History Unknown: How a CIA Human-Trafficking Operation Triggered the Vietnam War

Operation Passage to Freedom threw gas on the Vietnam fire.

Whenever I write about the Central Intelligence Agency, I encounter the same problem. By recounting the bizarre and brutal acts the agency has admitted to, I sound like a raging lunatic with a tinfoil hat for every day of the week (and some extra-shiny ones for special occasions). 

One of these very-real-but-very-unbelievable stories is Operation Passage to Freedom. Between 1954 and 1955, the CIA orchestrated one of the largest human trafficking operations in history. By incentivizing a mass migration from communist North Vietnam to anti-communist South Vietnam, the Central Intelligence Agency fostered wide-scale civil unrest, leading to religious persecution, a military coup, brutal assassinations, and, eventually, the Vietnam War.

A U.S. sailor with North Vietnamese children en route to Saigon. 1954

Like I said, I already sound like a crackpot.

Prelude to War

In 1954, the Geneva Convention officially ended French rule in Vietnam. The treaty temporarily partitioned the country along the 17^th parallel. Ho Chi Minh’s communist Viet Minh ruled the North, while Ngo Dinh Diem's anti-communist government controlled the South.

Unlike Ho Chi Minh, who had fought the Japanese during World War II and the French immediately after, Ngo Dinh Diem held little credibility among his constituents. Born to a prominent Vietnamese family, Diem followed his father’s career path and rose through the bureaucracy of Emperor Thanh Thai. However, in 1933, he resigned, decrying the Emperor as a tool of French imperialism. After leaving Vietnam, Diem lived in Japan, Europe, and finally, the U.S. A devout Catholic, Diem joined a New Jersey monastery and connected with influential religious leaders. Eventually, those connections whispered Diem’s name in the ear of CIA director Allen Dulles, knocking over the first domino that would lead America into its most infamous war.

Ngo Dinh Diem’s Presidential portrait, 1956