Washington Isolates Diem

The violence at the Buddhist protest in Hue deeply troubled Ambassador Nolting, but he believed the affair would be handled properly by all parties involved and, when the country seemed relatively calm, he left for his planned holiday on May 23, 1963. This proved to be a fateful decision: once Nolting was out of the country, Diem’s foes amongst the radical Buddhists—and in the State Department—redoubled their efforts to bring down the president of South Vietnam. According to journalist John Mecklin,

There was a personal drama behind the scenes of the American reaction to the Buddhist upheaval. It arose out of the coincidence that Ambassador Nolting had left Saigon on a well-earned home leave with his family just before the crisis developed. . . . It was a last-straw touch to Nolting’s anguished tour of duty that in his absence the U.S. switched back to a “tough” policy with Diem and it failed miserably. It will remain one of the unanswerable “ifs” of history that Nolting’s low-key way, at the moment of ultimate challenge, might have been more effective.¹

As can be seen from his memoir, Nolting agreed: “I could not have made a worse mistake. I left my post on the eve of the storm—a storm that eventually destroyed nine years of constructive American help and support for South Vietnam’s independence.”²

During Nolting’s absence from Saigon, his deputy, William Trueheart, was in charge of the embassy. Nolting left him strict instructions to contact him immediately if any sort of crisis or serious problem developed.³ Unfortunately for all concerned, the Buddhist crisis escalated while Nolting was out of the country, and Trueheart failed to contact the ambassador. This was a serious breach of trust, and it had long-term ramifications for U.S. policy. Later, in August 1963, when Nolting was back at the State Department in Washington, he filed a report on Trueheart with the personnel division. In it he stated that Trueheart,

through no fault of his own, was faced by a dangerously developing crisis shortly after my departure. It was of such magnitude as to threaten to destroy the base on which United States policy in Viet-Nam was founded and to cause great changes in the relationships between the United States Mission and the Vietnamese Government. . . . Mr. Trueheart failed to let me know of these developments. This was contrary to our understanding and, in my view, not in keeping with the responsibilities and loyalties of a Deputy Chief of Mission to a Chief of Mission, irrespective of previous understandings.⁴

In May 1966, Nolting claimed in an interview that Trueheart had failed to communicate with him because he had been won over by the Harriman group.⁵ The historical question is, what happened in Nolting’s absence that undermined the constructive and mutually respectful relationship he had built between the American and Vietnamese governments? The answer is the Buddhist crisis. This simple answer, however, reflects only the surface of the problem, because the relationship between Saigon and Washington might have withstood the crisis but for the way Trueheart treated Ngo Dinh Diem. And his treatment of the South Vietnamese president was prescribed by Averell Harriman and Roger Hilsman.

Nolting summarised in his memoirs what happened in Vietnam during his leave. He noted that the Buddhists continued their agitation regardless of Diem’s efforts to placate them;⁶ and a respected elderly Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, ceremoniously burned himself to death on June 11, 1963.⁷ The leaders of the radical Xa Loi and Tu Dam pagodas had arranged this self-immolation, which took place outside the Cambodian embassy.⁸ Hence, amongst other things, the suicide was an appeal to Cambodia, whose leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, was no friend of Diem.

The anti-Diem Buddhists received encouragement and support from Cambodia. Adherents of the Hinayana form of Buddhism that prevailed in Cambodia were in the South Vietnamese Buddhist movement. Consequently, the Ngo Dinhs suspected that Prince Sihanouk was using the movement to impose on Vietnam the neutrality of his own country, where he attempted to steer a middle course between the Communists and the West. The Ngo Dinhs feared neutrality would eventually lead to Communist control, as it had in Laos. They had therefore sponsored plots against Sihanouk, both with the Americans and on their own.⁹

Prince Sihanouk had made public statements against the Ngo Dinhs. He asserted, for example, that Hanoi was bound to be victorious over them. At the Seventh World Buddhist Congress, held in Phnom Penh in November 1961, the Buddhist delegation from South Vietnam had been introduced to delegations from North Vietnam and China. Both of these delegations were firmly under Communist Party control.¹⁰ While it cannot be proved with certainty, the claim that the Cambodians facilitated connections between the Viet Cong and the South Vietnamese Buddhist radicals appears to have some substance. According to Douglas Pike, Thich Thom Me The Nhem, “an ethnic Cambodian and a Buddhist monk, acted as leader of the Cambodian minority in Vietnam as well as the chief NLF liaison figure with the Vietnamese Buddhist organizations.”¹¹ There existed an ideological common ground between Communism and certain strains of Buddhism, as established in the research of Father Piero Gheddo of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions of Milan.¹²

The salient point is that, behind the public image of the Buddhist monk in flames, there was much intrigue and manipulation. This is an important consideration because of the devastating impact this crafted image had on the GVN’s ability to appear legitimate in the eyes of the American people. Ambassador Nolting recalled in his memoirs how a Vietnamese acquaintance explained the background of the suicide. Diem’s own personal physician, who also happened to treat Thich Quang Duc on a regular basis at the Xa Loi Pagoda, warned Diem that Thich Quang Duc would burn himself to death.¹³ This doctor, whose name Nolting would not divulge for security reasons, told Diem that several new monks were trying to persuade Quang Duc to kill himself. Several years earlier, Quang Duc had made a suicide pact with a Buddhist monk in Hanoi who had carried out his part of the bargain and burned himself to death in protest against the persecution of Buddhists in North Vietnam.¹⁴ When leaders of the Buddhist uprising in South Vietnam learned that Quang Duc wanted to redeem his pledge, they encouraged him to do so. The monk’s desire for suicide had little to do with Diem’s government until they made it so.¹⁵

Before Quang Duc’s death, monks at Xa Loi pagoda told American reporters that “an important event was going to take place” and directed them where to go. As a result, Associated Press journalist Malcolm Browne was able to photograph his award-winning “Buddha in the Fire”, which was published in newspapers throughout the world. Thus, “the world, and particularly the United States, was filled with shock and horror.”¹⁶ Indeed, Senator Frank Church, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, “Such grisly scenes have not been witnessed since the Christian martyrs marched hand in hand into the Roman arenas.”¹⁷

According to Nolting, this shocking image and the articles that accompanied it constituted the final blow to American public opinion of President Diem.¹⁸ And this is exactly the outcome the Buddhist radicals had intended. As Higgins discovered in interviews with Thich Tri Quang, the leader of the Buddhist insurrection, the monks were using self-immolation not because of harsh treatment by the GVN but because it had shock value in the Western world and would separate Diem’s regime from its supporters in America. Then the bonzes, or so they thought, would be able to install a government of their own.¹⁹ According to Ellen Hammer, “The activist bonzes found they had a weapon of choice that had captured the horrified imagination of people in many places throughout the world. They would use that weapon time and again in their struggle with the Diem government.”²⁰

While this author has made links between the radical bonzes and the Communists, it must be said that apart from the possibility of some actual Communist agents amongst them, the bonzes were not Communists per se. William Colby compared the bonzes to the radicalised Muslims who led the 1979 Iranian Revolution against the shah. The political ideology of the bonzes, he explained, included “a total rejection of the changes going on, modernization, [and] an idealistic return to some religious base.”²¹ Colby discerned a distinction between the impact of the burning bonzes on the American public—and hence on President Kennedy’s policy—and that on the political legitimacy President Diem still enjoyed in Vietnam. By adroitly manipulating the media, the bonzes, were able to convince the world that they had more political power than they really possessed and that Diem had less political legitimacy than he still had. “They [the bonzes] were not a major problem,” Colby said, “and he [Diem] had not lost the authority of his state. Sure, there were unhappy people, but he hadn’t lost authority and he had been through tough challenges like that before.”²²

The emotion stirred up by the media’s reporting of the Buddhist crisis nevertheless caused Washington to lose sight of its strategic assets and goals in South Vietnam. Nolting discerned this loss of focus in Trueheart’s actions during the ambassador’s absence. Looking later at the cable traffic between Washington and Saigon from this period, he saw that “the whole machinery of co-operation between the American mission and the South Vietnamese government nearly collapsed.”²³ He noted that the embassy had taken a “get tough” approach with Diem, and Higgins supported his claim with her observation that under Trueheart American diplomacy was reduced to crude table hammering and threats.²⁴ As a result, the South Vietnamese president was isolated, and deliberately so. Nolting wrote, “It is still incomprehensible to me that my deputy in Saigon and my colleagues in the State Department allowed this crisis in US-GVN relations to develop without letting me know what was happening. They had our daily schedule. I had their assurances. Upon timely notification, I could have returned within twenty-four hours, and I believe that I could have helped to prevent the tragedies that followed.”²⁵ Nolting concluded that the Kennedy administration did not want him back in Saigon. “In Washington I met with Hilsman and Harriman and once with President Kennedy. . . . Harriman was testy and uncommunicative. He appeared not to want me to return to Saigon. I suspect that I had not been notified during my vacation because the anti-Diem forces in Washington had not wanted me to return to Vietnam. Seeing in this crisis a chance for a fresh start, they may have wanted it to come to a head, to make a change in government in Saigon inevitable.”²⁶ Judging from Harriman’s negative reaction to Nolting’s request to get back to South Vietnam and from the remarks made by Roger Hilsman about Nolting’s bias in favour of Diem, which he called “localitis”,²⁷ it would seem that the Harriman group did not want Nolting to improve Washington’s relationship with President Diem.²⁸

Another perspective on the Buddhist crisis, by an eyewitness, lends credence to the conclusion that there was more behind the Buddhist protests then alleged religious intolerance by the GVN. John Mecklin, a U.S. Information Agency officer attached to Ambassador Nolting’s mission in Saigon, explained how the Buddhist crisis expanded exponentially just after Nolting had gone on leave. On June 1, 1963, the day after Diem had met with Buddhist leaders and promised to consider their demands, some four thousand Buddhists demonstrated in Hue. William Trueheart reported this protest to Washington, informing the Kennedy administration that the bonze leading the protest, Thich Tri Quang, was telling his followers that the “situation in his view [was] beyond compromise and [that], in direct confrontation with GVN, Buddhists should seek help from any source, including VC.”²⁹ DOS responded to this intelligence with the following advice: “Agree that unrest has political as well as religious motivation, but believe it would be unwise for GVN to make any further moves to place blame on Communists. Naming them would make them an officially recognized party to the dispute and downgrade genuine grievances Buddhists themselves have. Would seem best ignore Communists and deal as reasonably as possible with Buddhists.”³⁰

According to Mecklin, on June 2, 1963, there was violent rioting in Hue that GVN troops tried to suppress with tear gas grenades, which owing to their age burned about sixty people.³¹ The American consul in Hue reported to the American embassy in Saigon that the soldiers must have used blister gas against the demonstrators.³² Trueheart, acting as chargé d’affaires in Nolting’s absence, immediately stormed Secretary Thuan’s office, threatening the GVN with public condemnation in Washington. Thuan allowed Trueheart to rant and then forcefully explained to him that the Vietnamese forces did not possess blister gas but had used very old tear gas grenades leftover from the French. The acid, which activates the smoke, had broken through and burned the protesters. Nevertheless, an American reporter spread the story that the suppression of the peaceful bonzes in Hue had been brutally accomplished by means of blister gas.³³ Mecklin, a former war correspondent himself, questioned the professional ethics of the reporter who wrote about blister gas before it was confirmed. An investigation later proved that the burns had been caused by old tear gas, but the political damage had already been done by the false report.³⁴

Though highly critical of the GVN, Mecklin took seriously their concern that the Buddhist revolt had Communist connections. The police chief for central Vietnam, for example, told an American observer he had no doubt the three leading bonzes in Hue were Viet Cong.³⁵ Mecklin observed that their anti-government campaign was “executed with such sophisticated skill as to suggest that they had been trained on Madison Avenue”.³⁶ He asked questions that American newsman were failing to ask: Who benefited from and who had organised this unprecedented foray into politics by Buddhist monks? Additionally, Mecklin wanted to know how it had come about that Diem’s enemies, who had previously dragged up every conceivable charge against him, had discovered so late in the day (May 8, 1963) that the man was also anti-Buddhist: “The experts [on Buddhism] were no less surprised than the rest of us when the Buddhists went into politics so spectacularly. . . . For years Diem’s innumerable enemies had dredged up every possible charge against him, but it was only after the May 8 incident at Hue that they discovered that he was also guilty of oppressing the Buddhists.”³⁷

Mecklin maintained that it was never proved that the Communists planned the Buddhist crisis. He noted, however, that “for years it had been a standard Communist technique throughout the world secretly to infiltrate legitimate organisations, like American labor unions, to work into key positions of leadership, and to push openly for Communist objectives only when conditions offered the maximum chance of success. The Buddhist rebellion exactly fitted this pattern, and the Buddhists in Vietnam had long been vulnerable to exactly this kind of penetration.”³⁸ He also noted that the Buddhists could not have succeeded in attaining their political goals without the help of the American media. “Expressed more bluntly, American news coverage of the upheaval contributed directly to the destruction of a national U.S. policy of direct importance to the security of the United States, in an area where we had deployed nearly twenty thousand Americans, where we were spending some $500 million a year, at the only point in the world where we engaged in support of a shooting war against a Communist enemy.”³⁹

Marguerite Higgins, who had covered the Korean War alongside Pulitzer Prize winner Keyes Beech, was no stranger to Southeast Asia, and particularly South Vietnam. Her extensive travels around the country during the summer of 1963 demonstrated the power of the news media to distort the situation. For example, in her trips to the countryside, the phrase she heard the most often from American advisers was that “we are inching ahead.” Therefore, she wrote, she “was amazed upon returning to Saigon to find the town buzzing with news of recent newspaper dispatches proclaiming that the Buddhist crisis was ‘spreading to the countryside,’ that it was ‘deep and smouldering’ in the army, that the war in the delta had ‘deteriorated,’ and that the situation was ‘ominous.’ ”⁴⁰ She was stunned not only by these false conclusions but by the lack of reporting on the gains being made against the insurgents during this critical period. She contrasted the attention given to the defeat at Ap Bac in January with that given to the victory scored by the South Vietnamese at Quang Ngai four months later. The former made headlines for weeks, while the latter made no headlines at all. Yet, “the Twenty-fifth Vietnamese Division at Quang Ngai not only stood its ground but also fought four days and nights running. When the battle was over two hundred and twenty-six Viet Cong dead were picked off the field with their weapons (including Chinese and Czech machine guns).”⁴¹ The focus on the negative, she said, “was a recurring phenomenon, and it embittered the United States mission.”

The Ap Bac coverage in the New York Times had led the American public to conclude that something was seriously wrong with the government of South Vietnam, and its coverage of the Buddhist crisis very handily lent support to this conclusion. David Halberstam’s reporting introduced the notion that the Diem government was staggering and most likely entering a terminal phase. His New York Times article “Discontent Rises in Vietnam Crises: Regime Losing Ground over Treatment of Buddhists” put forward a number of allegations and rumours as facts. The article started off by stating that Diem’s government was “engaged in an all-out struggle for political survival”.⁴² Halberstam also wrote that the unrest in Saigon represented all of South Vietnam and that the GVN’s mishandling of the Buddhist crisis had irreparably damaged the war effort. He added, “Some well-informed observers believe there will be an attempt to oust the Government.”

Halberstam wrote a follow-up article that appeared on the front page of the New York Times on July 3. Entitled “Some U.S. Officials in Saigon Dubious about Diem Regime”, it raised the issue of American officials wanting to see Diem’s government replaced: “Some United States officials in South Vietnam who two months ago were praising President Ngo Dinh Diem have changed their minds about him and his chances of winning the war against the Communists. They would like to see a new government in Saigon.”⁴³The article reiterated the claim that during the initial protest in Hue nine Buddhists were killed by government troops firing at them. In another article in the same issue of the New York Times, Secretary of State Dean Rusk declared the conflict in Vietnam a “dirty, untidy, disagreeable” war.⁴⁴ Another official in Washington blurted out in anger, “What do you want us to do? We’re in a box. We don’t like that Government but it’s the only one around. We can’t fight a war and a revolution at the same time, so lay off.”⁴⁵

The New York Times did not lay off, and as it kept the pressure on the Kennedy administration, William Trueheart, at the behest of the Harriman group in Washington,⁴⁶ engaged in “direct, relentless, table-hammering pressure on Diem such as the United States had seldom before attempted with a sovereign friendly government”.⁴⁷ Lindsay Nolting said that her husband believed Trueheart had jumped ship and joined what he thought was the winning side in the State Department. Trueheart had been a close confidant, supporter, and friend of the ambassador, she explained, and therefore was trusted by the Ngo Dinh brothers. Yet, soon after he took over as chargé d’affaires at the American embassy in Saigon, he betrayed his boss and friend, and even the position he had previously held vis-à-vis Diem, in order to curry favour with the Harriman group.⁴⁸ Frederick Nolting said in an interview that he and Trueheart had completely agreed on policy until the ambassador left for his holiday. When he returned, he discovered that “Trueheart had shifted with the winds blowing from Washington—he had joined the Harriman-Hilsman group. He had adjusted his views.”⁴⁹

While Nolting was on holiday, the only high-level contact President Diem had with Washington, William Trueheart, offered neither understanding nor even normal diplomatic give-and-take; rather, he made threats. In his telegram of June 12, 1963, to Hilsman and Harriman, Trueheart boasted of following their instructions, which were “of course very strong medicine and will be very hard for Diem to take. . . . I believe we can be satisfied that we have done everything reasonably possible to get President Diem to save himself.”⁵⁰ In particular, Trueheart threatened a formal dissociation, per Harriman’s order, if Diem did not follow DOS directives to restore the confidence of the protesting bonzes.⁵¹ Trueheart’s hard-line approach accomplished two things: first, the honing of Diem’s wariness and doubts about his alliance with the Americans; and second, the hardening of Diem’s stance on the Buddhists.

As can be seen in DOS correspondence, President Kennedy was not immediately aware that his State Department had threatened Diem with formal dissociation. When Kennedy did find out on June 14, he was furious, because it had been done without his permission. He told DOS that no further threats were to be made without his personal approval.⁵² Regardless of Kennedy’s disapprobation, Averell Harriman and Roger Hilsman instructed Trueheart in a top secret telegram to “consider steps gradually [to] increase covert and overt contacts with non-supporters of GVN. In present situation this should only be done if you feel our (overt or covert) contacts with those who might play major roles in event of coup are now inadequate.”⁵³ Trueheart replied, “We have all the lines out that we know how to put out and have had for some days.”⁵⁴

When Nolting returned to Vietnam for four weeks in July 1963, he saw that the Harriman group had destroyed nearly all the confidence Diem had placed in the American government. “The Embassy in Saigon when I was away had broken the bridge of confidence by which we had worked with the Diem government. I tried to restore it during my remaining four weeks, after I got back to Saigon, but I was a ‘lame duck.’ I had more influence then with Diem than with Washington.”⁵⁵ According to Nolting, three things destroyed U.S. support of President Diem that summer. First, President Kennedy’s sensitivity to the claims in the American news media that he was supporting a Roman Catholic dictatorship permeated with nepotism.⁵⁶ Second, the Harriman group’s profound dislike of the Vietnamese president and his family, which was fed by the news media.⁵⁷ Third, the Buddhist crisis, which became the Kennedy administration’s justification to encourage a coup.

A meeting about the forthcoming coup took place with President Kennedy at the White House on July 4, 1963. In attendance were Undersecretary of State George W. Ball, Harriman, Special Assistant for National Security Affairs McGeorge Bundy, Hilsman, and Forrestal. In a memo about the meeting, Hilsman summarised the opinion of the Harriman group: “Our estimate was that no matter what Diem did there will be coup attempts over the next four months.”⁵⁸ To convince the president that the coup would not interfere with the war effort, Hilsman and Forrestal reversed earlier warnings about the Buddhist crisis hindering the progress of the counterinsurgency. Hilsman said, “The war between the Vietnamese forces and the Viet Cong has been pursued throughout the Buddhist crisis without noticeable let-up.”⁵⁹ Forrestal buttressed Hilsman with General Krulak’s contention that, regardless of the rancour in Saigon, “the military units in the field continue to confront the Communists.”⁶⁰ In other words, said both men, there would be no great loss to America’s security interests in the region if Diem were removed from power. Said Hilsman in his memo, “Everyone agreed that the chances of chaos in the wake of a coup are considerably less than they were a year ago.”⁶¹ Hilsman directly refuted what Nolting and Colby had been telling Washington, saying that Nolting had overstated the matter when he said a civil war could result from a coup.⁶²

At this point in the discussion, President Kennedy asked about returning Nolting to Washington and moving Henry Cabot Lodge to Saigon.⁶³ He delegated the authority of deciding the timing of Nolting’s return to Hilsman. The Harriman group wanted Hilsman to act upon this decision as soon as possible. Indeed, in a memorandum Forrestal sent Bundy, he stressed that they might need to recall Nolting before Lodge’s arrival in South Vietnam. Forrestal praised Trueheart over the pro-Diem Nolting because Trueheart, unlike Nolting, had been obedient to the instructions of the Harriman group.⁶⁴ Hilsman did not need any encouragement to recall Nolting as soon as possible.⁶⁵ Not only had Nolting been a thorn in the side of those wanting to remove Diem, sometime between the end of July and August 1, Nolting told the press, to the embarrassment of DOS, that Diem was not persecuting Buddhists.⁶⁶

Ambassador Nolting first heard about his replacement by Henry Cabot Lodge on the ship’s radio aboard an ocean liner to New York City, when he and his family were returning from their holiday.⁶⁷ After his arrival in the United States at the end of June 1963, Nolting finally received a personal message about the new assignment from Trueheart. The memo also stated that a major crisis involving the Buddhists had developed in Vietnam during his absence.

On July 5, 1963, the day after the coup discussion at the White House, Nolting attended a meeting at DOS with Undersecretary of State Ball and two other officials, Chalmers B. Wood and George S. Springsteen. Ball, who was not known to have any sympathy for the Diem government, asked Nolting what he thought would happen in South Vietnam if there were a coup.⁶⁸ Nolting answered that a coup would be a disaster and could very well unleash feuds between various factions with the result that the United States might have to withdraw, leaving the country open to the Communists. When DOS officials asked whether Diem could be pressured into tolerating the Buddhist protestors, Nolting said Diem would stop suppressing them if they stopped trying to overthrow his government. He further explained that, should Diem’s government collapse—which he believed it would if the United States pressed any further—the Communists would stand to gain the prize. At the end of this meeting, Nolting warned Ball about his replacement, Henry Cabot Lodge, that “the more Lodge was built up to be a strong man who was going to tell Diem where to get off, the harder it would be for Lodge to do his job in Viet-Nam.”⁶⁹

Two days later, in spite of the direction Washington was headed with respect to South Vietnam, Trueheart defended the GVN against accusations that it was suppressing the media being made by correspondents Malcolm Browne, David Halberstam, Peter Kalischer, Neil Sheehan, and Peter Arnett. Buddhist protestors had tipped off the reporters about a demonstration. After the reporters arrived, a scrum had ensued between protestors and plainclothes police who were there monitoring the situation. According to the reporters the police knocked Peter Arnett to the ground and smashed a camera.⁷⁰ Nevertheless, Trueheart reported to Washington that the situation was far less serious than the reporters were claiming.

Browne, Halberstam, Kalischer, and Sheehan sent a telegram of protest concerning the incident to President Kennedy on July 7. They said they had been covering a peaceful Buddhist religious ceremony when they were attacked by plainclothes policemen. Regular uniformed police would not come to their aid, they added. They concluded that the GVN had begun a campaign of open intimidation and violence against American newsmen; therefore, they wanted the president to make a strong protest to Diem, “since the United States Embassy here does not deem this incident serious enough to make a formal protest”.⁷¹ At least to Nolting, President Kennedy seemed unmoved by the incident. In his meeting with Kennedy on July 8, he wrote, the president’s “manner was more calm and cordial than what I had encountered in the State Department. It was he who agreed that I should return as promptly as possible to Saigon, telling me to do my best to help restore confidence and trust until Lodge arrived.”⁷²

Trueheart cabled Washington again on July 10 and informed DOS that the reporters in question had lost all objectivity and were openly calling for Diem to be overthrown.⁷³ The same day DOS made a clear statement on July 10, 1963: “There has been no change in our policy toward Viet-Nam, or our support for the program against the Communist Viet Cong in that country.”⁷⁴ Nolting, however, once back in Saigon, found that the previous policy had been overturned. He reported that the “patient” (i.e., U.S.-GVN relations) was on the “critical list” and that Diem’s confidence in U.S. intentions had been badly shaken. Most disturbing of all, Nolting found Diem in what he called a “martyr’s mood”, with heightened suspicions and resentments, some of them well founded, about American pressures and Buddhist intentions.⁷⁵ He informed Washington of what he thought was the best course of action:

While making our views and especially US domestic considerations amply clear, we should not try to blueprint his course for him. Specifically, we should not reiterate our threat of disassociation, nor feel stuck with it if other means of easing the situation (even the passage of time) work in favor of a political modus vivendi here. Rather, I think, we should continue, as has been done, to tell him the facts of life about public opinion at home and let him work out his own accommodation. . . . But I think we must accept the fact that we will probably continue to have a generally bad press for some time, until political calm returns and we can demonstrate the success of the overall strategy and plan. With luck—I emphasize this—[and?] an appearance of calm determination on the part of Americans to see this crisis surmounted, I believe there is a reasonably good chance of re-establishing the basis for continued progress here.⁷⁶

After a Buddhist demonstration July 16 outside the American embassy in Saigon, Nolting cabled Washington and confirmed what many had already suspected: “Buddhist agitation is now predominantly controlled by activists and radical elements aimed at the overthrow of GVN.”⁷⁷ Nolting also warned Washington that even if the Buddhists were not connected to coup plots against Diem by military officers, they were nonetheless well aware of them and their potential. In his response, Secretary Rusk stated that they must be prepared for further Buddhist demonstrations. He recommended that Nolting continue trying to persuade Diem to accommodate Buddhists.⁷⁸ Nolting wrote back that he was disappointed by Rusk’s recommendation: “It gives us nothing to work with, on either side of equation. A wait-and-see attitude on our part at this juncture will lead only, in my judgment, to further undermining of stability here and to further jeopardizing US vital interests. It will encourage more agitation and demand on part of Buddhists; it will discourage further conciliatory action on part of government; it will increase prospects of a coup.”⁷⁹

Toward the end of Nolting’s tenure as ambassador to South Vietnam, another public relations problem with the GVN was added to the Buddhist crisis: Madame Nhu, the wife of President Diem’s brother Ngo Dinh Nhu. The de facto first lady of South Vietnam, Madame Nhu had a special talent for saying exactly the wrong thing at the most inconvenient moment. For example, when Thich Quang Duc had burned himself to death, Madame Nhu used the word “barbecue” to describe the shocking event.⁸⁰ This indeed stung American sensibilities, but no one seemed to question where she had picked up such an un-Vietnamese description; in fact, her daughter had told her that that was what the American journalists were privately calling the suicide.⁸¹ That didn’t stop the American newsmen from seizing upon everything the very politically incorrect Madame Nhu had to say and using this material against Diem in the court of American public opinion.

Both Ellen Hammer and Marguerite Higgins interviewed Madame Nhu on various occasions and found her to be a strident Vietnamese nationalist and, in a Vietnamese fashion, an equally strident feminist.⁸² She had a strong will, an unbridled tongue, and—unfortunately for relations between Saigon and Washington—a very poor grasp of English, her first and preferred language being French. All of these factors combined to create, with the help of some very eager American journalists, an unflattering image of a notorious dragon lady.⁸³ Harriman had a much more venal and blunt name for Madame Nhu: he referred to her as “that bitch”, and he made sure that everyone in the State Department knew exactly what he thought of her.⁸⁴

On August 8, 1963, George Ball cabled Nolting and instructed him to seek an interview with President Diem to secure Madame Nhu’s silence since Halberstam had just run another story in the New York Times with another one of her unflattering outbursts.⁸⁵Nolting cabled Washington back on August 10, “Fact is Madame Nhu is out of control of everybody—her father, mother, husband and brother-in-law.”⁸⁶ Nolting relayed that Diem promised he would find a way to place Madame Nhu on holiday status, although his attempts up to that point had been less than successful. Regardless of the Madame Nhu annoyance, Nolting stressed that it was most important that the United States let Diem maintain authority in his own way and that urging Diem “to have Nhu make [a] public statement of support for Diem’s policy” was not a good idea, “as this brings into question who is running the GVN and related problems. Please reconsider.”⁸⁷

For all the criticism of Madame Nhu, justified or not, she did make some prescient remarks. For example, she had predicted that if the United Nations sent in a team to determine whether the government of Ngo Dinh Diem had persecuted Buddhists, they would find it had not. The United Nations did send in a team and found no justification for accusing the GVN of religious persecution.⁸⁸ By the time the United Nations committee’s investigations were complete, however, Diem had already been murdered and his government destroyed; thus, the report was never published. William F. Buckley Jr. obtained a copy and published its findings in his magazine National Review. The U.N. committee’s findings were a damning indictment of the story newsmen such as Halberstam told the American public, as well as of the story that the Harriman faction foisted onto the Kennedy administration. The Costa Rican member of the U.N. fact-fnding mission said: “The charges made in the General Assembly against the Diem Government were not sustained. . . . There was no religious discrimination or persecution, no encroachment of freedom of religion. . . . There is no other way to see it. The clash between a part—not all—of the Buddhist community and the Diem regime was on political grounds. . . . It [is] a political question, not a religious question.”⁸⁹

Because of the ongoing bad press, the Kennedy administration sent Robert J. Manning, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs, along with his special assistant, Marshall Wright, to meet with Ngo Dinh Nhu to see what could be done about it.⁹⁰ The meeting took place on July 17, 1963, and was also attended by Troung Buu Khanh (of the Vietnamese press) and John Mecklin, who at that time was serving as the public affairs officer of the U.S. embassy in Saigon. The American visitors were astonished by the political acumen and sheer intelligence of Nhu, who had been portrayed so negatively by American newspapers. The document that resulted from the meeting shows that Nhu had a firm and ready grasp of all the pertinent facts. Conversely, the Americans were caught rather short, and what was supposed to have been a dressing down of Nhu turned into almost an apology by Manning, who blurted out a reassurance of American support for the GVN. He said the journalists were not the tail that wagged the dog of American foreign policy, as Nhu proposed. He agreed that reporters such as Halberstam and Sheehan had abandoned professional ethics and were running on emotions, and he said he would urge editors in the United States to send reporters who would practice more self-discipline. Manning did point out, however, that 1964 was an election year, “and as the campaign heats up, it will become more and more necessary that the President have the necessary tools to insure a continuance of American public support for the effort in Vietnam.”⁹¹ This high-level meeting, which began with an inquisitor’s imperious manner on Manning’s part and ended with positive agreement, amounted to nothing. Manning’s efforts evidently had no effect on the biased reporting. Likewise, the Harriman group did not veer from its steady course to have Diem removed from power.

Two days after Manning’s assurances to Nhu, Chester Bowles, who had replaced John Kenneth Galbraith as ambassador to India,⁹² sent a top secret letter in favour of a coup to McGeorge Bundy, the president’s special assistant for national security affairs. In it the judgement of the Harriman group was laid bare: “We cannot achieve our objectives in Southeast Asia as long as Diem and his family run Vietnam.” Bowles played the China card in this letter to assist Harriman and Hilsman in provoking the Kennedy cabinet to act against Diem: “In Diem and his family we have a set-up comparable to that presented by the Generalissimo in China in the 1940’s. We failed in China largely because we failed to find an effective means of dealing with an inept ruling power that had lost touch with the people. We will fail in Southeast Asia, and perhaps even more decisively, if we repeat this mistake in Vietnam.” To be accused of losing Vietnam as China had been lost held serious political ramifications in Washington, especially for a president seeking reelection in 1964. Bowles concluded by saying, “Almost any articulate, courageous, anti-Communist Vietnamese with a good reputation who puts himself at the head of a coup to overthrow Diem. . . would find himself a national hero in a matter of weeks.”⁹³

According to William Colby, the Buddhist crisis not only weakened America’s support for Diem, it also weakened the support of his generals. The protesting bonzes caused Diem’s government to switch its focus from fighting the Viet Cong through war-winning strategic hamlets to fighting the radical Buddhists.⁹⁴ Taking on this new enemy led to a fight with the Americans. The diversion from the strategic imperative of protecting the rural villages and the conflicts with the Kennedy administration benefited the Communists. According to Colby, the Viet Cong had been so concerned about the success of the Strategic Hamlet Program that they had “instructed their people that they were to destroy this program at all costs, because it really did threaten them”.⁹⁵ Colby maintained that during the Buddhist revolt, the Communists directed their fire at what threatened their lifeblood: the strategic hamlets. He said the people in the Kennedy administration who wanted Diem removed unwittingly paved the way for these attacks. “The program [strategic hamlets] was let lag at exactly the time when the communists had identified it as a major threat. . . . So they began to attack it in about June or July, and you can see the terrorist incidents grow at that time against it.”⁹⁶ Meanwhile, because of the differences between Saigon and Washington over the protesting Buddhists, America threatened to withdraw its support of the counterinsurgency, which encouraged the eventual revolt by the ARVN generals. This threat, according to Colby, was the greatest mistake the Americans could have made.⁹⁷

Colby knew his business well; what he was describing, in effect, was that the Buddhist crisis served as a holding attack while the real assault of the Communists went in at the strategic hamlet level. Normally, one has to provide one’s own holding attack to focus enemy attention away from where the real attack will take place. The Communists, however, were fortunate in receiving timely assistance from the American press coverage of the Buddhist crisis: this diversionary holding attack was provided by the U.S. newsmen and, to a certain degree, the Harriman group in the State Department.

In support of what Nolting had argued all along, Colby said Diem could have sustained his government through the Buddhist crisis, the rioting in Saigon, and the unrest in the army if the Americans had maintained a steady course and adhered to their original policy of support. “But when the Americans indicated a change, then bing, it was gone, it went.”⁹⁸ Colby understood, however, the tremendous pressure brought to bear on Washington by the press coverage of the Buddhist protests.

One of Ambassador Nolting’s last cables to Washington in his capacity as U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam was sent on August 12, 1963. This telegram covered in depth Nolting’s meetings with President Diem about Madame Nhu’s attacks on the American media.⁹⁹ Nolting reported that Diem was not that annoyed with Madame Nhu for the content of her statements, but he was upset about the insensitive way she said them, which provoked more animosity from the press. During the course of these conversations, Nolting wrote, Diem “reverted again and again to the bad faith of the bonzes, to their sabotage of the war effort, etc. He also mentioned the pressure he was under from ‘good people’ in the provinces and elsewhere not to knuckle under to the false monks. He complained that nobody in the outside world recognized the falsity of the religious issue or the fact that it was being used for subversive action.”¹⁰⁰

Once again it was apparent to Nolting that Diem was everything the traditional Vietnamese demanded of a Confucian leader. His position vis-à-vis the Buddhists was not anchored to mere stubborn pride. Instead, his stance was founded on a deep-seated understanding. Even if the capriciousness of chance was in favour of the radical bonzes, he still had to stand by what was true, correct, and proper.

The State Department, however, did not see Diem in this light. In one of the very last cables sent to Nolting, DOS said Diem’s position vis-à-vis who had caused the deaths in Hue in May was unacceptable to Washington. Regardless of the forensic facts, which cleared Diem’s officials, Washington insisted that Diem cave in to the bonzes’ demands on this key issue.¹⁰¹ The cynical observer of this episode in WashingtonSaigon relations might presume that DOS knew Diem would not abide by such outrageous demands and that his impenitent stance would ensure the inevitability of a coup supported by the Kennedy administration. There can be little doubt that President Diem was being set up for removal when Washington pulled away its firmest pillar of support, Ambassador Frederick Nolting.