Powerful, behind-the-scenes leader in the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) in charge of high-level and sensitive intelligence, security, and internal investigative matters. Born in Ha Tay province near Hanoi, Tran Dang Ninh was a printer by profession who became politically active in the early 1930s. He joined the ICP in 1936. In 1939, he was a member of the party’s underground Committee for Hanoi. During World War II, he joined the ICP’s Territorial Committee for Tonkin (Xu Uy Bac Ky) and worked closely with the likes of Truong Chinh, then acting general secretary of the party. In May 1941, Tran Dang Ninh became the secretary of the same Territorial Committee and entered the ICP’s Central Committee. He participated in the 8th Plenum in May 1941 which gave birth to the Viet Minh. The French arrested him shortly thereafter and incarcerated him in Son La and Hoa Lo prisons following an escape in 1943. He regained his freedom following the Japanese coup de force of 9 March 1945 and resumed his activities in northern Vietnam. During a party plenum adopted during the Tan Trao Conference in August 1945, he joined the General Directorate or the Tong Bo Viet Minh. As a senior leader in the ICP, he was in charge of the Party’s own internal security affairs and its control over the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. In 1947, he assumed the leadership of the Control and Inspection Board (Ban Kiem Tra) of the Executive Committee of the ICP’s Central Committee, a powerful position. He served as the deputy director of the Party’s General Inspectorate for the Government (Pho Truong Ban Thanh Tra Chinh Phu). And he headed up the ICP’s Central Committee’s own Surveillance Board (Ban Trinh Sat), designed to oversee and coordinate all security services.
While Tran Dang Ninh was a committed communist, he was also a cool-headed, rational, and organized leader and thinker. This helps explain why Ho Chi Minh brought him in to handle the sensitive H122 Affair, which had generated a climate of paranoia within the army and even the Party as security services tried to ferret out an alleged French mole, H122. After close investigation, Tran Dang Ninh concluded that there was no spy. H122 was, he concluded, a French deception operation. Party and military unity was re-established in large part due to Tran Dang Ninh, and this at a crucial point in the Indochina War. He accompanied Ho Chi Minh on the latter’s voyage to China in late 1949 and early 1950. He also met with the nationalist archbishop Le Huu Tu in an effort to keep Catholics from leaning to the French side. Soon thereafter, he joined the Party’s General Military Commission (Quan Uy) (together with Vo Nguyen Giap and Nguyen Chi Thanh) and attended to questions of logistics and supply. In 1951, he became a member of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Worker’s Party.