Did U.S.-Blessed Coup Spur Vietnam Losses?

Dec. 3, 2002 -- -- President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam had come to power in the 1950s with American assistance, and was expected to help America defeat communism in Vietnam. But by 1963, it didn't seem to be working out so well.

Despite all the propaganda we put out that we were winning the war, we were losing it," said historian David Halberstam, who covered the war for The New York Times.

"He wouldn't let his commanders fight," Halberstam said. "He hated it when they took casualties, and by early 1963, the war was virtually over."

So when South Vietnamese armed forces ousted Diem in a violent two-day coup in November 1963, they apparently had the blessing of the Kennedy administration in United States, which may have acted partly out of fear Diem might strike a deal to create a coalition government with the communist rebels of North Vietnam.

During the coup, Diem and secret police chief, Ngo Dinh Nuh — Ngo Dinh Diem's brother and chief adviser — were assassinated while trying to gain safe passage out of the country.

Though the idea of replacing Diem may have looked good in the short term, his death may have wound up haunting the United States for decades. The shaky military regime that took over in the South, and it's faltering efforts to fight the North, led to the gradual increase of U.S. armed involvement in the ultimately disastrous Vietnam War.

Within a year of the regime change, U.S. forces in Vietnam had tripled. Over the next 12 years, the level reached approximately 500,000 U.S. troops. Overall, 50,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives were lost. North Vietnam ultimately won the war and the American psyche emerged bruised and battered.

"[In] the underdeveloped world … these things are often outside your control," Halberstam said, "and your acts often trigger things in that part of the world that are the exact opposite of what you wanted them to have triggered."

Inherited Problem

The Kennedy administration had inherited a delicate cold war balancing act in Southeast Asia. By 1963, there were 17,000 American advisers in South Vietnam helping that country's army defeat a communist insurgency headed by Ho Chi Minh, fighting with indigenous rebels from North Vietnam, the Viet Cong.

The people who had essentially installed Ngo Dinh Diem, the CIA, were the first to realize that he was the obstacle in the way of winning the war.

Kennedy wasn't sure, but he sent Diem a clear message: In a television interview in September 1963, he said the war could be won if the South Vietnamese government made some immediate changes in policies and personnel. In addition, the U.S. ambassador in Saigon, Henry Cabot Lodge, personally asked Diem to make changes.

But Diem ignored the American suggestions — which included neutralizing his brother, the secret police chief, and silencing his brother's wife, who was alienating Buddhists that might have been American allies by referring to Buddhist monks protesting the Diem government with fiery public suicides as "the barbecued monks."

For Kennedy's White House, the choices seemed to be either disengagement — withdrawing all U.S. advisers — or a regime change.

Since Vietnam was seen as a crucial Cold War battleground, the choice was made. On Aug. 24, 1963, the State Department cabled Lodge to "make detailed plans as to how we might bring about Diem's replacement," according to The Pentagon Papers, U.S. government documents that were published years later.

According to presidential historian Robert Dallek, Lodge used Lou Conein, a veteran CIA operative in South Vietnam, as the conduit between the U.S. embassy and the South Vietnamese generals who were planning a coup against Diem.

"Lodge wasn't going to go to them and create that kind of exposure for the United States," Dallek said.

The Coup

On Nov. 1, 1963, Lodge met with Diem but evidently never mentioned what was about to unfold.

The coup began that afternoon. Diem is said to have called Lodge and asked the U.S. attitude. Lodge allegedly maintained that it was 4 a.m. in Washington and there was no one available to talk to.

The following morning, Diem and his brother seemed to think they had safe passage out of the country. Instead they were assassinated.

Ted Sorensen, an assistant to President Kennedy at the time, said the U.S. Embassy offered Diem refuge but he declined the offer, certain that he could make it on his own. To this day Sorensen insists that although the United States did not try to stop the coup, it did not aid, abet or facilitate it.

History has a different view.

In a taped memo dictated to his secretary two days after the coup, and stored at the Kennedy Library, President Kennedy said: "I feel we must bare a great deal of responsibility for it, starting with our cable of early August in which we suggested the coup."

But no matter how one chooses to remember history, Halberstam, Dallek and Sorensen all agree: Regime change may look good going in, but it rarely does looking back.

"In South Vietnam, the assassination of Diem led to a series of regime changes over the next few years," Sorensen said. "The South Vietnamese putting in one leader after another, none of whom had any success in prosecuting the war."