On October 29, 1963 President John F Kennedy authorized the coup that overthrew Ngo Dinh Diem.
Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, were murdered the next day by a South Vietnamese Army Captain as they sought shelter with loyal troops.
Records of the Kennedy national security meetings, both here and in our larger collection, show that none of JFK’s conversations about a coup in Saigon featured consideration of what might physically happen to Ngo Dinh Diem or Ngo Dinh Nhu. The audio record of the October 29th meeting which we cite below also reveals no discussion of this issue. That meeting, the last held at the White House to consider a coup before this actually took place, would have been the key moment for such a conversation. The conclusion of the Church Committee agrees that Washington gave no consideration to killing Diem. (Note 12) The weight of evidence therefore supports the view that President Kennedy did not conspire in the death of Diem. However, there is also the exceedingly strange transcript of Diem’s final phone conversation with Ambassador Lodge on the afternoon of the coup (Document 23), which carries the distinct impression that Diem is being abandoned by the U.S. Whether this represents Lodge’s contribution, or JFK’s wishes, is not apparent from the evidence available today.
Kennedy had recruited Lodge, who he considered a likely 1964 Republican opponent, as a way of embroiling him in the Vietnam situation and preventing him from using it as a campaign issue. Lodge, it turned out, was a more militant enemy of Diem than Kennedy anticipated.
Max Boot, who has lost his mind since the Trump election, wrote an excellent biography of Edward Lansdale called “The Road NotTaken,” which described Lansdale’s successful work in the Philippines as a CIA agent in suppressing the Huk Rebellion. Lansdale tried to adapt his methods that had succeeded in the Philippines to Vietnam.
There were considerable differences. For one, the Philippines were islands while South Vietnam was not and the Viet Cong had sanctuaries in Cambodia and North Vietnam was able to supply them via the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Still, Lansdale had had some success in trying to get President Diem to adopt some methods that had worked in the Philippines. Lansdale was vigorously opposed by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who was absolutely opposed to psychological war techniques and wanted quantifiable measures, like body counts. McNamara blocked Lansdale from access to Diem in spite of Diem’s requests to meet with him.
The ultimate effect of United States participation in the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem was to commit Washington to Saigon even more deeply. Having had a hand in the coup America had more responsibility for the South Vietnamese governments that followed Diem. That these military juntas were ineffectual in prosecuting the Vietnam war then required successively greater levels of involvement from the American side. The weakness of the Saigon government thus became a factor in U.S. escalations of the Vietnam war, leading to the major ground war that the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson opened in 1965.
It also presented President Lyndon Johnson with an insoluble problem when he assumed office less than a month later after the Kennedy assassination.
Had the coup not been encouraged and occurred, the South Vietnam War might have been written off as an unsolvable problem and one we were not completely committed to. Instead, Johnson decided he could not “lose a war” and he sent thousands of American draftees to die in Vietnam for no useful purpose.
Tags: History