The Best and the Brightest

by David Halberstam

  Back in Washington, McNamara and Taylor went to the White House to read the report. Some of the civilians were uneasy with the optimism still contained in it (Bill Sullivan, Harriman’s man, had argued against it on the plane ride back), particularly against pulling out of troops. Mac Bundy, at the urging of some of his staff, questioned it. “Is this wise?” he asked. “Aren’t we setting a trap for ourselves?” But they would find no flexibility. Someone questioning Bill Bundy, still at the Defense Department, about the wording and the dangers inherent in it, got a shrug. “I’m under orders,” he said. Taylor, he told others, wanted the reference to the troop withdrawals left in as a means of pushing the Vietnamese. Hilsman, asking McNamara about the wording, found him brusque, almost rude, and later, Hilsman said, when McNamara read the statement publicly, it was as if he were reading an ultimatum. The President himself was unhappy about it, but was fatalistic; he could have leaned on them and pushed for more, but he had a sense of the delicacy of the whole thing, that he had moved one key player, McNamara, considerably with this one mission, and McNamara had in a limited sense moved Taylor (though without truly changing him or opening him up; it was as if McNamara had dragged a reluctant Taylor a few gradations on the calibration of attitude). So Kennedy knew that if he were having troubles with his bureaucracy in moving them a notch or two at a time, they in turn were having troubles with their bureaucracy.

  As everything about Vietnam was compromised, so too was this report by McNamara and Taylor, but Kennedy was not that worried. He knew Vietnam was bad and getting worse, that he was on his way to a first-class foreign policy problem, but he had a sense of being able to handle it, of having time, that time was somehow on his side. He could afford to move his people slowly; too forceful a shove would bring a counter shove. It was late 1963, and since 1964 was an election year, any delay on major decisions was healthy; if the Vietnamese could hold out a little longer, so could he. Besides, other things were beginning to come together. He had signed a limited nuclear test-ban treaty with the Soviets, the civil rights march on Washington had come and passed, and had not hurt his Administration; rather, by its dignity and grandeur and passion, it had reflected the aspirations of have-not Americans with a sense of majesty that probably had helped his Administration. Kennedy felt that the country’s doubts about him and his Presidency were ebbing, that his real popularity, not the visual popularity, but a deeper thing, was beginning to form, that the idea of him as President was beginning to crystallize. So he did not want to rush too quickly, to split his Administration unnecessarily. There was always time. The date of the McNamara-Taylor report was October 2, 1963.

  At almost the same time General Duong Van Minh, the most respected military figure in the South, a man close to the Lansdale group since the early days when he had helped fight the banditlike Binh Xuyen sect, contacted Lou Conein, an old friend of his, and asked if they could talk. Conein had been in Vietnam for eighteen years, mostly with the CIA; he had been one of the first Americans parachuted in at the end of World War II. He knew the non-Communist Vietnamese military well, since they had been his recruits, as he liked to say. Shrewd, irreverent, colorful, he seemed an American version of the audacious French paratrooper, someone sprung to life from a pulp adventure thriller. He knew the country, and the people, and he flirted with danger, it was danger that made life more exciting. Two fingers were missing from one hand, and stories were told all over Saigon as to how those fingers had disappeared, in what noble or ignoble cause; reporters who knew Conein well and liked him and whose phones were always tapped referred to him in their own code as “Three-Finger Brown” after a baseball pitcher named Mordecai Brown. The American command in Saigon despised him; he had, they suspected, been there too long, gone too native; he was erratic, untrustworthy, playing the game of adventurer—the most dangerous kind. He was also one of the very few Americans who had any credibility with the Vietnamese military, who despised Harkins and regarded Harkins as an extension of Nhu (later, as dealings with the Vietnamese generals became more involved, the White House cabled Lodge suggesting that it would be nice if someone more respectable than Conein could be found, and Lodge answered yes, he agreed, but there was no suitable substitute, and General Tran Van Don had “expressed extreme reluctance to deal with anyone else”).

  With Lodge’s approval, Conein met General Minh on October 5 and they talked for more than an hour. General Minh said that the war was being lost, that the senior Vietnamese officers (himself, Tran Van Don and Tran Van Kim, all respected and none of them commanding troops because they had followings of their own, and were thus considered dangerous by Nhu) felt that a change had to be made. He wanted to know what the American attitude toward this was; he did not want American assistance, but neither did he want the Americans to thwart them. They had to move and move quickly, he said, because regimental and battalion commanders were now too restless and were pushing for a coup (which confirmed a Hilsman-Sarris estimate made a month earlier that the generals would not move immediately unless pushed from below by junior officers). Conein said that he could not answer them until he had talked to his superiors; Minh said he understood. He mentioned three possible ways of removing the regime: assassination of both Diem and Nhu, a military encirclement of Saigon, or open fighting between loyal and disloyal units. Conein said that the United States would not advise on which plan was best. Minh also wanted to know whether U.S. aid would continue if the generals were running the government. Ambassador Lodge immediately answered that the United States would not thwart a coup, would review Vietnamese plans, other than assassination plans, and would assure the generals that U.S. aid would be continued to another anti-Communist government.

  With this the end was in sight for the Diem regime. Lodge, the dominant player in Saigon, shrewd, forceful and tough, did not believe anything the government said, nor much of what the U.S. military said. He cut Harkins out of much of the cable traffic, believing the general was a problem both in Washington and in Saigon, where he might leak information to the Ngo family. Ironically, Harkins was an old family friend from Boston, which made Lodge wary of being openly critical of the general’s reporting, so he tried simply to by-pass him (“The Ambassador and I are certainly in touch with each other but whether the communications between us are effective is something else. I will say Cabot’s methods of operations are entirely different from Amb. Nolting’s . . .” Harkins said in an angry cable to Taylor on October 30). Before he went to Saigon, Lodge had prepared himself fully in Washington, including long talks with Madame Nhu’s parents, who were highly critical of their daughter’s politics (her father, Tran Van Chuong, was ambassador to the United States and had resigned, along with the embassy staff, after the crackdown on the pagodas). Lodge felt that all the charges against the Ngo family were true, that Nhu could not be separated from Diem, that the war was being lost, that since there was going to be a coup anyway, the U.S. position should be to neither encourage it (except perhaps slightly; that is, by not discouraging it) nor thwart it. He predicted, accurately, to Washington, that Diem would make a request for U.S. help, and that the U.S. attitude should be that its capacities were far less than Diem’s.

  By mid-October Lodge had convinced the White House, which was in a receptive mood, that a coup was going to take place, led by the generals, unless the Americans openly betrayed them. He thought that it was all for the better, that the chances of a new government being far more effective than the old were at least even. In that he was right; in Saigon at least three major plots were still brewing, plus a counterplot by Ngo Dinh Nhu; it was no longer a question of a coup, but of which coup. By October 6 Kennedy had wired Lodge telling him that although the United States did not wish to stimulate a coup, it did not wish to thwart one either, that Lodge should keep in touch with the generals and find out what their plans were. However, the U.S. role should be covert and deniable; indeed, Lodge should pass on Kennedy’s instructions verbally to the acting CIA chief (John Richardson had been
sent home at Lodge’s request because he was too much of a symbol of the direct U.S. relationship with Nhu), so that no one else would know of the contents.

  The weeks of October passed with coup fever building in Saigon. Diem and Nhu had won the first round with the pagoda strike, but it soon became evident that it was a temporary move, that while it had left the opposition disorganized at first, in the long run it was galvanizing the opposition, making it virtually total. A form of madness seemed to take over in Saigon. Having crushed the Buddhists, the government had moved against college students, and having crushed them, moved against high school students, and after they were crushed, and finding rebellion in elementary schools, it cracked down on them, closing those schools too. In hundreds of homes of government officers, brothers and sisters had been arrested. In Saigon, a journalist for Catholic magazines and until then a vehemently loyal supporter of the family, took American journalists aside to tell them of past Ngo injustices against the Catholic Church, a means of separating the Church from the accelerating insanity of the family.

  Lodge, biding his time, letting the family guess his intentions, began to deal with Diem and found him as unresponsive as ever. Diem asked about reinstatement of American aid, and Lodge parried by demanding the release of hundreds of arrested Buddhists and students. Diem, Lodge later reported, offered a vast number of excuses. Finally Lodge said, “Mr. President, every single specific suggestion which I have made, you have rejected. Isn’t there some one thing you may think of that is within your capabilities to do and that would favorably impress U.S. opinion?” According to Lodge, Diem gave him a blank look and changed the subject. It was in fact a tactic which had worked in the past: give the Americans at best a vague promise, count on them to be so committed to you that they would never turn aside; also that whoever dealt with you would be afraid to face domestic reverberations if he failed with you.

  With the coup imminent, Harkins discovered in late October that he had been cut out of major decisions and cable traffic; in addition, he was irate over Lodge’s pessimistic assessments of the military status. Now, on October 30, he reported back to Taylor that he doubted a coup was coming. General Tran Van Don had told Conein that it would take place before November 2, but when Harkins asked Don he denied any knowledge of a coup. In addition, Harkins reported that he had sat with Generals Don and Minh for two hours the previous weekend and neither had mentioned a coup (which was of course true; both generals regarded Harkins as the last Diem loyalist in the country).

  The Harkins cable unsettled an already jittery Washington, and later that day there was a nervous Bundy cable to Lodge saying that despite what Lodge had said, the U.S. role on a coup could be crucial; he demanded more military information on what the generals were going to do, which units they had and which they lacked. Lodge answered that it was essentially a Vietnamese affair, though of course it was possible to give to Diem the information that Conein had received from the generals, which would place the United States in the position of being traitors. If at this point, he warned, we pulled back on the generals, it would guarantee that Diem and Nhu would never change, nor could they ever be moved. The United States, he continued, was trying “to bring this medieval country into the 20th Century and . . . we have made considerable progress in military and economic ways but to gain victory we must also bring them into the 20th Century politically . . .”

  Bundy was still not satisfied with the Lodge answer. He cabled once more suggesting that the United States could control Vietnamese events, that he was not suggesting the betrayal of the plotters but perhaps a delay until there were better chances of success. But it was too late, the final plans were in motion. On November 1 the Saigon embassy and CIA predicted in their early reports to Washington that a coup would come that day; MACV, which was supposed to be the best-informed on what the Vietnamese military were doing, dissented and said it would not come (when the coup did take place, MACV called up the embassy and asked to have the cable killed).

  Shortly after one o’clock in the afternoon, troops committed to the generals began taking over key points in Saigon. Ngo Dinh Nhu had been tipped off earlier by one officer that a coup was coming, and true to form, instead of trying to break it then, he had devised an enormously elaborate countercoup which was designed to lure the plotters into the open, destroy them, destroy the Buddhists and all American sympathizers and raise such havoc that the Americans would be glad to have the Nhus back in power. As the first incidents took place, Nhu was confident it was his own countercoup set in motion. By the time he realized that he was mistaken and that he had lost control, he and Diem were practically surrounded, only the palace guard remained loyal. Since their situation was almost hopeless, Diem and Nhu asked the generals to call a halt and negotiate demands, but the same thing had happened before, in 1960, when Diem used it as a means of smashing a coup and gaining time for loyal units to enter the city. Now the brothers tried it again, but there were no loyal units. At four-thirty in the afternoon Diem finally called Lodge, and the embassy preserved this record of the conversation:

  diem: Some units have made a rebellion and I want to know what is the attitude of the U.S.?

  lodge: I do not feel well enough informed to be able to tell you. I have heard the shooting, but am not acquainted with all the facts. Also it is 4:30 a.m. in Washington and the U.S. Government cannot possibly have a view.

  diem: But you must have some general ideas. After all, I am a Chief of State. I have tried to do my duty. I want to do now what duty and good sense require. I believe in duty above all.

  lodge: You certainly have done your duty. As I told you only this morning, I admire your courage and your great contributions to your country. No one can take away from you the credit for all you have done. Now I am worried about your physical safety. I have a report that those in charge of the current activity offer you and your brother safe conduct out of the country if you will resign. Had you heard this?

  diem: No. (And then after a pause) You have my telephone number.

  lodge: Yes. If I can do anything for your physical safety, please call me.

  diem: I am trying to re-establish order.

  The fighting continued through the night and into the early morning. By the time the rebels took the palace, Diem and Nhu were gone, having slipped out through a secret tunnel. They fled to the Chinese suburb of Cholon, where they remained in touch with the generals. Reportedly they finally accepted safe-conduct out of the country, but were picked up by the insurgents, and on orders of the new junta, killed while in the back of an armored personnel carrier. The body of Ngo Dinh Nhu was repeatedly stabbed after his death.

  It was all over. One day photographs and statues had been everywhere, but not just of Diem, of his sister-in-law as well, a personality cult. The next day it was all gone, the statues smashed, the posters ripped through, his likeness left only on the one-piastre coin. In the streets the population mobbed the generals and garlanded the troops with flowers (one combat officer from the Delta later recalled that it was the first time he liked being a soldier, the first time he felt popular with the people). When Lodge himself walked through the streets, he was cheered like a presidential candidate. For the Americans it was a high moment, yet it would soon be followed by darkness; the reality of how badly the war was going would now come home as the death of Diem opened the floodgates of reporting and allowed officers to tell the truth. In addition, the one factor which had briefly in the nine years of the country’s existence given even the vaguest element of unity to a non-Communist South Vietnam was gone—opposition to the Ngo family. For Diem the responsibility had been too much; he was a feudal leader, a man of the past trying to rule by outmoded means and dependent upon outside Caucasian support. There were many epitaphs written for him in the next few weeks, but curiously and prophetically the best one had been written some eight years earlier by Graham Greene:

  Diem is separated from the people by cardinals and police cars with wailing sirens and f
oreign advisers when he should be walking in the rice fields unprotected, learning the hard way how to be loved and obeyed—the two cannot be separated. One pictured him sitting there in the Norodom Palace, sitting with his blank, brown gaze, incorruptible, obstinate, ill-advised, going to his weekly confession, bolstered up by his belief that God is always on the Catholic side, waiting for a miracle. The name I would write under his portrait is the Patriot Ruined by the West.