The most important link in Mậu's plan was Colonel Nguyễn Chánh Thi, the former paratroop commander who had fled to Cambodia in the wake of the failed 1960 coup attempt against Diệm. Mậu persuaded the junta to install Thi as Khánh's deputy in I Corps. He tricked the junta into doing so by reasoning that Khánh had largely been responsible for putting down the 1960 revolt and that Thi would be an ideal mechanism for keeping Khánh in check, whom they distrusted. Privately, Mậu predicted Thi would be a bridge between him in Saigon and Khánh in Huế. Mậu recruited General Trần Thiện Khiêm, who had worked with him during the November 1963 coup. Khiêm had assisted Diệm in putting down the 1960 plot and had since been demoted from being Chief of Staff of the ARVN to the commander of the III Corps that surrounded Saigon following Diệm's fall. Khiêm joined the plot and controlled the divisions surrounding the capital. Khiêm, Khánh and Mậu kept in touch surreptitiously on a regular basis, supplementing their forces with an assortment of Marine, Air Force and Special Forces officers. Mậu recruited the chief of the Civil Guard, Dương Ngọc Lắm who was under investigation by the junta for swindling military funds, and General Dương Văn Đức, who had recently returned from Paris and was an assistant to General Lê Văn Kim, the chief of the junta's general staff.