October 01, 2001|DAVID LAMB |
TIMES STAFF WRITER Nguyen Van Thieu, South Vietnam's wartime president who fled into exile just days before his country fell to Hanoi's Communist troops in 1975, died Saturday, having long believed he had been betrayed by his U.S. allies in the final months of the war. He was 78.
Thieu, who collapsed at home Thursday in the Boston suburb of Foxboro, left many questions unanswered.
Among them: Why did he abandon South Vietnam's highlands to Hanoi's invading troops in March 1975? That decision led to the fall of Saigon a month later.
Thieu played a pivotal role in virtually every major event in Vietnam for a decade, from the overthrow of the Ngo Dinh Diem government in 1963, to the 1973 Paris peace accords, which he bitterly opposed, to the final, chaotic days of Saigon. He had already fled when North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace on April 30 to end a war that cost the lives of 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans.
But his secrets go with him to the grave. He never wrote a memoir, granted few interviews and received few visitors. Neighbors saw him walking his dog around Neponset Reservoir, but they knew little about him.
"I don't go out much," he said in 1992. "I do not, how do you say, go on promenade."
Members of the Vietnamese community in Orange County had mixed feelings about his death. He was criticized for heading a corrupt and incompetent government.
"The feeling is another chapter of history is turned," said Tony Lam, a Westminster city councilman and the first Vietnamese American elected official in the nation.
Lam said he takes a "very moderate stance" when it comes to the controversies surrounding Thieu, whom he met in Vietnam three decades ago, when Lam worked for the U.S. Embassy. He remembers Thieu as a friendly man who motivated others to help people and someone who may have been the victim of circumstances beyond his control.
"He ran a tight ship during that time," Lam said. "I felt that he was led into a primrose path by U.S. policy."
"There's a lot of controversy about his tenure as the former president of Vietnam," said Mai Cong, chairwoman of the Vietnamese Community of Orange County Inc. "The man is dead. I don't want to say anything."
Thieu, in a rare interview, acknowledged the criticism from his former countrymen.
