JFK and Vietnam: A Memoir by Ullman Design

ALLAN E. G O OD M AN

AL LAN E . G O ODM AN

JFK A N D V IE T N A M: A ME MOIR

“Doing this book became a way to understand better how situations unfold where US officials had enough information to know what they didn’t know but nevertheless were forced both by events and their own policy-making process to act. JFK found himself by November of 1963 quite unsure of the ability of US officials to influence anything that was happening in Vietnam. Had President Kennedy lived, I remain convinced he would have acted differently than those who followed him.”

A M E M O IR

Allan E. Goodman

A M EM OIR

P R EFAC E

For Collette who encouraged me to write all my books and the JFK she remembers

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Copyright © 2021 by Allan E. Goodman. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced, whole or in part, including photographs and illustrations, without advance permission in writing. Publisher: Sheridan Books, 2021 Author: Allan E. Goodman Assistant: Mariola Lin Design: Christina Ullman Special thanks to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and the National Archives. Library of Congress ISSN: XXXX=XXXX ISBN: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX IV

TABLE OF CONTENTS 2

Preface

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. 1789-1960: America and Vietnam

Chapter 3. 1950-1960: JFK and Vietnam Before He was President

Chapter 4. 20 Jan 1961 to July 1962

Chapter 5.

Chapter 6. August-November 1963: The Recordings in the Cabinet Room and the Oval Office

Chapter 7. 4 November 1963, Dictated Memoir Entry and the Last Press Conference, 14 November 1963

Epilogue

Appendix

July 1962 to July 1963

PREFACE

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The past is never where you left it.”

KATH ERIN E AN N E P OR TER , “SH IP OF FO OL S”

Two encounters, separated by over 40 years, led to this book.

The first took place in 1975 at the headquarters of the Ford Foundation in New York City. The then-president of the Foundation, McGeorge Bundy, had readily agreed to be interviewed for a book I was writing on the negotiations to end the Vietnam war. Bundy had served as JFK’s National Security Advisor and then as President Johnson’s until February 1966. He knew at first hand about the early attempts by America’s allies and their well-meaning diplomats to develop ways for Washington and Hanoi to discuss a political settlement that would allow North and South Vietnam to co-exist. My topic for the interview was whether or not any of these diplomatic initiatives offered a realistic basis for a negotiated settlement of what was, during Bundy’s tenure, a relatively small war. It was late into the afternoon and after 45 minutes, it was clear our time together was nearly over. Bundy seemed as though he wanted to say a bit more about Vietnam but on a different topic. We explored the differences between working in the Johnson and Kennedy White Houses and how he got to the Ford Foundation. And then I asked him how he thought things would have been different if Kennedy had lived. There was a long pause and Bundy seemed to be composing what I hoped would be a long answer. He seemed to almost start speaking a few times but then paused. When he did speak at last, it was simply to say: “I don’t think it’s useful now to think about what might have been.”

P R EFAC E

What Bundy knew (and I did not at the time of our interview), was that after the overthrow of the government of Ngo Dinh Diem in early November 1963, President Kennedy asked for a draft of a new National Security Action Memorandum (to be numbered 273) on which scholars have debated whether or not President Kennedy would have sent any more US troops to Vietnam in the months and years ahead. The document Bundy drafted called instead, for “a detailed plan for the development of additional Government of Vietnam resources” to counter the insurgent Communist forces and was consistent with Kennedy’s view that the South Vietnamese themselves needed to do whatever fighting may lay ahead. Bundy’s draft was ready by the 21st of November and the President was due to sign it the day after returning from his trip to Dallas. President Kennedy was assassinated on the 22nd. NSAM 273 was issued on the 26th of November by President Johnson but removed from the document was the emphasis on relying on “Government of Vietnam resources” and with it, JFK’s intended restriction on how much and how deeply the US should get involved.

Fast forward to the summer of 2020. I was fortunate to attend a talk on Cape Cod by the head of the JFK Library, Alan Price, with whom I had a brief chance to chat afterwards. He mentioned that there was quite a lot of newly declassified material on Vietnam at the Library and invited me to visit once the Pandemic was over. I said that I would, because , in fact, I had always wanted to write a book about what JFK intended to do about Vietnam. That I hadn’t yet done so reflected the fact that many other books had already been written which made me think there was nothing new to say. Mr. Price said, “You might be surprised by what could still be found.” And that I might want to write a book focussed instead on “how Presidents learn.” He was right on both counts. Despite the Library being closed due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, I found an enormous amount of well-organized and digitized material to read and over 12 hours of tape recordings made during President Kennedy’s meetings with key advisors from AugustNovember 1963. Listening to them was not easy but they put all the 3

declassified documents I read — and the events of those 4 months themselves about which I thought I knew so much — into a perspective I had not anticipated.

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This is not a scholarly book, nor an attempt to put to rest definitively the issues over who and what caused the escalation of the Vietnam. It is closer to a memoir in two senses. President Kennedy actually dictated notes for his memoirs starting in November 1963. Vietnam was one of the three subjects on which he did so; Latin America and the Alliance for Progress was one and the French Nuclear Capability was the other. The entire dictated memoir entry on Vietnam is transcribed here in Chapter 7. By the time, I got to the American Embassy in Saigon in 1967 and eventually wrote my PhD dissertation in 1970, the events of 1961-1963 through which President Kennedy learned to navigate had been overtaken by so many others that I never really studied the origins of the assumptions that led to the second longest and least successful war in US history. I now wish I had and connected more of the dots that I highlight here that only came back to me as I wrote. So I digress in parts of the narrative to explain why what I was learning about Vietnam then resonated so much when looking back at past events and milestones that transformed Vietnam from a country into a war. I offer my apologies in advance for any inaccuracy about or misplacement of things now well in the past.

Doing this book also became a way to understand better how situations unfold where US officials had enough information to know what they didn’t know but nevertheless were forced both by events and their own policy-making process to act. JFK found himself by November of 1963 quite unsure of the ability of US officials to influence anything that was happening in Vietnam. Had President Kennedy lived, I remain convinced he would have acted differently than those who followed him. From the meetings recorded in the Cabinet Room and Oval Office, JFK did, indeed, appear to learn a lot.

P R EFAC E

Mariola Lin kept meticulous track of multiple drafts and fragments of chapters, and without her efforts finishing a manuscript like this would have been impossible. I often mentioned to her that early on in the project, the book began to write itself. Indeed, there were evening and weekend days when so many elements of the early days of the Vietnam story I felt compelled to write that what Mariola got and had to file for later insertions must have resembled keeping track of a picture puzzle whose borders and innards were constantly changing. My thanks go to her for what she does every day to run the Office of the President at IIE which, it turns out, often has strikingly similar dynamics. And we both want to acknowledge the editing help and exquisite sense of design that Christina Ullman contributes to any project. Christina was responsible for producing two publications for the Institute, one to mark its Centennial in 2019 and another on our experience in rescuing scholars and students ever since 1920. Because of her fine work, I turned to Tina for help on this. Mariola and I were both very grateful when we were able shortly after New Year’s to put the manuscript into her hands. — WASHINGTON, DC AND COTUIT, MASSACHUSETTS

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JFK and Vietn am

UCTION

INTROD

EC C L E S I A S TE S 3:1, 7

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“

“To every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven … a time to keep silence and a time to speak.”

emember, government is a process.” About mid-way through my first year at the CIA, the insight of one of my mentors there explained a lot about what I didn’t learn in graduate school.

We both had received PhDs in Government from Harvard and had written books. And had taught courses on the making of foreign policy. But no one ever taught me to teach how fundamental to the process of making policy are the Inter-Agency meetings that, when called, signal another step toward a decision being made. The memos and talking points that get drafted in advance of those meetings represent the best thinking at the time and analysis done by Departmental and Agency experts on the issues under discussion. Very rarely do they resolve or explain differences; the policy-making process, nevertheless, grinds on.

It was my privilege to attend over 25 Deputies meetings at the National Security Council during the Carter Administration where I could observe at first hand some of these things. And I was part of the staffing of a dozen decision meetings where I learned a lot about when to pass my principal a cable or intelligence report he might want to highlight or suggest a question he might want to ask. I also learned when to keep my mouth shut and my opinions to myself. It did not come easily. CIA officials are as smart as they come, but they are not supposed to advocate for a particular policy. They provide facts and analyses of what is happening and respond to the direction of the President. 8

Each meeting usually leads to another, as options get narrowed down. Eventually, a single person on the NSC staff would write up a Memo for the President which we might or might not see. What mattered most was who was in the Oval Office when the President was close to making a decision and the questions the President would ask. This is a short book about that.

80,000 WOMEN AND MEN

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In listening in to the meetings on Vietnam, it also struck me that a very wide gap already existed in 1963 between those who were advising the President and those who actually knew something about Vietnam. While the CIA and other government agencies had experts that would play major roles in shaping strategy, by early 1960, their experience was largely in the field of countering insurgencies elsewhere and observing what the then-remaining colonial powers were doing to put down local rebellions. There were also a lot of anti-colonial revolts in the 1950s in Africa, the Middle East, and other parts of Asia from which Agency and Military experts drew lessons. But, as events would prove, this did not necessarily translate into insight or recipes for what would work in Vietnam. In the early 1960s, America was fortuPUSHED BICYCLES nate to have scholars willing to assist our FOR MONTHS government who actually knew Vietnam. Professor Bernard Fall taught at Howard laden with heavy weapons University in Washington DC and by the and supplies over 200 miles of time I met him in 1966 at a State Departjungles and mountains to surround ment seminar he already briefed many key the French encampments policy makers, including those advising President Kennedy. Having meticulously studied the Viet Minh victory over French forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, Fall impressed on us the mastery over logistics that the Communist forces consistently displayed in their fight against the French. Over 80,000 women and men pushed bicycles for months laden with heavy weapons and supplies over 200 miles of jungles and mountains to surround the French encampments.

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The region French soldiers called the “Street Without Joy” is a string of heavily-fortified villages along a line of sand dunes and salt marshes stretching from Hue to Quang-Tri. Photo: Office of History, Headquarters, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

He said that Hanoi had the capacity to summon that kind of kind effort whenever it might be required. Fall also later studied the systematic assassination by the Viet Cong of South Vietnamese province and district chiefs appointed by Saigon, and the impact that this was having on leaders at every level underneath them. Such terrorism was, he said, going to lead to the failure of the Strategic Hamlet Program because whatever a village chief said he would do during the day, at night he did the bidding of the Viet Cong leaders in the area. Fall told me that he had briefed at the CIA and the Defense and State Departments many times because his research on the assassination of local Vietnamese officials was sponsored by a grant from the South East Asia Treaty Organization. He soon stopped doing this because officials at the Agency did not think the Viet Cong organization would last much longer, especially if local Vietnamese officials were bolstered by American aid and advisors. Professor Fall was killed less than a year after I met him by a land mine while traveling on a road dubbed “Street Without Joy” because it was so consistently insecure and about which he wrote as a metaphor to explain why France lost its war in Indochina. His personal papers and writing form a collection of their own at the Kennedy Library. And in his autobiography, General Colin Powell observes: “I recently reread Bernard Fall’s book on

Vietnam, Street Without Joy. Fall makes painfully clear that we had almost no understanding of what we had gotten ourselves into. I cannot help thinking that if President Kennedy or President Johnson had spent a quiet weekend at Camp David reading that perceptive book, they would have returned to the White House on Monday morning and immediately started to figure out a way to extricate ourselves from the quicksand of Vietnam.” Fall’s book was published in 1961. In 1969, we had the chance to rent Fall’s former apartment in downtown Saigon. It was fully furnished but very run down. The noise generated from motorbikes from the street was unending. So we passed it up, seeking a quieter neighborhood. We did find a more modern flat but also learned that no place in Saigon was ever very quiet. Some of the Vietnam experts of the early 1960s later became my mentors and had fundamental insights we all ignored at our peril. Cora DuBois — who served in the OSS — was my anthropology professor at Harvard. She impressed on us the importance of understanding village life as key to knowing what local governmental authorities and their foreign advisors could and could not expect to do. Professor DuBois steeped us in reading about village life in Southeast Asia. Her reading list was mind-numbing to me because I thought that villagers just couldn’t ignore what a provincial or central administration official told their leaders to do. And while I had heard of the Vietnamese saying that “the Emperor’s writ stops at the village gate” even under Professor DuBois’ tutelage, I did I not fully comprehend its meaning until I got to Vietnam. Years later, I would also learn that DuBois was IIE’s first Director of Research.

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Some of the Vietnam experts of the early 1960s later became my mentors and had fundamental insights we all ignored at our peril.

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Brandeis University Professor I. Milton Sacks (known as Uncle Milty to colleagues and students alike) was steeped in knowing what real Marxist-Leninists believed and did. He was not avuncular at all and argued with practically everyone about everything, especially any time one expressed confidence in judgments about what was happening in Vietnam. Sacks was very patient with me and I learned to listen. He was an expert on the numerous South Vietnamese nationalist groups and political parties and persistently warned that they showed no signs of becoming a match for the Viet Cong. He was right. John Donnell was a professor at Temple University when I met him. He was a tall, kind, and gentle mentor to students. He learned about Vietnam by serving at the US Legation in Hanoi during the latter days of French Indochina. He also was always After 1975, we learned worried about Communist spies and how they that more than seemed to know every move the French were making on and off the battlefield. When we worked together in South Vietnam, he was equally worried and thought the Viet Cong must have found many ways to infiltrate the ranks of the South Vietnamese Government. And he was right. After 1975, we learned that more than 20,000 spies and double agents were were spread through the ranks of spread through the ranks of the government and the government and the army the army, so that very little of what the South Vietnamese or American forces were doing or planning came as a surprise to Hanoi. All of these experts — who I met because we all worked at one point at the RAND Corporation — had numerous chances to brief high-level US Officials, and all encountered the same reception as did Professor Fall. Indeed, as part of our policy making process then — as now — I realized that most government officials had little use for outside experts or their books. As one State Department official put it, “the only analysis we can really trust is our own.”

20,000 SPIES AND DOUBLE AGENTS

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“Viet Cong” army victories propaganda poster, ca. 1963 Image: National Archives, Records of the U.S. Information Agency

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CHA P T E R

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A C I R E AM M A N T E I V D N A

0 1

96 1 – 9 78

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H O C H I MINH 19 45

Compatriots of the entire Nation assembled: All people are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

he authorship of the passage quoted is not a typographical error. On the 2nd of September, 1945, in a flower garden near the administrative headquarters of the French Indochinese Federation, Ho Chi Minh read a proclamation of independence declaring that a new Democratic Republic of Vietnam would henceforth exist. Ho developed the document with help from American OSS officers over the summer; they had become acquainted on operations in southern China. One of the officers said what he heard reminded him of the American Declaration of Independence. Indeed, except for the preamble, these are the same words that Jefferson wrote into the Declaration of Independence adopted by the Second Continental Congress on the 4th of July, 1776. Ironically. Thomas Jefferson was also the first future US president to have an interest in Vietnam. While serving in Paris as the envoy of the new American government formed under the Articles of Confederation, Jefferson noticed that rice from a French colony named Cochin China (the name used then to refer to nearly all of Vietnam) tasted better and outsold that from America. I could readily see his point. When Embassy colleagues would host dinners in Saigon and provincial capitals, usually several bowls of rice would be set

As far as I have been able to determine, the United States’ first military involvement with Vietnam occurred in May of 1845. At the time, the USS Constitution was on a circumnavigation cruise and had anchored in Danang Bay for re-supply. The commander was Captain John Percival who hailed from Barnstable, on Cape Cod, and the town of which today the village of Cotuit is a part. But for some reason he or his family had deposited some papers at the Salem History Museum. Thinking I might uncover a long-forgotten memoir of what it was like dealing with Vietnamese officials, I drove from Boston where we lived during graduate school to the Museum. The visit was even shorter than the drive. The museum contained some displays of early whaling life and sea coast villages, but did not have much of an attic or any files that related to what Captain Percival had done or observed. I did, however, find Percival’s book at the Harvard Widener Library. In it, Percival recounts that while at anchor, he received a message from Bishop Dominique Lefevre asking for help. The Bishop had been arrested and sentenced to death by the Emperor of Cochin China. Emperor Thieu Tri wanted to purge Central Vietnam of French priests who threatened

C H A P T ER 2: A M ER I CA N A N D V I E T N A M

out and guests asked to guess their origin and rate their quality. There were always samples from the South Carolina or Louisiana; they never won. Jefferson began to study the crop’s quality and the conditions under which it was grown. Farmers in Cochin China, he wrote a friend in South Carolina, produced a very good variety of dry rice which “has the reputation of being whitest to the eye, best flavored to the taste, and most productive. It seems then to unite the good qualities of both the others known to us. If it could supplant them, it would be a great happiness, as it would enable us to get rid of those ponds of stagnant water so fatal to human health and life.” Toward the end of his tenure in Paris, Jefferson met a member of the Vietnamese royal family. He asked for and was promised seeds. But they never could be sent due to a civil a war that lasted until 1802. Some two hundred years later, rice seeds of the kind Jefferson sought did eventually reach Monticello. In 2015, and to mark the 20th anniversary of the establishing diplomatic relations between the US and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, an alumnus of the University of Virginia, Viet Nguyen, travelled from his home in Hanoi to Charlottesville and delivered the seeds as a gift “to fulfill Jefferson’s noble wish.”

his rule by their increasing popularity. Percival appears to have sent a letter to the Emperor asking for the Bishop’s release. I could not find a copy of that letter and it is not clear if it ever was delivered. But before he sent the letter, Percival organized a rescue party of 80 marines and sailors. They did not succeed in releasing the Bishop but instead captured three of the Emperor’s local officials. After a few days, they were released in return for promising that they would personally intervene with the Emperor. Again, there is no evidence that they actually did. Percival sailed from Danang to Macao participated and evacuated over by the end of the month and informed the French officials there of the Bishop’s plight. The French sent one of their warships to Danang and rescued the Bishop. The Museum of the USS Constitution in Boston contains an official biography along with thousands of tons of military vehicles and supplies that notes: “His strong-arm tactics were unsuccessful and soured relations with the Cochin China (Vietnamese) government for years.” For half a century, there were not many relations to sour. Indeed, in the 1,000 page index to the official series on “Foreign Relations of the US” from 1861 to 1900, there are only 4 references to anything related to French Indochina or Cochin China, and no mention of a Vietnam at all.

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US NAVAL VESSELS

300,000 VIETNAMESE

It would be another 100-plus years before the US Navy would again be involved in Vietnam. This time was also related to a rescue mission that involved Vietnamese Catholics. The 1954 Geneva Agreement that ended the French Indochina War provided for the partition of the country at the 17th Parallel and also allowed people on each side of the line to choose where they wished to live and under what kind of a regime. They had until May of 1955 to decide. Nearly a million people then living in the North opted to come South, the vast majority of whom were Catholic. France, Britain, and the US organized a “Passage to Freedom” operation to assist with their transfer by sea. Fifty 18

President Franklin Roosevelt regarded Indochina as an example of why colonialism everywhere was a failure. He made these points repeatedly in his meetings with Churchill and Stalin at their wartime conferences in Cairo, Teheran, and Yalta and clearly indicated to the British “that I had, for over a year, expressed the opinion that Indo-China should not go back to France but that it should be administered by an international trusteeship. France has had the country of thirty million inhabitants for nearly one hundred years, and the people are worse off than they were at the beginning.” He urged General Charles de Gaulle to pursue a “more progressive policy in Indochina.” Ironically, de Gaulle would tell JFK the same and urged him to leave Vietnam to the Vietnamese. But ultimately, FDR concluded that the fate of Indochina was “a matter for postwar.”

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US naval vessels participated and evacuated over 300,000 Vietnamese along with thousands of tons of military vehicles and supplies given to the French under the Mutual Defense Assistance Program in order to prevent them falling in the Communist hands. US Navy Seabees also built onshore refugee reception centers along the Saigon River for the South Vietnamese Government and also temporary quarters for US personnel assisting in the evacuation. The Seabees did so in civilian clothes, removing any US markings on their equipment, because the Geneva Agreement prohibited any foreign military forces landing in Vietnam or establishing any installations. What was not known at the time, was the ease with which the North Vietnamese government was able to plant thousands of its own agents among the thousands of persons moving to the South.

Ironically, de Gaulle would tell JFK the same [ as FDR had told him ] and urged him to leave Vietnam to the Vietnamese. 19

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President Harry Truman was no fan of colonialism, either. His advisors, however, also thought that the matter best left to the authorities in Paris. Ho Chi Minh asked for US help in a series of messages that went unanswered throughout 1945. Official US policy was “not … to assist the French to re-establish their control over Indo-China by force.” In the Spring of 1946, France and Ho signed an accord that acceded to the re-entry of French forces into Indo-China in return for recognizing it as a Free state of the greater post-war French Union. What was not anticipated was nearly a ten year war for independence from 1946-1954 between France and the nationalist forces led by Ho Chi Minh. For US officials, the issue was whether or not to support a European ally or encourage a local nationalist leader with “direct Communist connections.” The then-US Ambassador in Paris in 1946 believed and told the French that “it should be obvious that we are not interested in seeing colonial empire aspirations supplanted by philosophy and political organizations emanating from and controlled by the Kremlin.” A year later, the State Department concluded there is “no evidence no direct link between Ho and Moscow” though one was strongly suspected. Ho Chi Minh had written a letter to President Harry Truman on the opening of the first assembly of United Nations in January 1946, asking for his help in securing the full independence of Vietnam from the French. No reply was made. But the next year, President Truman announced a doctrine to contain the expansion of Soviet influence and assist countries threatened by Soviet Communism. When Moscow recognized the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in January 1950, the movement led by Ho was deemed communist and would not qualify for US help. Shortly thereafter, President Truman authorized shipment of $10 million worth of military transport equipment to help the French and a 35 man Military Assistance Advisory

The State Department concluded there is “no evidence no direct link between Ho and Moscow” though one was strongly suspected. 20

Group (MAAG) to make sure the aid was well spent and deployed. A year later, the aid level had increased to $150 million.

$2 billion IN AID TO SOUTH VIETNAM

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President Eisenhower knew a lot about fighting wars, especially when they were very far away. But he was also concerned about the impact on entire regions of any series of successful communist insurgencies. At a press conferences in April, 1954, he explained the “falling domino” principle: “You have a row After the partition of Vietnam of dominoes set up, you knock over the first into two states, the Eisenhower one, and what will happen to the last one is the Administration provided over certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.” The more he studied the political situation, however, the less he thought Vietnam was a place where America ought to get involved as he notes in his personal diary: “I am convinced that no military victory is possible in that kind and increased the size of of theater.” the MAAG to 1,000 But the decisions he took were less guided by that assessment than by a desire to help France avoid defeat at a time of a growing threat from the Soviet Union and the many communist parties it had seeded throughout Western Europe. After the partition of Vietnam into two states, the Eisenhower Administration provided over $2 billion in aid to South Vietnam and increased the size of the MAAG to 1,000.

In early December of 1960, President Eisenhower invited President-elect Kennedy to the White House. They met alone for an hour and forty-five minutes, and then were joined by the outgoing Secretaries of Defense and State and other top advisors. The three hour meeting covered many of the national security threats America was facing around the world at the time. In reading the record of that conversation today, it is striking that Vietnam was not one of them.

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Ho Chi Minh (standing third from left) with members of the OSS in 1945. Photo: United States Army

The other President that deserves mention here is Ho Chi Minh, who was the first to serve in that role for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and did so from 1945-1969. For a complicated set of reasons, the architect of Vietnam’s 20th century revolution and struggle for independence thought he saw a natural affinity with a number of US Presidents and the ideals of American society. He would note at times that he admiringly adopted George Washington’s strategy in fighting against the British in his fight against the French by wearing down the adversary and making it too expensive even for a superior enemy to continue to wage war. From 1912-1913 Ho also lived and worked in Boston as a pastry souschef making cream pies and Parker House Hotel dinner rolls. While living in a rooming house in that city’s Chinatown, and seeing our racial and economic inequities first hand, he would have also had the chance to walk the Freedom Trail which shows how a dedicated band of people seeking liberation from a distant foreign power could take their struggle to the streets and surrounding villages to win a war for their freedom. In 1919, in Paris Ho rented formal attire in anticipation of having an audience with President Woodrow Wilson whose call for the self-determination of colonial peoples as part of the “14 Points” for building peace after the end

of World War I, Ho hoped, would include independence for the Vietnamese people. He received neither a reply nor a meeting with any US official.

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In the Ho Chi Minh Museum in Hanoi, there are pictures of Ho with members of the OSS during World War II and of the medic who tended him in late July and August 1945. At the time, Ho had what was probably a mixture of viral and bacterial illnesses so severe that his own colleagues thought he only had a matter to days to live. For at least a decade, Ho sought to reach out to OSS and then CIA operatives to explore ways further conflict could be avoided. There is no record of him doing so, by the time JFK entered the White House. Ho did keep extensive diaries, not all of which have been published but nearly all of which talk of future relations with America. I learned this when giving a lecture of the Ho Chi Minh Political Academy in Hanoi in 1995, just after normalization of relations had been announced by President Clinton. Academy staff members in the audience called me aside afterwards and said that Ho’s last diary actually spoke of normalization with America “as being inevitable.”

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1950–1960

JFK AND VIETNAM BEFORE HE WAS PRESIDENT

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The President of the United States is not subject to quite the same test of political courage as a Senator.”

J OH N. F. KEN N EDY, “PR OFILE S IN C OU R AGE” 1956

n all of John F. Kennedy’s pre-presidential writing and speaking there are less than a dozen references to Vietnam. For most US officials after World War II, the Indochina region was a concern with which France would have to deal. While the OSS had developed some assets and connections to local guerrilla leaders during World War II — including Ho Chi Minh —they proved of limited usefulness in keeping the Japanese forces occupying the territory from exploiting the rich rubber resources of the Michelin Plantations in Central Vietnam. What happened there afterwards was deemed to be France’s problem and concerned American policy makers only insofar as the ebb and flow of local conflicts affected and limited France’s ability to prevent a communist victory (Soviet or Chinese) anywhere during the Cold War. Kennedy’s clearest and most complete statement on Vietnam is in June 1956, when he spoke to a meeting of the American Friends of Vietnam. The group was formed the year before by prominent US Catholics to support Ngo Dinh Diem as the head of a state made up of former French territory south of the 17th parallel and to oppose the plebiscite mandated by the Geneva Agreement to decide the unification of all the parts of Vietnam. Neither the US Government nor President Diem supported holding such a plebiscite because they feared that the vote would be overwhelming in favor of a Communist North, since there were so many divisions and political parties contending for power in the South. The fact that Diem was a Catholic in

a predominantly Buddhist country did not seem to bother US policy makers. The Catholics of Indochina there were regarded as reliable anti-Communists. In retrospect, that was a very mistaken assumption.

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Catholicism was introduced to the people of Indochina in 1524 by Portuguese and, later, Spanish missionaries. It took deep roots a century later thanks to the Jesuit missionaries and their creation of a Latinized script for the Vietnamese alphabet. By 1600 hundreds of Vietnamese priests were ordained and seminarians were being trained throughout East and Southeast Asia. They were also being martyred in large numbers when local rulers suspected their followers to be fomenting unrest and rebellion. Nevertheless, there was a lot about Catholicism that actually fit into Vietnamese society. The priestly vestments lent themselves to Vietnamese attire; so did the many festivals, feast days, and rigid hierarchy. There was a clear organizational structure that, unlike Buddhism, directed everyone to a place on earth as well as beyond. Along with other Vietnamese religions, the ranks of the faithful in Vietnam were closely tied to particular cities in every region. One of the largest in the North was in Phat Diem, which was famous for its elaborate celebrations of all of the Church’s holy days. It was also the scene of some of the fiercest resistance to Communist forces, where priests and Bishops functioned also as generals commanding a local army. During my time in Saigon, I got to know some of the followers of the warrior priests that organized and led the evacuations from the North. By the mid-1960s, they were busy organizing political parties; it was a time in South Vietnam that nearly all the religions had at least several parties competing for seats in the National Assembly.

Phat Diem city is 1,000 miles from Saigon but only 75 miles from Hanoi. It is deep into Ninh Binh province and is surrounded by steep mountains that are home to a particular breed of goat that specialized in climbing them and, when caught, made a delicious dinner with rice and spicy peanut sauces. Thanks to the head of the Vietnam-USA Friendship Association, I was able to visit in 1996. He had grown up there. His father was killed fighting the French; his mother, a doctor and also a resistance fighter had to hide in the caves in the mountains “that even the goats could 27

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not reach.” The area was the scene of the first decisive defeat of the French forces in their war against the Vietnam Minh and figures prominently in Graham Greene’s novel, The Quiet American. My host, an atheist, had served as the head of the Communist Party there before moving to Hanoi and becoming a member of the National Assembly. We observed Assumption Saturday together. The first cathedral of Phat Diem was built in 1892, and had a roof structure and lay out that made it look like a traditional Vietnamese pagoda. It was destroyed in the US Christmas Bombing of Hanoi in 1972. A decade later, parishioners and local authorities made plans to rebuild it. The church is dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul and is a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site. The main church is an enormous wooden beam structure and can accommodate more than a thousand worshipers at a single service. Just before Mass, a large procession of mainly students carried a very blue and white statue of the Virgin Mary through the city before entering the grounds of the church. Then the older parishioners took charge of escorting the statue to the altar. Mass seemed to last for hours. We left at what my host said was just “half time” in order to have an early dinner with friends and the cadre now running the government and the local communist party organization. Most had been at the Mass. We had goat. Eventually, I would learn that at least in Vietnam, Catholics found a way to accommodate to Communist political rule and Party Cadre found a way to let them gather and go about their rituals. They also knew that Catholics made good spies.

Through not a member of the Congressional committees which had been briefed throughout the French fight to maintain their control over Indochina, then-Senator Kennedy apparently followed events there closely and with an increasing sense of despair. He visited the region in 1951 and returned alarmed, as he told the Senate in a report, “There is no broad, general support of the native Vietnam Government by the people of that area.” He made clear that while “it makes sense to check the southern drive of Communism” it could not be done “only on reliance of the force of arms.” To do so, he argued, “in the absence of “strong Native non-communist sentiment … spells foredoomed failure.” Kennedy later proposed in 1953, an amendment to the Mutual Security Act to mandate the distribution of US aid in a way that 28

SENATOR JOHN F. KENNEDY, APRIL 1954

would encourage building such sentiment. It was defeated out of concern for its impact on French morale.

In April 1954, Kennedy spoke on the Senate floor as nearly every optimistic forecast by French Generals and US officials over the past year had proved incorrect. At the time, the French forces at Dien Bien Phu were surrounded by Communist forces and only weeks away from defeat. In deference to that Senator Kennedy began by apologizing for “any statement which may be misinterpreted as unappreciative of the gallant French struggle at Dien Bien Phu … or as a partisan criticism of our Secretary of State just prior to his participation in the delicate deliberations in Geneva.” But JFK appeared to have had enough: “the speeches of President Eisenhower, Secretary Dulles, and others have left too much unsaid … and what has been left unsaid is the heart of the problem that should concern every citizen. For, if the American people are, for the fourth time in this century, to travel and long and tortuous road of war … then I believe we have a right … to inquire in detail into the nature of the struggle in which we may become engaged, and the alternative to such struggle.” Most of his Senate colleagues were less willing to question what the President and Secretary Dulles were recommending; namely, do all America could to prevent the “imposition in Southeast Asia of the political system of Communist Russia and its Chinese Communist ally.” The proposed methods included military and economic aid, clearly demonstrating a willingness to

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For, if the American people are, for the fourth time in this century, to travel and long and tortuous road of war … then I believe we have a right … to inquire in detail into the nature of the struggle in which we may become engaged, and the alternative to such struggle.”

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Ngo Dinh Diem, accompanied by US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, is greeted by President Dwight D. Eisenhower upon his arrival at Washington National Airport in 1957. Photo: Department of Defense. Department of the Air Force

“fight if necessary to keep Southeast Asia out of their hands,” and stitching together “the free countries of Asia for united action against communism in Indochina.” To Kennedy, the strategy already spelled disaster: “… to pour money, material, and men into the jungles of Indochina without at least a remote prospect of victory would be dangerously futile and self-destructive.” And he did not favor American intervention as long as the circumstances on the ground were so politically adverse. In words that would be true, unfortunately for decades after he spoke them, Kennedy was convinced that “no amount of American military assistance in Indochina can conquer an enemy which is everywhere and at the same time nowhere, an ‘enemy of the people’ which has the sympathy and covert support of the people …. The hard truth of the matter is … that without a reliable and crusading native army with a dependable office corps, a [French] military victory, 30

Kennedy spoke on “America’s Stake in Vietnam.” He began with reference to President Diem by noting his “amazing success … in meeting firmly and with determination the major political and economic crises which had heretofore continually plagued Vietnam” as one of the three reasons that what was happening there was no longer making headlines that attracted journalistic attention. Given the bleak prospects of just a year before, Kennedy seemed to see in Diem’s Vietnam the building of a success story through his government’s “devotion to the cause of democracy, and their success in reducing the strength of local Communist groups.” Such success was important to Kennedy and others in Washington who were concerned about a domino effect on the other countries of the region if the Communist forces continued to prevail as they had against the French. Kennedy likened a Free Vietnam’s geopolitical significance as “the keystone to an arch, a finger in the dike” to prevent a “Red Tide of Communism “flowing from there to all the other countries of the region. He acknowledged that the country had also come into existence as a result of American diplomacy and was now “a proving ground of democracy in Asia.” And he concluded by noting that such success in Vietnam “can be measured … in terms of American lives and American dollars.” Kennedy explained that the US had been on the “brink of war in Indo-China — a war which could well have been more costly, more exhausting and less conclusive than any war we have ever known.” Unfortunately, that war still lay ahead.

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even with American military support, is difficult, if not impossible, of achievement.” Two years later, Kennedy would note in another speech, that “news about Vietnam has virtually disappeared from the front pages of the American press.” Senator Kennedy knew a lot about what was happening in Vietnam before he spoke to the Conference. He had a good nose for what the reports being sent to Washington were not saying and a premonition, perhaps, that what Washington was reading was as misleading as that the French had received from their Generals during the war they had just lost. But he appeared also to have admiration for President Diem, who may have been the only leader of Vietnam that JFK felt he understood.

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C H A P T ER 4: 20 JA N 1961 – J U LY 1962

J A N 19 20

J U LY 1 9 TO

In his first eighteen months, he gave Vietnam too many military advisors and too little of his attention.”

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“

TED S OREN SEN, “C OU N SELOR: A LIFE AT TH E ED GE OF H IS TORY”

et every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill that we will pay any price, bear any burden, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of our liberty.” When President Kennedy spoke the words Mr. Sorensen drafted for his Inaugural Address, it is not at all clear that either he or Sorensen had Vietnam on their minds. Many years later I would ask the latter and he said a flat “No.” The eighteen months between late January 1961 and July 1962, kept JFK and his closest advisors quite busy. Following a plan devised by the CIA late in President Eisenhower‘s Administration, Kennedy approved an invasion of Cuba by volunteers based in Miami. It failed. The Freedom Riders set out to test new laws protecting their civil rights. They immediately faced violent reactions. The CIA also encouraged the assassination of a popular leader in Africa. In June, the President met with Soviet Chairman Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna, at a summit meeting that would be widely regarded as a failure, although Khrushchev’s son said his father regarded Kennedy as brave, smart, and someone with whom there could be a relationship. By July, however, there was a crisis over allied access to Berlin and in August East German soldiers began to construct a wall. Two months later, the Soviet Union tested a 58 megaton nuclear weapon which still remains the largest ever tested to this day. 1962 was no better. Black churches were burned in the South and African Americans were still barred from entering universities there. And while the Supreme Court ruled

that segregated transportation facilities were unconstitutional, “Colored Only” signs and practices remained a part of daily life in many parts of America. There were multiple coups in countries considered important to the US. Over a thousand of the volunteers captured at the Bay of Pigs were sentenced to long prison terms by a Cuban Military Tribunal. For thirteen days in October, the US and the USSR nearly went to war over the placement of Russian Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles with nuclear warheads in Cuba. About the only bright spot was the conclusion of negotiations over an agreement to provide for the neutrality of Laos.

C H A P T ER 4: 20 JA N 1961 – J U LY 1962

President Kennedy did make some decisions on Vietnam during this period, but not many. Of the 178 National Security Action Memorandums issued between January 1961 and early August 1962, only a dozen applied to Vietnam. As the new President, Kennedy approved a Counter Insurgency Plan left over from the Eisenhower Administration, asked Secretary of Defense McNamara to place greater emphasis on developing Vietnamese counter guerrilla forces, and in early May he wrote a personal letter to President Diem to be handNASM 65 approved providing delivered by Vice President Johnson during equipment and training to bring the his visit to Saigon and indicating that the Vietnamese army up to US would be willing to add personnel to the MAAG and provide additional funds to build up the Civil Guard and the Vietnamese Naval Junk Force patrolling the coastline. A week later, Kennedy approved a National Security Action Memorandum (NASM 52) calling for a “full examination of the size and composition of forces which would be desirable in case of a possible commitment of U.S. forces to Vietnam.” NASM 56 (28 June 1961) asked the Secretary of Defense for a “deep assessment” of US needs in the area of unconventional warfare and paramilitary operations. NASM 65 (11 August 1961) approved providing equipment and training to bring the Vietnamese army up to a force of 200,000 soldiers. Two NASMs (115 and 178) dealt with operations to defoliate jungle areas and mangrove swamps.

A FORCE OF 200,000 SOLDIERS

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President John F. Kennedy meets in the Oval Office with the Vietnamese Secretary of State in Charge of Security Coordination on September 25, 1962. Photo: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

In sum, in this period, it appeared to me that President Kennedy was focused on how any war in Southeast Asia could be won but with local forces. By the fall of 1961, and in the face of reports that the situation was deteriorating in Vietnam due to North Vietnamese aggression and the inability of the South Vietnamese armed forces and paramilitary units to fight back, Kennedy began to plan for presenting a case to the United Nations. Meanwhile, US Generals on the ground in Vietnam and those making at Kennedy’s request periodic visits to assess the situation reached the conclusion that some US forces needed to be introduced to reassure 36

C H A P T ER 4: 20 JA N 1961 – J U LY 1962

the Vietnamese government and its people. By November, even small numbers, they argued, would have outsized effects. Secretary McNamara lent his weight to this viewpoint in a Memorandum for the President on the 8th, provided the US was willing “to commit itself to the clear objective of preventing the fall of SVN to communism ….” Three days later, McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk changed their minds about introducing any more US troops in any capacity. A week later, Ambassador Kenneth Galbraith — a close personal friend who Kennedy sent to Saigon to assess the effectiveness of the government led by Diem — reported that there is little chance “that the administrative and political reforms being pressed upon Diem will result in real change.” He argued for a change in government; Diem, he said, “is nonsense.” At the end of November, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Maxwell Taylor, wrote to the Secretary of Defense a list of questions he heard the President proposed be used by his key advisors and address at their next meeting. “Among the questions are: (1) what is the situation with regard to Diem …; (2) can we delay longer in obtaining an answer from Diem; (3) what are the views of the JCS on the military organization to support the new programs; (4) what is our plan for flood relief; (5) who should the President regard as personally responsible for the effectiveness of the Washington end of this operation?” He did not get very clear answers at that meeting or in the ensuing months. 1962 begins with a clear statement to President Kennedy by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the problem in Vietnam is Diem, his brother, and his brother’s wife. As a result, the President signs NASM 124 (18th January 1962) establishing a Special Group to study Wars of National Liberation and what is needed to fight the insurgents who fuel them. NASMs 131 and 132 in February and March focused on AID programs and whether they are enough to transform the local police. In sum, in this period, it appeared to me that President Kennedy was focused on how any war in Southeast Asia could be won but with local forces. By June and in NSAM 62 (19 June 1962), JFK calls on his advisors to specify the ingredients of counter insurgency operations and covert paramilitary operations, “increased use of third country personnel, exploitation of minorities, improvement of indigenous intelligence organizations, and research and development for counter insurgency.”

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62 9 1 J U LY TO 63 9 1 LY

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C H A P T ER 5: J U LY 1962 – J U LY 1963

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This is another type of war, new in its intensity ancient in its origin; by infiltration, instead of aggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him, … It requires … a whole new kind of strategy, a wholly different kind of force, and therefore a new and wholly different kind of military training.” 5President John F. Kennedy delivers an address at the United States Military Academy Field House at West Point on June 6, 1962. Photo: Cecil Stoughton. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

P R E SIDEN T KEN N EDY‘S GR ADUATION SP E ECH TO TH E W E S T P OIN T C LA S S OF 1962

n the 19th of July 1962, the National Liberation Front (NLF) proposed to end the war as it was then being fought with a cease fire. The declaration called for the withdrawal of all American troops and special forces, the creation of a coalition government composed of all political parties in South Vietnam pending future elections, and the neutrality of Vietnam guaranteed by international treaty as was by then being negotiated for Laos and Cambodia.

C H A P T ER 5: J U LY 1962 – J U LY 1963

This would essentially be their position for the next eleven years. It was immediately dismissed in Washington as Communist subterfuge aimed at weakening the morale of the existing South Vietnamese government and its army. Partly as a result of that assessment, on the 24th of August, 1962, President Kennedy approved a government-wide counterinsurgency doctrine focused on “the internal defense of overseas areas threatened by subversive insurgency.” Over 11,000 US Army and CIA advisors were by then posted in Vietnam. And there were also reports from the field that much of the American arms sent as aid for the South Vietnamese army made their way into the hands of the Viet Cong. The President and his closest advisors consistently expressed puzzlement at what was going on and JFK in particular was skeptical of routine reports from both the US Embassy and the Military Advisory Command. Visits by a flurry of Washington officials ensued. By October, there had been so many official visitors from Washington sent to assess the situation that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued an order to reduce the number “to those having actual business of pressing interest.” Multiple narratives were emerging that perplexed President Kennedy. Who was winning what in the military conflict depended on which General was doing the reporting and which Vietnamese Army units were doing the fighting. There was also disagreement among his advisors over the effectiveness of the leadership of President Diem. It did not help that the Vietnamese Generals who were relatives of President Diem increasingly thought that defeating the Viet Cong was a secondary priority to eliminating opposition to Diem and controlling the Buddhist clergy and student protesters. Nevertheless, by

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November, there were enough reports of progress that could be cited that the US Ambassador to Saigon declared in a press briefing that “We can see light at the end of the tunnel.” Two weeks later, Hanoi tasked its Military Transportation Group to build a road through Laos so that much greater quantities of arms and supplies could be sent from North Vietnam to the Viet Cong forces in the South and that rice grown in the South could be shipped North. Initially, and for many years, the road was a complex of dirt trails and so became known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail and, while bombed with more tons of explosives than the US had dropped on Germany and Japan combined during World War II, it’s traffic only grew. Only after the Paris Agreement was signed, did it become an all-weather, hard surface highway which would facilitate the invasion by regular North Vietnamese Army troops in 1975 that would lead to the collapse of the Agreement and the surrender of the Saigon Government in April.

By the end of 1962, 53 American soldiers had been killed in action and nearly 5,000 of their Vietnamese counterparts. In the next twelve months, US casualties would double and the US military presence would grow to more than 16,000 soldiers and CIA officers. Publicly, the Administration would deny that any were participating in combat operations. And virtually none of the questions that President Kennedy persistently asked had unambiguous answers.

The first six months of 1963, were marked by increasing Communist military successes against the South Vietnamese army. The Viet Cong had learned how to shoot down helicopters while the ARVN learned to wait for US-led air strikes before engaging their enemy who, by then, had dispersed. High-level visits to Saigon resumed, and with them more reports of military progress but also political disaffection with President Diem. The US Commanding General in early Spring reported that “the military phase of the war can be virtually won in 1963.” But there was another conflict that was about to begin that made this all but impossible.

In early May, ARVN soldiers fired on an assembly of Buddhists in the former imperial capital of Hue in central Vietnam. They were seeking the right to fly a 42

C H A P T ER 5: J U LY 1962 – J U LY 1963

religious flag on the occasion of Buddha’s birthday. Nine persons were killed and this galvanized religious leadership to seek assurances from Diem personally that they would be protected from future attacks and assured religious freedom. President Diem, instead, blamed the crisis and the casualties on the Viet Cong. At the end of the month, more than 500 monks demonstrated in protest against Diem and his government in front of the National Assembly in Saigon. This was followed by a hunger strike. A week later, on the 3rd of June, Army soldiers poured chemicals from tear gas grenades on the heads of praying monks in Hue; 67 were hospitalized. And on the 11th of June, Thich (Vietnamese for Reverend) Quang Duc calmly walked into the intersection of two of the capital’s busiest streets, assumed the lotus position, and then sat still as a fellow monk poured 5 gallons of gasoline over his head. He prayed one last time and then struck a match and dropped it on himself. The six members of Western Press Corps then in Saigon had been alerted to attend what they thought would be just another protest but were told by their Vietnamese assistants to be sure to bring their cameras.

Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation during the Buddhist crisis in Vietnam was captured by journalist Malcolm Browne on June 11, 1963. Photo: Malcolm Browne for the Associated Press

I respectfully plead to President Ngo Dinh Diem to take a mind of compassion towards the people of the nation and implement religious equality to maintain the strength of the homeland eternally.”

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THICH QUANG DUC

The resulting photograph taken by Malcolm Browne of the Associated Press won the World Press Photo of the Year award and it became one of the defining images of the entire Vietnam War era. By the Fall, seven other monks and a nun set fire to themselves in continued protest and the Western Press corps grew from 6 to over 60 members. In the letter he left to be read after his death, Thich Quang Duc wrote: “I respectfully plead to President Ngo Dinh Diem to take a mind of compassion towards the people of the nation and implement religious equality to maintain the strength of the homeland eternally.” Diem convened an emergency cabinet meeting and signed a joint communique with Buddhist leaders. Nevertheless, whenever there were protests or gathering of Buddhists in the days to come, Government soldiers and police attacked them. In a letter to The New York Times, while she was visiting the United States, Diem’s sister-in-law, Madame Nhu whom the US Press dubbed “the Dragon Lady” wrote: “I would clap hands at seeing another monk barbecue show.” After these events, President Kennedy turned decisively away from continuing to support Diem as long as his family controlled so much of the army and police and Madame Nhu remained in Vietnam and spoke for the Government.

Despite the news from Saigon, and the pictures, most Americans could not find Vietnam on a map in 1963. What would become “the living room war” as US casualties mounted and reporters could film what was happening on the ground, was not yet on the TV evening news. But as he met more regularly with his advisors after these events, Kennedy 44

was already acutely aware of how much the Press could shape US policy and influence Congress. So also were members of the Press Corps and their Vietnamese assistants many of whom were Communist agents and who knew when to tell their employers where to go to get a good story that would reveal that what was told them in the official briefings about military successes was untrue.

Some years later, I heard one of the most famous US journalists say that while there is indeed light at the end of any tunnel, “at the end of this one, I bet it will be the Viet Cong holding the candle.”

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Image: National Archives

C H A P T ER 5: J U LY 1962 – J U LY 1963

3President Kennedy received a telegram on June 14, 1963 from Norodom Sihanouk, Chief of State of Cambodia, urging the United States to intercede in Vietnam to protect the religious freedom of the Buddist monks.

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C HAP TER

C H A P T ER 6: T H E R E CO R D I N G S I N T H E CA B I N E T RO O M A N D T H E OVA L O F F I C E

N I S G N I D R O C E M R O O E R H T T E N E I C B I A F C F T H E H E OVA L O T D N A to t s 3 u 6 9 1 Aug r e b m Nove

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LY R I C S FR OM “ W H Y G O D WHY?” M I S S S A IG ON

“Vietnam You don’t give answers, do you friend? Just questions that don’t ever end … ”

nknown to all of the senior officials attending strategy meetings in the Cabinet Room or Oval Office, 248 hours of meetings with President Kennedy were recorded. These include the last 16 months of his presidency. That recordings were being made was known only by the President’s personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, and a few agents of the Secret Service.

Kennedy was not the only President to make such recordings. FDR was the first and asked to create a voice activated system. In total, he made 8 hours of such tapes. Richard Nixon still holds the record at over 3,400 hours. Seventeen tapes amounting to nearly 13 hours involve discussions related to events in Vietnam. There are short excisions for security reasons in nearly all of these recordings, most appearing to relate to protecting the identities of US agents and CIA officials in South Vietnam. The total time of the excisions is just over 9 minutes. Some officials at the meetings and even the President himself mumble; others are too far from the hidden microphone to be picked up completely. Between 4 and 17 officials attended these meetings. Vice President Johnson is at two, but does not speak. Unless you knew them, or the President turns to them by name, it is sometimes hard for a listener today to identify who was saying what. Aside from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (who attended 5 of the meetings), hardly any of the officials challenged what their colleagues were saying because, as they make clear when the President asks to reconcile the stark differences he is hearing, each were able to ground their assessments of a particular facet of the military situation or political

17 TAPE RECORDINGS

The first recording takes place on 15 August totalling nearly 1963, two days after Henry Cabot Lodge was sworn in as US Ambassador and before he departs for Saigon to present his credentials. It lasts 34 minutes and largely deals with what messages Lodge was planning to convey to President Diem and other officials in his cabinet. involve discussions related to the Lodge did most of the talking. That surprised events in Vietnam me. Of the handful of American officials who knew Vietnam well, Henry Cabot Lodge was not one of them. He did not speak the language (but was fluent in French), and had travelled just once to French Indochina in 1930 while working as a journalist for the New York Herald Tribune. But he sure did have opinions that August of 1963. Fully half of the 34 minute meeting (which included 5 minutes or so of banter while posing for photographs at the end) involved Lodge speaking at President Kennedy and going over what he was going to do and say when he met President Diem. I found that odd; he was not really seeking the direction of the President of the United States before taking up a post as both the President’s personal representative (as all ambassadors are) and especially one who was flying directly into the eye of a storm. Kennedy also did not offer instruction but repeatedly stressed that he was going to rely on Lodge’s judgment

13 HOURS

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developments based on whom they were talking to and when. The meetings reveal in retrospect that US officials had access to an enormous number of Vietnamese officials but little ability to know for sure who was telling the truth. Edward R. Murrow, the first head of the new US Information Agency (and IIE’s first Assistant Director) insisted that if the Government wanted his advice on how to report on a crash landing, he needed to be there for the take off. Murrow was at 4 of the meetings. Thanks to the recordings, we do know nearly all of the questions JFK asked and the observations he made as the meetings unfolded. It is on those moments that I focused attention. And from them it is possible to form a picture not only of what but also how Kennedy was learning about the unfolding situation in Vietnam.

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and assessments about the situation on the ground. The President did remind Lodge that the press can make Washington’s policy and build up or tear down foreign leaders, so it was important to form his own judgments. The key assessment Kennedy would be seeking was about President Diem. “Do you think we can win with him?” Lodge made clear that he did. But they both agreed that the bigger problem was Diem’s family. His brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, while given no official role in the government, controlled the secret police and the Special Forces, and half of the country’s rice trade. Nhu’s brother controlled the other half and together they had a share of all US Government contracts. Corruption was rife, honest officials terrorized and tortured, and army officers who were not relatives had been sidelined. JFK and Lodge spent some minutes talking about Nhu’s wife, who the western press had nicknamed “Dragon Lady.” Madame Nhu herself was a warrior, having saved Diem’s presidency several times both from a gangster rebellion in Saigon and attempted coups. She preferred to call herself Tiger Lady, because dragons in Vietnamese culture are kind and loving and tigers were universally regarded as ferocious. As a couple, the Nhus lived with Diem (a bachelor) at the Presidential Palace in Saigon. Nothing Madame Nhu would say or did in the days ahead were what Washington wanted to hear. The President and the Ambassador agreed that both Nhus had to leave the country so that Diem could really lead, appoint better generals, and quell the religious and student protests that had consumed the summer and would clearly weaken loyalty to the central government. They did not in this conversation mention how they thought this could be accomplished. I would meet Ambassador Lodge years later at the Embassy in Saigon and later interviewed him for my book. Lodge was gracious, deeply supportive of the idea of a free Vietnam as a bulwark against Communism in Asia,

Kennedy remarks mid-way that “I assume the situation is hopeless,” in reference to determining how much the US could rely on President Diem to win the war. 50

skeptical of all diplomacy, and told me that, in retrospect, it was “essential for the US to get its coups right.”

Starting with events in the previous month, there was a lot on which to report and nearly all of it bad. But the news was less about setbacks in the fight against North Vietnam and the insurgents than about the growing preoccupation by Diem and his brother with repressing protesting Buddhists. On the 21st of August, Diem declared martial law and his brother orchestrated nation-wide raids on scores of temple pagodas, with the secret police making thousands of arrests. As this was happening, the CIA was also in contact with Vietnamese Generals who spoke of organizing a coup to replace both Diem and Nhu. Kennedy convened three meetings at the White House between 26-28 August totaling more than three hours to sort out who was who among the coup leaders, what US officials knew about them, and how the US could evacuate the roughly 4,000 Americans then in the Saigon area should a coup happen and violence erupt. Near the end of the first meeting, Kennedy concluded “We don’t know” much about the coup plotters, or actually how to do one in Vietnam, and who would be a better leader than Diem. By the 31st August, the CIA had concluded “this particular coup is finished” but few of Kennedy’s basic questions had been answered. By my count, the President asked over 50 questions. He essentially wanted to know how well we knew who might lead Vietnam if Diem were deposed, what we really knew about their leadership qualities, and what our agents thought Diem’s ouster would do to the ability of the South Vietnamese

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As the conversation in the Oval Office continued, it had the tone of two senior statesmen who knew each other well and were being realistic about what was happening and what was possible. Kennedy remarks mid-way that “I assume the situation is hopeless,” in reference to determining how much the US could rely on President Diem to win the war. It was clear that neither man believed the optimistic assessments of the military commanders in the field and Kennedy observed that many times over the past 13 years, he was told by Generals that things in Vietnam looked good, the local leaders solid, and the conflicts there were practically over. And then found out that none of this proved true.

armed forces to fight and win a war against the Viet Cong. That he had so many and such persistent questions about who on the US side knew what and how, struck me as unusual. So many of these questions should, I thought, have been anticipated and preempted in the briefings script. Of course, the questions go to the heart of what we did not really know about the Vietnamese and what their struggle was all about. President Kennedy also wanted to know why The New York Times seemed to know more than the US Embassy did.

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There would, of course, be more talk of and coups to come. But on the 2nd of September, President Kennedy gave a television interview to CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite that contained two conclusions. First, “I don’t think that unless a greater effort is made by the Government [of South Vietnam] to win popular support that the war can be won out there. In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it.” Second, “I don’t agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake.” The question for Kennedy and his advisors, consequently, became if not Diem, then who? The President‘s knowledge of whom else might be better got no better in the weeks to come. Nor did the political and military situation on the ground. On the 10th of September, a Marine General leading Counterinsurgency programs for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a senior State Department Foreign Service Officer briefed President Kennedy on the results of their joint visit to Vietnam. The General observed that the war was still winnable and based his assessment on meeting with 87 US and Vietnamese military officials. His State Department colleague said he observed a complete breakdown of civil government and a pervasive atmosphere of “fear and hate arising from the police reign of terror” and that the program to fortify strategic hamlets was being “chewed to pieces.” The General disagreed, noting that less than 0.2% in fact had been overrun by the Viet Cong. Before he pushed for more details with more than 20 questions I was able to count, President Kennedy quips: “You two did visit the same country, didn’t you?”

As the meeting nears its conclusion, Kennedy is searching for details of a specific program of pressure that could be applied to Diem to both make him realize that the US was losing patience with his commitment to resolving the Buddhist crisis peacefully, with his ability to rein in the activities of his brother 52

16,000 US MILITARY PERSONNEL

The next day, Ambassador Lodge cabled that the situation was “worsening rapidly” and that the time was at hand “for the US to use whatwere in country in support ever effective sanctions it has to bring about of Vietnamese troops by the fall of the existing government and the September 1963 installation of another.” The President met with advisors in the Oval Office later that day. Over the course of nearly an hour and by asking 25 more questions, the President learned more about the extent to which US forces were already engaging in an air war in support of Vietnamese troops on the ground. And he appeared to be surprised that by then, some 16,000 US military personnel were in country and that there were more than 5,000 dependents that might have to be evacuated in the event of violence following either or both the collapse of the Diem government and escalated civil unrest if attacks on the Buddhists continued. Kennedy ends the meeting by asking the group to “work out a draft of what I would say in a press conference.”

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and the secret police, and with the actions and statements of the latter’s wife. He appears to be instructing this very divided group of advisors and top officials to develop strategy holistically and not just based on what parts of the South Vietnamese elite with whom they were in touch. Each would continue to maintain that what they said about the part of Vietnam with which they were familiar was correct. As subsequent meetings and events would reveal, this may have been because most were convinced that improving or replacing Diem was key to both the political as well as the military situation. Throughout the weeks ahead, JFK continued to probe and question whether or not US officials really knew what constituted an effective Vietnamese leader. Several times he asked “who we had in Saigon that actually knew Vietnam” as he began to lose confidence in the reports and judgments The President seemed surprised that coming from Ambassador Lodge but also the intermediaries the CIA was using to communicate with the Vietnamese Generals who appeared to be pressing again for a coup.

President Diem was also busy during this period. Rumors had begun to circulate in diplomatic circles that Diem and his brother were engaged in or about to engage in secret negotiations with Hanoi that would call for the withdrawal of American forces and advisors. From all I was able to determine now and in my research on the negotiations when I wrote “Lost Peace” this was fake news.

J F K A N D V I E T N A M : A M EM O I R

In the midst of so many uncertainties and conflicting reports, in midSeptember the President decided to send the Secretary of Defense and General Maxwell Taylor, back to Saigon for a ten-day fact-finding mission to again assess the situation. Their report cabled to Washington concluded that while the military situation is deteriorating, there is no evidence that a coup would be successful. They recommend a doubling down on defending the strategic hamlets and creating an intensive and speeded-up training program for the Vietnamese army so that the bulk of the US advisors could be withdrawn by 1965. And they call for issuing a public statement that 1,000 would be withdrawn by the end of 1963. Ambassador Lodge was informed on the 5th of October that the “President today approved recommendation that no initiative should now be taken to give any active covert encouragement of a coup” but that he could also keep in contact with “alternative leadership.” That same day, CIA officers were contacted by the Vietnamese Generals who were behind the first coup discussions and now wanted to reactivate their plans. General Duong Van Minh is reported to have said that a coup is urgently needed to

On the 11th of October, President Kennedy approves NSAM 263, which calls for stepped up training of the South Vietnamese so that “by the end of 1965 … it should be possible to withdraw the bulk of US personnel by that time.” 54

prevent losing the war to the Viet Cong. On the 11th of October, President Kennedy approves NSAM 263, which calls for stepped up training of the South Vietnamese so that “by the end of 1965 … it should be possible to withdraw the bulk of US personnel by that time.” By the end of October, the planning for a coup is well underway, but the US still lacks many critical details as to what the Vietnamese Generals intend, their leadership capabilities to win a war, as well as any means by which the US could thwart the coup they wish now to accomplish. Ambassador Lodge is in favor of letting events take their course. The American Commander in Vietnam is squarely opposed to this and disagrees with Lodge’s pessimistic assessment on how poorly the war is actually going. By this point, we are at the end of October. The White House is focused less on who is right about progress in the war than on whether or not a coup organized by this particular group of Vietnamese Generals could, in fact, succeed; “once it has started, it is in our interests to see that it succeeds,” the President reminds his advisors. On the 1st of November, the American Commander in Vietnam notified Washington that the coup is, indeed, underway. Hanoi also got the same news because one of the plotters was their spy. Colonel Pham Ngoc Thao, who preferred to be called Albert and was raised as a Catholic, was a protege of Diem’s elder brother who was the Archbishop of Hue. Diem put him in charge of the Strategic Hamlet Program. Thao would later be involved in an unsuccessful coup to replace General Khanh in 1965. Thao went into hiding after that and was murdered in July. He would be replaced by many other North Vietnamese agents until the very end of the government in Saigon. Indeed, Hanoi’s top agent turned out to be a South Vietnamese Army Colonel, Dinh Van De, who later was elected to the Upper House and became Chairman of its Committee on Defense and National Security. He and his wife founded a Catholic orphanage in Central Vietnam which we visited and gladly supported. Colonel and Mrs. De were highly regarded by the US Embassy and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Colonel De’s positions over the years enabled him to pass along all of Saigon’s military plans. But his most significant accomplishment may have been leading a delegation to Washington in late March of 1975 to meet with President Gerald Ford, who was considering asking Congress for more aid

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to help prevent the collapse of the Saigon Government. It was successful. The delegation cast enough doubt on the viability of the South Vietnamese government that no aid was ultimately asked for by President Ford or provided by Congress. A month later, Saigon surrendered.

J F K A N D V I E T N A M : A M EM O I R

Writing about the unfolding of these events from a Washington perspective today is surreal. I am not aware of any situation since when so many enemy agents had access to and infiltrated so many parts of a government we were supporting. Ambassadors in the field rarely have the freedom to act as Lodge intended on doing and did. The White House is not so inclined repeatedly to send out the very top level civilian or military officials to try to find out what is going on. And Presidents may be less inclined to ask so many questions.

The last two weeks of October 1963, were increasingly difficult for President Kennedy and for his advisors. There are meetings on the 25th, 29th, 30th of October and on the 1st of November. The President asked over 60 questions about who was leading the coup, which US officials actually were in touch with them, what forces and backing did the coup leaders have, and whether or not a new government in Saigon would be any better than Diem’s government at fighting the war. The most frequent answer was “We don’t know, Sir.” JFK sounds increasingly skeptical of the CIA contacts who were in touch with the Vietnamese Generals organizing the coup and what they are being told, as well as what Ambassador Lodge says he knows and is reporting to Washington. In the middle of one meeting, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ticks off 5 minutes of his own questions on these issues. In exasperation, the Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara observes: “We are just dealing with a bunch of amateurs,” including the main interlocutor for the US who says he is in touch with all the coup leaders. Later, McNamara observes that what we are doing and how is “disgraceful” and that “the chances of being better off with a change of government are 50:50.” The President concludes, “I don’t know who the hell these Generals are.”

JFK also persistently questions “what it is we wanted Diem to have done to respond” to pressures from Washington and “what he can reasonably do.” 56

On the 30th of October, we have the next recording and it is of a 40 minute meeting in the Oval Office that is almost most entirely devoted to drafting and editing a telegram to Ambassador Lodge and conveying the Presidential directive that he discuss what is going on with General Harkins, the US military commander in Vietnam. The recordings indicate that JFK is still seeking the ground truth about whether or not a change in government in South Vietnam would increase the chances of winning the war. The war being discussed is still not the American war. This meeting and the next would produce a message to Ambassador Lodge that JFK would later regret. There is still no agreement among the President’s advisers on whether we should stop the coup, and what precisely the US should instruct its Ambassador Lodge to say. President Kennedy throughout the meeting is also still troubled about what we don’t know and what each element of the US Country Team is

C H A P T ER 6: T H E R E CO R D I N G S I N T H E CA B I N E T RO O M A N D T H E OVA L O F F I C E

The senior advisors all join the President in questioning what had happened to Lodge’s judgment and how fact-based is what he is urging Washington to do. At the meeting on the 29th, Secretary of State Dean Rusk comes closest to answering JFK’s operational questions about who is doing what in the coup. “We are not privy to their plans.” The President also begins to ask the larger question of “how do we square a military revolt against a constitutionally led government [in Vietnam] versus our position in Honduras and the Dominican Republic.” As the coup was unfolding in Saigon, the US was also dealing with situations in those countries, as well as coups unfolding in Morocco and Algeria. Almost by thinking out loud, it appears that JFK is now trying to rationalize US policy across a number of situations and outcomes that his advisers seemed unprepared for having to do or seemed to be expecting that they would indeed have to at the moment. JFK reminded them that making sense of what was happening would be important for building the support in Congress for the new aid levels that might be required. Indeed, throughout all these meetings, President Kennedy reminds his advisors that they have to work with the other branch of government and he knew first hand how skeptical Senators could be of anything a Defense Secretary or General told them about politics elsewhere or how soon we could win a war.

J F K A N D V I E T N A M : A M EM O I R

President John F. Kennedy speaks with Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara (right) in the West Wing Colonnade outside the Oval Office. Photo: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

not sharing with the other. And as the day of Ambassador Lodge’s planned departure for consultations with Washington officials who would meet him in Honolulu approaches, there is discussion over who would then be in charge and what they would say both to President Diem and the coup leaders. President Kennedy still wants to know what his top General there thinks, and it seems hard for all the meeting participants to tell him. Throughout all of these meetings, I was struck by how much the President was also involved in the drafting process in order to get instructions just right. And because so many State Department telegrams seem to have been leaked to the Press, JFK instructs that his messages be transmitted by the CIA communications system. There is consensus, however, on the need to have a new country team and clear assessments of what is going on. JFK expresses remorse toward the end of the meeting that the US has “contributed to weakening the government.” And he also refers to a conversation he has just had with the 58

The last recording of a meeting on Vietnam that we have is from the 2nd of November. It is just under 20 minutes long and President Kennedy actually asks 21 questions. About half of the time is taken up with the back and forth of editing a draft of a message to Ambassador Lodge still requesting an accurate account of the coup and its impact on what JFK terms “the military prosecution of the war.” He still also wants to know what kind of government is going to emerge. The President also makes clear that he is “concerned about what happened to Diem and Nhu … it bothers me about this,” referring to their assassinations. He wants to know “did they surrender under honorable conditions” and then something went wrong with the plan to escort them to a place where they would be safe until they could go to another country. As his advisors try to explain the confused circumstances in Saigon, Kennedy concludes “we didn’t know enough” about who the coup plotters were and what they intended. “We don’t know much about the coup generals.” And ironically he makes the point that even when the US is accused of orchestrating the coup, actually “we didn’t have any clear knowledge.” Nevertheless, “I think the suggestion [by the press] is that the United States made the coup inevitable by applying the pressures” on Diem “in support of the conclusions of the McNamara-Taylor Mission …” We were not pushing a coup but he [Diem] did not give us anything” in response to what the US wanted the South Vietnamese Government to do. McGeorge Bundy concludes this part of the meeting with what he thought might be history’s epitaph for President Diem: “He had an honorable chance to come to terms with us that he didn’t take.” President Kennedy, however, reached a different conclusion as indicated in the notes for a memoir he dictated two days later.

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journalist and friend from Cape Cod Joe Alsop, “who told me, he knew it was hopeless.” Or, maybe that “Nhu was hopeless.” The CIA director John McCone concludes the meeting by saying; “Lodge has no experience … he has been there only 60 days.” And in those days, Ambassador Lodge, as Defense Secretary observed, seemed to have the power “to run his own Press Section and CIA Station.” These days, again, it is very hard to conceive of any ambassador having that much freedom regardless of their lineage from Washington’s micro management.

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CHA P T E R

N OV R I O M E M D T E S T A A L T E H DIC T D N A E Y C R N T E N R E E F N O C S S E PR 3 6 9 1 V O N 4 1

J F K A N D V I E T N A M : A M EM O I R

1963

C H A P T ER 7: D I C TAT ED M EM O I R EN T RY A N D T H E L A S T P R ES S CO N F ER EN C E

J J F K A N D V I E T N A M : A M EM O I R

FK began dictating notes for his memoirs in November of 1963. Thirty-five minutes into President Kennedy’s dictation on Vietnam, a child’s voice breaks into the narrative. This is not the first time on the Oval Office tape recordings that the Kennedy children make an appearance.

John Jr. peers out from the panel which he called ‘the secret door’ under the Resolute Desk as his father reviews papers. Photo: Stanley Tretick

“1…2…3…4…5… Monday, November 4th 1963. The … over the weekend, the coup in Saigon took place, culminated in three months of conversation about a coup, conversation which divided the government here and in Saigon. Opposed to a coup was General Taylor, the Attorney General, Secretary McNamara, to a somewhat less degree, John McCone, partly because of an old hostility to Lodge, which causes him to lack confidence in Lodge’s judgement, partly, too, as a result of a new hostility because Lodge shifted his station chief; In favor of the coup was State, led by Averell Harriman, George Ball, Roger Hilsman, supported by Mike Forrestal at the White House. I feel that we must bear a good deal of responsibility for it, beginning with our cable of early August in which we suggested the coup. In my judgement, that wire was badly drafted. It should never have been sent on a Saturday. I should not have

C H A P T ER 7: D I C TAT ED M EM O I R EN T RY A N D T H E L A S T P R ES S CO N F ER EN C E

In October, there appeared to be matters in need of arbitration between them and a nanny to which he attended, as well as several instances when one of the White House dogs — there were 5 adult dogs, including one given by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev that also had 4 puppies — can be heard barking and also in need of the President’s attention. JFK can be heard leaving policy discussions to sort things out, while his advisors remain in the Oval Office to do the same. From all that has been written in retrospect, we know that as President, JFK had some clear markers, as clear as the seasons of the year themselves. He admired courage and integrity. He had a clear vision of what would be good for America and the world we shared. The Vietnam War as we know it now, was not one of them. In the text below and the excerpt from the press conference ten days later, JFK speaks for himself.

From all that has been written in retrospect, we know that as President, JFK had some clear markers… He admired courage and integrity. He had a clear vision of what would be good for America and the world we shared.” 63

J F K A N D V I E T N A M : A M EM O I R

given my consent to it without a roundtable conference in 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. There was a sharp split between Saigon and the rest of the country. Politically the situation is deteriorating. Militarily they had not had its effect. There was a feeling however that it would; for this reason, Secretary McNamara and General Taylor supported applying additional pressures to Diem and Nhu in order to move them …. At this point, John Kennedy Jr. enters the room. The President asks: JFK: Do you want to say anything? Say hello John Jr.: Hello JFK: Say it again. John Jr.: Naughty, naughty Daddy. JFK: Why do the leaves fall? John Jr.: Because it’s autumn. JFK: Why does the snow come on the ground? John Jr.: Because it’s winter. JFK: Why do the leaves turn green? John Jr.: Because it’s spring. JFK: Where do we go to the Cape? Hyannis Port? John Jr.: Because it’s … JFK: It’s summer. John Jr.: (laughs) Your horses. His son then leaves the room and the President returns to the dictaphone. The reference to horses may be because on JFK’s desk John Junior saw his sister pictured with one of the three she rode, Tex (a gift from Vice President Johnson), Macaroni, or Leprechaun (A gift from the people of Ireland). The President continues: “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 held his country together to maintain its independence under very adverse conditions. The way he was killed made it particularly abhorrent. The question now is, 64

whether the generals can stay together and build a stable government, or whether Saigon will begin … will turn on public opinion in Saigon …The intellectuals, students, et cetera, will turn on the government as repressive and undemocratic in the not too distant future …”

“Because we do have a new situation there, and a new government, we hope, an increased effort in the war. The purpose of the meeting at Honolulu … is to attempt to assess the situation: what American policy should be, and what our aid policy should be, how we can intensify the struggle, how we can bring Americans out of there. Now that is our object, to bring Americans home, permit the South Vietnamese to maintain themselves as a free and independent country, and permit democratic forces within the country to operate — which they can, of course, much more freely when the assault from the inside, and which is manipulated from the north, is ended.”

Like any sailor, JFK had way points by which he navigated. Perhaps they came from his own experience in combat in the South Pacific and then from writing Profiles in Courage. None of them pointed in the direction of turning Vietnam from a country into a war. If both Kennedy and Diem had lived, I am convinced by all my years working on Vietnam that it would be what it is today; namely, a unified country under the firm control of its own Communist party. America would have been very different, especially in respect to the distrust of its government in matters of war and peace.

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Here the recording stops. What does not cease are the dynamics that JFK foresaw would weaken successive governments in Saigon and the effort to win a war. Ten days later, at what was to be JFK’s last White House Press Conference, he is asked by a reporter to “give us your appraisal of the situation in South Vietnam now, since the coup and the purposes of the Honolulu conference?” The President responds:

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EPILOGUE

J F K A N D V I E T N A M : A M EM O I R

n the day JFK was assassinated, the political and military leaders of North Vietnam had just met to decide the next phase of their war for national liberation. The outcome was a new mandate for the Communist Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN) to coordinate all of the military and paramilitary forces aimed at the destruction of the government in the South.

The coup leaders in Saigon picked General Duong Van Minh to head the government after the assassination President Diem; he was replaced three months later. Three more military leaders and one civilian would in turn serve as President over the next 11 years. Some we picked and some we didn’t. All were able to leave Vietnam and lived in exile with a portion of its treasury in Taiwan or California.

One served twice. This was General Minh. His second term came as the North Vietnamese Army was marching on Saigon in April, 1975. Just weeks before, South Vietnamese army forces fled province after province after losing the battle for a provincial capital in the central highlands on the 10th of March. What had been ordered as a strategic retreat to prepare ARVN forces to defend Saigon became a disorganized mass exodus southward of soldiers and their families seeking safety from the then full-scale invasion by the North Vietnamese Army. The South Vietnamese Army commanders were airlifted to safety on US Navy ships in the South China Sea (and never to return). Leaders in Hanoi and Washington were equally shocked at the rapidity of the collapse. Minh was sworn in as President on the 28th of April 1975, and two days later formally surrendered the Government at the Presidential Palace. Minh was able to make his way to the United States a month later. He died in 2001, at the age of 85 in Pasadena, California. His brother died the year before in Vietnam. He was also retired, having served throughout the war as a General in the North Vietnamese Army.

j In the years after the assassinations of Presidents Diem and Kennedy, US officials would attempt to pick more leaders in Vietnam as well as initiate or support regime changes over 40 times in dozens of countries. As I write now, it is hard to think that we are any better at picking leaders elsewhere than we were in 1963. Had he lived, JFK might have been the first President to understand that.

EP I L O G U E

Collette and her family were fortunate to have attended President Kennedy’s Inauguration in Washington. This was thanks to her godfather who was the Sheriff of Middlesex County in Boston. She was a high school student and took her first camera on the trip. It was so cold, she recalled, that she couldn’t get her fingers to make it work. So we have no pictures. She would catch glimpses of President Kennedy and his family each summer. The President’s yacht “Marlin” would motor over from Hyannisport to Cotuit Bay, anchor off Sampson’s and Dead Neck Island, where Kennedy children, cousins, and guests would swim and relax; others freely sailed around them. Collette’s younger brother John Wood served as an infantry officer in Vietnam and assisted because of his superb language skills in uncovering what happened at the massacre at My Lai. He was awarded a Silver Star and the Purple Heart. Her older brother George Wood also served and made it as far as Okinawa. He was a medic and his steady hands were greatly needed as casualties mounted and were airlifted to the Army hospital there. John returned safely from Vietnam in 1970 and we wrote an article together explaining how then-President Nguyen Van Thieu had come to believe that Vietnam was “about to enter the post-war period” and why US officials were increasingly thinking he might be right. We didn’t agree. John died in a collision with a speeding train just a few days before it was published. He was handsome, bright, and charismatic, like JFK. Vietnam marked our generation and many named John perished. We still grieve for them and all that was lost.

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J F K A N D V I E T N A M : A M EM O I R

APPENDIX

The following pages include letters, memos, notes and telegrams relating to the history of Vietnam and America’s involvement in the war. Images (below and at right): National Archives

A P P EN D I X

J F K A N D V I E T N A M : A M EM O I R

FDR Memo

President Franklin D. Roosevelt explains why decolonization after World War II is going to be complicated. Image: National Archives

Ho Chi Minh Telegram

A P P EN D I X

President Ho Chi Minh explains to President Truman why US support for Vietnamese independence is the right thing to do. Image: National Archives

J F K A N D V I E T N A M : A M EM O I R

Telegram 243

Text of what JFK calls “our cable of early August … [in] which we suggested the coup.” He considered “that wire was badly drafted” and did not have the benefit of the “roundtable conference” that would have allowed the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to present their views. It was drafted on a Saturday and the Kennedy family was on vacation in Hyannis Port; Secretary McNamara and General Taylor were also on leave. JFK was briefed on the telephone by Michael Forrestal (Deputy to McGeorge Bundy and who was on duty that weekend) and asked all to “wait until Monday” but was told the situation in Saigon required that the cable go “out right away.” Kennedy mis-speaks when referring “early August “in his Dictated Memoir Entry” since Ambassador Lodge did not arrive at his post in Saigon until the 22nd of August. 72

Image: George Washington University Archives

A P P EN D I X

J F K A N D V I E T N A M : A M EM O I R

Telegram 383

A P P EN D I X

Within days of arriving in Saigon, Ambassador Lodge concludes that a coup and military government would be best. Image: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

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NSAM 263

When paragraph 7 disappears from future NSAMs, US troops levels rise quickly and substantially. 76

Image: National Archives

ALLAN E. G O OD M AN

AL LAN E . G O ODM AN

JFK A N D V IE T N A M: A ME MOIR

A M E M O IR

Allan E. Goodman