe that the Vietnamese are unaware of how tough the fighting ahead will have to be to turn the tide of the conflict.

The outlook is that the situation will deteriorate unless the Government can wrest the initiative from the guerrillas. Unless it can, there appear to be only two likely alternatives.

One is a neutralist settlement. The other is use of United States combat troops to prop up the Government.

Despite President de Gaulle’s idea of a neutral Vietnam free of American influence and with closer ties to France, most observers believe that a neutralist settlement would leave a vacuum in South Vietnam that could be exploited by Communist North Vietnam. The observers say that a Communist takeover in the south would probably follow a neutralist settlement in about two years.

The use of United States troops for combat, rather than for advisory, support and training missions, would pose major problems. Some think that nothing would please the Communist world more than the sight of American troops fighting the Vietcong.

Furthermore, many guerrilla-war experts believe that the Vietnamese rice paddies would swallow up the United States troops, that the population would turn on them and help the Vietcong and that the Americans would face a situation like the one that defeated the French in the 1945-54 Indochinese war. With France's defeat, French Indochina was divided into North and South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

There is a general impression that the current war in South Vietnam was envisioned by North Vietnam at the time of the Geneva settlement of the Indochinese conflict, a settlement that partitioned Vietnam. The struggle in South Vietnam began in earnest in the late 1950s.

The prevalent view is that while the Vietcong are almost all South Vietnamese, the guerrilla war is directed from North Vietnam and cadres are sent there for training.

The Vietcong strategy, especially in the last year, has been aimed not so much at all-out military victory—the guerrillas do star have the strength for that—as at forcing a new Geneva settlement, one that would neutralize South Vietnam and enable the Communists to take over.

This strategy has included a major military offensive in the provinces right around Saigon—Long An, Dinh Twang and Binh Duong—to choke off the capital and hold all the countryside around it.

This would make the local and foreign residents in Saigon edgy, create a psychological impression of vast Vietcong control, and presumably result in a greater willingness to seek a neutralist settlement. The Vietcong offensive in these provinces, American and Vietnamese military observers believe, was singularly successful. 

In a sense, one chapter has ended in Vietnam and another is about to start. The last chapter began in late 1961, when the country, faced by a grave challenge, appeared unable to resist Communist subversion. That was the time, according to one American, “when you went to bed at night and didn't know whether there would still be a country there when you woke up."

In October of that year President Kennedy sent General Maxwell D. Taylor, then his special military adviser and now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on a special mission. General Taylor found Vietnam prepared for a war it was not fighting and unprepared for one it was fighting. He recommended drastic measures designed to give the Vietnamese army the means and mobility with which to resist a guerrilla war.

What has become clear is that the Americans and the Ngo Dinh Diem regime differed widely on their priorities. To the American, the number one priority was winning the war. For the Ngo family it was different: Its survival in a postwar Vietnam held the top priority.

What also became clear was that although the United States mission in Vietnam was primarily advisory, the government was far more interested in American gear and money than in American advice.

This seemed particularly true at the highest level. Last September Ngo Dinh Nhu, the president's brother and chief adviser, said to an Australian visitor that the war would be won faster if the Americans went home and left their equipment in Vietnam.

President Diem and Mr. Nhu are known to have disliked American advice, which placed considerable emphasis on direct confrontation and meant that the attacking government forces must be prepared to accept relatively heavy casualties.

President Diem, though extremely sensitive about losses suffered by his main-force units when attacking, did not seem to feel so strongly about losses when an outpost was overrun by the Vietcong.

Though there are no official statistics on this, some well-informed United States military officials believe that between 75 and 80 per cent of government casualties were suffered in stativ positions. This indicates the kind of war that was fought in the last year.

The United States military command was in a difficult position. It was caught between an ally that was not taking its advice and an administration at home that was exerting pressure for results.

Perhaps because the ally at times paid lip service to accepting United States tactical doctrines, perhaps because the weapons statistics appeared good, the United States military mission in Vietnam expressed optimism and apparently, right up until the coup that overthrew the regime, believed that the war was going well.

Western authorities on guerrilla warfare believe that what happened in Vietnam in the last year and a half was something like the following:

The Vietcong, caught off-guard by the American-aided buildup, and having underestimated American willingness to make a commitment in Vietnam, took a beating through mid-1962. Then, as the year ebbed, the guerrillas adjusted to the situation; they learned how to stand and fight instead of running from the helicopters and fighter planes. They regained their confidence.

The government troops failed to follow up aggressively. Rather, commanders became too dependent on the new machinery, relied too much on air and artillery. They lost the momentum they had, and by the end of 1962 the favorable statistics were beginning to taper off. The Vietcong forces were beginning to exploit the situation.

This continued through the beginning of 1963. It was most noticeable in the Mekong delta region, where confrontation with the enemy can be a regular thing if a commander really seeks it. By February some United States field advisers were warning that the signs were ominous.

What it amounted to was this: Despite all the talk about fighting guerrillas there was little antiguerrilla fighting in Vietnam.

The Special Forces, with their montagnard trainees in the highlands, encouraged some small-unit fighting. But in the heartland of the war, the delta, there was little fighting at night, little  attempt to try guerrilla tricks nn the Vietcong themselves, little emphasis on patrols, mobile defense or ambush.

Because mistakes were regularly repeated—for instance, the guerrillas were allowed to help themselves constantly to good weapons at the small outposts—victory is further away, not closer, than it was a year ago. And the price in blood will be considerably higher.

The Vietcong men did not repeat their mistakes—they exploited the Government's lack of aggressiveness, and consequently improved their abilities more than the Government troops did.

Fifteen months ago the Americans would say about the elusive Vietcong, "If we could only make them stand and fight." Now the Vietcong are often standing and fighting. The problem has changed drastically. It has become one of how to face a well-armed, dug-in enemy in a rice paddy and tear it up without taking a disproportionate number of casualties.

Eight times this year, government soldiers have come upon Vietcong battalions in rice paddies. Though they inflicted sizable casualties on the guerrillas, they never really sealed off an area, destroyed a battalion or performed as the American advisers fed Vietnamese are capable of performing.

Just how much the mling junta is going to improve on this situation is the key question in Vietnam today. The generals, one American asserted, "are good men, but good isn't enough." He added: "They damn well better be great men. We don't have time for anything else."

So far the American advisers appear to like the three top generals in the junta but, as an embassy official noted, it is "more a matter of liking their promises than anything specific—they haven't done that much."

In particular, the Americans seem to like Major General Duong Van Minh, chairman of the junta. There is a marked feeling that whether the junta succeeds depends to a great degree on whether he becomes a bold figure and tries to become a popular leader.

So far neither General Minh nor any other member of the junta has emerged sharply. Some Vietnamese set the difficulty as stemming, in part, from the junta's uncertainties and divisions.

A basic division is reported among the regime's top four generals. On one side are General Minh, Major General Le Van Kim and Major General Tran Van Don, the defense minister. On the other is Major General Ton That Dinh, along with a few other lesser-known officers.

General Dinh was for long a loyal supporter of President Diem. He was a particular favorite of the late president and is not really trusted by the others. He reciprocates this suspicion. In style, manner and age, the audacious General Dinh is different from the others.

Many observers feel that a break within the junta is inevitable. But for the present the split has taken the form of uneasy maneuvering, primarily over command appointments.

As the generals maneuver, each seems hesitant to move too quickly to seize power lest this alarm the others. The result has been to neutralize some of the leadership potential of the junta, and leave it with less of a sense of direction than is needed in Saigon.

Yet there is a realization in Vietnam of the urgency of the war situation, and some Americans believe that part of the most recent McNamara visit was an attempt to impart that urgency to the generals.

For there is little time and optimism left in South Vietnam. As one member of the American mission said, “It is no longer a question of not knowing the problems. We are down to looking for the answers.”

By David Halberstam

SAIGON, Nov. 23 - The Mekong Delta stretches out green and hall at this time of year, inviting in both its richness and simplicity. It is, says one friend, “like nothing you have ever seen: the farmer, his wife, the rice, the coconuts, pineapples, oranges, ducks, chickens, dogs and pigs, the children fishing canals and riding the water buffalos” — he paused and added: "Just like a page out of the Bible."

But there is trouble in paradise and once an American over it In a helicopter pointed out the window and said, "Just as far as the eye can see: miles and miles of discontent."

Today in this discontented paradise the most vicious war in today's world shuttles back and forth in front of 'peasant huts, troops moving along tree lines are wary both of the enemy and of aroused water buffaloes, and often, as they approach, peasants file from the villages wearing their Sunday best to distinguish themselves from the guerrillas.

The stakes are high in this rich and fertile land. Where the Communists had been making frighteningly successful inroads, the new Government has answered with a major challenge and the lines are drawn. The stakes could hardly be higher, for what happens here may decide not only what happens eventually in this country but perhaps what happens in much of Southeast Asia as well.

There is nothing simple or easy about this region nor, having joined this challenge, is there any Inexpensive way out for either side. The price this year is likely to be steep in blood. For this war is not, as former rulers of Vietnam said, in Its final quarter-hour. Rather, in the delta, it has barely begun.

Eroding Position

Or worse. For it appears unmistakably that thorn has been a slow and subtle erosion of the Government position and initiative; that the Vietcong have similarly become better armed, more aggressive and have slowly undermined the Government's position with the population.

For it is one at the bitter realities of the past year that it is the Government's side which has repeated its mistakes, inevitably to the benefit of the guerrillas, while the guerrillas rarely made the same mistake twice; it is the Government side which created an attitude of almost willful self-delusion on developments here, and, what is particularly bitter to Westerners, it is the Communist side which reacted more flexibly to changing developments and which has so far shown the most motivation and discipline.

And so the war in the delta now looks more, not less, difficult than it did a year ago. There is in Saigon among the Vietnamese generals considerable awareness of the extent of the problems facing them there, and this is healthy. The generals, most of whom are southerners (unlike the Ngo family, which came from the central region and tended to be somewhat suspicious.of the south), are making this their priority area and they are deriding their and they are sending their picked commanders there.

Roughly, the situation up to Nov. 1 was this: The Government had been fighting a cautious war; hesitant to take casualties, it was fighting too often what one American referred to as “an eight-to-five war.” Its small outposts remained in isolated areas serving as weapons supply points to the Vietcong. Vietcong units became increasingly well armed and aggressive, regular Vietcong units became bigger and tougher. The Government, always cautious about taking on main-force units, became even more cautious, allowing, as one American said, “the Vietcong to operate out of what were virtually sanctuaries." Thus to the Vietcong went the military initiative.

There were other contributing factors: First, the failure to establish priorities for areas and to determine how best to allocate resources. “So in the end they were trying to hold everything at once and were holding nothing," said one American officer.

Second, the related problem of the strategic hamlet program, which is seen as a key part to success. Here building hamlets became virtually a competition among province chiefs with officials with officials vying to build more than the man in the next province. Building large numbers of hamlets pleased Ngo Dinh Nhu, most powerful man ho.the country, and also meant more aid money.

Easy Targets

Despite the fact that a hamlet is at best a sensitive political-military entry which the people themselves must want, hamlets were going up at a rate of more than one a day in areas where population could hardly 'be considered pro-Government. The result almost inevitably was the creation of too many paper hamlets which became relatively easy targets for the Vietcong when they launched a major military push against them earlier this year. The result was that the confidence of the people in the hamlets was soon undermined by the Vietcong.

Third is a psychological hangover from colonial days. It is a haunting fact of this political war that in too many parts of the Delta the Vietcong are not seen as an enemy by the population, and sometimes the Government seems more alien and foreign. For unless local officials are able it will appear that the Vietcong are the direct descendants of the Vietminh, fighting the same type of war and using the same type of slogans and techniques; similarly it will also appear that the Vietnamese regulars who shuttle through during daylight hours are the the troops who fought under the French, rarely seen at night, too often waging ineffective psychological war. Bluntly, too, often the Vietcong remain closer to the peasant than does the Government.

Explaining Threat

This was underlined by a young Catholic priest in the city of My Tho this past week. The priest was discussing the difficulty of explaining to his faithful thereat threat of the Vietcong, the fact that theirs really is a Communist-backed and inspired movement.

The parishioners did not accept this: The Vietcong, they said, were nationalists, not Communists. Why, the very fact that in this area which they controlled they permitted the priest to travel safely showed they were nationalists.

The priest shrugged. “How can I tell them that this is part of the propaganda; that the Vietcong do not want to alarm the peasants now, by killing me? It is premature now, so they let me live two more years. It is a sad thing, but to the the Vietcong are the heroes and the revolutionaries and the government officials corrupt and evil.”

Some Americans envisioned something of a stalemate developing in the delta about two months ago. But now there is doubt that even this is really possible. For other sources believed that inevitably one side is going to have superior initiative and momentum, that instinctively the peasants are going to sense that, in the delta for many months the initiative and drive belonged to the Vietcong and, according to these sources, the peasantry knew this.

What is particularly chilling is the growing hold the Vietcong were gaining on two rich provinces immediately south of Saigon, Long An and Dinh Tuong. There they had undermined vast segments of an overextended hamlet program and in the opinion of both some Americans and Vietnamese controlled an estimated two-thirds of the rural area despite a former commander's claim that the Government controlled more than 95 per cent.

If the Vietcong are successful in this drive—and they are still continuing a major campaign there—then they will gain in this particular kind of war a singularly handsome victory. It would give them a hand right at Saigon's throat with the remarkable benefits that would bring. For there is no doubt that if the area immediately around Saigon is dominated by guerrillas and travel becomes unsafe then this will have vast and unsettling effect on the nation's leaders, foreign diplomats, civil servants, and military leaders—in essence a psychological victory of stunning proportions and a more than subtle push towards a trip to that most feared of cities, Geneva.

Appearances

For the Vietcong fight their war at times for psychological effect. They cannot really hold territory but they can appear to hold it; both to the Government forces and the peasantry this to often enough. For the guerrillas it is always important to seem stronger than they really are.

What are the effects of the junta on this contested region?

So far there is little effect on the peasants themselves. Just informing many of the peasants is a difficult and complex job, and for many peasants, sadly, the first news of the change In government will come from Vietcong mouths and will be colored by Vietcong views. For many peasants, as one Vietnamese said, there will be a willingness to believe that the Government has changed when the price of rice changes, military security improves or a really able local administrator appears.

The military have made the delta their top priority and have appointed their best commanders to it. Many Vietnamese and Americans hope this will work down through the chain of command and that at all officer levels there will be a new effort and capacity. They say the outposts are going to come down, that they will be replaced by mobile defenses and night fighting and they say they are willing to take on guerrilla main-force units even if it means extremely heavy casualties.

Some observers here believe that this could be vital. For the Vietcong are seen having made a major investment in these beefed-up battalions. If the Government can break their backs then it will have beaten the guerrillas in part at their own game, for it will have scored a major psychological victory.

Finally, what the junta will be doing is testing how much more will there is left to fight this war on the part of its people. For after 20 years of war the Vietnamese people are tired. Some people—neutralists, French, Communists—feel that this is a war forced on the Vietnamese by the Americans and that there is a subsurface desire on the part of the Vietnamese to make a deal with Hanoi at almost any price.

Yet others, Vietnamese and Americans, believe that this is not true, that there Is still a capacity on the part of the Vietnamese to fight well if they are well led and if they have something to fight for. What will be proved in the delta will be how well they are led and whether they have something worth fighting for.

Saigon, South Viet Nam (AP) - In its nine years of independent existence, South Viet nam has been scourged by terror and political intrigue.

Now it is experiencing a nightmare.

The nightmare began 10 days ago, and its effects have jolted capitals around the world.

Buddhist soldiers -- trained by Americans -- invaded pagodas where once they had worshipped. They cracked the skulls of Buddhist monks. Shotgun blasts shattered the serenity of monastery cloisters.

Catholics joined Buddhists in fighting other Catholics and Buddhists. Families were torn apart. Friends became enemies. Blood flowed in town and city.

In the countryside, furtive Communist Viet Cong guerrillas fought on. In North Viet Nam, the Communist regime gleefully broadcast the news from the South, as if anticipating an issue for rallying the population behind the drive they have pursued relentlessly since the 1930s the envelop the whole country for communism.

"Here goes eight years and $2 billion worth of American aid down the drain," remarked a U.S. official sourly as reports of violence poured into his office.

In Washington, administration officials feared a keystone of U.S. policy in Asia might be tottering. Americans have stationed 14,000 troops on Viet Nam's soil and are spending $500 million a year to shore up this little chunk of Southeast Asia against the Communist steamroller.

What motivated the violent government crackdown on the Buddhists? From remarks dropped by persons close to President Ngo Dinh Diem and his powerful brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu -- who together rule the country -- it seemed the plan was to crush Buddhist and political opposition, force potentially recalcitrant army leaders to support the government, and lay down a hard line to the United States, all in one sweep.

"To save a nation, radical surgery is necessary sometimes," said a ranking Vietnamese cabinet minister. "We believe history will show that we were right. America disagrees. But America lost China, Laos and many other countries to the Communists. We think our methods are realistic."

The chain of events began May 8 in the city of Hue. An angry crowd gathered at Hue's main pagoda, Tu Dam. Leading monks made speeches the like of which had not been heard in public since the Diem administration began.

The government had ordered religious flags taken down everywhere. Buddhists were angry. It was Buddha's birthday. Flying the five-colored Buddhist banner was among the traditions. They were embittered because Roman Catholic banners still flew in various communities. The president and his family are Catholics, and this also was a source of Buddhist resentment. Perhaps three quarters of the people embrace one or another form of Buddhism.

From the gently rising hill where the Tu Dam pagoda is perched, thousands of persons marched behind saffron-robed monks and nuns. They trudged along Hue's main boulevard to an American-built broadcasting station. There they demanded entrance to broadcast their protests, and the first of a long series of bloody demonstrations erupted.

An obscure major named Dang Sy, the local security officer, threw his forces at the demonstrators. Ttroops fired in the air. Soldiers hurled tear gas grenades. Fire houses spewed torrents. Two blasts went off in the crowd -- grenades, said the Buddhists. Armored cars crushed several persons beneath them. Screaming girls hurled their shoes at troops and vehicles.

When it was over eight were dead. Three more died later of wounds. 

The news spread, and insurrection rumbled among the Buddhists. Men and women who had not been in pagodas for years changed long-forgotten prayers.

In a country like Viet Nam, politics is made in the cities. The countryside peasant, busy scratching out a living, knows little of the forces shaping his destiny and cares about politics only when he is directly affected. But people in cities like Hue and the coastal towns are strongly Buddhist and know what is going on.

Hue normally is preoccupied with its own bustling affairs. The town is bisected by the Perfume River and dotted with magnificent tombs of bygone kings. Its 90,000 residents are tough, courageous, accustomed to hard work. President Diem and his ruling family come from a village near Hue, and from the Hue area come many of the regime's deadliest enemies.

Saigon is not easily aroused. A sprawling capital of 2 million, Frenchified and lovely despite teeming slums, it has seen politicians, wars and crises come and go. But many Saigonese have been aroused now.

Buddhist leaders put forward "five demands." They called for an end to alleged persecution, equal rights with Christians, release of jailed demonstrators, government acknowledgement of responsibility for the bloodshed with punishment of the perpetrators, and compensation of the victims.

Saigon, where demonstrations always were strictly forbidden, saw its first public challenge to the Diem government May 30.

In front of the National Assembly building, 356 Buddhist monks and nuns leaped from buses and taxis and stood for hours on the mall, protest banners raised. Simultaneously in Saigon and Hue, 400 miles to the north, hunger strikes began.

Violence exploded again June 4. Students demonstrating in Hue ran into a blockade and sat in the streets. Troops threw glass containers of a liquid -- never officially identified -- on the pavement where the students squatted. About 70 were hospitalized with severe burns.

Hue's Tu Dam pagoda was blockaded. Soldiers charged with fixed bayonets on any assembly of students.

In Saigon the most violent shock of all came June 11. A demonstration had begun and police apparently expected nothing exceptional. Silently marching monks had just left a small pagoda.  A grey sedan led the procession. 

At 9:20 a.m. the sedan stopped briefly, abruptly. Three monks stepped out, carrying a plastic can. Several hundred marchers formed a circle at an intersection.

An aged monk, Thich Quang Duc, seated himself on a cushion, legs folded. Two other monks poured gasoline over his shaved head and stepped back. Quang Duc lighted a match and calmly folded his hands in the Buddhist lotus position. For five minutes he sat motionless while the skin was seared from his body. The charred form sprawled grotesquely.

A wail arose from the monks and nuns. They raised banners proclaiming that "a Buddhist priest burns for five demands."

Monks shed their outer robes to fashion a sling and carried the body to the Xa Loi pagoda, Buddhist national headquarters. The pagoda's great bell tolled to the accompaniment of thunder from a huge drum behind the statue of Buddha in the main hall.

A week later Quang Duc's charred body was cremated. His ashes were distributed to stupas -- Buddhist reliquaries -- and pagodas throughout the nation. The local Buddhist hierarchy proclaimed him a saint. 

The robes which carried the body were cut into tiny pieces and distributed. Some said each fleck of yellow cloth provided miraculous protection for the wearer. Dots of yellow appeared everywhere on dresses and lapels.

At Saigon's Quang pagoda, a U.S.-educated monk named Quang Lien said: "Thich Quang Duc was a courageous and intelligent old man, adept at yoga. It was yoga and prayer that freed him of pain in his final minutes. His act has given Vietnamese Buddhism moral strength -- a strength that will be able to stand even the test of bayonets and machine guns."

On Sunday, June 16, about 8,000 demonstrators moved down a wide Saigon boulevard. Combat police met them with clubs and tear gas. Young men and women struck back with stones and insults. A 15-year-old boy was killed, many were injured.

That same rainy Sunday, about 60 nuns tried to march from Giac Minh pagoda to Xa Loi temple. Halted, they sat in the street. Police herded them into vans, cuffed them about and carted them off to another pagoda.

The government that day announced it agreed in principle to settling the "five demands," though President Diem said the government was merely agreeing to policies always exercised. Buddhist leaders said they were ready to accept the government's word. Briefly, the struggle subsided, but behind scenes the political activity was intense.

Ngo Dinh Nhu, powerful brother of the president, distributed a document to the million-member youth corps he commands, condemning the agreement and indicating preference for a tougher line. Buddhists displayed the document as evidence of bad faith.

Sunday, July 7, another brief outburst was quelled by combat police and plainclothesmen, but the nation was in for another shock that night.

Nguyen Tuong Tam, the nation's greatest living poet and author, faced trial the next day with hundreds of others accused of involvement in plots. He took poison and died, leaving an eloquent protest note.

The trials brought generally light sentences. They seemed only a show of force indicating the government would tolerate no more opposition.

But by July 13, the day of the poet's funeral, it was clear that every opposition group had made common cause with the Buddhists, even if there was no direct collaboration. The government hinted it detected the hand of communism. It said agents at Tam's grave arrested a Red agent who planned to create a bloody incident among mourners.

On July 16, about 200 monks and nuns marched to the U.S. Embassy residence and stood in the street two hours, calling for American help. Ambassador Frederick Nolting Jr. was away at the time. Police did not interfere, but the government, which frequently had voiced suspicions of American plotting against it, was angered.

Next day, thousands of women and children gathered before dawn at Saigon's tiny Giac Minh pagoda for a procession. Combat police sprinted down Phan Thanh Gian Boulevard with bayonets fixed.

Police, boxed in the crowd with barbed wire, pounced on marchers with clubs and rifle butts. Young girls, dresses stained with blood, tore at the barbed wire with bare hands. Police herded several hundred marchers into vans and detained them three days at the crematory where Quang Duc's body had been reduced to ashes.

Saigon's sultry air was charged with tension. There was a suicide fever in it. Monks and nuns for weeks had sent letters to Xa Loi pagoda offering themselves for immolation in flames.

Buddhist leaders ordered barbed wire strung against the wall of Xa Loi pagoda. Inside, nuns armed themselves with insecticide sprayers loaded with vinegar and pepper.

A wall separates the pagoda from the U.S. aid mission's parking lot. Monks asked U.S. aid officials to break an escape hole in the wall in case Buddhists might need asylum. The request was turned down.

On Sunday, Aug. 4, in the sleepy fishing town of Phan Tiet, 100 miles east of Saigon, a 20-year-old novice monk named Nguyen Huong slipped from services at a pagoda. In a smal town square he poured gasoline over himself and lighted his robes.

Government authorities found the body and spirited it away to a relative. Martial law was clamped on the town, whose people are mostly Buddhists. 

Near midnight, on Aug. 12, an 18-year-old schoolgirl climbed halfway up the outside stairs of Xa Loi pagoda in Saigon. In the rain, she drew a hatchet from under her dress and tried to chop off her hand. The monks said she did it as a sacrifice to the cause.

Two days later, a 17-year-old novice monk, Thanh Tue, left a pagoda near Hue in the dead of night, set fire to himself and died in a blaze of gasoline. Monks at the pagoda, intent on a public funeral, carried the coffin toward the highway to Hue. Soldiers sailed into the crowd, using steel helmets as weapons, and laid out many monks. They seized the coffin and whisked it off to a relative in a northern village.

At times there was hope for conciliation. Buddhist leaders said they had trusted Diem's good faith, but were worried about the others, including Diem's brother, Nhu.

Nhu's beautiful and powerful wife poured more fuel on the flames. She declared that all the Buddhists had done for their country was to "barbecue a monk." Her father, Tran Van Chuong, then ambassador in Washington, reprimanded her and later resigned his post, along with his staff.

Diem had named a commission, headed by the vice president, a Buddhist, to deal with the problem. Buddhists had been granted permission to fly their flag on certain occasions. The government promised the National Assembly would look into claims of inequalities. The officer in charge during the May 8 bloodshed in Hue was fired.

But the hour was late for such measures. More and bigger trouble was in store.

On Aug. 15, Ambassador Nolting ended a stormy two-year tour in Saigon and left. Buddhist leaders said they planned demonstrations after the arrival of the new ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge. But privately they admitted worry.

On the day Nolting left, a 29-year-old nun became the first of her sex to join the fiery suicides. The nun, Dieu Hien, died in flames in Ninh Hoa, near the northern coastal resort of Nha Trang. The provincial chief said the nun's body was seized by authorities and given a pauper's burial. Monks in Nha Trang were furious. Demonstrations began and the town was placed under martial law.

In Hue that night a period of eerie, unreal quiet was broken suddenly by a loudspeaker carrying the voice of Tieu Dieu, a 71-year-old monk whose son was a university professor in Saigon. He announced that he would burn alive in support of the Buddhist cause and in protest against Mrs. Nhu's remarks. He died in flames in the pagoda courtyard a few hours later while monks and nuns chanted prayers and snapped pictures.

Hue was placed under strict martial law. On Aug. 17, with the town's deathlike quiet broken only by the rumble of military vehicles the government announced dismissal of the Catholic rector of Hue University, who had been moderate in his approach to the Buddhist problem. There was talk he had clashed with Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc, another brother of President Diem. Students, both Catholic and Buddhist, promptly demonstrated.

A national crisis was at hand. On Sunday, Aug. 18, Hue's Tu Dam pagoda, opened by government permission, was jammed by people listening to funeral oratory over Tieu Dieu's body. In Saigon, about 17,000 rallied at Xa Loi pagoda, chanting and cheering. In a dozen or more towns of the central highlands and coast areas, tension ran high.

At Da Nang, a coastal city 300 miles northeast of Saigon, American eyewitnesses reported a demonstration of about 4,000 Buddhists began with official permission. Troops surrounded the area, but there were no incidents until a jeep tried to drive into the crowd.

In the jeep were an army captain and driver. According to several accounts, the driver became alarmed when shouting. Buddhists surrounded the jeep, and he fired several shots. This apparently maddened the crowd. Demonstrators hauled the two men from the jeep, disarmed them, burned the vehicle and beat the officer. Buddhist Boy Scouts finally dragged the officer to safety. 

In Saigon, high Cabinet ministers said it was the last straw for the palace. It was then, the ministers said, that Diem and Nhu decided on all-out force against the Buddhist leaders, political opponents and what the Diem government once called American meddlers

Da Nang was placed under military control. Monks in Nha Trang were bottled up in their pagoda. In Hue, Tu Dam pagoda monks had scheduled a huge funeral demonstration for a burned monk Aug. 22.

On Tuesday, Aug. 20, monks at Xa Loi pagoda hauled benches across staircases, evidently as barricades. At about 11 p.m. a monk named Duc Nghlep reported he had received news from a devout and important Buddhist that police had orders to mass around the pagoda.

Just after midnight the monk telephoned a correspondent and excitedly reported: "The police have come. They're at the gate. Tell the American embassy quickly." Then the line went dead.

A few minutes later, several hundred U.S.-trained special forces troops, police and uniformed palace bodyguards blasted their way through the pagoda's iron gate with explosives. Floodlights cast a garish glare over the courtyard. A din of gongs, drums and screams was punctuated by shots. In the neighboring U.S. aid building, U.S. Marine guards were poised and ready with riot guns.

Two frightened monks scaled the concrete wall into the parking lot and told the Americans they had seen at least one monk shot and killed and many others wounded.

After 15 wild minutes, the shooting subsided. Ambulances and trucks loaded with prisoners roared away into the night. At one hospital, an eyewitness reported, at least 30 wounded monks were admitted.

Throughout Saigon and all South Viet Nam, key pagodas were hit, monks and nuns were arrested and carted away in vans.

In Hue, troops invaded Tu Dam pagoda and seized the body of the dead monk. Shotgun fire was heard. At Hue's other pagoda, Dieu De, inflamed people made a stand and a pitched battle developed with attacking paratroopers. The resisters fought with sticks and fists for a bridge over the river leading to the pagoda. Hundreds were wounded. Probably many were killed. There are no reliable casualty lists from any of the actions that night.

Dieu De pagoda fell soon after dawn, and while troops cleared the streets, people of Hue beat gongs in protest from behind their windows.

Troops in Saigon took over all key installations, and Minister of State Nguyen Dinh Thuan told a U.S. official the president had declared a national state of siege. Maj. Gen. Tran Van Don was named to take charge of national security. Posters denouncing "Buddhist traitors" were slapped on buildings throughout the capital.

President Diem said he decreed martial law to safeguard the nation's security. Arrests had run into the thousands. Ngo Dinh Nhu told correspondents later that more than 1,000 Buddhists were in jail. He denied that any had been killed.

American officials denounced the violence as a broken promise to deal with the Buddhists moderately.

SAIGON, Viet Nam (AP) -- The passing of the Diem government in South Viet Nam has created a power vacuum that could lead to more instability and upheaval.

The transition from family dictatorship to military junta has been immediate, smooth and relatively bloodless. Army units were back fighting the Communist Viet Cong guerrillas within hours after the Saigon government was overturned. Civil administration has been almost undisturbed; with few exceptions, the same faces were in the same government offices Monday morning.

The big change is that the nation is now ruled by a committee instead of a family.

But there is no guarantee that this unit will work harmoniously. And in the absence of an established political leader in the group, some observers feel the generals may eventually fall to wrangling.

Despite the naming of civilians to a provisional government, the generals will continue to hold the real power for a long time, according to present indications.

One general on the junta said Wednesday he thought it might be 6 to 12 months before a civilian government with full power could be elected.

This leaves a lot of time for political juggling or a counter-coup.

The provisional government is not made up of strong political personalities. Nguyen Ngoc Tho, the premier, has been a career bureaucrat since 1930. Although he was President Ngo Dinh Diem's vice president, he never has exercised any real authority.

All national policies for the time being will be made by the military revolutionary committee of generals headed by Maj. Gen. Duong Van Minh.

Minh, 47, while highly respected, is difficult to identify as a national leader. In his own words he is "a soldier, not a politician."

The junta unquestionably will fight hard to crush the Communist guerrillas they have been fighting the past four years. And the generals will continue to be good friends of the United States.

But their problems are massive. They still must face huge deficit spending and a precarious economy, even with massive U.S. aid.

The Viet Cong has by no means tossed in the towel.

The junta will have to do some unpopular things, the sting of which will be noticeable after the honeymoon of freedom from the Ngo family is over.

"Someone must take a strong hand here before long, because the Vietnamese are basically like the French -- each citizen is a political party unto himself," a longtime Saigon resident said.

SAIGON (AP) -- Gen. Paul D. Harkins feels the coup that toppled President Ngo Dinh Diem will have little overall effect on the prosecution of the war against Communist guerillas. 

In an exclusive interview, the commander of U.S. forces in South Viet Nam said yesterday he believed Diem had a good anti-Communist campaign with effective U.S. support before the coup, and that this pattern will continue under the new revolutionary government.

Harkins' views differ sharply from those of key generals in the junta. Gen. Ton That Dinh said last week, for example, that the war against the Communists could never have been won under Diem.

The four-star American commander was asked if political considerations by Vietnamese field commanders hindered the war effort under the Diem regime.

"I don't think they were as serious as some people make them out to be," he said. "The president (Diem) did direct some operations. Province chiefs conducting operations had to work within his chain of command, and some operations were affected."

How effective was Diem, viewed purely as a military commander?

"I don't think Diem ever was really a military man, and he never had any military training as far as I know," Harkins said.

"But he was bold. Some of his military operations, when he was given good information, were very effective. The An Lac operation (earlier this year), for example, pinpointed the Viet Cong's sixth regional battalion. The operation was very bold, very daring and very worthwhile.

"Diem was concerned that the Viet Cong might cut the country in two, so he put major effort into the central Vietnamese provinces. These are under control now, making it possible to transfer troops from there to the Mekong River Delta."

During the past week, Harkins has been charged in the Saigon press and by critics of the old regime with having been too close to the president's family, including his brother and advisor, Ngo Dinh Nhu.

"I was sent here by the President (Kennedy) to support 14 million people," Harkins replied. "I know President Diem, but I did not know Nhu at all. I talked to Nhu three or four times, but my poor French was not the equal of his excellent French.

"I have been close to the military commanders here."

Asked about rumors that he might be reassigned to another post in the face of criticisms, Harkins said:

"That decision is not up to me. Naturally, I would like to see this job through to the end. I think 1964 will be the decisive year. Of course, it is not a question of a clear-cut victory over the Viet Cong, but of getting the situation enough under control that the Vietnamese can carry on and take care of things alone."

Harkins said that intentions before the coup of bringing 1,000 American servicemen home from Viet Nam before Christmas still were in effect despite the coup. The United States has 16,500 servicemen in South Viet Nam.

Harkins, U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and top Pentagon and State Department officials will meet in Hawaii Nov. 20 to discuss conditions in South Viet Nam.

SAIGON, Viet Nam, Nov. 9 (AP) -- Two hundred armed rebels of the formerly outlawed Social Democratic Party have rallied to the new revolutionary government, the government announced tonight. 

Recruitment of these fighting men, who have been campaigning against United States-supported government troops near the Cambodian frontier, raised a question as to how many guerrilla outfits labeled communist Viet Cong by Ngo Dinh Diem's administration may have been made up of noncommunist foes of his regime.

The government of Premier Nguyen Ngoc Tho hopes to win over all noncommunist opposition parties, factions, and guerrillas and create a united front against the Viet Cong.

Buddhist leaders called today for support of the new regime by the nation's Buddhist millions.

A once-powerful religious sect, that Diem crushed, the Cao Dai, was reported planning to give its backing and reorganized a private army of 2,000 to 3,000 men.

Another American serviceman was killed yesterday in the sporadic warfare the Communists have intensified since Diem was overthrown last weekend.

Sgt. William J. Everhart of Canton, Kas., was killed by machine gun fire that raked a patrol of armed mountain tribesmen he was accompanying. Everhart was the 75th American to die in combat in South Viet Nam.

An American enlisted man with him was wounded.

There was no immediate identification of the enlisted man.

The government said that the Social Democratic rebels switching to its side quit positions in An Giang province, 120 miles west of the capital, and brought in weapons that included two mortars and two dozen machine guns.

Another leading political opponent of Diem was freed from prison. He is Phan Khac Suu, an engineer and former deputy in the national assembly who was a leader of the outlawed Dai Viet party.

Suu was arrested by secret police Nov. 15, 1960, three days after the collapse of a military uprising against Diem.

He said he was kept for a year and tortured frequently in police dungeons maintained in the cellar of a building at the Saigon zoo, then was transferred to a succession of prisons.

Malcolm W. Browne for the last year and a half has been chief Associated Press correspondent in South Viet Nam. He has traveled into many remote areas with troops and reported the action. Now in the United States briefly he has been asked many questions about the Vietnamese war. In this article he answers some of these questions.

Q: How is the war in South Viet Nam going?

A: For a few months the war has been on a kind of plateau. Fighting and casualties go on, but neither side has gained much. The Communists have not achieved what they hoped to do, but they are still fighting as hard as ever.

Q: How long do you think it will take to win?

A: The most discouraging aspect is that the Viet Cong is evidently recruiting fighters just as fast as it loses men in battle. In this pattern the war could go on indefinitely. Saigon and Washington hope the Viet Cong will realize it can't win and will give up. The Viet Cong hopes Washington will get tired of spending and bloodshed, and agree to a negotiated truce of the Laotian type. Neither side shows signs of giving in.

Q: How deeply is America involved?

A: As deeply as possible -- short of combat divisions. The decision has been made to hold the line against Communist subversion. Americans in Viet Nam feel that White House would send in combat units if it became obvious there was no other way to win. As it is, GI advisers are shooting and getting shot. Technically, this is not combat, but to call it anything else is quibbling with words.

Q: What would happen if America pulled out?

A: Most Saigon government officials, American diplomats and military officers agree the Communists would take over quickly. Without American support, President Ngo Dinh Diem's government could not stand. The strongest opposition to the government is the Viet Cong.

Q: Should America continue support of the Diem government?

A: It is doubtful that there is much choice. America can influence Vietnamese policies only by persuasion. To use force would bring charges of colonialism that would strengthen the Communist position throughout Southeast Asia. The CIA is kept out of Vietnamese politics and confined to war activity in the countryside, for the most part.

Q: What is life like for the average American soldier?

A: If he's in one of the support units, such as the helicopter crews, he is under fire almost daily. Soldiers usually serve 12-month tours, and most I've known have been anxious to leave.

Q: Vietnamese army units have been charged with lacking aggressiveness and being unwilling to fight. What about that?

A: Most of the Vietnamese soldiers I've known struck me as courageous -- but if they are not pushed, they insist on cooking lunch and having a long siesta, even when their units are in hot pursuit of the enemy. The Vietnamese officer corps is organized on the basis of political reliability. Many officers are unwilling to initiate action that could backfire into a reprimand from the palace.

Q: How effectively are Americans waging guerrilla warfare?

A: In general, American field officers and soldiers are doing an impressive job. Many speak Vietnamese enough to communicate with local commanders. They have learned to live on local food and can keep going in the jungle. There are few privates and fewer draftees -- most are seasoned professionals.

Q: How effective are helicopters?

A: Without them it would be hard to continue the war, although helicopters are easy to hit with a machine gun. If the Viet Cong had better weapons or a few armed airplanes, helicopter war would be even more dangerous. But helicopters have made it possible to keep the Vietnamese army on the move.

Q: Will Viet Nam become a second Korea?

A: Most American officials consider this unlikely. Ambassador Frederick Nolting feels that neither North Viet Nam nor Communist China is in a position to risk that kind of war. North Viet Nam's small but growing industry is the major hope for its economic future. The industry would be destroyed in a larger war.

Q: How about progress toward democracy in South Viet Nam?

A: The machinery exists but under an emergency clause in the constitution President Diem rules by decree. There is no habeas corpus. Secret police keep tabs on everything. The government contends that democracy must be built from the hamlet level upward, educating peasants and getting them accustomed to the democratic process. Critics say that unless Saigon moves faster toward giving the people a voice in their government, the Viet Cong will remain popular.

Q: How much influence does Mme. Ngo Dinh Mhu, the first lady, have?

A: She is very powerful. She is the wife of Diem's brother, regarded as the second most powerful man in the country. Mme. Nhu is beautiful and charming, with an extremely forceful personality and a good deal of political strength in her own right. She has been charged by many opposition leaders with corrupt business dealings and with amassing a fortune in foreign banks. I asked her about these charges once, and she answered that her family had always been wealthy and didn't need more money. She was much more interested in power, she said.

Q: How big a factor is Communist infiltration through Laos?

A: North Vietnamese agents come in through Laos steadily, but intelligence men feel the rate is not numerically great -- a few hundred a month. There is no evidence of weapons being infiltrated. Chinese-made medical supplies and North Vietnamese uniforms turn up, and some rice is smuggled. The main strength of the Viet Cong seems to be internal. Even if the Laotian border could be sealed, I think the war would continue pretty much as is.

Q: Where does the Viet Cong get its weapons?

A: Most Viet Cong weapons now are new U.S. military weapons, captured in ambushes on government units and attacks on outposts. Often a Viet Cong is organized initially with no weapons. The political organizer tells his men and women that they must fight at first with handmade arms -- spears, daggers, swords, and crude shotguns. To get better weapons, the unit must capture them from the enemy. The system evidently works. Viet Cong arms now include modern recoilless cannon, heavy mortars, good machine guns and very large supplies of submachine guns.

Q: To what extent is the war spilling over into the civilian population?

A: Accidental civilian casualties are probably equal to or greater than military casualties. Air force bombing and strafing and artillery take a particularly heavy toll. There is no front line, and the war generally rolls into hamlets without warning. Throughout the Mekong River delta, peasants have improvised air raid shelters, sinking earthenware crocks into pits.

Accidental loss of life is tragically high. Many American officials feel bombing and shelling in the countryside may do more harm than good. A family that lost a mother or a child in a raid is likely to look sympathetically on the Viet Cong, which condemns such things as the work of the "U.S.-Diem imperialist warmongers." Terror cuts both ways. The Viet Cong has sometimes shelled swarming rural marketplaces, and often burns down schools, assassinates teachers and local officials, or murders families whose men cooperate with the government.  

Dam Doi, Viet Nam (AP) -- This jungle town went through a bloodbath Tuesday and the generals called it a victory. Perhaps it was. But it is not the kind of victory this shattered town can endure very often.

The marines landed by helicopter and chased out the Viet Cong guerrillas who seized Dam Doi. In the jungles and paddies south of here, the Communists may have lost more than 100 killed. They also lost some machine guns and rifles.

As usual, the enemy came up the canal in sampans in the dead of night and crept to within yards of the flimsy barricades before attacking.

This time he came in strength, with recoilless cannon, machine guns, mortars and 500 battle-hardened Viet Cong regulars.

Dam Doi reeks of death. The bodies of women and children lie rotting on corrugated iron litters, waiting for the burial squads. The few buildings still standing have been turned into morgues.

It was even worse at Cal Nuoc, 20 miles west of here. Most of the town was burned to the ground Tuesday.

In the two biggest Viet Cong onslaughts of the night in Dam Doi, more than 100 government soldiers and civilians died. Probably another 100 were carted off by retreating Communists.

The enemy took along four mortars and more than 75 smaller weapons captured from government posts. 

Dam Doi, a jungle settlement of 2,000, about 70 miles south of Saigon, has lived with death and the Viet Cong for years.

In February 1962, this correspondent watched another of its agonies. Only jungle trails and canals connect Dam Doi with the outside world, and at that time there were no troop-carrying helicopters. It took three days to relieve this town.

That attack was bad. The district chief led 65 troops in a desperate counterattack against the enemy in the dark jungle outside the fortifications.

No one returned from that mission and the Viet Cong cut off the head of the district chief.

But the few defenders lefty inside the earthwork stockades held out until help came. 

This time, the survivors want to leave Dam Doi, and let the jungle claim it.

The district chief was killed by one of the first shells.

Two months ago, an American advisor in Ca Mau, the province capital 25 miles to the north, predicted something like this.

"We just can't hold on in Dam Doi, Cai Nuox or a dozen other places in an Xuyen province if the Viet Cong ever makes one big push," he said. "We just don't have the strength to occupy an enemy zone, and this whole province is an enemy zone."

A few weeks ago, another American adviser in the area blew out his brains with a pistol. No one knows why. But the jungle closes in on people down there.

The government has tried. Last year there were some huge operations in an Xuyen province, with tanks, planes, helicopters, armored river boats and upwards of 5,000 men. There was another big operation early this year.

Both were billed as victories. But the Viet Cong came back as strong as ever when the dust settled.

In the mountains of central Viet Nam, government forces and their American advisers are systematically building strongholds to halt enemy movements and cut Viet Cong supply lines.

But it is a different war in these jungles, where the Communists are in force and move fast.

"If and when we win this war," a weary, mud-spattered American said, "the last place we're going to win is down here."