Shortly after his inauguration, John Kennedy read a Pentagon analysis of the deteriorating Vietnamese situation. The analysis urged that aid to Diem be increased. Kennedy increased the number of in-country "advisors" to 3,000. The advisors were really military personnel, in violation of the Geneva Accord. Kennedy issued a foreign-aid order which served to increase the size of the South Vietnamese Army (the ARVN, or Army of the Republic of South Vietnam) by 20,000 men, to a total of 170,000.
Diem resented the presence of the U.S. "advisors." Then large Viet Cong units began attacking ARVN posts. At that juncture, Diem told the advisors that he wanted to form a bilateral defense pact between the U.S. and South Vietnam.
Kennedy sent General Maxwell Taylor to Saigon. Taylor reported back and recon.firmed the strategic importance of a stand against the Viet Cong. He called for more advisors, along with helicopters and pilot-support for the ARVN. Taylor requested 8,000 troops. The Joint Chiefs and Secretary of Defense McNamara requested 200,000. Kennedy compromised and sent more financial aid to Diem.
Diem initiated the "Strategic Hamlet" program early in '62. He detained peasants in armed stockades in an effort to thwart their susceptibility to the Viet Cong. In reality, the program supplied the Viet Cong with converts. In February '62, Diem survived another coup. Two ARVN pilots attacked the presidential palace with napalm, bombs and machine-gun fire. Diem, his brother Nhu and Madame Nhu survived.
Ngo Dinh Nhu had become an embarrassment. He was an opium addict prone to bouts of paranoia. Madame Nhu had convinced Diem to sponsor edicts abolishing divorce, contraceptives, abortion, boxing matches, beauty contests and opium dens. These edicts spawned great resentment. The U.S. advisors noted a new groundswell of anger against the Diem regime.
Anti-Diem sentiment was building within the ARVN command. Diem's Can Lao (the South Vietnamese Secret Police) stepped up its arrests and torture of suspected Buddhist dissidents. Four Buddhist monks publicly incinerated themselves in protest. Madame Nhu praised the suicides and created more resentment. Kennedy and the new Vietnamese ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge, concluded that the Diem regime was becoming an embarrassing liability, and that Ngo Dinh Nhu and Madame Nhu were the heart of the problem. Covertly, Agency operatives were told to sniff out discontent within the ARVN high command and discuss the viability of a coup.
It was determined that numerous plots already existed, in various states of readiness. Diem sensed the existing ARVN discontent and ordered a show of force against Buddhists and Buddhist sympathizers in Saigon and Hue. It was Diem's intention to turn the Buddhists against the ARVN and exploit the situation to his advantage. On 8/21/63, Diem troops attacked Buddhist temples in Saigon, Hue and other cities. Hundreds of monks and nuns were killed, injured and arrested. Riots and protests against the Diem regime followed.
The Agency learned of Diem's machinations in the ensuing weeks. Kennedy and his advisors were furious and still convinced that Ngo Dinh Nhu was the problem. Diem was instructed to get rid of Nhu. Agency operatives were told to contact potential coup leaders should he refuse, and to pledge our post-coup support.
Ambassador Lodge met with Diem. He became convinced that Diem would never drop Nhu. Lodge informed his Agency contacts. They contacted plotters within the ARVN high command. Lodge, Kennedy, McNamara and the Joint Chiefs met. They discussed the cutoff of financial aid to the Diem regime.
The cutoff was announced. The plotters proceeded. Chief among them were General Tran Van Don, General Le Van Kim and General Duong Van Minh, aka "Big Minh." Agency operatives met with General Don and General Minh and promised them continued U.S. financial aid and support. Kennedy determined that his administration would remain convincingly unaccountable and that the coup would publicly present itself as an all-Vietnamese affair.
The coup was planned and postponed throughout the early fall. Kennedy's advisors included pro-coup and anti-coup factions. The anti-coup faction argued that the autonomous nature of the coup might lead to another "Bay of Pigs fiasco."
Internal bickering diverted the plotters. The generals argued over which position of power they would assume in post-coup Saigon. The coup was finally scheduled for 11 / 1/63. It was implemented that afternoon.
Madame Nhu was in the U.S. Premier Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu hid in the basement of the presidential palace. Insurgent units captured the palace, the guard barracks and the police station. Diem and Nhu were apprehended and given "safe passage" in an armored personnel carrier. The carrier stopped at a railroad crossing. Diem and Nhu were shot and stabbed to death.
A 12-man "Military Revolutionary Council" took over and then succumbed to internal squabbles. Concurrent with this, riots swept the south and steady streams of Viet Cong infiltrated from the north. ARVN troops deserted in large numbers. Concurrent with this, Kennedy was assassinated. Lyndon Johnson and his advisors reevaluated the ambiguously defined Vietnamese policy of the Kennedy administration and decided to expand our financialmilitary commitment.
General Nguyen Khanh toppled the "Military Revolutionary Council" on 1/28/64. ("Bloodless" describes it best. The other generals abdicated and returned to their military fiefdoms.) Concurrently, the Viet Cong stepped up its southern incursion, defeating the ARVN in several encounters and staging a series of terrorist attacks in Saigon, including the bombing of a movie theater, where three Americans were killed. Throughout early '64, the Viet Cong forces doubled to 170,000 (mostly recruited in the south) with a commensurate improvement in their ordnance: Red Chinese and Soviet-supplied AK-47s, mortars and rocket launchers.
Secretary McNamara visited Vietnam in March and toured the south in a propaganda effort to bolster Premier Khanh. McNamara returned to Washington. He proposed and secured President Johnson's approval of an "action memorandum." The memorandum called for increased financial aid, to provide the ARVN with more aircraft and other ordnance. Premier Khanh was allowed to stage cross-border raids against Communist strongholds in Laos and to study the feasibility of possible incursions into Cambodia to interdict Viet Cong supply routes. Pentagon specialists started pinpointing North Vietnamese targets for U.S. bombing raids.
Ambassador Lodge resigned to pursue a career in domestic politics. President Johnson appointed General William C. Westmoreland as Commander of the U.S. Military Advisory Group (MACV) in Vietnam. Westmoreland remains committed to a greatly expanded American presence. There is now a formidable U.S. contingent in the south, among them servicemen, accountants, doctors, mechanics and sundry others involved in dispensing the $500,000,000 that Johnson has pledged in fiscal '64 aid. Much of the U.S. donated food, weaponry, medicine, gasoline and fertilizer has ended up on the black market. The U.S. presence in South Vietnam is rapidly becoming the foundation of the South Vietnamese economy.
Johnson has approved a covert plan called "OPLAN 34-A," which calls for larger incursions north of the 17th parallel, an expanded propaganda effort and covert ops to intercept Communist ships delivering material to the Viet Cong in the south. The Gulf of Tonkin incident (8/1-8/3/64, wherein two U.S. destroyers were fired upon by Communist seacraft and returned said fire) was largely a staged and improvised event that Johnson capitalized upon to get congressional sanction for planned bombing raids. The 64 bombing sorties that followed were limited to one day, so as to not give the appearance of overreaction to the Gulf of Tonkin provocation.