No More Vietnams by Richard Nixon

as one in which “a Frenchified Catholic Vietnamese President began to beat up the pagodas and kill Buddhist priests and Buddhist nuns.” This view was typical and totally at odds with the facts. Kennedy’s anti-Diem advisers had refused to believe the balanced reports on the crisis sent previously by Ambassador Frederick Nolting and instead came to rely on the news accounts of stridently anti-Diem reporters. Roger Hilsman, the assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs, summed up the Kennedy administration’s attitude when he commented, “After the closing of the pagodas on August 21, the facts became irrelevant.”
    With the facts deemed irrelevant to policymaking, the Kennedy administration proceeded to make disastrous policy. Support for the anti-Diem policy was not unanimous. Vice President Johnson, CIA Director John McCone, and General Maxwell Taylor were opposed to abandoning Diem. But three days after the pagoda raids, a powerful coalition of top officials set in motion events that resulted in a military coup against Diem’s government, acting with at best cursory consideration of the consequences. A sober examination of Diem’s likely successors was never undertaken. No attention was paid to the abysmally low caliber of the men with whom they were plotting. None of the generals even approached Diem in leadership qualities.
    On August 24, Harriman, Hilsman, Rusk, and Undersecretary of State George Ball collaborated on a telegram to Henry Cabot Lodge, the new American ambassador in Saigon. Kennedy approved it over the phone from his vacation home in Hyannisport. It stated that the current situation was intolerable and that Diem’s brother and closest adviser, Ngo Dinh Nhu, whom Kennedy’s men held responsible for the raids, had tobe replaced. “We wish [to] give Diem reasonable opportunity to remove Nhu,” the cable read, “but if he remains obdurate, then we are prepared to accept the obvious implication that we can no longer support Diem. You may tell appropriate military commanders we will give them direct support in any interim period of breakdown [of the] central government mechanism.” It added that Lodge 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.”
    The cable’s message was unequivocal. Since everyone knew Diem would never dismiss his brother Nhu, Lodge interpreted it as a direct order from the highest authority to prepare a coup against Diem. Another cable somewhat qualifying the first was sent to Lodge a few days later, but it was too late to slow the momentum of events in Saigon. The gun aimed at Diem’s head had already been fired; the bullet could not be recalled. Lodge was an efficient ambassador, and he carried out his orders. He instructed the CIA in Saigon to make the rounds of their contacts in the military. Several South Vietnamese generals later testified that they had been sounded out by United States officials that summer on the possibility of leading a coup.
    On August 29, Kennedy told his National Security Council staff that he supported the idea of a coup if its success was guaranteed. Lodge was already reporting progress. In a cable to Rusk, Lodge said, “We are launched on a course from which there is no respectable turning back: the overthrow of the Diem government.” He added, “The chance of bringing off a Generals’ coup depends on them to some extent; but it depends at least as much on us.” Rusk authorized Lodge to suspend aid to Diem at a time of his choosing and instructed him to do whatever was necessary to “enhance the chances of a successful coup.” Rusk also ordered the head of the American military mission in Saigon to establish a liaison with the coup leaders and to review their plans. One plot misfired in late August, but the generals soon