Ky and Thieu Wage Battle for Hearts, Minds

The general who once bragged he had “absolute power” over South Vietnam sat in a Little Saigon law office, chain-smoking Winstons and talking about a post-communist world.

“We fought them with guns. We failed,” former South Vietnamese premier Nguyen Cao Ky said Friday. “Now Marxism is finished. . . . We should fight them in the field of politics and economics.”

After a bumpy 15 years of exile, the flamboyant Ky, who divides his time between Fountain Valley and Bangkok, and his equally controversial rival, former president Nguyen Van Thieu, now living in Boston, have suddenly hit the lecture circuit.

Inspired by the democratization of Eastern Europe, both men are predicting the demise of Communism in Vietnam and offering their services in helping to rebuild a new order.

Yet old enmities remain. In the factionalized world of Vietnamese emigre politics, Thieu’s followers are now painting Ky as an opportunist and Ky’s supporters are calling for a federal investigation of Thieu for alleged embezzlement and drug trafficking during the Vietnam War.

Meanwhile, several other groups of Vietnamese-Americans say both men are disgraced, and they have promised to picket a speech by Thieu today in Westminster.

“Thieu and Ky are both criminals,” said one prominent Vietnamese community leader who asked not to be named. “They ruined a whole country with their stupidity. Now they want to come out and speak for everybody. That’s ridiculous.”

However, Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) said that both men were patriots who failed largely because of the ineptitude of the Americans.

“I respect both men, and they both have gotten a rotten deal,” Dornan said in a telephone interview from Chicago. “I hate to see them fighting for the affection of their own people, because in the main I think they served their country well.”

Though Ky and Thieu have been jockeying for position for several months, their paths suddenly intersected when both announced plans to speak in Little Saigon today.

In what all insist was an accident of scheduling, Ky and Thieu scheduled speeches one hour and three blocks apart. Meanwhile, a third group, the newly formed Vietnamese Community of Southern California, had invited a bevy of federal, state and local politicians to its maiden reception--also scheduled for this afternoon.

Upon learning of the conflict, Ky announced he would postpone his speech until next month, and jetted off to San Jose on Friday to attend the funeral of a former Vietnamese air force general. The Vietnamese Community reception is scheduled for 2 p.m., and so is Thieu’s invitation-only speech.

“Orange County is a small county, and I don’t think there is enough room for three big meetings,” Ky said. The former fighter pilot laughed, rubbed his Winston between his small, lean fingers and leaned back in his chair, preparing to field questions about Thieu.

The power struggle between the two men dates back to 1967, when Thieu, then a figurehead chief of state, challenged Premier Ky for Vietnam’s presidency. This alarmed the Americans, who feared a feud might weaken the South Vietnamese army, according to historian Stanley Karnow. Ky agreed to become Thieu’s vice president in exchange for a behind-the-scenes military role. But by 1971, the cautious and wily Thieu had pried Ky from power.

“Rivalry, I think, is too strong a word to describe our relationship,” Ky said. “In 1967, I voluntarily stepped down. Every Vietnamese at that time knew that I held the power. I could have the presidency, I could do anything I want. I could even (have) put Mr. Thieu in jail if I want. But that was not my nature.”

Ky chalked up some of the struggle to a personality conflict. “You can say that he’s a politician and I’m a fighter,” he said.

But Ky giggled with disbelief when told of rumors that his faction was offering to pay picketers at Thieu’s speech today. Nevertheless, Ky said: “He’s going to have to answer questions about his past. I don’t think people are going to listen to what he has to say about the future.”

An aide, Ha Son Tran, came in and explained, “We say he is a combination (of) Noriega and Marcos.” Tran repeated often-leveled but unproven charges that Thieu had profited from the Indochinese drug trade, and had fled in 1975 with $75 million in gold from the Vietnamese national treasury. “Our people will ask the government to expel or indict him,” Tran said.

Thieu, through a spokesman in Los Angeles, declined requests for an interview last week. The spokesman said Thieu was aware of the allegations and the planned protests at his speech but would have no comment.

Thieu has been living quietly in London since 1975 but recently moved to Boston.

In a recent speech in San Jose, Thieu predicted that the North Vietnamese, given the opportunity, would be as eager as the South Vietnamese to overthrow the Communist regime.

“The South Vietnamese people have the right to ask the North Vietnamese Communists to give back their land,” Thieu added, in a videotape made of the speech. “If they refuse, the South Vietnamese have the right to stand up and fight the Communists.

“I have never said that I would come back and restore the government,” Thieu added, but said that if a Vietnamese hero emerged to battle the current regime, “I would be the first one . . . to kneel down at your feet and offer you my service.” Ky, on the other hand, has said that the time for armed struggle has passed.

“The trend of the world today is peaceful cooperation,” he said. “Nobody wants war. No more. The Communists in Vietnam today are still very strong, militarily speaking. But they are very weak politically and economically.”

Life in the United States has not been altogether easy for Ky. Now 61, he has failed in two business ventures, a liquor store in Westminster and a shrimp processing plant in Louisiana, and at one point was forced to declare bankruptcy.

“I was the very first Vietnamese to come to Orange County,” Ky said. “Bolsa Avenue, at that time, for $100,000 you could buy the whole street!”

After a recent divorce, Ky said, he sold his home in Huntington Beach and now stays with his daughter in Fountain Valley. But Americans have always treated him kindly. Ky said he still counts many American officials among his friends, including Richard M. Nixon, whom Ky hopes to visit again soon.

“I like him,” Ky said.

Ky now describes himself as an “old papa-san” with seven grandchildren and no more stomach for war.

In a sharp break from the harshly anti-communist views of many exiles, Ky said Friday that he did not oppose normalization of relations between Washington and Hanoi.

But, he said, the United States should exert diplomatic and economic pressure to push for liberalization in Vietnam.

“The best was for us to use that pressure to get some concessions from them. Don’t give them a free ride, because they need the Free World, and they need America.”

Ky called on Vietnamese-Americans to concentrate on helping Vietnam rebuild its faltering economy.

“It hurts you when you see your country at the bottom. It hurts me to see Vietnam so poor,” he said.

“Forget about the past,” he said. “The whole world is changing. Whether you are a communist or a non-communist is just an idea. Above all that, your country and your people are still the most important thing.”