Nhuận left the CIO/SOC in December 1963 to become Chief of the National Police in Quảng-Đức Province, headquartered in Gia Nghia City in the Central Highlands. Like his previous post in Darlac, Quảng-Đức was a mountainous province on the Kampuchea border, populated by Montagnards.
Nhuận maintained his CIO contacts, but there was less contact between the SOC and the Special Branch in the years after the 1963 revolution, as the CIA tightened its control of the CIO at the expense of the Special Police.
As a province police chief, Nhuận was now a manager. His office consisted of three bureaus: the Special Police, the uniformed police, and administration. His job was to work politically against the communists and dissidents; judicially against any criminal; and administratively to protect people by maintaining law and order. Nhuận supervised more than one hundred police officers in the province capital Gia-Nghĩa and in four districts; Đức-Lập, Kiến-Đức, Khiêm-Đức, and Đức-Xuyên.
The failure of the resettlements programs, for example, created chaos. “After the 1963 coup, almost all inhabitants of the Dinh Điền Zones felt that they were now liberated from the Ngô regime,” Nhuận explained. “They spontaneously left these zones to return to their native villages.”
At the same time, political groups pressured the Khanh government to release political prisoners jailed during the First Republic. Among those released were key…