The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia

The Lower House: Heroin Junkets

Another avenue of the narcotics traffic that has proved embarrassing to President Thieu is the smuggling operations indulged in by pro-Thieu members of the National Assembly's lower house. The buffoonlike ineptness of many of these politicians has turned out to be more of a liability than an asset. At one point in Thieu's rivalry with the increasingly important Prime Minister Khiem, the ease with which these politician smugglers could be exposed created a good many political problems for the Thieu apparatus. While only the slightest hint of the pro-Thieu faction's massive smuggling operation has leaked out of the securityconscious military, the opera bouffe antics of bumbling lower house representatives have rated incredulous headlines around the world. Between September 1970 and March 1971 no less than seven representatives returning from foreign study tours were caught trying to smuggle everything from gold and heroin to Playboy calendars and brassieres into South Vietnam. (153) Foreign observers were genuinely dismayed by the smuggling arrests, but the Vietnamese public simply regarded them as a new low in the lower house's four-year history of bribery, corruption, and scandal. (154)

The outrageous behavior of its representatives on the floor of the house, where insults of every order are freely and openly traded, has cost the lower house any semblance of popular respect among the essentially honest, puritanical South Vietnamese peasants. It is widely regarded as the longest-running comedy show in Saigon. Votes on crucial issues are sold to the highest bidder, and the Saigon press cheerfully keeps a running tally of the going price. In addition to regular monthly stipends and special New Year's bonuses of $350, (155) pro-Thieu representatives have earned up to $1,800 apiece for voting the right way on crucial government measures. (156) In fact, even staunch opposition members vote the right way to pick up a little extra cash when defeat for their side looks inevitable. (157)

In the lower house, President Thieu relies on members of the Independence Bloc to do the bargaining and make the payments, rather than negotiating personally or working through his military advisers. Consisting almost entirely of North Vietnamese Catholic refugees, this bloc has maintained a militantly anti-Communist position since it was formed in 1967. Although the bloc is nominally independent, its leader, Rep. Nguyen Quang Luyen, met with President Thieu soon after it was formed and "verbally agreed" to support the president in exchange for unspecified favors. (158) The bloc has influence far beyond its numerical strength, and all its members occupy key positions as committee chairmen, fund raisers, or whips; with only nineteen members, the Independence Bloc controls six out of the lower house's sixteen committee chairmanships. (159) During the debates over the 1971 election law, for example, it was an Independence Bloc member, Rep. Pliam Huu Giao, who floor managed the passage of article 10. This controversial clause required a minimum of forty Congressional signatures on every nominating petition for the upcoming presidential election and made it possible for President Thieu to eliminate Ky from the running. Early in the debates, Rep. Pham Huu Giao reportedly tied down a few hill tribe votes for as little as $350 apiece and most of the Cambodian minority's ballots for a mere $700 each. (160) However, in the three days of intense bargaining preceding the final balloting, the price jumped from $1,000 to $1,800 for the final handful that completed the proposal's winning tally of seventy-five votes. (161)

Loyalty to Thieu seems to have its benefits. No opposition members have even been implicated in a serious smuggling case. All lower house representatives implicated in the heroin and gold traffic are either present or past members of the Independence Bloc. The reason for this is simple; opposition deputies often lack the necessary capital to finance such trips, and are not guaranteed "courtesy of the port" when they return. However, pro-government deputies who are bankrolled by an official travel grant or savings from months of voting the right way are able to take advantage of their four exit visas per year, a privilege guaranteed I deputies for foreign travel during the legislative holidays. The result has been an orgy of foreign junketeering on the part of pro-government deputies. In 1969-1970 junketeering representatives purchased $821,000 worth of foreign currency for their travels. One prominent progovernment representative was abroad for 119 days in 1969, 98 days in 1970 , and 75 days during the first three months of 1971. (162)

Although most pro-government deputies had usually returned with some form of contraband or undeclared dutiable item, they passed through customs without being checked. (163) Even if a representative was caught, customs officers merely imposed a "fine" and allowed the illegal items to pass through. For example, in August and December 1970 Vietnamese customs officers at Tan Son Nhut Airport discovered gold and dutiable goods in the luggage of Rep. Pham Huu Giao, one of the Thieu regime's most important lower house whips. The representative paid a rather nominal fine, and the whole matter was hushed up until it was revealed during the height of the smuggling controversy several months later. (164)

The tempo of parliamentary smuggling seems to have been intensified by the eruption of the GI heroin epidemic and the liberalization of the assembly's travel laws. In December 1970 a group of pro-Thieu deputies who control the lower house administrative office decided to allow representatives four foreign trips each year instead of two. (165) When the annual January-March legislative holiday started a few weeks later, one Saigon daily reported that a record 140 out of the National Assembly's 190 members would soon be going abroad. (166)

The smuggling bonanza that followed resulted in three sensational customs seizures within ten days of each other in March as the legislators returned one by one to prepare for the upcoming session of the National Assembly.

The first deputy implicated was Rep. Vo Van Mau, a Catholic refugee from North Vietnam and a member of the pro-Thieu Independence Bloc. During Air Vietnam's regular Vientiane-Saigon flight on March 10, a Chinese smuggler transferred a suitcase to one of the stewardesses, Mrs. Nguyen Ngoc Qui. (167) But instead of being waved through customs at Tan Son Nhut, as Air Vietnam stewardesses usually were, Mrs. Qui was subjected to a thorough search, which turned up 9.6 kilos of Laos's most popular export-Double U-0 Globe brand heroin-and a letter addressed to Rep. Vo Van Mau. Showing unusual insensitivity to Representative Mau's high official status, officers of customs' Fraud Repression Division followed up the lead. A search of Representative Mau's offices turned up the Chinese smuggler's identity card. (168) Although a spokesman for Prime Minister Khiem's office later announced that this seizure was being thoroughly investigated "because it appears to implicate directly" a deputy, (169) Representative Mau was never officially charged and quietly faded from view when he failed to stand for reelection several months later.

On March 17 another pro-Thieu representative, Pham Chi Thien, landed at Tan Son Nhut Airport on the 4:30 P.m. flight from Bangkok. Much to Representative Thien's surprise, a customs officer insisted on giving his luggage a thorough search and opened a gift-wrapped box he found in the legislator's suitcase, which turned out to contain four kilos of Double U-0 Globe brand heroin. (170) Announcing his resignation from the lower house a week later, Representative Thien denied that he was "actually" a smuggler and claimed that he had simply agreed to carry a package to Saigon as a favor to "a soft-spoken lady I met in Vientiane." (171) He admitted to accepting money for carrying the package, but denied any knowledge of its contents. (172)

While the charges against Vo Van Mau and Pham Chi Thien, both rather unimportant legislators, caused a certain amount of dismay, the arrest of a third pro-Thieu legislator, Rep. Nguyen Ouang Luyen, for gold smuggling was a major scandal. Representative Luyen was second deputy chairman of the lower house, chairman of the Asian Parliamentary Union, and had been chairman of the pro-Thieu Independence Bloc from 1967 to 1970 (he, too, was a North Vietnamese refugee). As he was boarding a flight for Saigon at the Bangkok Airport on March 18, Thai customs searched his luggage and discovered fifteen kilos of pure gold, worth about $26,000 on Saigon's black market. (173) However, the Vietnamese Embassy intervened and secured his immediate release after another legislator traveling with Representative Luyen raced into downtown Bangkok to plead for assistance. (174)

Four days later one Saigon newspaper reported that Thai customs had suspected Representative Luyen of being part of an international smuggling ring for several years but had been maintaining a discreet surveillance because of the sensitive nature of ThaiVietnamese relations. The fifteen kilos seized in Rep. Luyen's luggage were reportedly part of a larger shipment of ninety kilos of gold (worth $158,000 on the Saigon black market) being smuggled piecemeal into Saigon by this ring. (175) Reliable sources inside the lower house report that other members of the Independence Bloc had helped finance this shipment.

By all accounts, lower house representatives had been smuggling narcotics, gold, and dutiable goods into South Vietnam for over three years without such sensational exposes. Arrests were rare, and when they occurred the legislator almost always settled the matter quietly by just paying a "fine." Why had Vietnamese customs officials suddenly become so aggressive, or more pointedly, why was the Thieu faction suddenly subjected to the humiliating indignity of having three of its staunchest legislative supporters implicated in contraband smuggling within ten days of one another? The answer, as usual in South Vietnam, was political. Ironically, President Thieu's gadfly was his own handpicked prime minister, Tran Thien Khiem.