JFK (51 page)

Negotiations leading to the overthrow of Diem, particularly to the elimination of the Nhus, continued through August 1963 but were not conclusive. An August 31 message from Ambassador Lodge, however, came close to outlining the series of events that became the approved plan.

It had become clear that the war could not be won with the Diem regime in power in Saigon, that the Vietnamese people were not with him. But these conclusions failed to consider the impact of the one-million-plus Tonkinese Catholic “refugees” on the people of South Vietnam and of Diem’s callous disregard for the welfare of the indigenous population. U.S. officials never seemed able to understand why the situation, political and military was much worse in the far south, the Mekong Delta region, than it was in the north and central regions. After all, if the Vietminh in the north were behind the Vietcong enemy in the south, how did it happen that the people farthest from North Vietnam were the most hostile to the Diem government and those nearest to the North Vietnamese the most peaceful? The answer never surfaced. Most of the one-million-plus refugees had been dumped into the southern districts south of Saigon. That was the simple, undeniable, and most volatile reason. They had become the “insurgents” and the fodder for the insatiable war machine.

Under the burden of these and other questions, President Kennedy set up a train of events that became vitally important and that revealed his own views and his future plans for Vietnam. In the aftermath of the showing of Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, there were many top columnists, among others, who attempted to have the American public believe that the Kennedy administration had not produced any substantive body of historical fact concerning his plans for Vietnam. They were wrong—dead wrong. It is very interesting to speculate on why these columnists all “circled wagons” with their untenable stories even before JFK had been shown in the theaters. What is the source of their common bond?

In response to their contrived questions and to bring to light the facts of the matter, I shall present selected information from the public record and from personal experience. A recently published (1991) book, the
Foreign Relations of the United States
, 1961-63, volume 4, by the Government Printing Office, specifically covers “Vietnam, August-December 1963.” This book contains the record of frequent meetings, studies, messages, and travels to and from Saigon by top U.S. officials at the White House, the Department of State, and the Defense Department during that period. These meetings often included Kennedy, McNamara, Rusk, General Taylor, and other high-level administration officials.

At that time my boss was Gen. Victor H. Krulak. He was assigned to the Joint Staff and worked closely with General Taylor and President Kennedy. A review of the above source book will reveal that he was involved in as many as thirty such meetings, messages, and trips on the subject of the future course of the U.S. government in Vietnam. Krulak and I worked closely, and I was involved in much of the preparation of this developing policy. A fact that I recall clearly was that Kennedy was the driving force of these meetings and the “idea man” behind the policy.

Because Kennedy attended a number of these meetings, it will be seen, quite readily, that he was deeply involved in Vietnam planning from 1961 until his death and that the climax of this work came between August and late November 1963. Chief among these records is the Kennedy-generated National Security Action Memorandum #263 of October 11, 1963, which was developed as a result of the McNamara and Taylor trip to Vietnam during September.

First, the President dispatched General Krulak to Vietnam so that he would be completely up-to-date on matters there, with the purpose of Krulak’s writing a “Trip Report” that would contain the new Kennedy policy and any last-minute items that the general would be able to pick up that might not have been apparent to JFK during the last round of meetings in Washington.

Accompanying Krulak was a senior Foreign Service officer, Joseph Mendenhall. What most people in Washington had not noticed was that of all the senior officers in the Pentagon at that time, Krulak had become the one closest to Bobby Kennedy, and through him, to the President. This was not only an official closeness; it was also personal. They understood one another and could work together.

Krulak and Mendenhall made a whirlwind four-day tour of Vietnam and returned with views so opposite from each other’s that during the NSC meeting of September 10, President Kennedy asked, “You two did visit the same country, didn’t you?” This kind of public small talk about their trip concealed the real significance of what Krulak actually had been asked to accomplish for the President—which unfolded with the next decisions from the White House.

Shortly thereafter, Kennedy announced that he was sending Secretary McNamara and General Taylor, at that time the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on another fact-finding mission to Vietnam. Ambassador Lodge did not like the idea, but the President was adamant. The trip was announced on September 21. The two men left on September 23 and were back in Washington on October 2, with a massive report for the President.

On September 29, McNamara, Taylor, Gen. Paul Harkins, Lodge, and Admiral Felt had met with President Ngo Dinh Diem. The next day, most of them had met privately with the Vietnamese vice president, Nguyen Ngoc Tho. Tho was able to inform them about the failure of the Strategic Hamlet program and of the broad-based peasant disaffection with the Diem government. These were the last top-level meetings with President Diem, and from that day forward his days in Saigon were numbered. The decision to remove him had been made. But it had been planned to take effect quite differently than has generally been reported.

McNamara and Taylor left Saigon and returned to Honolulu for a one-day stop “to prepare their report.” This was an interesting ingredient of such an official, top-level trip. They had spent a lot of time traveling; they had met people on an unbroken schedule all day long and into the night. And yet, when they returned to Washington, they stepped off the helicopter onto the White House lawn, carrying a huge, leather-bound, fully illustrated official report to the President containing all that they had done during the trip—a report written in one day, during their spare time. Could this be true?

It seems impossible; yet it happened then, and it has happened on other occasions. Let’s see how this magic is performed.

When Krulak was sent to Saigon, the President knew that he would come home with all the current data essential for final decision making. But the President wanted to move the decision level up to the top. Therefore, he sent McNamara. While McNamara and Taylor were touring Vietnam, the President, Bobby Kennedy, and General Krulak were setting down the outline of their report—aided by frequent contact with McNamara in Saigon via “back-channel” communications of the highest secrecy—which would contain precisely the major items desired by the President, in the manner in which he wanted them. This report was written and produced in the Pentagon by Krulak and members of his SACSA staff, including this author.

Krulak is a brilliant man and an excellent writer. He set up a unit in his office to write this report. Teams of secretaries worked around the clock. The report was filled with maps and illustrations. It was put together and bound in leather and had gold-leaf lettering for President Kennedy. As soon as it was completed, it was flown to Hawaii to McNamara and Taylor so that they might study it during their eight-hour flight to Washington and present it to the President as they stepped out of the helicopter onto the White House lawn.

The Government Printing Office history text
Vietnam: August-December 1963
includes a brief note about this “Trip Report”:

Let no one be misled: This is simply the public record. That McNamaraTaylor report to Kennedy of October 2, 1963, was, in fact, Kennedy’s own production. It contained what he believed and what he planned to do to end the Vietnam problem. More important, this Kennedy statement on Vietnam was the first and major plank in his platform for reelection in 1964. This was one of the rising pressure points that led to the decision to assassinate him. A Kennedy reelection could not be permitted.

This report, entitled “Memorandum for the President, Subject: Report of McNamara-Taylor Mission to South Vietnam,” and the decisions that it produced played a most important part in the lives of Diem and his brother, in those of President Kennedy and his brother, and in those of the American public because of events that it set in motion. Some of the report’s most significant items were:

Then, revealing the President’s plan to remove the Diems from power:

With this report in hand, President Kennedy had what he wanted. It contained the essence of decisions he had to make. He had to get reelected to finish programs set in motion during his first term; he had to get Americans out of Vietnam. And he had to make a positive and comprehensive move early in order to accomplish both of these goals.

To achieve his ends, he send Krulak to Saigon first and then followed this with the “official” McNamara and Taylor visit. All of this was made formal with the issuance of National Security Action Memorandum #263 of October 11, 1963, particularly that section that decreed the implementation of “plans to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963.”

Plans continued for the removal—but not the death—of Diem and his brother. Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu had left Saigon on September 9 to attend the Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, with plans to extend the trip to Europe and the United States. With the intercession of the Vatican and the papal delegate in Saigon, Diem’s brother, Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc, traveled to Rome.

These detailed plans carefully included arrangements for the departure of President Diem and his brother by commercial airliner from Saigon for Europe. This was the most delicate part of the removal plan. The two men actually were driven to the Tan Son Nhut airport, in Saigon, and boarded the [Super-Constellation] plane waiting for them. Then, for some totally unexplained and unaccountable reason, President Diem and his brother turned and left the plane while the few witting Americans on the scene looked on, stunned by their action.

The brothers hurried back to their limousine, which had not yet pulled away from the airport ramp, entered it, and drove back into Saigon and to the Presidential Palace at high speed. There they found themselves alone. Their longtime household and palace guards had fled as soon as they realized that Diem and his brother Nhu had gone. Without them, they were all marked men.

The brothers were alone. They had no troops at their call. All anyone in the government knew was that they were going on a trip. There was no fighting, as would have been normal had the plotters made a move against Diem.

This is how their removal was planned, and this is how close it came to success. But they had returned to an empty palace.

The stark realization struck Diem and his brother: They were alone and deserted in a hostile environment. A tunnel had been dug, for just such purposes, from the palace and under the river to Cholon. They ran through the tunnel to what they thought would be safety and ended up in the hands of their enemies. They were thrown into a small military van, and en route to some unknown destination, they were murdered.