An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 (114 page)

The report was hardly a vote of confidence in Diem’s regime—it was more a confession of bankruptcy than a viable statement of how to compel reform in Saigon and preserve South Vietnam’s autonomy. Asked at an October 9 news conference how U.S. policy was progressing in Vietnam, Kennedy frankly stated, “I don’t think that there have been changes in the situation in the last month. I think we are still dealing with the same problems.”

Unable to compel changes in Vietnam, Kennedy focused instead on getting the U.S. government to speak with one voice and ensure that U.S. newspaper reports did not generate pressure on him to take unwise steps. Bundy directed state, CIA, DOD, USIA, and JCS to clear with the White House all cabled instructions to “the field.” Bundy did not underestimate the resentment such an order might generate from officials convinced they had a “right” not to be monitored so closely from above. “But,” Bundy told Kennedy, “your interest is not served by the uncritical acceptance of that right.”

At the same time, Kennedy tried to curtail critical press reports coming from Saigon. In September, when Halberstam reported a split between U.S. military advisers and the Vietnamese on the strategic hamlet program, Kennedy had asked McNamara to assess the accuracy of the story. McNamara’s reply that the article was inaccurate and that Halberstam’s objectivity was open to question heightened Kennedy’s irritation with a press corps that he believed demonstrated an excessively “zealous spirit of criticism and complaint.” On October 21, during a lunch with Arthur “Punch” Sulzberger, the new publisher of the
New York
Times,
Kennedy urged him to get Halberstam out of Vietnam. Sulzberger refused, and Kennedy was left to worry all the more.

Kennedy worried that publicly promising to withdraw one thousand troops by the end of the year might undermine larger withdrawal plans if conditions made it unwise. Should the United States have to back away from an announced withdrawal, it seemed likely to encourage press discussion of the need for an expanded U.S. effort. But McNamara’s argument that an announcement had “great value” as a way to answer complaints that we were becoming “bogged down forever in Vietnam” persuaded Kennedy to go ahead as planned. Kennedy did not dispute McNamara’s additional statement at an October 2 meeting: “We need a way to get out of Vietnam, and this is a way of doing it.”

At the close of the meeting, Pierre Salinger publicly announced the president’s endorsement of the McNamara-Taylor recommendations. He accepted “their judgment that the major part of the U.S. military task can be completed by the end of 1965. . . . They reported that by the end of this year, the U.S. program for training Vietnamese should have progressed to the point where 1,000 U.S. military personnel assigned to South Viet Nam can be withdrawn.” Kennedy had not wanted Diem to see the announcement as part of the pressure on him to abandon political repression, which is exactly what some Kennedy advisers hoped it might do. (Max Taylor said, “Well, goddammit, we’ve got to make these people put their noses to the wheel—or the grindstone or whatever. If we don’t give them some indication that we’re going to get out sometime, they’re just going to be leaning on us forever.”) Thus, Kennedy instructed that the decision to remove advisers “not be raised formally with Diem. Instead, the action should be carried out routinely as part of our general posture of withdrawing people when they are no longer needed.” This would also free him to alter the end-of-year timetable without a press flap about progress in the war.

The decisions on troop withdrawals were given official expression in a National Security Action Memorandum on October 11 with the proviso that “no formal announcement be made of the implementation of plans to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963.” News of Defense Department steps to bring U.S. troops out of Vietnam was to be done by a “leak to the press.” But on October 31, during a news conference, Kennedy himself acknowledged the plan to remove one thousand troops from Vietnam before the end of the year. “If we are able to do that,” he said, “that would be our schedule.”

Kennedy’s announcement was a public confirmation of a private conclusion. It had become crystal clear to him after hearing from McNamara and Taylor on October 2, if not before, that Diem’s regime was incapable of winning the war. Major General Duong Van Minh (“Big Minh”) told Taylor, “[My country is] in chains with no way to shake them off.” On October 5, Minh asked Lieutenant Colonel Lucien Conein, a CIA contact in Saigon, to see him at his headquarters. After getting Lodge’s approval, Conein and Minh met alone for over an hour. During their conversation, Minh declared the need for a prompt statement of Washington’s attitude toward a change of government in the “very near future.” Minh predicted that without action soon, the war would be lost to the Viet Cong. He wanted assurances “that the USG will not attempt to thwart this plan.” Conein promised nothing, but agreed to report back on his government’s attitude. Lodge urged conformity with Minh’s request for assurances and a promise to Minh of continued U.S. military support for a new government devoted to defeating the communists. After discussion with Kennedy, McCone advised Lodge that they did not wish “to stimulate [a] coup,” but they would not thwart one or deny support to a new, more effective regime. “We certainly would not favor assassination of Diem,” McCone added, but “we are in no way responsible for stopping every such threat of which we might receive even partial knowledge.” As always, Kennedy saw “deniability” of direct U.S. involvement as of utmost importance should a coup occur.

As more information came in during the next two weeks, the White House became concerned that a coup, for which the United States would be held responsible, might fail and embarrass the administration. “We are particularly concerned about hazard that an unsuccessful coup . . . will be laid at our door by public opinion almost everywhere,” Bundy cabled Lodge on October 25. “Therefore, while sharing your view that we should not be in position of thwarting coup, we would like to have option of judging and warning on any plan with poor prospects of success. We recognize that this is a large order, but President wants you to know of our concern.”

Lodge believed that the White House was asking for something beyond the embassy’s control. He cabled Rusk on October 29, “It would appear that a coup attempt by the Generals’ group is imminent; that whether this coup fails or succeeds, the USG must be prepared to accept the fact that we will be blamed, however unjustifiably; and finally, that no positive action by the USG can prevent a coup attempt.” Since the plotters promised to give Lodge only four hours notice, he saw no way that the United States could “significantly influence [the] course of events.”

Still, Kennedy wanted him to try. If the coup failed, Bobby predicted, “Diem will throw us out.” Rusk countered that if the United States opposed the uprising, “the coup-minded military leaders will turn against us and the war effort will drop off rapidly.” Taylor and McCone thought that a failed revolt would be “a disaster and a successful coup would have a harmful effect on the war effort.” Harriman disagreed, arguing that Diem could not win the war. With pro- and anti-Diem forces in Vietnam so equally divided, Kennedy thought a coup “silly,” and wanted Lodge to discourage an uprising. “If we miscalculated,” Kennedy said, “we could lose our entire position in Southeast Asia overnight.” But it was too late. Despite additional appeals to Lodge over the next forty-eight hours to restrain the generals, the coup was launched at 1:45
P.M.
on November 1. And once it began, as Bundy had cabled Lodge on the thirtieth, it was “in the interest of the U.S. Government that it should succeed.” At a meeting following news of the coup, Kennedy emphasized “the importance of making clear publicly that this was not a U.S. coup.” Contrary reports about who at any given moment held the upper hand in Saigon made this even more complicated. When Diem called Lodge at 4:30
P.M.
to ask, “What is the attitude of the United States?” he replied evasively, “I do not feel well enough informed to be able to tell you. . . . It is 4:30
A.M.
in Washington and U.S. Government cannot possibly have a view.” Lodge added, “I am worried about your physical safety,” and offered to help get him out of the country if Diem asked. Rusk at once counseled Lodge against premature recognition lest the coup be described as “American-inspired and manipulated.”

On the morning of November 2, Diem and Nhu, who had taken refuge in a private residence in suburban Saigon, offered to surrender to the generals if they guaranteed them safe conduct out of the country. When the generals made no firm promise of safe passage and troops tried to seize them, Diem and Nhu took refuge in a Catholic church, where they were arrested and placed in an armored personnel carrier. Early on the morning of the second, Conein received a call from Minh asking him to provide a plane for Diem’s exile. Still reluctant to give any indications of U.S. involvement, CIA operatives falsely answered that no aircraft with sufficient range to fly Diem to an asylum country was available for at least twenty-four hours. Before any plane became accessible, Diem and Nhu were assassinated in the personnel carrier. Even had a plane been available, it is doubtful that the generals would have allowed Diem or the Nhus to leave the country and set up a government in exile.

The news of their deaths reached Kennedy during a morning meeting with the National Security Council. According to Taylor, the president at once “leaped to his feet and rushed from the room with a look of shock and dismay on his face,” which Taylor had never seen before. Taylor attributed Kennedy’s reaction to his having been led to believe or having persuaded himself that a change in government could be carried out without bloodshed. Schlesinger, who saw the president shortly after, found him “somber and shaken.” He had “not seen him so depressed since the Bay of Pigs.” Kennedy refused to believe that Diem and Nhu, devout Catholics, would have killed themselves, as the Vietnamese generals were claiming. “He said that Diem had fought for his country for twenty years and that it should not have ended like this.” The fact that Diem had a million dollars in large denominations in a briefcase when he died added to Kennedy’s skepticism about the generals’ suicide account. So large a sum of money suggested that Diem intended to make himself comfortable in exile. Indeed, it was possible that the CIA had given him the money as an inducement to leave the country.

Kennedy tried to assuage his guilt about the assassinations by taping a statement in the Oval Office that future historians could consult. “Monday, November 4, 1963,” he began. “Over the weekend, the coup in Saigon took place. It culminated three months of conversations about a coup, conversations that divided the government here and in Saigon.” He listed Washington opponents as Taylor, his brother, McNamara (“to a somewhat lesser degree”), and McCone—“partly because of an old hostility to Lodge,” whose judgment he distrusted. The advocates were at state, “led by Averell Harriman, George Ball, Roger Hilsman, supported by Mike Forrestal at the White House.”

Kennedy did not spare himself from blame: “I feel that we [at the White House] must bear a good deal of responsibility for it, beginning with our cable of early August in which we suggested the coup. In my judgment that wire was badly drafted. It should never have been sent on a Saturday. I should not have given my consent to it without a roundtable conference at which McNamara and Taylor could have presented their views. While we did redress that balance in later wires, that first wire encouraged Lodge along a course to which he was in any case inclined. Harkins continued to oppose the coup on the ground that the military effort was doing well. . . . Politically the situation was deteriorating, militarily it had not had its effect. There was a feeling, however, that it would.”

Kennedy then turned to the assassinations: “I was shocked by the death of Diem and Nhu. I’d met Diem with Justice Douglas many years ago. He was an extraordinary character. While he became increasingly difficult in the last months, nevertheless over a ten-year period, he’d held his country together, maintained its independence under very adverse conditions. The way he was killed made it particularly abhorrent. The question now is whether the generals can stay together and build a stable government or whether Saigon will begin—whether public opinion in Saigon, the intellectuals, students, etc.—will turn on this government as repressive and undemocratic in the not too distant future.” Kennedy then matter-of-factly turned away from Vietnam to discuss other current events.

His truncated discussion was a sign that he had made up his mind. The lesson Kennedy seemed to take from all this was that U.S. involvement in so unstable a country was a poor idea. He was immediately dismissive of the new government and its prospects for survival. And having been so concerned, as he had told McNamara on November 5, not to get “bogged down” in Cuba as the British, the Russians, and the Americans had in South Africa, Finland, and North Korea, respectively, it was hardly conceivable that Kennedy would have sent tens of thousands more Americans to fight in so inhospitable a place as Vietnam. Reduced commitments, especially of military personnel, during a second Kennedy term were a more likely development. The failed coup had—just as the Bay of Pigs had in Cuba—pushed Kennedy further away from direct engagement.

Kennedy’s official and public statements about Vietnam were predictably upbeat. On November 6, he cabled Lodge, “Now that there is a new Government, which we are about to recognize, we must all intensify our efforts to help it deal with its many hard problems.” The fact that the administration had encouraged a change of government created a responsibility for it “to help this new government to be effective in every way that we can.” The goal was to concentrate on “effectiveness rather than upon external appearances.” The new regime needed to “limit confusion and intrigue among its members, and concentrate its energies upon the real problems of winning the contest against the Communists.” If it could do this, “it would have met and passed a severe test.”