South Viet Nam: Invitation to an Exile

When Major General Duong Van Minh attempted to return to his native South Viet Nam in 1965, the tower at Saigon's Tan Son Nhut airport refused to grant his plane landing clearance and he had to head back into exile in neighboring Thailand. It was a humiliating rebuff for burly "Big Minh,"* the man who ousted Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 and who rose to chief of state before he was shelved and then banished in a subsequent coup. Last year Minh tried another route—by filing as a presidential candidate—only to have his application rejected by a military government...

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