Word: ky
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...Directory. Part of the balance is in the makeup of the ten generals themselves. The Directory is divided between Catholics and Buddhists, Northerners and Southerners, staff officers like Ky and commanders of Viet Nam's four embattled corps areas and the capital military region...
...Ky, in fact, is not even nominally the top man. That hat belongs to Directory Chairman and Chief of State Nguyen Van Thieu, 42, a brainy, sophisticated survivor of nearly every government since Diem, who provides a quiet balance to Ky's occasional impulsiveness. Of the line commanders, both the III Corps and the Capital Military Region are in the hands of generals born in North Viet Nam-and close friends of Ky. The Mekong Delta, or the IV Corps, is the domain of Major General Dan Van Quang, 36, a rough soldier whose girth and ready laughter have...
...most powerful of the corps commanders is Lieut. General Nguyen Chanh Thi, 40, tough boss of the I Corps. A sound tactician, charismatic speaker and careful planner, Thi is the one man in the Directory thought to covet Ky's job. Dapper and mustachioed, favoring fierce badges and gaudy scarves, he even resembles Ky. Thi, who was exiled by Diem after an abortive 1960 coup, could probably take the job any time he chose. Among his other assets, he can count his hand-picked head of the nation's 50,000-man police force...
Prickly Sensitivity. So far the collegium has been happy to let Ky have the headlines-and do the public honors that professional military men often find onerous. Ky has become the closest thing to a national hero cynical South Viet Nam has, is often besieged by admiring youngsters when he goes out in the streets. Sometimes Ky's flair still gets the better of him. On a recent visit to a village just liberated from the Viet Cong, Ky and his wife Mai intended to show their interest in the peasants. Snipers were firing, and it would have worked...
Some U.S. officials in Saigon fear that Ky's flair, and above all his rapport with Americans, may well prove his undoing. It was probably no accident that yet another spate of coup rumors began to float through Saigon behind the news of Ky's impressive confrontation with Johnson in Hawaii. "We killed Khanh that way," ruminates one U.S. old hand in Saigon, recollecting how the U.S. Mission backed Khanh even when it was clear that the Young Turks had lost faith in his leadership. "And we are in real danger," he adds, "of killing Ky the same...