NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
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replace Diem were unacceptable for being either French puppets or crypto-Viet Minh.
(2) The opposition to Diem, in addition to the Communists and a large element of the French, included the Chief of the Vietnamese General Staff and the sectarian religious groups. These sects have long been more concerned with maintaining their private armies and domains than with working for the common national good. The sects finally joined the Diem Government, to protect their own interests. However, General Hinh, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, with some tacit support from the sects, precipitated a prolonged crisis by threatening for about two months to overthrow the Government by force. Although this officer as a French citizen and a lieutenant colonel in the French Air Force, no effective French pressure was brought to bear on him to desist from threatening the Government. On the contrary, it appeared that a Vietnamese Neguib (or Nasser) would not have been unwelcome to the French if he had been able to establish a military dictatorship responsive to French direction.
c. Situation as of November 1954. (1) As of the date mission arrived in Saigon, General Hinh, the Chief of Staff, continued to threaten the Government, even though he had been ordered by the Chief of State to proceed to France. The sects, although represented in the Government, were openly working toward their own objectives, without thought of the consequences of their action upon the nation. The Viet Minh were in effective control of most of the rural areas and villages under nominal authority of the National Government. French representatives were pressing for the early removal of Diem and his replacement by one of their own stooges or else by a Viet Minh sympathizer who might reach some kind of understanding, perhaps tacit, with the Viet Minh. The latter course, they felt, would facilitate the work of Sainteny, then negotiating in Hanoi with the Viet Minh to the end that French businesses might continue to operate under "normal" conditions in Viet Minh territory. At the same time the Government was faced with the crushing problem of moving, caring for and relocating anti-Communist refugees from the North who now number nearly one-half million and may in the end total one million. This undertaking, which could never have succeeded without the devoted service of the French Army and the American Navy and the financial support of the U.S. Government, will long tax the resources of the nation, involving as it does one of the not significant population movements of modern times.
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