The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [191]
American intelligence, which seems not to train its sights on popular feeling, had not foreseen the revolt. Two weeks before the outbreak, Secretary Rusk, deceived by the barrage of optimism from MACV, was led to speak of the “steady movement” in South Vietnam “toward a constitutional system resting on popular consent” and the evidence of rising morale indicating that the people were “on their way to success.”
In the army too Diem had enemies. A generals’ coup was simmering. War effort had dwindled as the government struggled against plots and conspiracies. Nhu and the sinister Mme. Nhu began to appear in intelligence reports as communicating with the enemy, with the suspected object of reaching a “neutralist” settlement through French intermediaries for the advancement of their own fortunes. All America’s investment seemed in jeopardy. Was this the preferred protégé for nation-building, the reliable candidate to bar the way to the implacably motivated North?
Discussions in Washington about what to do were heated, the more so as the government, in fact, did not know what course to take. Was there an alternative to Diem? If he remained, could the insurgency ever be defeated under his government? Argument concentrated on the pros and cons of Diem and how to get rid of the Nhus, not on any reconsideration of what America was doing in this galère. Less because of their oppression of the Buddhists than because of their neutralist overtures, the Nhus had to be eliminated. The hope was to force Diem to that point by judicious cut-off of aid, but Diem, confident of the American commitment against the Communists, was impervious to these threats. They were made rather nervously in anxiety at the State Department that Diem might see in them a sign that action against him and the Nhus was imminent and “take some quite fantastic action such as calling on North Vietnam for assistance in expelling the Americans.” This interesting notion suggests a certain frailty in Washington’s own sense of its role in Vietnam.
Gradually policy-makers reached the conclusion, not that South Vietnam as a barrier to Communism was a losing proposition, but that Diem was and would have to go, with the help of the United States. In short, Washington should support the plotted military coup. It was an assumption of the right—or, if not the right, the pragmatic imperative—to protect investment in a client company under failing management.
A classic covert CIA agent, Colonel Lou Conein, opened liaison with the plotting generals, and the new Ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge, vigorously took charge, completely convinced of the need to end American partnership with “this repressive regime with its bayonets at every corner.” Responding to his advice, Washington instructed him that if Diem did not get rid of the Nhus, “We are prepared to accept the obvious implication that we can no longer support Diem,” and empowered him to tell “appropriate military commanders we will give them direct support in any interim period of breakdown central government mechanism.” In the yes-no style of government instructions, Lodge was told by the White House that “no initiative” should be taken for “active covert encouragement to a coup,” but on the other hand “urgent covert effort” should be made to “build contacts with possible alternative leadership”—which should of course be “totally secure and fully deniable.”
As the recent Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, Lodge had been appointed to the Embassy not only for his political ability and fluency in French, but as a means of involving his party in the Vietnamese entanglement. No pushover, he took care to put the Kennedy government on record so that it could not later repudiate him. “We are launched,” he wired, “on a course from which there is no respectable turning back: the overthrow of the Diem government.” He informed State that Colonel Conein had made the desired contact with the coup leader, General “Big” Minh, who had outlined three possible plans of action of which the first was the “assassination” of