Madame Nhu, Vietnam War Lightning Rod, Dies

Madame Nhu, who as the glamorous official hostess in South Vietnam’s presidential palace became a politically powerful and often harshly outspoken figure in the early years of the Vietnam War, died on Sunday in Rome, where she had been living. She was believed to be 87.

Her death was confirmed by her sister, Lechi Oggeri.

Born in 1924 — the date is uncertain, though some sources say April 15 — she spent the last four decades in Rome and southern France.

Her parents named her Tran Le Xuan, or “Beautiful Spring.” As the official hostess to the unmarried president of South Vietnam, her brother-in-law, she was formally known as Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu. But to the American journalists, diplomats and soldiers caught up in the intrigues of Saigon in the early 1960s, she was “the Dragon Lady,” a symbol of everything that was wrong with the American effort to save her country from Communism....