University of Virginia Library

U.S. Aircraft Affect
Opium Trade In Asia

He and his buddies even
watched the unit's sergeant-major
receive payoffs at a nearby
whorehouse where every kind of
drug imaginable was available.

An article by Kansas City
newspaperwoman Gloria Emerson
inserted into the Congressional
Record by Senator Stuart
Synungton on March
to said "In a brigade headquarters
at Long Binh. there were reports
that heroin use in the unit had risen
to 20 per cent...'You can salute an
officer with your right hand and
take a "hit" (of heroin) in your
le' an enlisted man from New
York told me... Along the 15-mile
Bien o highway running north to
Saigon om Long Binh. Heroin can
be purchased at any of a dozen
conspicuous places within a few
minutes, and was by this reporter.
for three dollars a vial."

Intrigue

Adding glamour to the
labyrinthine intrigue of Vietnam's
op trade throughout the late
1950's and early 60's was the
famous Madame Nhu. The Dragon
Lady of Saigon.

Madame Nhu was in a position
to be very likely coordinator for
the entire domestic opium trade in
Vietnam, yet so great is the power
she still wields om the palatial
exile in Paris that she has
intimidated one American publisher
and kept him from publishing the
story.

In his book, "Mr. Pop". Don
Schlanche, former editor of
Horizon and former managing
editor of the Saturday Evening
Post, recounts the following
interchange on the Plain of jars
during August 1960 between Edgar
"Pop" Buel the Indiana farmer
who left his home to work with the
Mo tribes people and a local
restaurant

"Buell drove with Albert
(Foure) to Phong Savan and
watched from the side of the
air-strip as a modern twin-engined
plane took on a huge load of
opium. Beneath the wing, talking
heatedly with the plane's Corsican
pilot, was a slender woman dressed
in long white silk pants and aod'ai,
the side-slit, high-necked gown of
Vietnam. Her body was exquisitely
formed, and her darkly beautiful
face were a clear expression of
authority. Even Buell could see that
she was Vietnamese, not Lao.

"Zat," said Foure. "Is ze grande
madame of opium from Saigon."
Edgar never learned her name, but
he recognized the unforgettable
face and figure when thy picture of
an important South Vietnamese
politician appeared months later in
an American news magazine.

Though Schanche's publisher,
David McKay Co., refused to
publish her name for fear of
reprisals, the unforgettable face was
that of Madame Nhu.

But Saigon's opium trade is not
new. Its history stretches back to
1949, when the French appointed
former Vietnamese Emperor Bao
Dai as chief of state. Bao Dai
brought with him as chief of police
Bay Vien, the undisputed leader of
Saigon but also the important
Chinese suburb of Cholon.

Bao Dai and Bay Vien held
power until they were displaced
after the 1954 Geneva accords by
Ago Dinh Nhu Diem's brother.
Nhu had gained prominence in
Vietnam as an organizer of a
Catholic trade union movement
modeled after the French Force
Ouvriere, which the CIA had helped
supply in the 1940s to break
France's communist dockworkers'
union, the CGT.

At first Nhu feigned support for
Bay Vien and Bao Dat, but by the
end of 1955 he had taken control
of the Saigon secret police and,
thereby, the city's opium and
heroin trade as well. Just as the
Nhus were consolidating their own
power, a little-known figure entered
the Diem military apparatus, a man
who through the years would
carefully extend his control over
the air force and end up eventually
heir not only to the South
Vietnamese government but to the
opium and heroin trade as well.

That man was Nguyen Cao Ky,
who had just returned from Algeria
to take charge of the South
Vietnamese air transport's C-47
cargo planes.

At what particular point in time
Ky became involved with the Nhus
in the opium trade is not known,
but by the end of the '50s he was
cutting quite a figure in Saigon's
elite circles.

Real Light

The first real light shed on the
possible sources of Ky's
extracurricular income came only
in the spring of 1968, when Senator
Ernest Gruening revealed that four
years earlier Ky had been in the
employ of the CIA's "operation
Haylift," a program which flew
South Vietnamese agents "into
North Vietnam for the purpose of
sabotage, such as blowing up
railroads, bridges, etc."

More important, Ky was fired;
Gruening's sources claimed, for
having been caught smuggling
opium from Laos back into Saigon.
Significantly, Ky and his flight
crews were replaced by Nationalists
Chinese Air Force pilots.

Neither the CIA, the Pentagon,
nor the State Department ever
denied Ky worked on Operation
Haylift. Nor did they deny that he
had smuggled opium back into
Saigon.

(To Be Continued)