Pentagon Papers

by Neil Sheehan

  The Viet Cong is obviously prepared for a long struggle and can be expected to maintain the present pace and diversity of its insurgent-subversive effort. During the next month or so, it may step up its military effort in reaction to the growing GVN-U.S. response. Hanoi can also be expected to increase its efforts to legitimatize its “National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam” (NFLSV) and to prepare further groundwork for a “liberation government” in South Vietnam. On the present evidence, the Communists are not actively moving toward neutralization of South Vietnam in the Laos pattern, although they could seek to do so later. Elimination, even significant reduction, of the Communist insurgency will almost certainly require several years. In either case, a considerably greater effort by the GVN, as well as continuing U.S. assistance, is crucial. If there is continuing improvement in security conditions, Diem should be able to alleviate concern and boost morale within the bureaucracy and the military establishment. But the GVN will not be able to consolidate its military successes into permanent political gains and to evoke the positive support of the peasantry unless it gives more emphasis to non-military aspects of the counterinsurgency program, integrates the strategic hamlet program with an expanded systematic pacification program, and appreciably modified military tactics (particularly those relating to large-unit actions and tactical use of air-power and artillery). Failure to do so might increase militant opposition among the peasants and their positive identification with the Viet Cong.

  A coup could occur at any time, but would be more likely if the fight against the Communists goes badly, if the Viet Cong launches a series of successful and dramatic operations, or if Vietnamese army casualties increase appreciably over a protracted period. The coup most likely to succeed would be one with non-Communist leadership and support, involving middle and top echelon military and civilian officials. For a time at least, the serious disruption of government leadership resulting from a coup would probably halt and possibly reverse the momentum of the government’s counterinsurgency effort. The role of the U.S. can be extremely important in restoring this momentum and in averting widespread fighting and a serious internal power struggle. . . .

  Chapter 4

  The Overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem:

  May-November, 1963

  Highlights of the Period: May-November, 1963

  The Kennedy Administration’s “complicity” in the 1963 overthrow of President Ngo Dinh Diem is documented in the Pentagon study, which says that this episode “inadvertently deepened” U.S. involvement in the Vietnam conflict.

  Here, in chronological order, are highlights of this period:

  MAY-JUNE 1963

  Buddhist protests against the Diem government flared into violence after government troops attacked demonstrators in Hue.

  AUGUST 1963

  The Saigon regime, violating its pledge to the U.S. that it would seek to conciliate the Buddhists, staged midnight raids on Buddhist pagodas.

  The first request for U.S. support of a coup was made to a C.I.A. agent.

  George W. Ball, Acting Secretary of State, told Henry Cabot Lodge, the new U.S. Ambassador, that Diem must “remove” Nhu and his wife or “we can no longer support Diem.” He said that “appropriate military commanders” could be given a pledge of “direct support in any interim period of breakdown central government mechanism.” The Ambassador was authorized to threaten a cut-off of U.S. aid unless the jailed Buddhists were released.

  Lodge replied that the chances of “Diem’s meeting our demands are virtually nil.” He added that “by making them, we give Nhu chance to forestall” a coup, and suggested that “we go straight to generals with our demands.”

  C.I.A. agents made contact with two plotters.

  Col. Lucien Conein, a top C.I.A. agent, met with Lieut. Gen. Duong Van Minh, a leader of the plot.

  Lodge, replying to a query from President Kennedy, said that “U.S. prestige” was publicly committed; he added, “there is no turning back . . .”

  A National Security meeting “reaffirmed basic course.” The U.S. “will support a coup which has a good chance of succeeding.”

  President Kennedy, in a private message to Lodge, pledged “everything possible to help you conclude this operation successfully,” but he asked to be given continuing reports on the situation to allow a possible “reverse” signal.

  The Ambassador reported a breakdown in the conspiracy.

  At a National Security Council meeting, Paul M. Kattenburg, the head of the Vietnam Interdepartmental Working Group, urged U.S. disengagement. Secretary of State Dean Rusk said that the U.S. would not pull out “until the war is won,” and “will not run a coup.”

  OCTOBER 1963

  Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense, and Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, proposed after meeting with Diem that the U.S. “work with the Diem regime but not support it.” They urged economic pressures.

  Conein and other C.I.A. agents renewed their contacts with Minh and other plotters. Lodge recommended assurances that the U.S. would not “thwart” coup.

  The President accepted the McNamara-Taylor proposals, including a series of economic cut-offs. The study says this “leaves ambiguous” the question of whether the aid suspension is meant as “green light for coup.”

  The aid cut-offs began.

  The White House messages to the Ambassador stressed “surveillance and readiness,” not “active promotion” of a coup. The study says they stressed also the desire for the “plausibility of denial” of U.S. involvement.

  The coup was canceled. Its leader cited as the reason the attitude of Gen. Paul D. Harkins, the U.S. military commander in Saigon. Harkins denied “trying to thwart” a coup but said that he “would not discuss coups that were not my business.”

  Doubts about the coup were revived in Washington, the study says. The White House wanted the “option of judging and warning on any plan with poor prospects of success.”

  Lodge opposed any move to “pour cold water” on the plot.

  The White House told Lodge to “discourage” the plot if quick success seemed unlikely. Lodge replied that the U.S. was unable to “delay or discourage a coup.”

  NOVEMBER 1963

  The coup proceeded on schedule. Diem, on the phone with Lodge, asked about the “attitude of the U.S.” Lodge replied that he was not “well enough informed” to say, and told him: “If I can do anything for your personal safety, please call me.”

  The Pentagon study says that Diem finally accepted the offer of safe-conduct out of the country made by the coup’s leaders. He and his brother were shot to death by armored units.

  Chapter 4

  The Overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem: May—November, 1963

  —by HEDRICK SMITH

  The Pentagon’s secret study of the Vietnam war discloses that President Kennedy knew and approved of plans for the military coup d’état that overthrew President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963.

  “Our complicity in his overthrow heightened our responsibilities and our commitment” in Vietnam, the study finds.

  In August and October of 1963, the narrative recounts, the United States gave its support to a cabal of army generals bent on removing the controversial leader, whose rise to power Mr. Kennedy had backed in speeches in the middle nineteen-fifties and who had been the anchor of American policy in Vietnam for nine years.

  The coup, one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of the American involvement in Vietnam, was a watershed. As the Pentagon study observes, it was a time when Washington—with the Diem regime gone—could have reconsidered its entire commitment to South Vietnam and decided to disengage.

  At least two Administration officials advocated disengagement but, according to the Pentagon study, it “was never seriously considered a policy alternative because of the assumption that an independent, non-Communist SVN was too important a strategic interest to abandon.”

  The effect, according to this account, was that the United S
tates, discovering after the coup that the war against the Vietcong had been going much worse than officials previously thought, felt compelled to do more—rather than less—for Saigon. By supporting the anti-Diem coup, the analyst asserts, “the U.S. inadvertently deepened its involvement. The inadvertence is the key factor.”

  According to the Pentagon account of the 1963 events in Saigon, Washington did not originate the anti-Diem coup, nor did American forces intervene in any way, even to try to prevent the assassinations of Mr. Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, who, as the chief Diem political adviser, had accumulated immense power. Popular discontent with the Diem regime focused on Mr. Nhu and his wife.

  But for weeks—and with the White House informed every step of the way—the American mission in Saigon maintained secret contacts with the plotting generals through one of the Central Intelligence Agency’s most experienced and versatile operatives, an Indochina veteran, Lieut. Col. Lucien Conein. He first landed in Vietnam in 1944 by parachute for the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime forerunner of the C.I.A.

  So trusted by the Vietnamese generals was Colonel Conein that he was in their midst at Vietnamese General Staff headquarters as they launched the coup. Indeed, on Oct. 25, a week earlier, in a cable to McGeorge Bundy, the President’s special assistant for national security, Ambassador Lodge had occasion to describe Colonel Conein of the C.I.A.—referring to the agency, in code terminology, as C.A.S.—as the indispensable man:

  “C.A.S. has been punctilious in carrying out my instructions. I have personally approved each meeting between General Don [one of three main plotters] and Conein who has carried out my orders in each instance explicitly. . . .

  “Conein, as you know, is a friend of some 18 years’ standing with General Don, and General Don has expressed extreme reluctance to deal with anyone else. I do not believe the involvement of another American in close contact with the generals would be productive.” [See Document #52.]

  So closely did the C.I.A. work with the generals, official documents reveal, that it provided them with vital intelligence about the arms and encampments of pro-Diem military forces after Mr. Lodge had authorized C.I.A. participation in tactical planning of the coup.

  So intimately tied to the conspiracy did the Ambassador himself become that he offered refuge to the families of the generals if their plot failed—and he obtained Washington’s approval. Near the end, he also sent a message to Washington seeking authority to put up the money for bribes to win over officers still loyal to President Diem. [See Document #57.]

  The fear of failure—fed by bitterly conflicting advice from Ambassador Lodge and Gen. Paul D. Harkins, chief of the American Military Assistance Command in Saigon—dogged President Kennedy to the end.

  In late August, with a coup by the generals expected any hour, President Kennedy sent a private message to Ambassador Lodge. Possibly thinking back to the collapse of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba he said: “I know from experience that failure is more destructive than an appearance of indecision. . . . When we go, we must go to win, but it will be better to change our minds than fail.”

  In his Aug. 30 cablegram, obtained by The New York Times along with the Pentagon study, the President also pledged “We will do all that we can to help you conclude this operation successfully.”

  On Oct. 30, after the plot had been postponed and later revived, the White House cabled Mr. Lodge with instructions to delay further any coup that did not have “a high prospect of success.” But it left the ultimate judgment up to the Ambassador and asserted that once a coup “under responsible leadership” had begun, “it is in the interest of the U.S. Government that it should succeed.” [See Document #56.]

  The conclusions of the Pentagon study run contrary to the denial of American involvement by Ambassador Lodge in a press interview on June 29, 1964, and the impression given by the more carefully worded disavowals of American responsibility published in the memoirs of some Kennedy Administration officials.

  “For the military coup d’état against Ngo Dinh Diem, the U.S. must accept its full share of responsibility,” the Pentagon account asserts.

  “Beginning in August of 1963 we variously authorized, sanctioned and encouraged the coup efforts of the Vietnamese generals and offered full support for a successor government. In October we cut off aid to Diem in a direct rebuff, giving a green light to the generals. We maintained clandestine contact with them throughout the planning and execution of the coup and sought to review their operational plans and proposed new government.”

  The intrigues of the Vietnamese generals and of Mr. Nhu have largely been recounted before. Two added elements emerge from the Pentagon study: the step-by-step American collusion with the conspiracy, revealed previously only in shadowy outline; and the feud inside the American Government that brought it close to paralysis at decisive moments.

  For if the Diem regime was a house divided against itself, so was the Kennedy Administration.

  In Saigon, the two chief antagonists were Ambassador Lodge, considered even by admirers an aloof, shrewd Massachusetts Brahmin politician; and General Harkins, an affable, athletic cavalry officer who had been a protégé of the World War II tank commander, Maj. Gen. George S. Patton, 3d.

  As the Pentagon study recounts it, the Ambassador quickly became a partisan of the anti-Diem plot, while General Harkins resented what he felt would be shabby treatment of President Diem. “I would suggest we try not to change horses too quickly,” the general declared in a cable to Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Oct. 30, less than 48 hours before the coup. [See Document #54.]

  “After all, rightly or wrongly, we have backed Diem for eight long hard years. To me it seems incongruous now to get him down, kick him around and get rid of him. The U.S. has been his mother superior and father confessor since he’s been in office and he leaned on us heavily.”

  The Ambassador and the general clashed at almost every juncture on almost every major issue and their controversy reverberated at the highest levels of government in Washington.

  At one point, the study relates, the two men even relayed contradictory messages to the plotters. Subsequently, Ambassador Lodge held such tight control over the conspiratorial maneuvering that General Harkins protested to Washington that he was being kept in the dark.

  Ultimately, the Pentagon narrative shows, it was Mr. Lodge—a supremely self-confident ambassador, a former Republican vice-presidential nominee with independent political power, firm in his views, jealous of his ambassadorial prerogatives, intent on asserting his full authority—who exerted critical influence on the Government.

  “Political Decay”

  Until the eruption of Buddhist demonstrations against the Diem regime in May, 1963, much of the American public was oblivious to the “political decay” in Vietnam described in the Pentagon account: the atmosphere of suspicion, the pervasive but latent disaffection with the autocratic Diem regime, the taint of corruption, the suppressed discontent in the Army.

  In America, the early months of 1963 were a season of bullish public pronouncements about the war. In his State of the Union address on Jan. 14, President Kennedy declared that the “spearpoint of aggression has been blunted in Vietnam” while Adm. Harry D. Felt, commander in chief of Pacific forces, predicted victory within three years.

  Although this reflected the view prevailing among policymakers, a national intelligence estimate on April 17 offered a less glowing picture. Provided that outside help to the Vietcong was not increased, the intelligence paper estimated that the guerrillas could be “contained militarily” but added that there was still no persuasive evidence that the enemy had been “grievously hurt” by the allied war efforts. Conclusion: “The situation remains fragile.”

  Moreover, as the Pentagon account recalls, military officers had twice tried to kill President Diem—in November, 1960, and again in February, 1962. Deeply distrustful of the army, the South Vietnamese President had placed loyal favori
tes in sensitive posts commanding troops around Saigon, established a trusted network of military chiefs in all provinces and stripped potential challengers and malcontents of troop commands.

  Over the years, secret intelligence reports had told of the corrosive effect of such methods on military morale. Periodically, they also described the gulf between the mandarin ruler and the apathetic peasantry, or the alienation of an urban middle class resentful of overbearing political controls and of its lack of real political voice.

  At times even Washington felt exasperated with its chosen ally for failing to strive for greater popular allegiance through political, military and economic reforms. But the United States had become accustomed to having President Diem reject its advice and, early in 1963, found itself somewhat on the defensive before his complaint that there were too many prying Americans roaming his land.

  “As the U.S. commitment and involvement deepened,” the Pentagon chronicle relates, “frictions between American advisers and Vietnamese counterparts at all levels increased. Diem, under the influence of Nhu, complained about the quantity and zeal of U.S. advisers. They were creating a colonial impression among the people, he said.”

  Despite such frictions, the Kennedy Administration was content to continue the general policy that, the Pentagon analyst observes, was aptly captured in a journalistic aphorism: “Sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem.”

  As the Pentagon study recounts the 1963 political crisis, the spark of revolt was struck in the central Vietnamese city of Hue on May 8, when Government troops fired into a crowd of Buddhists displaying religious banners in defiance of a Government decree. Nine persons were killed and 14 injured, when they were crushed by armored vehicles.