Reacting swiftly to a new political indictment of his dictatorship, Nguyen Van Thieu’s national police raided the offices of nine Saigon newspapers that were publishing the indictment February 2 and confiscated their press runs and printing plates. The statement had been drawn up by the opposition movement led by the Reverend Tran Huu Thanh.
During the next two days, mostly in predawn raids, the regime arrested twenty-four journalists and editors as “Communist agents.” Five newspapers were shut down.