by Neil Sheehan
At this point Mr. Kennedy sent his totally private message to Ambassador Lodge. The President said he had given his “full support” to the earlier message and promised that Washington would do everything possible “to help you conclude this operation successfully.”
He asked the Ambassador to provide him with a running assessment of the coup’s prospects right up to the “go signal” to permit him to “reverse previous instructions,” if necessary.
The Ambassador’s brief reply, on Aug. 30, acknowledged the President’s right to change directions but warned him that, since “the operation” had to be Vietnamese-run, the American President might not be able to control it.
As matters turned out, Washington’s agonizing had been to no avail. For, according to the study, General Harkins’s first direct contact with the conspirators brought news that General Minh had called off the coup for the time being, fearing a bloody standoff in Saigon.
According to the Pentagon account, General Harkins was also told that Mr. Richardson’s careful cultivation of Mr. Nhu had aroused suspicions among the generals that the C.I.A. chief might be undercutting them and that the President’s brother was on the C.I.A. payroll. Later this would become an important issue and would lead to Mr. Richardson’s replacement.
But on Aug. 31, Ambassador Lodge reported to Washington the collapse of the conspiracy and the end of the coup phase. He told Secretary Rusk—who had worried in a cable only the day before about the lack of “bone and muscle” among the conspirators—that there was “neither the will nor the organization among the generals to accomplish anything.”
Mr. Lodge also reported hearing that Mr. Nhu was secretly dealing with Hanoi and the Vietcong through the French and Polish ambassadors, both of whose governments favored a neutralist solution between North and South Vietnam.
Washington was in a quandary. It had finally taken the risk of seeking an alternative to the Diem regime only to see the attempt dissolve. As the Pentagon narrative says: “The U.S. found itself at the end of August, 1963, without a policy and with most of its bridges burned.”
The members of the National Security Council—minus the President—held a “where do we go from here?” meeting on Aug. 31. That session was revealing, the author comments, because of the “rambling inability to focus on the problem”—the sense of an administration adrift.
The most controversial position was advanced by Paul M. Kattenburg, a 39-year-old diplomat who headed the Vietnam Interdepartmental Working Group. He proposed disengagement—thereby, according to the Pentagon version, becoming the first official on record in a high-level Vietnam policy meeting to pursue to its logical conclusion the analysis that the war effort was irretrievable, either with or without President Diem.
Until he spoke, the trend of the discussion seemed to favor reluctantly sliding back toward some workable relationship with the Diem regime since there seemed no alternative. Secretary Rusk commented that it was “unrealistic” to insist that Mr. Nhu “must go” and Secretary McNamara pushed for reopening high-level contact with the Presidential Palace. [See Document #44.]
In rebuttal, Assistant Secretary of State Hilsman reminded the group of the crippling malaise within the Vietnamese Government and the impact on the American image and policy elsewhere if Washington acquiesced “to a strong Nhu-dominated government.”
According to the minutes of the meeting, Mr. Kattenburg pushed this argument a step further by asserting that if the United States tried to “live with” the Diem regime, it would be “thrown out of the country in six months.” In the next six months to a year, he argued the war effort would go steadily downhill to the point where the Vietnamese people “will gradually go to the other side and we will be obliged to leave.”
His analysis was immediately dismissed by Vice President Johnson, Secretary Rusk and Secretary McNamara. Mr. Rusk was reported in the minutes as insisting that American policy be based on two points—“than we will not pull out of Vietnam until the war is won, and that we will not run a coup.” Mr. McNamara endorsed this view.
Vice President Johnson said he agreed completely, reportedly declaring that “we should stop playing cops and robbers and get back to talking straight to the [Saigon Government] . . . and once again go about winning the war.”
It was more easily said than done. As the Pentagon study recounts, the Kennedy Administration passed through the next five weeks without any real policy but with three general notions in mind: first, the compulsion to send special missions to reassess the situation in Vietnam; second, the attempt to coerce the Diem regime into moderation through economic and propaganda pressures; and third, Ambassador Lodge’s efforts to persuade the Nhus to leave the country while giving the cold shoulder to President Diem.
President Kennedy, in a television interview Sept. 2, applied his personal pressure on the Diem regime for the first time. The South Vietnamese Government, he said, would have to “take steps to bring back popular support” after the Buddhist repressions, otherwise the war could not be won. Success was possible, he said “with changes in policy and perhaps with personnel.” But he did not specify whom he meant.
At another inconclusive National Security Council meeting four days later, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy returned to the question of disengagement. The Pentagon account reports him as reasoning that if the war was unwinnable by any foreseeable South Vietnamese regime, it was time to get out of Vietnam. But, if the Diem regime was the obstacle, he contended, then Ambassador Lodge should be given the power to bring about the necessary changes.
But the Administration’s immediate response to its dilemma was—at Secretary McNamara’s suggestion—to send a fact-finding mission to Vietnam for a fresh look: Maj. Gen. Victor H. Krulak, the Pentagon’s top-ranking expert in counterguerrilla warfare, and Joseph A. Mendenhall, the former political counselor in the Saigon Embassy.
The two men came back after an exhausting four-day tour with such diametrically opposed assessments that President Kennedy was moved to ask, “You two did visit the same country, didn’t you?”
Dissatisfied, President Kennedy dispatched Secretary McNamara and General Taylor on a new fact-finding mission on Sept. 23. They met with President Diem on Sept. 29 and although Mr. McNamara had the authority to press the South Vietnamese ruler to remove his brother from power, he did not raise the issue. No explanation is given for this significant omission.
The Pentagon analyst comments that the report of their mission, submitted on Oct. 2, tried to bridge the Lodge-Harkins gap, and in the process reflected for the first time serious doubts in Mr. McNamara’s mind.
The military assessment—which the Secretary of Defense radically revised in retrospect after the successful Nov. 1 coup—was generally optimistic. It reported “great progress” in the last year with no ill effects on the conduct of the war from the prolonged political crisis, and asserted that the “bulk” of American troops could be withdrawn by the end of 1965. The two men proposed and—with the President’s approval—announced that 1,000 Americans would be pulled out by the end of 1963. [See Document #47.]
Their political analysis found discontent with the Diem-Nhu regime a “seething problem” that could boil over at any time. Unaware of the revived plotting, they discounted prospects for an early coup on grounds that the generals appeared to have “little stomach” for it and proposed that in the meantime, “we should work with the Diem regime but not support it.” The study notes that they recommended a series of economic pressures, including an aid cutoff, without indicating whether they remembered that this was the “go” signal that the generals had previously requested.
The Kennedy Administration was already engaged in a pressure campaign that, whatever its intent, was bound to encourage the army generals to try again, as the narrative notes.
The President’s televised remark on the need for possible changes in personnel was the first shot. Next, on Sept. 14, Washington informed the embassy that it was deferring decisions o
n an $18.5-million program to finance commercial imports to South Vietnam. Three days later the White House instructed Ambassador Lodge to make new efforts to achieve a “visible reduction” in the influence of the Nhus—preferably by arranging their departure from Vietnam “at least for an extended vacation.” [See Document #45.]
It gave him broad authority to use aid as leverage in this venture, “bearing in mind that it is not our current policy to cut off aid entirely.” In particular, it was suggested, Mr. Lodge might want to limit or reroute aid now going “to or through Nhu” or his collaborators. It also urged him—without ordering him—to resume contact with President Diem. But Mr. Lodge demurred.
Washington’s high-level messages to the Ambassador throughout the fall of 1963 are notable for the unusual deference they show him. President Kennedy himself proceeded with delicacy on those rare occasions when he overruled the Ambassador. Once, in a personal cablegram to Mr. Lodge in mid-September, he commented that, as the son of a former Ambassador, “I am well trained in the importance of protecting the effectiveness of the man-on-the-spot.” The record shows that the President understood, too, how firm and explicit he had to be to overrule the Ambassador—and, significantly, he did not do so in the final days before the coup.
Death Knell for Diem
In October, the tempo of events quickened. In Saigon on Oct. 2, the analyst writes, Colonel Conein “accidentally” ran into General Don, who proposed a date that evening in Nhatrang. That night, the C.I.A. man learned that the conspiracy was on the track again and that General Minh, its leader, wanted to discuss the details. Ambassador Lodge approved the meeting.
Oct. 5 was a fateful day both in Saigon and in Washington. For the first time in weeks, another Buddhist monk burned himself to death in the central marketplace in Saigon. Mr. Richardson, the C.I.A. chief whose links to Mr. Nhu had aroused suspicions among the Army generals, left South Vietnam after what are described as behind-the-scenes efforts by Ambassador Lodge to have him transferred. And President Kennedy took far-reaching decisions to apply major economic sanctions against the Diem regime.
At 8:30 A.M. that same day Colonel Conein went to General Minh’s headquarters for a 70-minute meeting. According to the C.I.A. account of the meeting, the two men talked in French. The South Vietnamese general, nicknamed Big Minh by his colleagues because of his burly build, disclaimed any personal political ambition.
But he said that the army commanders felt the war would be lost unless the government was changed soon and that he “must know” the American Government’s position on a change of regime “within the very near future.” The general said he did not expect “any specific American support” for the coup d’état but did need assurances that the Americans would not block it. He did not press for an on-the-spot commitment, but asked for another date with Colonel Conein.
General Minh outlined several possible tactics. The two main ones called for retaining President Diem but assassinating his two powerful and feared brothers Mr. Nhu and Ngo Dinh Can, the regime’s proconsul in Central Vietnam; or, a head-on military battle for control of Saigon and the government against roughly 5,500 loyalist troops in the capital.
Because of the abortive plot in August, Ambassador Lodge reacted warily. In a special message to Secretary Rusk, he commented that neither he nor General Harkins had “great faith in Big Minh.” [See Document #49.] Nonetheless, he recommended giving the generals assurance that the United States would not “thwart” their coup, that it would review their plans—“other than assassination plans”—and that it would continue aid to any future government that gave promise of gaining popular support and winning the war. He said General Harkins concurred in these recommendations.
In Washington, too, events were gaining momentum. On Oct. 2, President Kennedy had received the recommendations of the McNamara-Taylor mission (drafted before the new Saigon contacts) urging tight new pressures on the regime in the hopes of gaining some reforms and simultaneously advocating covert contacts with “possible alternative leadership” without actively promoting a coup.
The President accepted all the report’s proposals. According to the Pentagon account, he specifically authorized suspension of economic subsidies for South Vietnam’s commercial imports, a freeze on loans to enable Saigon to build a waterworks and an electric-power plant for the capital region, and, significantly, a cut-off of financial support for the Vietnamese Special Forces—controlled by Mr. Nhu—unless they were put under the Joint General Staff, headed by the plotting generals.
There were to be no public announcements, and the various steps were to be unrolled consecutively at Mr. Lodge’s discretion. But in a city as keyed-up and alert to every nuance in American policy as Saigon, the Pentagon study notes, these steps were bound to be read in many quarters as the death knell for the Diem regime. Only a month before, he recalls, the cut-offs had been discussed—and approved—as a signal of American support to the generals, if necessary.
The analyst comments that the documentary record in early October “leaves ambiguous” whether the White House intended the aid suspensions to be a “green light” for the coup. But he says that they were interpreted that way by the generals. The Diem regime reacted furiously. Its press outlets publicized the freeze on import subsidies on Oct. 7 and accused Washington of sabotaging the war effort.
In a White House message—sent on Oct. 5 through C.I.A. channels for tight security within the American Government—Washington gave Ambassador Lodge careful coaching. It instructed him that “no initiative should now be taken to give any active covert encouragement to a coup.” But he was to organize an “urgent covert effort . . . to identify and build up contacts with possible alternative leadership as and when it appears.” [See Document #50.]
The Washington message emphasized that the objectives should be “surveillance and readiness” rather than “active promotion of a coup.” It told Mr. Lodge that “you alone” should manage the operation, through the C.I.A. chief in Saigon.
These instructions were transmitted before Washington had received the report of the Minh-Conein contact, the Pentagon study observes. For, on the very next day, with time to digest that report, Washington took a considerably more flexible approach.
The C.I.A. relayed new White House instructions on Oct. 6. In a passage that Ambassador Lodge interpreted as signaling a desire for a change of regime—though General Harkins later disputed him vigorously on this point—Washington said that while it did not wish to “stimulate” a coup, it also did not want “to leave the impression that the U.S. would thwart a change of government.” Nor would it withhold aid from a new regime. [See Document #51.]
In view of General Minh’s modest request for American acquiescence, the generals could interpret this as a go ahead.
The Oct. 6 message also ordered the C.I.A. man to obtain “detailed information” to help Washington assess the plot’s chances. Yet it cautioned against “being drawn into reviewing or advising on operational plans or other actions” that might eventually “tend to identify U.S. too closely” with a coup. In the language of the Oct. 5 cable, Washington wanted to preserve “plausibility of denial.”
The new American position was conveyed to General Minh by his C.I.A. contact about Oct. 10.
On Oct. 18, with the cut-off of commercial import subsidies already causing financial scares in Saigon, the Pentagon study reports that General Harkins informed President Diem that American funds were being cut off from the Special Forces. The narrative notes that by then the coup plans were well advanced and the American move against what amounted to a Presidental Palace guard was an obvious spur to the conspirators.
By mid-October the Administration was hearing very disturbing intelligence estimates on the war. On Oct. 19 the C.I.A. reported that the tempo of Vietcong attacks was rising, Government troops “missing in action” were increasing and other military indicators were “turning sour,” as the Pentagon account puts it. In a controversial report on Oct. 22, th
e State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research contested the military optimism of recent months. It concluded that there had been “an unfavorable shift in the military balance” since July and that the Government would have been in trouble even without the Buddhist crisis.
Against this background, the conspiracy in Saigon hit a snag.
The narrative recounts that General Don, in a state of agitation, told Colonel Conein on Oct. 23 that the coup had been scheduled for Oct. 26—and then called off because General Harkins had discouraged it on Oct. 22. General Don’s account was that General Harkins complained to him that a Vietnamese colonel had discussed the coup plans with an American officer, asking for support—all without sanction from the senior generals.
General Harkins, he said, had insisted that American officers should not be approached about a coup because it distracted them from the war. He implied that General Harkins might have leaked word of the plot to the palace. He demanded reassurance of American support—and got it from Colonel Conein.
The Pentagon study quotes a message from Ambassador Lodge on Oct. 23 saying that he had talked with General Harkins who said he had misunderstood Washington’s policy guidance. The Ambassador quoted the general as saying he hoped he had not upset the delicate arrangements and would tell General Don that his previous remarks did not reflect American policy. That very night, the Pentagon version says, General Harkins saw General Don to retract his earlier statements.
On Oct. 24, however, in a message to General Taylor, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Harkins disputed Mr. Lodge’s version of the events. He denied having violated Washington’s policy guidance, saying he had merely rebuffed General Don’s suggestion that they meet again to discuss coup plans.
“I told Don that I would not discuss coups that were not my business though I had heard rumors of many,” General Harkins told Washington. Insisting that he was “not trying to thwart a change in government,” he did, however, voice the prophetic fear that if the Diem regime was toppled, its fall might touch off factional warfare within the army that would eventually “interfere with the war effort.”