Dragon Lady, Dragonfly

In a blaze of flashbulbs, Mme. Ngo Dinh Nhu left Saigon last week on a trip to Beirut, Belgrade, and points west. Elaborately coiffed and gowned, she met reporters and defended her views, attacked her enemies, dodged overly curved questions, and displayed an incredibly fascinating feminine charm. Whether twirling a parasol or hiding shyly behind an ivory fan, she both attracted and annoyed. "I had a strong desire to slap her," said one French television interviewer, "but from very, very close."

After the Lynching. Mme. Nhu's performance began at the Saigon airport. She said that when her mother cabled her from the U.S. urging her to flee South Viet Nam with her children because their lives were in danger, she had answered: "Dear Mother, I am sorry you have become intoxicated." To a question about her itinerary, she said: "Everyone calls me 'the Dragon Lady.' For the next few weeks, I will be like the dragonfly of the Vietnamese song. When it's happy, it stays; when it's unhappy, it flies away."

Tentatively, Mme. Nhu said, she planned to visit the U.S., though it would be like getting inside "a lion's cage." "I shall just talk extemporaneously," she said. "I am invited by the most important press groups. After lynching me, more or less, now they wish to hear me." She denied that she was going to be South Viet Nam's observer at the United Nations General Assembly. "I have nothing to do with the U.N.," she said. "I am not even going there to visit, because I have already seen it."*

Official Consternation. At the Interparliamentary Union Conference in Belgrade, where she represented South Viet Nam, Mme. Nhu stole the show with her graceful pink aodai. There was fire in her eyes and in her words. The Diem government would never yield to "perfidious blackmailing attacks," she exclaimed. What about the concern for South Viet Nam's Buddhists voiced by the Vatican? Pope Paul VI is too "easily worried," retorted Mme. Nhu. Her acid remark supplemented earlier comments on the same subject on French television: "As a Catholic, I am only required to believe in the dogmas of my religion and the Pope. The Pope is only infallible when he decrees something ex cathedra. I do not believe that he will put himself in his chair to disavow me, because that would be a very bad blow to Catholicism."

Reports that she would not stay at the conference until its conclusion left officials near consternation. "If Mme. Nhu leaves one day early," said one, "then the conference will have lost its importance." But she showed every sign of enjoying herself. Letting fly at the White House after reports that John F. Kennedy might be a bit unhappy with South Viet Nam's whole ruling family, Mme. Nhu suggested that the President was "misinformed about the situation in South Viet Nam." "He's a politician, and when he hears loud opposition, he tries to appease it."

Two days later she had lunch with another delegate at the conference. It was none other than the President's brother, Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Like others on the U.S. delegation, Teddy Kennedy had halfway hoped to avoid the confrontation. But they had a chat. A long chat. "She discussed at length her side of the picture," said Teddy later. "She wanted to talk to me. She wants to talk to anyone and everyone." In fact, declared an awed witness to the one-sided conversation, "she did not stop talking from one minute to the other." Unable to get a word in edgeways, Teddy took notes.

* It may have been this tart remark that partly prompted U.N. Secretary-General U Thant to make some wholly gratuitous observations at a Manhattan press conference. Conditions in Saigon were "chaotic," declared U Thant, adding that "constitutional processes" are "a feature which is completely absent in Viet Nam." They are, of course, completely absent in his own country, Burma, which is ruled by General Ne Win, as firm a dictator as exists in Southeast Asia but never criticized by U Thant.

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