The Rot Within: How Drug Trafficking, Parliamentary Smuggling, and Institutional Corruption Consumed the South Vietnamese State from the Inside During the Final Years of the Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was not merely a military confrontation between armed forces on a battlefield but also the stage upon which profound political and social fractures played out, fractures that corroded the system of South Vietnam from within until nothing of substance remained. In the later years of the conflict, a network of corruption and organised criminal activity revealed itself, a network that reached into the highest echelons of military and political leadership and that operated with the tacit approval, and often the active participation, of those sworn to defend the nation. The narcotics trade developed into a highly lucrative field of enterprise that undermined the authority of the state and destroyed the morale of its own fighting forces, turning the instruments of national defence into instruments of private enrichment. These developments did not take place in secret or in the shadows but were made possible by the interplay of military commanders, political factions, and criminal associations that operated in the open light of day. What follows is a detailed account of how this web of corruption functioned, who its principal actors were, and how the very institutions meant to protect the republic became the agents of its dissolution.

The Division of Labour in the Narcotics Trade

While the maritime protection force was involved in the import trade of narcotics, the backers of the head of state from within the ranks of his own army assumed a large share of the distribution and sale to American soldiers inside the country. High-ranking commanders of the South Vietnamese armed forces generally cooperated in this enterprise with Chinese criminal organisations from the district of Cholon. Whenever large shipments of narcotics arrived, smuggled in by the military itself or brought into the country by Chinese groups under its protection, these shipments were customarily handed over to the gangsters in Cholon for packaging and distribution. From there, Chinese and Vietnamese couriers fanned out across the land and delivered packages of heroin weighing several kilograms to military commanders from the Mekong Delta to the demilitarised zone. In three of the four military zones, high-ranking officers supervised and protected the local distribution.

The Distribution Networks Across the Military Zones

In the Mekong Delta, colonels controlled the local sale, men who were devoted to a particular general and acted under his direct authority. In the central southern part of the country, distribution became the object of contention between two feuding generals, both of whom were equally devoted to the head of state. In the northern military district, finally, deputies of the troop commander directed the trade. In June of the year nineteen hundred and seventy-one, the senior American police adviser in the country forwarded a memorandum to the military command concerning the involvement of one of these generals in the narcotics trade. In this document, attention was drawn to the relationship between the Chinese criminal organisations of Cholon and the Vietnamese generals who facilitated their operations.

A Confidential Source Reveals the Inner Circle

A confidential source had informed the investigation directorate that the father of the commander in question operated a narcotics trade together with a Chinese businessman from Cholon. This businessman undertook regular journeys from the capital to the home town of the general, usually with the national airline but sometimes also with the private aircraft of the military leader. Upon his arrival at the airport, an escort composed of members of the military security service and the military police collected him. The businessman was then presumably accompanied to the father of the general, where he handed over narcotics by the kilogram in exchange for American currency. The local police allegedly knew of these activities but feared reporting these violations of the law, since they dreaded being made into scapegoats for crimes committed by men far above their station.

The Final Link in the Chain: Reaching the American Soldier

Once the large shipments had arrived in the cities or at army bases near American installations, they were sold to the American soldiers through a network of civilian traders or low-ranking members of the Vietnamese army. In the capital and in the surrounding military district, a network of civilians handled the greater part of the marketing. However, when addicted soldiers were transferred from the capital to isolated combat positions along the border and the demilitarised zone, the drug dealers of their own army gained ever greater significance. The procurement of the substance often occurred through simple contacts at the fence, where one spoke with soldiers of the local army and could purchase directly when supplies were available. Even in vast American army installations on the outskirts of the city, Vietnamese officers operated as dealers from whom one often received the substance directly.

Smuggling by Members of the National Assembly

Another path of narcotics trade compromising to the head of state was the smuggling carried out by representatives of his faction in the lower house of the National Assembly. The inability of many of these politicians, however, represented more of a risk than an asset to the operation. The ease with which these smugglers allowed themselves to be caught created political problems for the apparatus in its confrontation with the prime minister. Although from the security-conscious military only hints about the massive smuggling of the faction leaked out, the antics of the lower house representatives made headlines around the entire world. Between September nineteen hundred and seventy and March nineteen hundred and seventy-one, no fewer than seven representatives returning from study trips abroad were caught in attempts to smuggle all manner of goods into South Vietnam.

The Degradation of Parliamentary Life

With their outrageous behaviour in the chamber, where representatives hurled vulgar insults of every kind at one another, the lower house squandered the respect of the rural population. Votes on important matters were auctioned to the highest bidder, and the local press constantly reported on the prevailing prices. In addition to regular salary supplements and special New Year gratuities, the representatives of the faction earned considerable sums in American currency for each correctly cast vote on decisive government measures. In fact, even die-hard opposition members voted correctly in order to earn something on the side when the defeat of their own side seemed inevitable. In the lower house, the head of state left the negotiations and the payments to members of the Independence Bloc.

The Independence Bloc and Its Role

This bloc, which consisted almost exclusively of Catholic refugees from the North, adopted a militantly anti-communist line from the moment of its founding. Although nominally independent, the leader of the bloc met with the head of state shortly after its establishment and agreed to support him in exchange for unnamed favours. The influence of the bloc extended far beyond its numerical strength, since all its members occupied key positions as committee chairmen, fund-raisers, or party whips. With only nineteen members, the Independence Bloc provided in the year nineteen hundred and seventy-three six of the sixteen committee chairmen of the lower house. During the debates on the electoral law, it was a member of the bloc who orchestrated the passage of a controversial article through the parliament.

The Purchase of Votes and the Exclusion of Rivals

This article required a minimum of forty signatures from members of the lower house for each nomination application in the forthcoming presidential election and enabled the head of state to exclude a rival from candidacy. At the beginning of the debate, the representative allegedly purchased a few votes of the mountain tribes for only three hundred and fifty dollars apiece, and most votes of the Cambodian minority for a mere seven hundred dollars each. In the three days of intensive negotiation before the final vote, the price for the last representatives still needed as majority procurers rose from one thousand to one thousand eight hundred dollars per vote. Loyalty to the head of state appeared to have its advantages, for no member of the opposition ever stood under the suspicion of being involved in a serious case of smuggling. All lower house representatives entangled in narcotics and gold trade were either current or former members of the Independence Bloc.

The Structural Advantage of Government Loyalists

The reason for this was simple, since opposition representatives frequently lacked the necessary capital to finance such trips and could not rely on the port authorities looking the other way upon their return. Government-friendly representatives, by contrast, who received official travel allowances or possessed savings through months of correct voting behaviour, could utilise their four exit visas per year. Such a privilege was available to all representatives during the parliamentary recesses, which is why a flood of government-friendly parliamentarians travelled abroad at state expense. In the years nineteen hundred and sixty-nine and nineteen hundred and seventy, representatives procured foreign currency worth eight hundred and twenty-one thousand dollars for their journeys. One prominent representative of the government side accumulated in this period more than one hundred days abroad.

The Customs Farce and the Culture of Impunity

Although most representatives of the government side usually returned with some smuggled goods or undeclared dutiable items, they were waved through customs without inspection. Even when a representative was caught, the customs officials merely imposed a fine and allowed the illegal goods to pass. In August and December of nineteen hundred and seventy, for example, Vietnamese officials at the airport discovered gold and dutiable goods in the suitcase of a representative. The representative paid a nominal penalty, and the entire matter was covered up until it surfaced several months later at the height of the smuggling controversy. With the outbreak of the narcotics epidemic among the soldiers and the liberalisation of the travel laws for members of the National Assembly, the pace of parliamentary smuggling appeared to increase.

The Doubling of Travel Privileges and the Smuggling Boom

In December nineteen hundred and seventy, a group of loyalists of the head of state who controlled the administrative office of the lower house decided to permit representatives four foreign trips per year instead of two. When the annual parliamentary recess arrived a few weeks later, a daily newspaper reported that one hundred and forty of the one hundred and ninety members of the National Assembly stood on the verge of a foreign trip. The smuggling boom that followed led in March nineteen hundred and seventy-one within ten days to three sensational customs seizures as the representatives of the people returned. Among the first representatives caught was a Catholic refugee from the North and member of the government-friendly bloc. On a regular flight, a Chinese smuggler handed a suitcase to a flight attendant who was subjected to a thorough search upon landing.

The Discovery of Narcotics in the Parliamentarian’s Mail

The search brought to light nearly ten kilograms of a Laotian narcotic together with a letter addressed to the representative. With unusual insensitivity to high official status, the officials of the customs fraud department followed the trail and found during the search of the offices the identity card of the Chinese smuggler. Although a spokesman later announced that the seizure would be thoroughly investigated, the representative was never officially charged and quietly disappeared from the scene. On the seventeenth of March, another government-friendly representative landed at the airport on a flight from Bangkok. Much to his surprise, a customs official insisted on subjecting his luggage to a thorough search and opened a gift box that contained four kilograms of narcotics.

The Defence of a Smuggler and the Escalation of Scandal

When he announced his withdrawal from the lower house a week later, he denied actually being a smuggler and claimed that he had merely agreed to take a package to Saigon in order to do a lady a favour. He admitted having accepted money for carrying the package but denied any knowledge of its contents. Had the accusations against these two rather insignificant representatives already caused a certain consternation, the arrest for gold smuggling of a third representative triggered a major scandal. This man was the second vice-president of the lower house, chairman of a parliamentary union, and from nineteen hundred and sixty-seven to nineteen hundred and seventy the faction leader of the Independence Bloc. As he boarded an aircraft to Saigon at the airport, the Thai customs searched his luggage and discovered fifteen kilograms of pure gold.

Diplomatic Intervention and the International Ring

The Vietnamese embassy intervened, however, and secured his immediate release after another representative had raced into the city centre to plead for assistance. Four days later, a newspaper reported that the Thai customs had had this representative under suspicion for several years as part of an international smuggling ring. The fifteen kilograms confiscated from his luggage were said to be part of a larger shipment of ninety kilograms of gold that this ring was smuggling in stages. Reliable sources reported that other members of the Independence Bloc had helped finance the shipment. In any case, lower house representatives had been smuggling narcotics, gold, and dutiable goods into South Vietnam for more than three years.

The Political Logic Behind the Exposure

Arrests were rare, and when they did occur, the representative almost always settled the matter by quietly paying a fine. The question of why the Vietnamese customs officials suddenly proceeded so aggressively and why the faction was suddenly exposed to the humiliating disgrace of seeing three of its most loyal parliamentarians associated with smuggling within ten days was easy to answer. The answer lay, as was customary in the country, in the prevailing political conditions. Ironically, the tormentor of the head of state was none other than the prime minister of his own choosing. The exposure of the smuggling operations was thus not a triumph of justice but a weapon in the internal struggle for power between rival factions of the ruling elite, each seeking to discredit the other while the nation they governed crumbled beneath their feet.