An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 (113 page)

At another meeting the next day, Kennedy peppered his aides with questions about prospects for a successful coup. Nolting doubted the likelihood of a “clean coup” and dismissed the Vietnamese generals as lacking “the guts of Diem or Nhu.” Krulak assured the president that the current civil disturbances were having no significant impact on the military campaign against the communists. Kennedy responded that he saw “no point in trying a coup unless there was a chance of its success.” Moreover, unpersuaded by Krulak’s assurance, he thought that it was possible to delay a coup and wait to see if internal divisions were undermining the war effort. Kennedy ended the meeting by repeating Nolting’s doubts about the ability of the Vietnamese generals to replace Diem, emphasizing the need to hide any U.S. role in a coup, and directing that Lodge and Harkins be asked for their opinions on “whether we should proceed with the generals or wait.”

But despite Kennedy’s doubts, the pressure to support a coup was now too great to reverse. The CIA analysts in Saigon warned that if Diem and the Nhus continued in power, “they and Vietnam [would] stagger on to final defeat at the hands of their own people and the VC” and “American public opinion and Congress, as well as world opinion, would force withdrawal or reduction of American support for VN.” Lodge and Harkins also recommended a coup, and at a meeting on the twenty-eighth, George Ball said that it would be “difficult if not impossible” for the United States to live with the existing government in Saigon. He added that as for a coup, the administration was already “beyond the point of no return.” Kennedy disagreed, and Nolting opposed a coup as a breach of faith with Diem. But Ball objected that it was Diem, not the United States, that had broken promises. Harriman was even more emphatic, giving Nolting a tongue-lashing that embarrassed everyone in the room. Diem had double-crossed us, Harriman snapped, and without a successful coup we would face defeat in Vietnam. Nevertheless, Max Taylor, McNamara, McCone, and Johnson shared Nolting’s doubts. “The government split in two,” Bobby said. “It was the only time really, in three years, the government was broken in two.” The debate over what to do became so heated that Kennedy told Charlie Bartlett, “My God! My government’s coming apart!”

The passions reflected memories and assessments of the recent past. If only the United States had found a reliable replacement for Chiang Kai-shek, the logic went, it might have saved China from communist control. However costly American losses in Korea, U.S. intervention had certainly rescued Seoul from Pyongyang. And coup advocates saw little resemblance between Cuba and South Vietnam, where the United States could act decisively with generals ready to follow our lead.

After hearing Lodge argue that “any course is risky, and no action at all is perhaps the riskiest of all,” and “we are launched on a course from which there is no respectable turning back: The overthrow of the Diem government,” Kennedy agreed to a U.S.-backed coup. As with the Bay of Pigs, however, he wished to mute America’s role as much as possible. To ensure against another embarrassing defeat, Kennedy sent Lodge a top secret or strictly personal cable marked “no Department or other distribution whatever.” “Until the very moment of the go signal for the operation by the Generals,” Kennedy wrote, “I must reserve a contingent right to change course and reverse previous instructions. While fully aware of your assessment of the consequences of such a reversal, I know from experience that failure is more destructive than an appearance of indecision. . . . When we go, we must go to win, but it will be better to change our minds than fail. And if our national interest should require a change of mind, we must not be afraid of it.” Lodge did not dispute the president’s authority, but he warned that the coup would have to be “a Vietnamese affair with a momentum of its own. Should this happen you may not be able to control it, i.e. the ‘go signal’ may be given by the Generals.”

The accuracy of Lodge’s analysis became apparent the next day. By the afternoon of August 30, U.S. officials agreed that “the Generals were either backing off or were wallowing,” and that prospects for a change of government were “very thin.” On the thirty-first, the CIA station in Saigon reported that “this particular coup is finished.” The Vietnamese told Harkin that they “did not feel ready and did not have sufficient balance of forces.” Lodge cabled the State Department that evening: “There is neither the will nor the organization among the generals to accomplish anything.” Rusk now felt that they were back to where they had been on August 21, and that they needed to reopen communications with Diem. He also stated, “We, first, should decide that we will not pull out of Viet-Nam and, second, that the US is not going to operate a coup d’etat itself.” McNamara, Taylor, and LBJ agreed. Johnson thought it would be a disaster to pull out or stage a coup. Instead of “playing cops and robbers,” he said, we should get on with winning the war.

Only Paul Kattenburg dissented. He thought the advisers around Kennedy were “hopeless. . . . There was not a single person there that knew what he was talking about. . . . They didn’t know Vietnam. They didn’t know the past. . . . The more this meeting went on, the more I sat there and thought, ‘God, we’re walking into a major disaster.’” Unable to contain himself, Kattenburg declared that he had known Diem for ten years, and the South Vietnamese leader was incapable of change. He predicted steady deterioration in Saigon and advised a dignified withdrawal.

In CBS and NBC interviews during the first two weeks of September, Kennedy tried to pressure Saigon into establishing greater popular control and to remind the American people why we were involved in Southeast Asia: “I don’t think . . . unless a greater effort is made by the Government 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. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it, the people of Viet-Nam against the Communists. . . . But I don’t agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake. . . . This is a very important struggle even though it is far away. We . . . made this effort to defend Europe. Now Europe is quite secure. We also have to participate—we may not like it—in the defense of Asia.” Did he believe in the “domino theory”? Chet Huntley asked him. “I believe [in] it,” Kennedy declared. The loss of Vietnam would “[give] the impression that the wave of the future in southeast Asia was China and the Communists.” The interviews not only signaled Diem that Washington insisted on greater popular rule and encouraged Americans to back a limited war effort but also implied, despite Kennedy’s denials and domino theory conceits, that he would consider withdrawing unless the South Vietnamese effectively met the communist threat.

Having used his television appearances to prod Diem and suggest future U.S. options, Kennedy now wanted to get Vietnam off the front pages. Its continued presence seemed likely to undermine relations with Saigon and provoke a public debate between those advocating a greater military effort and those eager to abandon a repressive regime fighting an unsuccessful civil war. A public argument over what to do about Vietnam seemed certain to increase Kennedy’s problems. Consequently, on September 3, Kennedy told State Department public affairs officer Robert Manning that it would be a good idea to avoid press interviews and television appearances on Vietnam. When Manning reported that “Hilsman had been turning down press calls and TV requests, the President agreed that was wise.”

Privately, Kennedy simultaneously pursued two options. He increased pressure on Diem to reform his government while also signaling the Vietnamese generals that the United States remained interested in a coup. “We should wait for the generals to contact us,” he said in a meeting on September 3. “When they come to us we will talk to them. [But] we should avoid letting the generals think that the U.S. [has] backed off.”

In the meantime, he tried again to persuade Diem to abandon repressive, anti-Buddhist policies. At a White House meeting on September 6, Bobby said, “We have to be tough. . . . Lodge has to do more than say our President is unhappy. We have to tell Diem that he must do the things we demand or we will have to cut down our effort as forced by the U.S. public.” The president was particularly concerned about “shutting up” Madame Nhu, “if only for the public relations problem here in this country.” Madame Nhu had publicly claimed that the CIA was planning a coup and that Lodge was trying to remove her from Vietnam or even have her “murdered.” (Told of Madame Nhu’s actions, Kennedy facetiously suggested a publicity release pointing out that in one week Madame Nhu, Castro, Governor George Wallace, and Mao Tse-tung had all attacked him.) The CIA also reported that Nhu had “ordered Vietnamese soldiers to open fire on Americans or foreigners involved in acts hostile to the GVN.” The State Department now cabled Lodge that “from the viewpoint of Vietnamese solidarity and world and domestic US opinion, it is important that Nhu not have a key role.”

Conflicting assessments of the war made Kennedy’s decisions on Vietnam as difficult as ever. Reports from Krulak and Harkins on Krulak’s visit to interview U.S. military advisers could not have been more upbeat. They described the Vietnamese military as “attentive to fighting the war, certain that steady progress is being made, convinced that present thrust will ultimately bring victory, [and] assured that their units are worrying about the Viet Cong and not about politics or religion.” If there had been any change in the war effort, it was “small.” Krulak predicted that “the Viet Cong war will be won if the current U.S. military and sociological programs are pursued, irrespective of the grave defects in the ruling regime.”

But Hilsman and Harriman were “sore as hell” over these reports that said “everything’s wonderful in Vietnam.” Joseph Mendenhall, another Asian expert in the State Department, who visited Vietnam with Krulak, disputed the general’s assessment. He saw “a virtual breakdown of the civil government in Saigon as well as a pervasive atmosphere of fear and hate arising from the police reign of terror and the arrests of students. The war against the Viet Cong has become secondary to the ‘war’ against the regime.” Mendenhall concluded that “the war against the Viet Cong could not be won if Nhu remains in Vietnam.” Referring to Krulak and Mendenhall, Kennedy asked, “The two of you did visit the same country, didn’t you?”

Kennedy’s frustration was reflected in his comments and questions to advisers at a September 10 meeting. He “recalled that he had made a number of public statements condemning the Vietnamese Government’s actions but this has ignited nothing.” When Rufus Phillips, a director of rural operations in Vietnam, suggested cuts in U.S. aid, Kennedy asked, “What about the possibility that Nhu’s response would be to withdraw funds from the war and field to Saigon—retreating to Saigon and charging publicly that the US was causing them to lose the war?” He also wanted to know how Krulak’s differences with Mendenhall and Phillips could be explained. Krulak responded that “the battle was not being lost in a purely military sense.” Phillips countered that “this was not a military war but a political war. It was a war for men’s minds more than battles against the Viet Cong.”

The only immediate effective step Kennedy saw was to rein in the American press war over differences in U.S. policy toward Vietnam. He declared himself “disturbed at the tendency both in Washington and Saigon to fight our own battles via the newspapers. . . . He said he wanted these different views fought out at this table and not indirectly through the newspapers.” He saw only negative results from this bad publicity—pressure to escalate our commitments without sufficient consideration of consequences or to withdraw support before it seemed wise to do so.

Kennedy continued to temporize for the next several weeks. With his advisers remaining sharply divided and CIA reports of new plans to oust Diem and Nhu and, if necessary, assassinate them, Kennedy believed it best to wait on developments, so he sent McNamara and Taylor to Saigon on yet another fact-finding mission. Lodge believed it a poor idea. It would “be taken here as [a] sign that we have decided to forgive and forget and will be regarded as marking the end of our period of disapproval of the oppressive measures. . . . It would certainly put a wet blanket on those working for a change of government.” Lodge also feared that it would take the pressure off Diem to respond to his push for reforms. Kennedy, however, believed that they could “stage manage” the mission so as not to give Diem any comfort or undercut Lodge.

On October 2, in a report to Kennedy on their trip, McNamara and Taylor cited “great progress” in the military campaign, acknowledged “serious political tensions in Saigon,” and saw small likelihood of a successful coup, although assassination of Diem or Nhu was “always a possibility.” They had little hope that American pressure would “move Diem and Nhu toward moderation,” but without such pressure they seemed “certain to continue past patterns of behavior.” McNamara and Taylor suggested the suspension of some economic aid to deter Diem from further political repression but recommended waiting two to four months to see his response before considering more drastic action. They also counseled against actively encouraging a change in government, though building contacts with “an alternative leadership” seemed like a good idea on the off chance that unforeseen factors might precipitate a coup.

As for the U.S. role in the war, McNamara and Taylor recommended stepped-up training “so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time.” In accordance with this program, “the Defense Department should announce in the very near future . . . plans to withdraw 1000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963.” The publication of this plan should be “explained in low key [terms] as an initial step in a long-term program to replace U.S. personnel with Vietnamese without impairment of the war effort.”