(UNTITLED)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000200750007-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 22, 1999
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: June 29, 1967
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

OUT OF L1',1PYRGHT
To the Editors:
2 should like to return rom a im o
which Mary McCarthy consigned me.
and reply to her absurd but malicious ar-
ticle, Report From Vietnam III: intellec-
tuals 1NYR, May 18]. 1 have long ad-
mired Miss McCarthy as an eminent fic-
tionist. In this article, her latest contrihu-
tion to that genre, she displays the tal-
ents for which she is famous. Her treat-
ment of social scientists in general, and
of Michigan State University, and nly-
self in particular, simply indicate that
.she was moved more by the flow of her
own rhetoric than by the need to he'
factual.
It was especially flattering to learn
that. I had "invented" Ngo Dinh Diem,
but that is an honor I must disavow.
Diem was known and respected by the
Vietnamese long before I or any other
American had met him. In fact,'Ho Chi
? \?Iinh had offered him the Vice Presi-
dency in his government four times be-
fore 1 appeared on the scene. Bao Dai,
to head his government several times, hut,}
Diem had refused because neither Sao
Dai nor .1. French sponsors would ItC-
cord a non-Communist Vietnam the in-
dependencc which was Dicn1's sine qua
non for a,:c.pting office. Beyond this,
Miss McCarthy seems bothered. by the
thought th:?t .' had introduced the word
"semantics' in;u official discourse about
Vietnam.. ~nf ;:tinarely, though she
writes McCarthy gives no in-
dication tha, reads well. Her flip
reference to . article of mine that ap-
peared in The :Vcw Leader in 1959 shows
that she eithc: did not read it at all, or
she ;lanced ;: rough it to find a passage
with which she might lambaste me. This
is not the place to argue with Mary Mc-
Carthy over whether Western political
terms and categories are applicable to'
emerging As.:tn nations. Suffice it that
many social scientists working in such
areas have. concluded that they are not
applicable without considerable modifica-
;ion. That, very simply, was the thrust
Of the article in question. (I should add
for the record that, as most writers are
aware, The New Leader, like most poli-
tical magazines. titles its articles. The
oft-quoted unfortunate phrase, "Viet
nam s Democratic One-Man Rule," was
The New Leader's, never mine.)
As for Miss McCarthy's remarks about
y Michigan State University, the CIA, and
or covert connection between MsU and
.L- 411.1rl wn. "., knr even
:n:ttcse adepts in Political Science
and Public AdntirSa44Mzed'Ztfthere was never at any time-any overt
myself, this is a classic example of how
one man's charges, however effectively
refuted they may be, aide picked up and
repeated by another person, and another,
and yet another, elaborated upon and cm-
hellishcd, until, in this ridiculous exam-
ple, she writes that "the CIA virtually took
over Michigan State University to train a
Vietnamese -police force :ind to form
CPYRGHl`T'~212..29; 1967
to to orma rc anon;ht '
raining officers ani. ng the 23 members
:4su project in Vietn:ml, who had been
cies to train Vietnamese police (civil
police, not secret police) in counter-
myself-was ever employed by qr made
a consultant to; the CIA, to the best of
my knowledge. Furthermore, there was
or ,indirect, from the CIA 10 MSU,, nor
tivity permitted. or even contemplated.
fehash of disproved assertions. It is part
ion from unproved assertions to unrelat-
McCarthy or The New York Review of
Professor of Political Science trrotcssor eishet is rignt when ne on-
4iehinan State University ccis to my statement "the CIA virtual-
East Lansing CF'.Y.K.GH I p y took over Michigan state universi-
??
. Mary McCarthy rephcs: lion.' In fact, the ICA (a US govern-
? I didn't mean tut _ ro ctsor t, a mt nt agency for internailonal cooper=
invented Diem out of, whole cloth. He ation) made an open contract with
had to have something to work with. Msu involving only fifty-four profcs-:
It is true that the Bao Dai 'had of- sors, 200 Vietnamese assistants, and 25
fered Diem the premiership twice and million dollars. I think this was a CIA-
that Ho had offered hirn a post in his inspired project but I cannot prove it.
government, in 1946, when Ho was look- What has been attested, though, by oth-
ing for' nationalist hacking. According er members of the program. is' the
to Bernard ran. (The Two Viet-Nani.c), presence of a c1A nucleus-the five
the post was the Ministry of the In- men alluded to by Professor Fishcl,
terior. Fall also cites an interesting some. of whom, according to one Nisu
fact: that Diem's name never figured in professor. were given faculty rank.'
a sort of Who's Who in Indochina, a red These men, listed on the University
book published every year till ..1943 by the. ~~ Y Y Y chart ? as' "Police Administration Spe-'
French Governor General, listing leaders cialists,,, were 'training an, internal se
and leader-material; three of Dien1's ~~_rily. , police- force, modeled on the
brothers, including Nhu, were listed. This? !i:iir. I don't know what Professor Fish-
may prove how stupid the French were or; I means by using "civil" police as an '
how little known Diem was. In any antonym of secret police: this must he
case, Diem as?.'ihe man Of prbvi-' ;tore semantic: Undercover agents of
dence" was an American invention; he: r.a- internal .. sccuritl?, police force ,
was put into power on American insist-, engaged in intellige.nce' work; tncy are
ence and. kept there on American in-, political policemen. If there were such
sistence. All authorities I am aware of a thing as a. civil police force as op-
are agreed on this',- It is generally' I posed to a criminal *police force and a
with Pro-'
olitical
olicethe
would have to he ?;
n hi
meetin
a
re
d t
th
p
p
g
y
g
e
oo
a
s
, . lessor Fishel in Tokyo in 1950 .(when traffic cops. Is that what Professor -
he had just got the brush-off from Fishel is trying to say?
General MacArthur). was what put him Finally, I was too hasty in assuming
on the map. His chief palace advisers, !that Professor Fishcl was in Limbo. He
aside from rGmbers of his family, is still active and 'operating from quite
when he came into power, were Pro- !another address-234 Fifth Avenue-as
fcssor Fishel and Colonel (now Gener- '! I discovered from a stoney-raising ap
al) Lansdale of the CIA. See Donald . pear that came through the mail the. I
Lancaster, for instance (The Einanc?i- ?'other day from the American -Friends
potion of French Indo-China), on Diem's 'of Vietnam, Incorporated, with Wesley
lack of local support, which Lancaster R. Fishel on their letterhead as first
accounts for partly by his long absence vice-chairman: "Dear Friend," it said,
in the United States during the war r"The nature of the Communist threat
against the French. . Robert Shaplen. to South Vietnam has never been clear-
contributes a biographical note that er than it is today.... We, call upon
? may explain the instant attraction he- , you -and other Americans to educate
v,edrftbc Diem ReIw se FCc c P ~ 419ff000204( 6g?t T i* lion
munism. As early as 1923, as a French in South Vietnam." Underneath, in
"rnvtnaia1 nl'?i..s.,,i ha hecai-ni alerted i ttttx..i1 ,,..hest! "cnntrlh,ath-,se A- :_r... I
sion and " imotcr%ed himself" in Cani-
st studie.s. The French took no in-
MUni
A1{il~r~~t'rI'
The content of Professor Fishel'.
New Leader article is as I described
it. Here are a few more snatches. "Is
N,o Dinh Diem a 'dictator' or a 'demo-
crat'? . . . Ngo Dinh Diem has all the
authority and all the power one needs to
operate a dictatorship, but . he isn't
operating one! Here is a leader' who
speaks the language of democracy, who
holds the powers of a dictator, and who'
governs a Republic in accordance with the
terms of a Constitution." "It may seem
paradoxical to some that out of strong .`.
governmental -power may cone indivi-
dual freedom:. But considering the con-
text in which Vietnam exists, can one _
think of a more dependable method of
assuring it?" 1 don't see that the au=
Thor of these lines has anything to cons-
plain of in The New Leader's title ex-
cept maybe that it stated clearly
what the author was getting at. Inci-
dentally, when I used to write occa-
sionally for The New Leader, they did' _.