{Nguyen Phuoc Hoang} Nobel and two others were the only Vietnamese authorized to pack a .357 Magnum at all times: "The Americans didn't trust anybody else."
In the morning of March 30, 1965, Nobel was seriously injured in what he describes as "the first car bombing in modern times", which occurred in front of the US embassy in Saigon and injured deputy ambassador U Alexis Johnson. Nobel, Johnson's bodyguard, was standing very close to the explosion: the ambassador was on the fifth floor of the building. Nobel was unconscious, presumed dead, and taken to a morgue. As he recalls it, he woke up in the middle of the night, naked, among all the corpses, and had to smash a window with his fist to get out. He had become a survivor.
Pepe Escobar Asia Times August 12 2003
