Saturday, December 6, 2008

The trial of General Dang

In a south Sacramento assisted-living home, Lt. Gen. Quang Van Dang waits out the last moments of his life. He is ill, very ill, and has been for several years. Disease and old age have corroded the 78-year-old's mental faculties; his eyes, though alert, have the look of a man held captive by his own body. Family members gather around, knowing this might be the last chance they ever get to speak with the general.

To the young girl sitting beside him in the room, he is simply Grandpa, but at one time, Lt. Gen. Quang Van Dang commanded the largest military force in the Republic of Vietnam. Later, he served as national security adviser to President Nguyen Van Thieu, working closely with U.S. officials who considered him a valuable American asset. Then came the fall of Saigon, in April 1975, and Dang's world turned upside down.With the help of American officials, Dang escaped the chaos and was able to settle his wife and his seven children in the United States and in Montreal, where French-speaking Vietnamese can more readily assimilate. But after visiting one of his sons in Montreal in May 1975, Dang's visa application to re-enter the country was rejected by the U.S. State Department.

No explanation was given, but at roughly the same time, Canadian and American news sources began alleging that Dang controlled the heroin trade in the Mekong Delta during the war and had secreted away millions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts. Dang found himself branded an "undesirable alien" in Canada, the only thing preventing his deportation the certain death sentence awaiting him back home in communist-ruled Vietnam.

For the next 15 years, Dang washed dishes and worked odd jobs in Montreal to support his wife and two sons. Appeals to the State Department by family members in America and military officers who vouched for his character were ignored. The United States had apparently washed its hands of him.

When retired U.S. Army Special Forces Lt. Col. Dan Marvin offered to help him in 1988, the general couldn't place the name at first. He'd known many American officers during the war. Marvin's message was simple: The general had once saved his life and the life of his men in Vietnam. It only seemed right to return the favor.

Vietnam in 1965 was a country set to explode. In the more heavily populated south, the collapse of French colonialism had been followed by a succession of corrupt national governments; communist insurgents operating from safe havens in Cambodia had overrun the countryside. America's arrival on the scene added more fuel to the fire. Caught in the middle, between colonialism and communism, were ordinary Vietnamese such as the 64,000 Buddhist Hoa Haos who lived in the An Phu District, on the Bassac River near the Cambodian border.

Capt. "Dangerous" Dan Marvin fell in love with the Hoa Haos immediately.

This isn't precisely the same Dan Marvin who earlier this year notified SN&R that Gen. Dang was spending his final days in a south Sacramento rest home. This is Dan Marvin before he found God, when he was not only dangerous but lethal.

"I fell in love with An Phu just going up the Bassac River," he recalls via telephone from his home in upstate New York. "The people on the banks were waving and smiling, and I remembered thinking I was going to earn those waves and smiles."

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