Vietnam, An Epic Tragedy

by Max Hastings

  3 KILLING TIME

  The countdown to the murder of President Ngo Dinh Diem started on 23 August 1963, when a top-secret cable to the State Department from Lodge demanded to know whether Washington would support a coup. A positive reply was drafted and sent to Saigon over a weekend when Kennedy, Rusk and McNamara were out of town: its authors were Averell Harriman, Roger Hilsman and Michael Forrestal. If Diem refused to make reforms and sack his brother Nhu, they wrote in the name of the US government, ‘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 … Ambassador … 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.’

  On Monday morning, when Kennedy returned to the White House he was disturbed by the insouciance with which this momentous directive – for such the cable was – had been dispatched, by middle-ranking officials. He consulted with McNamara and Taylor, who equivocated: they would prefer that Diem stayed, albeit without Nhu. If the generals decided otherwise, however, the US should support an interim military government. Kennedy finally decided not to recall the weekend telegram: it would be left to Lodge to determine policy. The ambassador later claimed to have been ‘thunderstruck’. His entirely reasonable interpretation of the Washington cable was that he was now mandated to precipitate Diem’s fall.

  On 2 September the US president, answering a question about Vietnam in a CBS interview with Walter Cronkite, said that the Saigon regime needed to gain more support: ‘with changes in policy and perhaps in personnel I think [the government] can win. If it doesn’t make those changes, I would think the chances of winning would not be very good.’ Kennedy appealed for more help – practical help – from America’s allies: ‘It doesn’t do us any good to say, “Well, why don’t we all just go home and leave the world to those who are our enemies.”’ He added that ‘the only people who can win are the people of Vietnam’. Some historians have interpreted such words as indicating Kennedy’s acknowledgement that Americans could not achieve what Vietnamese would not do for themselves; that he was pointing towards an exit. This seems fanciful: he had his own presidential re-election race to win, which might conceivably be lost in South-East Asia, just as Korea doomed Harry Truman in 1952.

  Events now accelerated. The North Vietnamese were probing for any means of separating Diem from the Americans. To this end, Hanoi embarked on a dog-leg dalliance with Saigon, via Polish and French intermediaries, which soon became known to the Kennedy administration. The most ignoble aspect of Washington’s mounting interest in a coup was the impetus provided by fears that Diem or his brother Nhu might be contemplating a deal. Bernard Fall, who commanded a readership among decision-makers because he was known to have good contacts on both sides, reported that, in the event of a meaningful North–South dialogue, Ho Chi Minh would accept a delay to reunification – a ‘decent interval’, to use a phrase Fall did not employ, but which would become the focus of many future Indochina peace efforts. In truth, the exchanges had little chance of an outcome: Le Duan was interested only in achieving a communist Vietnam, while the Ngos laboured under the delusion that they held good cards – an imminent prospect of military victory and their own indispensability to the Americans. The mere fact of contacts between the two sides nonetheless set alarm bells ringing in Washington. The Saigon regime’s willingness to parley reflected increasing animosity towards its paymasters.

  President Kennedy’s friend Charles Bartlett claimed later that the Saigon regime’s flirtation with the North was the principal reason for the decision to dispense with Diem. He quoted the president as saying, ‘Charlie, I can’t let Vietnam go to the Communists and then go and ask [American voters] to re-elect me. Somehow we’ve got to hold that territory.’ Nonetheless, Kennedy allegedly added, ‘But we’ve got no future there. [The South Vietnamese] hate us. They want us out of there. At one point they’ll kick our asses out of there.’ This reported conversation seems credible. Kennedy’s private attitude was coloured by the bad faith shown by the communists about implementing his administration’s Laos neutralisation pact; there seemed likewise no prospect of Hanoi proving an honest partner in any coalition settlement for Vietnam.

  American alarm increased when France’s president Charles de Gaulle took a hand. This lofty, profoundly anti-Anglo-Saxon nationalist repeatedly urged that the US should disengage, allowing Vietnam to be neutralised. Washington believed that de Gaulle’s remarks reflected jealousy about France’s displacement from a region that had once been its property. Fredrik Logevall has written: ‘American planners would spend much time discussing the French leader’s actions and ideas, but only in terms of how best to counter them. The substance of his argument was not closely examined, then or later, partly because it was anathema to American officials, and partly because they were convinced he had ulterior motives.’

  Walter Lippmann warned in his column on 3 September: ‘If there is no settlement such as General de Gaulle proposes, then a protracted and indecisive war of attrition is all that is left.’ The veteran commentator, who in those years wrote more about Indochina than any other single issue, believed that the best to which the US could aspire was a Titoist outcome, whereby a unified Vietnam became communist, but not a tool of China or the Soviets. Lippmann implicitly argued that Ho Chi Minh could not be defeated on the battlefield, and that the best alternative might be to woo him with dollars. This was implausible: there seems no more reason to believe that Le Duan, a Robespierrian ‘sea-green incorruptible’, could have been bribed into running a moderate, humane government had he been granted suzerainty over a unified Vietnam in 1963, than he did after 1975. But that does not diminish the validity of Lippmann’s thesis, that the Americans could not prevail by force of arms.

  On 13 September the NSC’s Chester Cooper wrote from Saigon to his old CIA colleague John McCone saying that he thought a diplomatic rapprochement between the Diem regime and Hanoi, involving expulsion of the Americans, was on the cards. Here were gall and wormwood, which made the administration even less inclined to discourage Lodge from inciting Saigon’s generals to intervene. The ambassador had no hesitation about exploiting the authority delegated to him by the White House to instigate a change of government, though this proved a tortured process. It was hard to urge into action the influential soldiers whom he addressed – generals Duong Van Minh, Tran Van Don, Le Van Kim, Tran Thien Khiem. The CIA’s Colby, who hated Lodge and strongly opposed action against a Vietnamese national leader who was as devout a Catholic as himself, wrote later: ‘There was an almost total absence of consideration and evaluation of the personalities who might succeed Diem, beyond generalised references to “the military”.’ The South Vietnamese officers were not unreasonably hesitant about deposing Diem unless or until they were sure their own hand was strong enough, which required unequivocal American backing. They knew that they could expect nothing on paper from the embassy, but were unwilling to risk their own necks merely on the verbal assurances of Lou Conein, who hereafter acted as covert liaison officer between Lodge and the army chiefs.

  A few years after these events, US undercover agents were watching a Marseilles bar involved in the huge Transatlantic drug-smuggling operation that became notorious as ‘the French Connection’. The surveillance team was startled to identify Conein among those present, gladhanding Corsican gangster friends from his OSS days. Frank Scotton nonetheless argued that beneath Conein’s posturings as buccaneer or buffoon, the big thug could work effectively to fulfil an allotted task, which in October 1963 meant providing the link between the US government, which acquiesced in Diem’s extinction, and the Vietnamese generals who brought this about.

  Lodge chafed at the sluggishness of the plotters, who, he wrote crossly, had ‘neither the will nor the organisation … to accomplish anything’. Harkins, having no time for the a
mbassador, shrugged to Max Taylor, ‘You can’t hurry the East.’ George Ball later argued that the notorious August Harriman/Hilsman telegram was less influential in energising the generals than Kennedy’s TV appearance two weeks later, warning that the US would withdraw aid unless Saigon changed its ways. Many South Vietnamese, both in uniform and out of it, sensed backing for Diem ebbing away. Army lieutenant Nguyen Cong Luan was a passionate anti-communist, who also hated the government: ‘My comrades and I believed that it was necessary to bring new leaders to power so that South Vietnam could deal effectively with the communists and become a place of full freedom and democracy like the United States.’ They had been much excited when South Korea’s dictator Syngman Rhee was forced out of power in 1960. ‘We believed that if our side [in Vietnam] showed enough resolution and strength for a coup attempt, the Americans would have to support us.’

  President Kennedy now confused the issue by dispatching McNamara and Taylor on a ten-day ‘fact-minding mission’ to Vietnam, which began on 25 September. They returned to fantasise about ‘great progress’ on the battlefield, while deploring Diem’s intransigence. They had probed in vain for tidings about the supposedly imminent coup. When Gen. Duong Van ‘Big’ Minh, leader of the army plotters, said nothing significant to Taylor during an energetic tennis game at Saigon’s Cercle Sportif, the American decided that the plan must have been aborted. He and McNamara nonetheless concluded that military victory remained attainable, if only the Saigon government could be sorted. Which required removal of the Ngos.

  The White House cabled Lodge on 2 October, emphasising that deniability was all: ‘No initiative should now be taken to give any covert encouragement to a coup. There should, however, be an urgent effort … to identify and build contacts with possible alternative leadership as and when this appears.’ Three days later Lodge messaged the president that the coup seemed likely to happen after all. Conein and Minh met for some frank exchanges, conducted in French, at an old colonial bungalow in the Saigon garrison compound. The Vietnamese said that his only non-negotiable demand was an assurance that US aid would continue. He warned Conein that time was of the essence: his own was merely one of several rival conspiracies. That day another Buddhist monk burned himself to death.

  Conein’s report caused Lodge to recommend to Washington that he need merely give Minh an assurance that the US ‘will not attempt to thwart’ regime change. Kennedy assented, though warning that Americans must not be actively engaged in the process of a coup. The mood in Saigon was now febrile, with rumours everywhere of an impending threat to Diem. These had their effect in alarming the Vietnamese generals, who once more drew back from the brink. Lodge felt obliged to sack CIA station chief John Richardson, who shared Paul Harkins’ scepticism about dumping Diem.

  Then Nhu intensified his campaign of political repression, and publicly heaped obloquy on the Americans for alleged meddling. After the war, senior communists observed that this would have been an ideal moment to provoke an uprising: South Vietnam had become unstable and vulnerable; almost everyone hated the Ngos. COSVN, however, merely sustained its guerrilla campaign, while in Saigon the generals bargained for support from key army units. Lou Conein sought to keep the plotters on course through soothing conversations with Gen. Don at their mutual dental surgery, which became a safe house for meetings.

  On 26 October, National Day, Diem visited the hill resort of Dalat. In the prevalent jittery mood, his plane was preceded by an identical but empty decoy C-47, and the welcoming honour guard’s rifles were inspected to ensure that they were unloaded. The president had scheduled a meeting with the US ambassador, and Frank Scotton was tasked to enquire of a Vietnamese contact, privy to the coup planning, whether Lodge could enter the presidential guesthouse without getting caught in a storm of bullets. The USIA man got the necessary nod: the generals were not yet ready. The visit, and Diem’s meeting with the ambassador, took place without incident.

  In Washington, divisions persisted. Vice-president Lyndon Johnson exercised little influence, but persistently opposed eviction of the Diems. As a visceral anti-communist, he saw the challenge as being simply to contrive the military defeat of the Vietcong. Never a man for nuances, he liked to pretend to jest ‘Foreigners are not like the folks I am used to,’ though this indeed emphasised an important truth about himself. On 29 October Kennedy convened the NSC to discuss a cable from Harkins, expressing the general’s desire to stick with the Ngos: ‘Rightly or wrongly, we have backed Diem for eight long hard years. To me it seems incongruous to get him down, kick him around and get rid of him.’ This message shook Robert Kennedy, who decided that a coup now looked risky.

  National security adviser McGeorge Bundy dispatched another cable to Lodge, reflecting the president’s new doubts. Yet the ambassador had become determined to see the plot through: he never conveyed Washington’s equivocations either to the Vietnamese generals or to Lou Conein. On 1 November the old OSS man arrived by appointment at army headquarters, wearing uniform and carrying a .357 revolver together with $US40,000 in cash, which he deemed the appropriate fashion accessories for an afternoon’s work overthrowing a government. He left his wife and children in their villa guarded by Green Berets, and radioed from his jeep an agreed signal to his superiors that the operation was starting: ‘Nine, nine, nine, nine, nine.’ Rebel troops launched an assault on Diem’s palace, where the president and his brother took refuge in the cellar. In Saigon, the plotters seized and shot several Ngo loyalist officers. At 4.30 p.m. Diem telephoned Lodge to seek his support, and received only the offer of a safe conduct out of the country.

  The plotters phoned the president, urging him to quit in exchange for his life. Instead he contacted intimates, trawling for support which was not forthcoming. At eight o’clock that evening Diem and Nhu attempted a desperate gambit, slipping out of the palace and driving to Cholon through deserted streets, defying a curfew imposed by the army plotters. The two took refuge in a house prepared by Nhu for just such an emergency, with its own communications system: they were in Cholon when rebel troops shelled and finally stormed the palace, overcoming guards who died in defence of an absent Diem. Only after hours of fighting was the wrecked building secured, then looted of everything from Madame Nhu’s negligees to the president’s impressive collection of American comics.

  At 6 a.m. on 3 November, an audibly exhausted Diem telephoned ‘Big’ Minh and offered to negotiate terms for his resignation. The generals rejected the proposal, likewise a suggestion that he should be allowed to leave the country with the public honours due to the head of state. Minutes later, Diem called again: he and his brother had decided to surrender unconditionally, and were to be found at St Francis Xavier, a Catholic church in Cholon. The generals, uncertain what they should do with their redundant president, turned to Lou Conein. He said it would take twenty-four hours to produce an American plane to fly Diem out, and they would need to find a country willing to grant him asylum.

  The generals delegated a veteran secret policeman to fetch Diem and Nhu from Cholon in an M-113 APC. In the party was also Capt. Nhung, Minh’s personal bodyguard, to whom the general is alleged to have given a discreet signal – two raised fingers – to indicate that the captives should be killed: Nhung had already executed two Diem loyalists the previous night. At the church, the Ngos shook hands with their escort, who ushered them into the carrier with an assurance that its armour offered protection against ‘extremists’. On the way back into Saigon, the little convoy halted at a railroad crossing, where an officer emptied a sub-machine-gun into the passengers. The carrier, awash with blood, then continued to Minh’s office at garrison headquarters, where his man announced tersely, ‘Mission accomplie.’ The general told Conein that Diem had committed suicide, then asked, ‘Would you like to see him?’ Absolutely not, said the American: there was a ‘one-in-a-million chance’ that the world would swallow the coup plotters’ story, and he declined to be embarrassed by confronting the truth.

  A British
Council lecturer found himself identifying the bodies of Diem and Nhu at St Paul hospital, because he was married to the late president’s niece. Diem appeared to have been hit just once in the neck, Nhu repeatedly in the back. Lodge summoned the generals to the US embassy, where he described the coup as ‘a remarkable performance in all respects’, then sent a buoyant cable to Washington: ‘The prospects now are for a shorter war.’ There were public celebrations in Saigon and other cities, with the deposed dictator’s image exultantly torn from the walls of public buildings. Hundreds of political prisoners, some showing marks of torture, were set free. An incongruous memory lingered in the minds of many Saigonese: a ban on dancing, imposed by Madame Nhu in the alleged interests of public morality, was rescinded. Thousands danced, figuratively, on the Ngos’ graves.

  Neil Sheehan and some of his press corps colleagues detected an illusory gleam of hope: ‘If you stuck with Diem, you were going to lose the war. We thought, if they got a decent military regime, they had a chance.’ Gen. Duong Van Minh assumed leadership of the junta that took over the government of South Vietnam. In London The Times reported on 5 November: ‘Saigon was acting as if a great weight was lifted. Streets were crowded as they have never been crowded … Thousands of Buddhists flocked to Xa Loi pagoda for almost jubilant prayer services.’ A special correspondent added: ‘The pro-American leanings of several of the Junta … should incline them towards democracy.’

  John F. Kennedy was attending a meeting with Max Taylor when news was brought of Diem’s death. The soldier recorded how the president ‘rushed from the room with a look of shock and dismay’. Subsequent arguments about responsibility seem otiose. The administration had authorised Lodge to open the seacocks, allowing the regime to founder. Recriminations about whether Washington should have ensured the availability of lifeboats for survivors are beside the point. The South Vietnamese generals would not have dared to remove Diem had they not been assured that this represented Washington’s will. Nobody convincingly warned them not to kill him.