Word: crackdowns
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...military front seemed a million miles from Saigon last week. Four weeks after the crackdown on South Viet Nam's Buddhist opposition, an atmosphere of watchful waiting hung over the city. Still fearful of a coup, the government stationed secret police outside the homes of suspect officials; top military officers were ordered to sleep at military headquarters so that a check could be kept on their whereabouts. With the Buddhist opposition lulled for the moment, Saigon's student population feebly tried to raise protests against the government. Pelted with chairs and desks thrown from classroom windows, government troops...
...coup on an astrologically auspicious day. In South Viet Nam everybody was indeed on the move, but where they were moving was no clearer than the zodiac. The U.S. was increasingly unhappy with President Ngo Dinh Diem (Capricorn), and after what the U.S. officially called his "brutal" crackdown on the Buddhists, Washington obviously could not string along with him as if nothing had happened...
...made noises designed to encourage opposition to Diem. But South Viet Nam being what it is, potential rebels did not want to move without virtually a written contract for U.S. support. Meanwhile the U.S. tried to place the odium of the crackdown on Diem's brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu (Libra),* and new Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge (Cancer) managed to suggest, without saying anything publicly, that he did not like what was going...
...Siege. A week after the government's crackdown, Saigon looked like a city under siege. Heavily armed Special Forces units guarded all key installations. Mobile "anti-suicide" squads patrolled the streets, ready to douse any further Buddhist attempts at self-immolation. An antiaircraft battery was rolled into position outside Saigon's presidential palace; since the Communist Viet Cong have no planes, the government evidently feared an attack from its own force...
...first time has a viable power structure of its own. It may well stay loyal as long as Diem remains in the presidential palace, but Nhu is vastly unpopular with most of the military commanders except Tung. The army immediately tried to dissociate itself from the Buddhist crackdown. All official bulletins from the army-controlled government information center pointedly mentioned that Nhu's special forces, and not the army, had wrecked the pagodas...