Thích Quảng Đức
Nhu's men vandalized the main altar and confiscated the intact charred heart of Thích Quảng Đức, the monk who had self-immolated in protest against the policies of the regime. However, some of the Buddhists were able to flee the pagoda with a receptacle with the remainder of his ashes. Two monks jumped the back wall of the pagoda into the grounds of the adjoining United States Agency for International Development (USAID) mission, where they were given asylum. Thich Tinh Khiet, an eighty-year-old Buddhist patriarch, was seized and taken to a military hospital on the outskirts of Saigon. Military control, press censorship and the airport closures were enacted in Saigon.