JFK & the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (65 page)

In fact on September 2, while repeating his constant theme that it was their war, not ours, Kennedy told Cronkite defensively that he was opposed to a withdrawal: “in the final analysis it is the people and the government itself who have to win or lose this struggle. All we can do is help, and we are making it very clear, but I don’t agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake.”
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He went on to distinguish himself from people whom he characterized in terms that, if the truth were known, applied, first of all, to himself: “I know people don’t like Americans to be engaged in this kind of an effort. Forty-seven Americans have been killed in combat with the enemy, but this is a very important struggle even though it is far away.”
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Kennedy was carrying in his conscience the number of Americans he thought had been killed in combat in Vietnam, forty-seven. (The actual number was about 170.)
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It was those American war dead who were the moving force behind his decision to withdraw from an increasingly futile war.

Yet in his interview with Walter Cronkite, he tried to distance himself from people who “don’t like Americans to be engaged in this kind of an effort.” He knew he was among them. “This kind of an effort,” he had come to realize, was an unwinnable war in Southeast Asia with mounting casualties. His claim that he didn’t agree with a withdrawal, and that it would be a great mistake, was defensive and deceptive, if not an outright lie. Since the previous spring, he had been telling friends that he not only agreed with a withdrawal but was planning one. When he spoke with Cronkite, Kennedy knew he was headed in that contentious direction, but he was not prepared to admit it in advance on national television.

One week later, in an interview with two other television anchors, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, he again denied the withdrawal policy he was plotting: “I think we should stay [in Vietnam]. We should use our influence in as effective a way as we can, but we should not withdraw.”
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By making defensive public statements that contradicted his beliefs and his intentions, Kennedy was digging himself into a hole concerning the withdrawal he was about to authorize. Once he did make it official by his national security memorandum, his withdrawal order would then fall into a deeper darkness after his assassination—compromised in execution, covered up by the government, and obscured by the record of his own public denials. When NSAM 263 was finally declassified three decades later, skeptics could question its authenticity by citing JFK’s public statements opposing a withdrawal, made only one month before he signed one into national security policy.

Even when he had implemented a withdrawal policy by NSAM 263, he still hesitated as to how to justify it politically during the final weeks of his life. He was wary lest the withdrawal order be taken, in the context of the Buddhist crisis, as only a form of pressure against Diem. He continued to assess the uncertain direction of battlefield reports, whether positive or negative. For short-range political reasons, he delayed identifying himself publicly—until it was too late to do so—with the historic order he had signed withdrawing U.S. soldiers from Vietnam.

Kennedy’s mistaken judgment in appointing Lodge his ambassador began his downward path toward a Saigon coup. Once the president was manipulated by his advisers into approving the August 24 telegram, he never succeeded in reversing a policy that favored a coup, reinforced by an ambassador determined to have one. Lodge was methodical in pursuing his goal.

On September 14, Lodge invited his old friend, influential journalist Joseph Alsop, to dinner in Saigon. Lodge then became the unacknowledged source for Alsop’s sensational column, “Very Ugly Stuff,” which appeared in the September 18
Washington
Post
and other newspapers.
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Alsop’s thesis was that Ngo Dinh Nhu was being seriously tempted by North Vietnamese representatives “to open negotiations [for a ceasefire] behind the backs of the Americans,” as Nhu himself put it in an interview with Alsop. Nhu was quick to add, “That was out of the question.”
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However, Alsop’s column left the impression that a Saigon–Hanoi truce was a distinct possibility, on the condition that the Ngo brothers would first expel the United States from South Vietnam.

Alsop’s column had a germ of truth in it, as revealed years later by Mieczyslaw Maneli, a Polish diplomat who served as an intermediary between the North and South governments. The contacts between Saigon and Hanoi were only tentative and indirect.
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Nhu deliberately spread rumors about them in order to threaten the U.S. government. His tactic backfired when Alsop, at Lodge’s encouragement, used the Nhu-inspired rumors to write “Very Ugly Stuff.” As Lodge knew, Alsop’s column was certain to build up the pressure in Washington for a coup against Diem and Nhu. In the context of the Cold War, it was indeed considered “very ugly stuff” that our anti-communist rulers, put in power by the United States, now seemed willing to become traitors to the cause.

The CIA knew the conspiring South Vietnamese generals were already being pushed toward a coup by their suspicions of a Saigon–Hanoi connection. General Tran Thien Khiem told the CIA in Saigon that “the Generals would under no condition go along with Nhu should he make any step toward the North or even toward neutralization a la Laos.”
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The generals and the CIA knew that “neutralization a la Laos” had been accomplished in Laos itself by President John F. Kennedy. The generals were reassuring their CIA allies that Nhu’s moves, toward the kind of peace Kennedy had already made with the Communists in Laos, would prompt a coup in South Vietnam.

On September 19, Lodge sent a telegram to Kennedy rejecting once again the president’s suggestion that the ambassador “resume dialogue” with Diem and Nhu
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(a dialogue never really begun). Lodge told Kennedy that such a dialogue was hopeless: “Frankly, I see no opportunity at all for substantive changes.” He continued to think his silence was better than dialogue: “There are signs that Diem-Nhu are somewhat bothered by my silence.”
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By this time, Kennedy had realized that he could not rely on his newly appointed ambassador to carry out his wishes. Thus he chose to send McNamara and Taylor, two coup opponents, to Vietnam to assess the situation and meet with Diem. The McNamara-Taylor mission stalled the forward progress of Lodge’s coup-making with the CIA and the generals. However, the president’s purpose was being undermined at the same time by a letter sent surreptitiously to Lodge by Roger Hilsman, principal author of the August 24 telegram. Hilsman’s letter of September 23 was delivered to Lodge in Saigon by a member of the McNamara-Taylor mission, Michael Forrestal, who was Kennedy’s aide but Hilsman’s ally.

Noting that he was “taking advantage of Mike Forrestal’s safe hands” to deliver his letter, Hilsman wrote Lodge: “I have the feeling that more and more of the town is coming around to our view [for a coup against Diem] and that if you in Saigon and we in the [State] Department stick to our guns the rest will also come around. As Mike will tell you, a determined group here will back you all the way.”
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Hilsman’s secret message spurring on Lodge subverted Kennedy’s purpose. The back-channel letter demonstrated just how isolated Kennedy had become. Even his aide for the Far East, Forrestal, and his point man on Vietnam, Hilsman, were encouraging Lodge behind the president’s back to launch a coup against Diem.

Kennedy was losing control of his government. In early September, he discovered that another key decision related to a coup had been made without his knowledge.

A White House meeting with the president was discussing whether or not to cut off the Commodity Import Program that propped up South Vietnam’s economy. It was a far-reaching decision. For the United States to withdraw the AID program could prompt a coup against Diem.

David Bell, head of AID, made a casual comment that stopped the discussion. He said, “There’s no point in talking about cutting off commodity aid. I’ve already cut it off.”

“You’ve done what?” said John Kennedy.

“Cut off commodity aid,” said Bell.

“Who the hell told you to do that?” asked the president.

“No one,” said Bell. “It’s an automatic policy. We do it whenever we have differences with a client government.”

Kennedy shook his head in dismay.

“My God, do you know what you’ve done?” said the president.
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He was staring at David Bell, but seeing a deeper reality. Kennedy knew Bell’s agency, AID, functioned as a CIA front. AID administrator David Bell would not have carried out his “automatic” cutoff without CIA approval. “We do it whenever we have differences with a client government” could serve as a statement of CIA policy. By cutting South Vietnam’s purse strings, the CIA was sending a message to its upstart client ruler, Diem, as well as to the plotting generals waiting in the wings for such a signal. Most of all, the message was meant for the man staring at David Bell in disbelief. He was being told who was in control. It was not the president.

By having AID cut off the Commodity Import Program, the CIA had made it almost impossible for Kennedy to avoid a coup in South Vietnam. The aid cutoff was a designated signal for a coup. In late August, the CIA had agreed with the plotting South Vietnamese generals that just such a cut in economic aid would be the U.S. government’s green light to the generals for a coup.

The critical meeting is described in Ellen Hammer’s book on the coup,
A Death in
November
. On August 29 at a top-secret meeting in Vietnam approved by Lodge, the CIA’s Lucien Conein had asked coup leader General Duong Van Minh point-blank, “What would you consider a sign that the American government does indeed intend to support you generals in a coup?”

Minh answered, “Let the United States suspend economic aid to the Diem government.”
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It was twelve days later when David Bell told Kennedy at the White House that he had in fact already cut off commodity aid to Diem. The CIA had thereby sent a signal to the generals to prepare a coup. The aid cutoff was the official confirmation that the U.S. government supported the generals’ plot.

The generals certainly understood it that way. “At least six of the generals who masterminded the revolt,” journalist Marguerite Higgins wrote, “told me and others that the reduction in U.S. assistance was the decisive event that persuaded them to proceed with plans to overthrow the Diem regime.”
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General Minh said, “The aid cuts erased all our doubts.”
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General Tran Thien Khiem, the army chief of staff, said, “We looked on this U.S. decision on aid as a signal from Washington that the Vietnamese military had to choose between the Americans and Diem.”
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Given the accomplished fact of the aid cutoff, Kennedy was left with the choice of either relieving that economic pressure on Diem, which would be taken as Kennedy’s consent to Diem’s repression of the Buddhists, or allowing the suspension of aid to take its gradual toll on the South Vietnamese economy and government—thus proceeding step by step toward a coup.

Through the McNamara-Taylor Report, Kennedy tried to find a way out of the coup box in which he’d been placed. He approved McNamara’s and Taylor’s recommendation of a middle way between an unconditional reconciliation with an unchanged Diem, on the one hand, and the active promotion of a coup, on the other. The theoretical middle way, endorsed by Kennedy, was to apply only selective pressures, with “the resumption of the full program of economic and military aid” to be “tied to the actions of the Diem government.”
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However, the more moderate policy the president was trying to choose had been largely superseded by the CIA’s suspension of the Commodity Import Program, as a signal to the generals, and by Lodge’s own active promotion of a coup.

JFK’s slender hope was that the gradual impact of the aid cutoff, combined with a genuine effort at dialogue with Diem, could still persuade Diem to lift his repression of the Buddhists in time to avoid a coup. The moment even seemed ripe for a change in Diem, who surprised his critics by deciding to invite a United Nations fact-finding mission to South Vietnam to investigate the Buddhist crisis.

At an October 5 White House meeting, Kennedy emphasized the openness with which he wanted Ambassador Lodge to negotiate with Diem:

“We should not consider the political recommendations [to Diem] to be in the nature of a hard and fast list of demands, and that this point should be made more clear in the draft instructions [to Lodge]. The most likely and desirable result of any U.S. pressures would be to bring Diem to talk seriously to Lodge about the whole range of issues between us.”
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Kennedy then directed Lodge in a cable the same day to “maintain sufficient flexibility to permit US to resume full support of Diem regime at any time US government deems it appropriate.”
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The president added the stipulation: “we do not now wish to prejudge question of balance or quantity of actions which may justify resumption of full cooperation with [the Government of Vietnam].”
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Kennedy would make that judgment himself. He did not want Lodge to confront the South Vietnamese ruler with “a hard and fast list of demands,” as the ambassador was prone to do.