In the end, American policy toward President Diem “came down to a disgraceful one,” wrote Frederick Nolting, “encouraging a coup while pretending we had nothing to do with it.”1 President Diem and his brother Nhu were aware that the Americans were contemplating a coup, and they knew that one of their reasons for such a move was the deepening Buddhist crisis. Nevertheless, they decided to take firm measures against the radical bonzes during the interim between U.S. ambassadors Nolting and Lodge, and this proved to be the catalyst that set the coup in motion.
The Buddhist uprising was threatening the very survival of the Diem government. Thus, the choice before Diem and Nhu was simple and the same one they had faced when the militant sects vied for power in the early days of the Republic of South Vietnam: either suppress the challenge or give up authority. They knew that if they chose to suppress the radical bonzes, they could expect no help from the Americans, for the Kennedy administration had done nothing but demand they placate a group intent on overthrowing the government. Nevertheless, on August 20, 1963, President Diem declared martial law and moved militarily against the Xa Loi and Tu Dam pagodas.
The news that martial law had been declared in South Vietnam and that the pagodas had been seized and cleared was met with shock and confusion in Washington, and the Kennedy administration scrambled to condemn publically the actions of their ally.2Nolting recalled that the news shocked him as well and that he could not understand why Diem had acted so rapidly and against his own policy of conciliation. He sent Diem a telegram with a personal note to this effect. He later regretted the telegram when he learned Diem’s reason for raiding the pagodas—“continued packing of arms in the Xa Loi and other pagodas, continued riots clamoring for the government’s overthrow, and a total unwillingness on the part of Thich Tri Quang and his militants to compromise on anything”.3
William Colby believed that the pagoda raids gave the GVN a position of strength vis-à-vis the Buddhists, from which they could finally negotiate a settlement regarding legitimate grievances, such as their losses at Hue.4 Then the GVN would be able to put the counterinsurgency—particularly the Strategic Hamlet Program—back on course.5 He also believed, however, that the massive show of force gave too much credence to the arguments of Diem’s enemies in Washington, particularly within the State Department.6The raids also caused immediate problems for the CIA, because the organisation was thought to have been involved in them and therefore too close to Diem and Nhu.7 The CIA’s overall assessment nevertheless remained that America should continue its support of the Diem government. Colby underscored this position, which supported Nolting’s arguments entirely, in an interview with the BBC several years after the fact. He said, “Our position was that Diem is about as good a leadership as you’re going to get in Vietnam in this damn time. That America’s main interest in Vietnam is not the small details of how it runs its internal government structure, but whether it’s meeting the communist challenge.”8
Using as a pretext the crackdown on the pagodas and the fictitious report that Nhu was consolidating power to take over the government, Hilsman sent a fateful telegram to involve the Kennedy administration in the direct planning of a coup. Hilsman’s transmission, in some ways a reaction to earlier queries Lodge had sent from Saigon, was despatched to the U.S. embassy on the weekend of August 24, 1963, when President Kennedy was out of town.9 It outlined the following steps:
(1) First, we must press on appropriate levels of GVN following line:
(a) USG [U.S. government] cannot accept actions against Buddhists taken by Nhu and his collaborators under cover of martial law. (b) Prompt dramatic actions redress situation must be taken, including repeal of decree 10, release of arrested monks, nuns, etc.
(2) We must at same time also tell key military leaders that US would find it impossible to continue support GVN militarily and economically unless above steps are taken immediately which we recognize requires removal of the Nhus from the scene. We wish give Diem reasonable opportunity to remove Nhus, but if he remains obdurate, then we are prepared to accept the obvious implication that we can no longer support Diem. You may also tell appropriate military commanders we will give them direct support in any interim period of breakdown central government mechanism. . . .
Concurrently with above, Ambassador and country team should urgently examine all possible alternative leadership and make detailed plans as to how we might bring about Diem’s replacement if this should become necessary. . . .
. . . We will back you to the hilt on actions you take to achieve our objectives.10
Nolting saw this telegram just a short while after it had been sent as he stood in Hilsman’s office at the State Department, and he perceived that the impact of the cable would be far-reaching, certainly beyond the combined imaginations of the group of men who were behind its content. “The telegram of August 24 turned out to be a decisive factor in leading our country into the longest and most unnecessary war in American history.”11 According to the editors of the State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961—1963, “The drafting and clearance of this message has occasioned subsequent controversy which is reflected in the memoirs and recollections of some of the principal personalities involved at the time.” For an example, they quote General Maxwell Taylor’s description of the cable as “ill-conceived, confusing, and would never have been approved had Hilsman and his colleagues not taken advantage of the absence from Washington of most of the high-level officials of the administration.” The general also wrote that “the cable was an ‘end run’ by an anti-Diem faction in Washington including Hilsman, Harriman, and Forrestal.”12
Nolting’s assessment made plain the actual mechanics of how the telegram sneaked out of town with the tacit approval of all the key players: “They had cleared this text over the telephone with representatives of State (George Ball was acting Secretary because Rusk was away), Defense, CIA, and the White House staff. The President was consulted. Each person, including President Kennedy, who was vacationing on Cape Cod, had approved the telegram under the impression that other top officials had agreed with it. There was no formal meeting to discuss or co-ordinate the message.”13
Robert McNamara, Kennedy’s secretary of defense, remembered the details of how this cable was approved and sent forward. His description supports Nolting’s assertion that everyone was presented with the cable having been told it had already been approved by everyone else.14 McNamara also recalled that Maxwell Taylor, whom he considered far and away Kennedy’s most capable geopolitical thinker and security advisor, was appalled by what Hilsman had done. Roswell Gilpatric, who initially had fallen prey to the efforts of Hilsman and Harriman to get instant approval of the telegram, had immediate doubts and, even while the cable was in the process of being sent, made sure that General Taylor got a copy immediately. Regardless of misgivings, the cable was sent, and McNamara recalled: “Lodge understood the August 24 cable as instructing him to initiate action to remove Diem as leader of South Vietnam.”15 Years later—in 1977, in an interview with the BBC—Ambassador Lodge claimed that he was stunned by the content of the August 24 telegram:
I was thunderstruck. . . . So I get on down to Saigon on Friday and then Sunday comes this telegram telling me to do whatever I could to overthrow Diem, and to, in effect, press the button. . . . I thought about asking for clarification of instructions and then I thought no, that I wouldn’t do that. . . . I can read English, I could understand perfectly well what the telegram said, I thought it was very ill-advised; but I only had had twenty-four hours in the country and my opinion wasn’t worth very much to me or anybody else. So I said I’m going to try to carry it out.16
Lodge went on to tell the BBC that he believed that the instigators of the telegram (i.e., the Harriman group in Washington) had gotten carried away. “In the State Department you had men who had devoted a large part of their lives to this thing, they were on it day and night and they’d get worked up and I think it’s all done in the spirit of sincerity. That doesn’t make it any less reprehensible.”17 The BBC interviewer then asked Lodge: “Do you think that a group in the State Department opposed to Diem seized their opportunity that weekend in a quite deliberate way?”18 Lodge answered this question in the affirmative: “Well, that’s the obvious explanation, that there was a group that had been working on this question for a long time and they were emotionally involved.”19One of the Harriman group’s chief accusations against Nolting was that he was emotionally involved with Diem, yet they could not perceive their own emotional involvement in a contrary direction.
Nolting recalled that McNamara was so upset by what he had read in the Hilsman telegram that the secretary called him and asked him to attend a meeting he was trying to set up with the president to have the telegram’s instructions voided.20 Nolting assured McNamara that he would attend if he were invited, whereupon he received an immediate invitation from President Kennedy’s military aide, General Chester V. “Ted” Clifton. The meeting turned out to be, in Nolting’s words, “a kind of National Security Council special group meeting, chaired by President Kennedy, who appeared to be harassed and worried”.21 The meeting illustrated yet again that a deep division existed in Kennedy’s administration over policy toward President Diem.
Prior to this meeting, another had taken place at the White House on August 26, 1963, wherein all of the major forces in the Harriman group were involved. These included Ball, Forrestal, Harriman, and Hilsman. According to Nolting’s memoirs, Kennedy was plainly annoyed at the way U.S. policy was being driven by certain individuals and was fed up with what the press had been doing. He said, “Halberstam of The New York Times is actually running a political campaign; and he is wholly un-objective, reminiscent of Mr. Matthews in the Castro days.” He added that the reporter should not be unduly influencing the actions of his administration.22 But did the president realise that the reporter’s influence on policy had been given to him, at least in part, by State Department officials?
On August 14, for example, Assistant Secretary of State Roger Hilsman, in a broadcast on Voice of America, declared that the Buddhist crisis was “beginning to affect the war effort”. Marguerite Higgins took Hilsman’s statement to Ambassador Nolting, who was to leave Saigon the following day. Nolting told her that all his reports showed that the Buddhist crisis was not having any impact at all. He said, “I don’t know what Hilsman based his statement on. But he isn’t basing it on anything that went out of this embassy, the military mission, or the CIA.”23 When Higgins returned to New York, she telephoned Hilsman and asked him if the basis for his claim was the New York Times. “Partly that,” said Hilsman, “the Times and other press dispatches out of Saigon.” Higgins later wrote,
And thus is history recast. All those Vietnamese-speaking Americans circling the countryside for the purpose of testing Vietnamese opinion; all those American officers gauging the morale of the troops; all those C.I.A. agents tapping their sources (hopefully) everywhere; all those dispatches from Ambassador Nolting—an army of data—collectors in reasonable agreement had been downgraded in favor of press dispatches stating opposite conclusions. It was the first time that I began to comprehend, in depth and in some sorrow, what was meant by the power of the press.24
Perhaps she should also have been taken aback at the power of the powerful to use the press.
Back to the August 26 meeting at the White House, President Kennedy tried to find out if it were possible for the United States to live with Diem and Nhu. According to Nolting, Hilsman responded it would be horrible to contemplate because of “Nhu’s grave emotional instability”.25 Hilsman pressed to have the regime overthrown, which seemed to annoy the president. Harriman supported Hilsman during this conference by stating that they had sent the August 24 telegram because they believed they had Vietnamese support to move against Diem as a result of the pagoda raids.
According to Robert McNamara’s memory of this meeting, Hilsman tried to stop Kennedy from listening to Nolting. “The President told him he wanted another meeting the next day and asked that former Ambassador Nolting be present. Hilsman did not like that. He complained that Nolting’s views were colored and that he had become emotionally involved in the situation. The president replied acidly, ‘Maybe logically.’ ”26 McNamara’s recollections of this meeting match notes in State Department papers.27
As we saw, Nolting did attend the next meeting. During the next couple of weeks, he attended several meetings on Vietnam. In his memoirs, he described how he expressed his position in support of President Diem.
The basic issue was whether the U.S. government should connive to overthrow the Diem government. I argued that it should not. A coup would create a political vacuum, encourage the Communists, and wipe out the nine years of relatively successful support we had given South Vietnam—without the use of American combat forces. Furthermore, in supporting a coup, the United States would be doing exactly what President Kennedy had promised President Diem we would not do, namely, interfering in South Vietnam’s internal affairs. Our moral commitment, the integrity of the United States, was at stake. Finally, I argued that the generals would be ineffective leaders. They would not gain the support of the South Vietnamese people and would naturally turn to the United States for more and more military help, including, probably, U.S. combat forces. I was appalled that our government would encourage a coup of dissident generals to overthrow their elected government. It was wrong in principle and would, even if successfully executed, have disastrous long-range consequences for the United States as well as for Vietnam.28
Regardless of Nolting’s efforts, and regardless of Kennedy’s willingness to listen to his former ambassador, there is no evidence that the White House made any attempt to stop the coup. In fact, from what can be discerned in a top secret telegram Kennedy sent to Lodge on August 29, 1963, Kennedy approved the go-ahead for an overthrow of the Diem’s civilian government by his generals:
Top Secret, Eyes Only,
Emergency Personal For The Ambassador From The President—No Department or Other Distribution Whatever
I have approved all the messages you are receiving from others today, and I emphasize that everything in these messages has my full support.
We will do all that we can to help you conclude this operation successfully. Nevertheless, there is one point on my own constitutional responsibilities as President and Commander in Chief which I wish to state to you in this entirely private message, which is not being circulated here beyond the Secretary of State.
Until the very moment of the go signal for the operation by the Generals, I must reserve a contingent right to change course and reverse previous instructions. While fully aware of your assessment of the consequences of such a reversal, I know from experience that failure is more destructive than an appearance of indecision. I would, of course, accept full responsibility for any such change as I must bear also the full responsibility for this operation and its consequences. It is for this reason that I count on you for a continuing assessment of the prospects of success and most particularly desire your candid warning if current course begins to sour. When we go, we must go to win, but it will be better to change our minds than fail. And if our national interest should require a change of mind, we must not be afraid of it.29
In sending such a telegram, Kennedy had ignored not just Colby, Nolting, Taylor, and McNamara but also the opinions of several foreign governments. The French opinion can be seen in a cable Lodge sent George Ball on August 30, 1963. In it Lodge explained that French Ambassador Roger Lalouette urged the United States not to back a coup. Lalouette defended Diem and Nhu as the best available leaders in South Vietnam and said the war against the Viet Cong could be won with them at the helm. He explained that the Buddhist protests had been overdramatised by the press and that it was American opinion that needed calming down.30
Similar to Lalouette’s message was one by the Philippine government. A CIA report dated September 7, 1963, included statements by Philippine Foreign Secretary Salvador Lopez, who said his government backed President Diem and was willing to act as an agent of reconciliation between him and the United States. The Communist threat was the most important issue in South Vietnam, he said. While Diem needed U.S. support for the counterinsurgency, Lopez warned that without him Washington could not succeed. He mentioned that the Buddhist uprising was a South Vietnamese internal matter and that according to Philippine intelligence the revolt was Communist inspired.31
The Australian government’s position was remarkably similar to this. A telegram sent from the American embassy in Canberra to the secretary of state in Washington spelled out the position of the Australian government that there was no alternative to Diem and that the regime was by no means beyond constructive influence. The radical Buddhists had shot their bolt for the time being, and the crisis had calmed down somewhat. The Australians were hopeful that the calm would allow the fight to be refocused on the Communists.32
The British ambassador to South Vietnam, Gordon Etherington-Smith, felt likewise, as noted by Lodge in his cable to Washington on September 11, 1963: “On the general situation, Etherington-Smith thinks that the Diem Govt. has overcome the Buddhist problem and is strongly in the saddle and that apparently nothing much can be gained by trying to bring about a change. . . . In other words, attempts to get another govt. will probably fail and therefore should not be undertaken.”33
In her research on South Vietnam, Anne Blair asked a fundamental question: How did Kennedy become so divorced from what was really going on in South Vietnam so as to get behind a coup? Her answer coincided, for the most part, with those offered by Nolting and Colby. She identified the power of the Halberstam-Sheehan group of reporters to draw attention to and to amplify the Buddhist crisis at Kennedy’s political expense. She highlighted the fact that Halberstam, Sheehan, and other reporters had made clear their support for a coup.34 In Blair’s assessment, Kennedy was so driven by domestic concerns related to bad publicity over Diem and South Vietnam that he made himself prey to a flawed and inexpert group headed by the powerful Averell Harriman. In turn, these domestic concerns prevented him from seeing or hearing what the most experienced Southeast Asian experts were saying: Stay the course with Diem.35
On August 29, 1963, Ambassador Lodge followed up on President Kennedy’s cable with a momentous one of his own, wherein he declared: “We are launched on a course from which there is no respectable turning back: The overthrow of the Diem Government.”36 On this same date, the White House drafted another top secret, eyes only cable, approved by the president, Secretary of State Rusk, and Hilsman. It informed Lodge: “The USG will support a coup which has a good chance of succeeding but plans no direct involvement of U.S. Armed Forces.”37 This telegram was fleshing out what had been hinted in Kennedy’s earlier message to Lodge. There is no record that would indicate that Nolting was aware of this last DOS cable, especially since at a White House meeting the same day, Nolting continued his fight against the coup. He argued that Diem was firmly in control of the government, working his usual eighteen-hour days, and that it was still not clear whether the generals wanted to get rid of both him and Nhu. He added that if the Nhus had to go, the United States could certainly live with a new government headed by Diem.38
At a State Department meeting the following day, Nolting tried to defend Nhu against the increasingly vicious attacks on his character. This malice against Nhu made it unthinkable in Washington for him to serve in any future government supported by the United States. The question was raised whether Nhu was going to sell out to North Vietnam, and Nolting answered that while Nhu was “shifty”, he was committed to an anti-Communist course.39
When the discussion turned to the coup, Secretary of Defense McNamara supported Nolting’s position against it. He expressed his contempt for the generals plotting against their president and claimed they had no plan for a replacement government, “contrary to their assurances”.40 A day later, in another high-level DOS meeting, McNamara again argued against encouraging a coup. He said the United States should instead be helping Diem fight the Viet Cong. He stated: “We need to reopen communications with Diem to get his ideas about what comes next.”41 Later, when Paul Kattenburg, a DOS researcher, tried to condemn Diem as a petty tyrant who was alienating the people of South Vietnam, Nolting corrected him by pointing out that the political discontent as confined to the cities, which represented only 15 per cent of South Vietnam’s population.42 At this point in the meeting, Secretary Rusk swung his support behind Nolting. Taking exception to Kattenburg’s statement, he said that during the first six months of the year the GVN had made steady progress in winning over people in the countryside and that an attempt should be made to recover this position.43
At this juncture, Vice President Johnson stated with considerable force that he never had any sympathy for the idea of changing the Vietnamese government by plotting with ARVN generals; he strongly recommended that the White House backtrack immediately, reestablish amicable relations with Diem, and then get on with the real fight, which was against the Communists.44 During his stout defence of Diem, Johnson could not resist the opportunity to use his famous Texas humour: “Certainly there were bad situations in South Viet-Nam. However, there were bad situations in the U.S. It was difficult to live with Otto Passman, but we couldn’t pull a coup on him.”45
In another last-ditch effort to restore U.S. support for the Diem regime, Nolting told President Kennedy at a September 6 White House meeting not to use any more pressure tactics on Diem, because they would most likely trigger an “unfortunate reaction”. The president then asked him if the American minimum requirement should be the removal of Nhu. Nolting replied that, for the sake of U.S. public opinion, Nhu would have to go. He quickly added that the removal of Nhu would be a loss for Vietnam, a loss that was difficult to justify even if there were a corresponding gain in public opinion of Kennedy.46
On September 10, at another White House meeting, Marine General Krulak and DOS advisor Joseph A. Mendenhall gave their two reports on their recent visits to Vietnam. Ambassador Nolting was in attendance. The two vastly different reports—Mendenhall’s focusing on political intrigue in Saigon, and Krulak’s focusing on the overall national picture and the counterinsurgency—prompted Kennedy to ask: “The two of you did visit the same country, didn’t you?”47 Mendenhall’s report was strongly anti-Diem, while Krulak’s report stated that progress in defeating the Viet Cong was tangible. General Krulak noted that, although there was still a lot of war left to fight, “the Viet Cong war will be won if the current U.S. military and sociological programs are pursued.”48 His message to the president was unmistakable: Stay the course.
Nolting liked what he heard from Krulak. He interrupted the meeting only after Rufus Phillips of the CIA put forward various scenarios through which Nhu and Colonel Le Quang Tung of the ARVN Special Forces could be discredited and removed from power.49 Nolting interjected with a query as to what the results would be from Phillips’ intrigues if they were put into effect: “Military action against the Nhus? Military action against the government?. . . Civil war?”50 Phillips then tried another avenue to criticise the Diem government. He claimed that the strategic hamlets were “being chewed to pieces by the Viet Cong [in the Mekong Delta region]”, that 60 per cent of them had been overrun.51 Hilsman, who was taking notes, recalled that General Krulak strongly disagreed with Phillips. Krulak said that his “statement respecting military progress had its origins in a reservoir of many advisors who were doing nothing other than observe the prosecution of the war; that their view was shared and expressed officially by General Harkins.” Krulak added that in a choice between Harkins and Phillips, he would go with the general.52
Owing to his continual defence of Diem, Nolting became a persona non grata within the Kennedy administration and was invited to fewer and fewer meetings. He was conspicuously absent at an important September 10 meeting at DOS, which was attended by Secretary McNamara, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, CIA Director John McCone, Undersecretary Harriman, General Taylor, General Krulak, Deputy Secretary Gilpatric, Assistant Secretary Hilsman, Colby, Phillips, and several others.53 This meeting revealed the chasm that had grown between the Harriman faction and Diem’s remaining supporters within the Kennedy administration. The divide became apparent when Robert Kennedy said they all agreed the war would go better without Diem and Secretary McNamara immediately disagreed: “He believed our present policy was not viable. He thought that we had been trying to overthrow Diem, but we had no alternative to Diem that we knew about. Therefore, we were making it impossible to continue to work with Diem on the one hand and, on the other, not developing an alternative solution. He felt that we should go back to what we were doing three weeks ago.”54 Harriman defended the change, claimed it was the president’s policy, and stated it should therefore not be discussed any further. He said Diem, by persecuting the Buddhists, had made it impossible for the United States to back him. Diem had to be removed, he added, because he had “gravely offended the world community”.55
The military men in the room did not buy Harriman’s lofty logic. As can be seen in this message General Harkins sent the Joint Chiefs of Staff two days after the meeting with Harriman, they had come to believe that the Communist enemy, not President Diem, was to blame for the Buddhist uprising:
I think we must all realize we are fighting a ruthless, crude, brutal enemy who is using every known trick in the Communist bag. In 1960 he saw he was losing the initial round so he openly flexed his biceps. Our tremendous effort of the past year and one half began to pay off early this year and he saw he was losing the military battle. In seeking a new approach he seized the religious one. Bonze Quang, the culprit we now are giving asylum to in our Embassy, has admitted in conversations since he entered his safe haven that he had been planning to go full out against the Diem regime prior to May 8th. He seized upon this episode as his opportunity. Though the government made concessions, Quang and his cohorts refused to accept them, always demanding more. He remained unable to unseat Diem. The 21st of August crackdown stopped the outward religious effort, and now the school children [protest organised against Diem]. This of course is another well-organized covertly led Communist trick.56
Ironically the military coup was being demanded by American diplomats and resisted by American generals. The former believed the removal of Diem was essential to winning the war; the latter believed the war was being won with Diem in place. On September 3 General Taylor hand carried a memorandum to President Kennedy stating that, regardless of Saigon’s preoccupation with the unstable political situation, the whole month of August 1963 displayed favourable military trends in all areas of activity. In other words, the GVN was successfully prosecuting the counterinsurgency in spite of the Buddhist protests.57 Nevertheless, Kennedy asked Secretary McNamara to determine the accuracy of reports in the New York Times stating the opposite. McNamara informed the president that Halberstam was understating the effectiveness of the ARVN and overstating the abilities of the Viet Cong. In addition, he said, Halberstam was failing to report on positive trends in ARVN operations.58 The CIA prepared a memorandum for Director McCone to make available to the president, which was based on a review of all the articles written by Halberstam since June. The majority of these were “almost invariably pessimistic reports” about “the Buddhist crisis in South Vietnam and the injurious effects of the crisis on the struggle against the Viet Cong”. The CIA found that Halberstam was “by and large accurate” in terms of his facts. His emphasis and conclusions, however, called “his objectivity into question”.59
The CIA also prepared a report to address another concern of the Kennedy administration—that Diem and Nhu might conclude a neutrality deal with the North, which would essentially hand South Vietnam to the Communists. In late September 1963, the CIA reported that Diem and Nhu were feeling “boxed between two unacceptable alternatives: abject surrender to US demands or a loss of all political power”. While they might be casting about for alternatives to American support, including some kind of agreement with Hanoi, they would not go along with a united Communist Vietnam.60
Irrespective of the positive reports—which essentially verified what Nolting had been telling the president—worries about Diem’s ability to lead the war effort continued to escalate in the Kennedy administration, and Nolting was effectively squeezed out of having any influence whatsoever on the final decisions with respect to the Diem government.61 Also ignored was a late October congressional fact-finding visit to South Vietnam, which determined that the best course for U.S. policy was to stay with Diem. Congressman Clement Zablocki reported that in spite of Diem’s faults—“his autocracy, his tolerance of venality and brutality”—his government was winning the war against the Communist insurgents. He stated that there was no reasonable alternative to Diem, and that therefore coup plots were harmful. He accused American reporters in the country of being “arrogant, emotional, un-objective and ill informed”.62
Regardless of the meetings, the reports, and the fact-finding missions during late summer and early fall 1963, President Kennedy did nothing to halt the plot against Diem that he had set into motion. It is therefore remarkable that Averell Harriman later blamed its forward movement on Ambassador Lodge: “I don’t think we could have [prevented Diem’s overthrow]. Now it is true at the end there Lodge did not try to stop it. You would have to try to stop it. There was nothing we did that I know of that encouraged the coup.”63
Making Lodge, a Republican, the fall guy for the coup was perhaps planned at the time of his appointment as ambassador to South Vietnam. According to Anne Blair, “Kennedy welcomed Rusk’s nomination of Lodge. Lodge, he thought, would serve admirably as Republican asbestos against the heat of possible future criticism of his foreign policy. . . . As history was to show, the Lodge appointment did achieve the goal of deflecting criticism from Kennedy’s involvement in Vietnam, although ultimately with great cost to America’s reputation in the foreign relations field.”64
The coup took place on November 1, 1963. With forces loyal to Diem deployed to the far-flung reaches of South Vietnam, rebel forces sealed off military bases in the capital and proceeded to assault the presidential palace, where the coup leaders discovered that Diem and Nhu had escaped during the night. The brothers had fled to the house of a friend in Cholon. Early on November 2 they attended Mass at the local Church of Saint Francis Xavier and spent some time afterwards in prayer, according to Father Clement Nguyen Van Thach, an eyewitness.65 The brothers were outside the church, in the Grotto of the Virgin Mary, when General “Big” Duong Van Minh’s soldiers arrived with a couple of American jeeps and an armoured personnel carrier. Sometime during that morning, General Minh, the leader of the coup, had been informed that the Ngo Dinh brothers were at the church. He made the plan to capture both brothers there and gave a direct order to his body guard to murder them. Once Diem and Nhu were secured in the hold of the personnel carrier, Minh’s order was carried out promptly as the vehicle was driven away. The executioner, Major NguyenVan Nhung, cut out their gallbladders while they were still alive and then shot them.
Years later, visibly distraught at recalling the murder, General Nguyen Khanh said, “Nhu was alive when they put the knife in to take out some of the organs. . . the gallbladder. And in the Orient when you are a big soldier, big man—this thing is very important. . . They do it against Nhu when Nhu was alive. . . . And Diem had this happen to him, and later on they kill him by pistol and rifle. This is murder. A real murder. . . It’s very savage. . . très savage!”66 General Khanh, who had been involved in the coup, maintained that the Americans did not expect that Diem and Nhu would be killed, but he also said that the Americans had no idea with whom they were dealing when they accepted General Minh67 as the leader of the coup. Khanh indicated that had the Americans known about the intrigues in which Minh was involved, they would have known murder was likely and would not have allied themselves with him.68
According to Minh, the Americans not only expected the murder but wanted it. The plotting generals wanted the Ngo Dinh brothers dead, and “the Americans had wanted the same thing too.”69 Minh attempted to justify the murder by saying, “They had to be killed. Diem could not be allowed to live because he was too much respected among simple, gullible people in the countryside, especially the Catholics and the refugees.”70 According to Tran Van Huong, who had signed the Caravelle Manifesto and became president of South Vietnam in 1975, “The top generals who decided to murder Diem and his brother were scared to death. The generals knew very well that having no talent, no moral virtues, no political support whatsoever, they could not prevent a spectacular comeback of the president and Mr. Nhu if they were alive.”71 Huong’s testimony is especially significant because he had been jailed by Diem’s government for participating in the Caravellists; he was no friend of the Ngo Dinh brothers.