Nguyen Van Troi - Execution of a Viet Cong Terrorist
By Ted Sampley
July 31, 2005
U.S. Veteran Dispatch

On October 18, 1964, a South Vietnamese government firing squad executed Viet Cong terrorist Nguyen Van Troi after convicting him of a May 1963 unsuccessful attempt to assassinate U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge.

Troi had planted a bomb under the Cong Ly Bridge near Saigon with the intention of blowing it up as the U.S. officials drove across. He was discovered and arrested by the South Vietnamese.

It was revealed during Troi's trial that he was an active member of a secret Viet Cong terrorist cell which had been operating in the Saigon area beginning as early as 1961.

During the time Troi was active in the terrorist cell, according to U.S. government reports, a bomb exploded May 20, 1962 in front of the Hung Dao Hotel, Saigon, a billet for American servicemen, injuring eight Vietnamese and three Americans who were in the street at the time.

On October 20, 1962, a grenade was thrown into a holiday crowd in downtown Saigon, killing six persons, including two children, and injuring 38 persons.

Terrorists, on March 16, 1963, hurled a grenade into a Saigon home where and American family is having dinner, killing a French businessman and wounding four other persons, on of them a woman.

Two powerful explosions set off May 23, 1963, by terrorists on bicycles killed two Vietnamese and wounded ten others in Saigon.

Terrorist set off three grenades in Saigon, on November 9, 1963, injuring a total of 16 persons, including four children; the first was thrown in a main street, the second along the waterfront, and the third in the Chinese residential area.
On February 16, 1964, three Americans were killed and 32 injured, most of them family members of U.S. servicemen, when a teenaged terrorist bombed the Capital Kinh-Do Theater in Saigon.

United States Marine Corps Captain Donald E. Koelper was standing in the lobby with a companion when he realized a bomb was being placed in the theater.

Realizing that he only had seconds to react, Maj Koelper rushed toward the main area of the theater shouting for the United States servicemen and their dependents, to get down.

Maj. Koelper's warning provided time for many in the theater to take cover by lying between the rows of the seats. Seconds later the bomb exploded, fatally wounding Maj. Koelper and another person, and injuring approximately fifty others.

Also killed was PFC Peter Feierabend of Milwaukee, WI., who was serving on duty in the theater when the blast tore through the lobby

Because of his prompt, courageous and unselfish action of warning the theater patrons of the imminent explosion, rather than seek cover for himself, the United States Marines posthumously awarded Maj. Koelper the Navy Cross.

It remains unclear of exactly which of the aforementioned terrorist attacks Troi was directly involved, but South Vietnamese court found him guilty of "other terrorist acts which included tossing bombs into civilian filled restaurants in Saigon."

Reports that the South Vietnamese had tried and sentenced Troi to death became a lightning rod drawing a strong wrath of threats from the communist Vietnamese as well as other communist countries worldwide.

Here is how Time Magazine described Troi's execution in its October 23, 1964 issue:

For a few days it seemed possible that the life of 19-year-old Nguyen Van Troi might be spared. The young Viet Cong terrorist had been sentenced to die for his unsuccessful attempt to plant a bomb under a bridge over which Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was to cross during his trip to Vietnam last May. But then, early last week, with U.S. Lt. Col. Michael Smolen in the hands of pro-Castro kidnapers in Venezuela, and reports circulating that Smolen would be killed if Troi were to die, the Saigon Government announced that "no Date" had been set for the youngster's execution.

Thanks to alert Venezuelan police work, however, Smolen was released early last week and two days later, Troi was led kicking and screaming to the center of a soccer field in Saigon's Chi Hoa prison and tied to a stake.

"Down with the Americans. Down with Khanh," the terrified youth screamed. And then, just before a firing squad sent twelve bullets ripping through his frail gody, Troi shouted out a final salute to North Vietnam's Communist chief: "Long live Ho Chi Minh!"

It was the first public execution of a Viet Cong terrorist in Saigon, and many Americans in Saigon were openly fearful that Troi's death, far from deterring the Communist, would simply provide them with a new revolutionary martyr. Not that the Viet Cong needed one.

In the Vietnamese countryside last week, Viet Cong guerrillas were stepping up their pressure, capturing more weapons than ever before and taking a heavy toll of government troops and their U.S. "Advisers." And in Saigon itself the pattern of events was so obscure that few including strongman Premier Nguyen Khanh himself-seemed to know just what might happen next.

South Vietnam's Communist National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) warned that American prisoners of war would be executed in retaliation if the South Vietnamese followed through and executed Troi.

True to their threat, on Sep. 26, 1965, Viet Cong interrogators gathered a group of American prisoners of war they were holding deep in the U Minh forest and forced them to listen to a National Liberation Front radio broadcast transmitted in English.

Liberation Front radio said two U.S. prisoners of war Captain Humberto "Rocky" Versace and SFC Kenneth M. Roraback had been executed by order of the high command of the National Liberation Front. The communists said the American POWs were "unrepentant reactionaries who had been punished for their crimes."

Newsweek reported Oct. 11, 1965 that the executions of POWs Capt. Versace and SFC Roraback were in retaliation for the South Vietnamese execution of terrorists.

Newsweek had reported earlier on June 24, 1965 another American prisoner of war, Army Sgt. Harold Bennett, had also been executed by the Viet Cong.

The U.S. State Department immediately branded the execution of the American prisoners of war an "act of wanton murder" in violation of the Geneva convention as it pertains to the holding of prisoners of war.

According to Lt. "Nick" Rowe, one of the American prisoners who heard the transmission, the American POWs went into immediate depression when they heard the radio report the executions of the American POWs.

Almost immediately after Troi's execution, communist worldwide glorified his salute of "Long live Ho Chi Minh" in the face of a firing squad as heroic defiance of "American imperialism."

The Vietnamese communist lionized him as a "revolutionary martyr," a national hero who loved his country more than he did his life. They urged all Vietnamese to turn their sorrow for his death and patriotic passions into "armed revolutionary actions" against Americans and all anti-communist South Vietnamese.

Academy Award-winning American actress and pro-communist political activist Jane Fonda returned to Vietnam in Spring 1974 with Tom Hayden, with their small son, to attend a special service being held in her honor. Fonda was still a recognized idol and hero to the Vietnamese communist regime from her earlier years of political and moral support for the North Vietnamese.

But the ceremony, it turned out, was not just to recognize and honor Fonda for her love of the communists. She was there to have her newborn son formally christened and named Troy in honor of Vietnam's national hero Nguyen Van Troi.