Tran Kim Tuyen - Downfall

Downfall

See also: Arrest and assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm

As time passed, Tuyến began to show displeasure at the increasing interference of Nhu's wife, Madame Nhu into politics. Eventually, Nhu took offense and began to ignore Tuyến. In early 1963, Tuyến was ordered to go home and rest by Diệm, who felt he had been too lenient in his meetings with disillusioned military officers and politicians who were veering towards opposition. He was not called back to work, effectively sacked. Tuyến responded by dispatching his staff back to the position they held before they joined his department, leaving the intelligence bureau in a state of collapse. In May, when the Buddhist crisis erupted after Diệm's forces had banned Buddhists from flying the Buddhist flag to commemorate Vesak, and fatally fired on them, Diệm recalled Tuyến, hoping he could resolve the crisis.

Tuyến eventually began to plot against the Ngo family. He began meeting with Colonel Ðỗ Mậu, the chief of military security and other colonels in key leadership positions in the marine and paratroop divisions around Saigon. He also used his contacts in the Cao Đài and Hòa Hảo religious sects in plotting the coup. With growing displeasure among the populace against the Diệm regime, Tuyến targeted July 15 as the date for a coup, but was unable to recruit the generals required for his plan, since he was too closely associated with Nhu to gain their trust. In the end, Tuyến's old group ended up being led by Thảo, who was deliberately fomenting discord among the army in order to help the communists. Thảo's group did not lead the coup, as they were integrated into the main group led by Generals Dương Văn Minh and Trần Văn Đôn, which would depose and assassinate Diệm and Nhu on 2 November 1963.

Aware that Tuyến might be involved in plotting against Diệm, Nhu sent him to Cairo as ambassador. At the time, the Soviet Union-aligned Egypt was leading a campaign of African countries against South Vietnam at the United Nations, and Nhu ostensibly sent him to Cairo to lead a diplomatic push against communist influence there. It was effectively an exile for Tuyến, and there were rumours that Madame Nhu's younger brother, Trần Văn Khiêm, was planning to assassinate him. Upon arriving in Cairo, Tuyến was greeted with the news that Egypt had extended diplomatic relations to North Vietnam. Tuyến eventually flew to Hong Kong, where British intelligence provided him with protection; Tuyến kept in contact with anti-Diệm forces in Vietnam.

After Diệm was overthrown in November 1963, Tuyến decided to return to Vietnam. His wife was pregnant and he reasoned that as he had no enemies in the military junta and had worked well with them in the past, he would be safe. However, he was arrested and tried by the junta for corruption and abuse of power, and sentenced to five years in prison. Tuyến believed he was jailed because the generals were afraid that he would claim they were corrupt puppets of Nhu.

When his prison term ended, Tuyến remained under house arrest after the brother of President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu intervened. Tuyến's wife was allowed to teach in a high school and Tuyến was allowed to write political columns under an assumed name. In April 1975, as South Vietnam collapsed amid a communist onslaught, British intelligence arranged for Tuyến's wife and their three youngest children to leave for Cambridge, where their eldest son was studying. Tuyến was reluctant to leave, but did so on 29 April 1975, the day before the fall of Saigon. He departed on one of the last helicopters out of the besieged city with the help of Pham Xuan An, a Time magazine correspondent and communist spy.