On August 14, 1963, Ambassador Nolting said his official farewell to President Diem. Because of State Department pressure, this last meeting was tense as it focused on the Buddhist question and Madame Nhu’s intemperate public statements. Diem promised he would make a public statement through Marguerite Higgins and the New York Herald Tribune that would offer some conciliation to Americans affronted by Madame Nhu. On this point, Diem kept his word.1 At the end of the meeting, Nolting recounted, Diem said that their frank exchange would not mar their friendship and that he considered Nolting’s tenure in Saigon one of the best memories of his life.2
The next day, Nolting and his family left for the United States with many concerns still unresolved, especially with regard to U.S. policy toward South Vietnam and Ngo Dinh Diem’s government. Recognising that American-Vietnamese relations were extremely tenuous, Nolting had requested to stay long enough to restore the old pattern of trust, but DOS had denied this request. The Harriman group wanted Nolting out even if there were no ambassador in Vietnam until Henry Cabot Lodge could take up the post.3 Diem, Nolting recalled, was as concerned about U.S. policy as he was. Prior to Nolting’s departure he asked the ambassador if his return to the United States signalled a change.4 “Does your departure mean that the American government has changed its policy from what you and I agreed two and one half years ago?” Diem asked. Nolting replied: “No, Mr. President, it does not.”5 Diem then asked Nolting to check with Washington just to be sure, and Nolting complied straightaway. Subsequently, Nolting received the reply from the U.S. president’s office: “No change in policy and you can tell him that straight out.”6 When Nolting translated the telegram, Diem remarked, “Mr. Ambassador, I believe you, but I’m afraid your information is incorrect.”7 Diem knew, via his own intelligence sources, what Harriman was engineering, and he suspected that Washington was attempting to play both him and their own ambassador for fools.
All during the spring and summer of 1963, a distrustful American attitude toward Diem had been building. The way he was handling the Buddhist crisis and the response to it in the American media was one reason for this. Another reason was Diem’s recalcitrance toward increasing American force levels and American control in South Vietnam. Diem had signed the agreement over the joint counterinsurgency funding program after much delay, ostensibly because he did not want to give up control of the money to the United States. However, the real reason the Vietnamese leader had hesitated was best stated by Nolting in a cable he had sent to Washington in early April 1963 during the negotiations over the joint fund: “In assessing Diem’s rejection of our proposal for counter-insurgency fund, most significant point is that grounds advanced for rejection approach repudiation of concept of expanded and deepened US advisory effort, civil and military.”8
Ellen Hammer also asserted that the real problem for Diem was not his giving the Americans control of the counterinsurgency funding. Rather, it was the numbers of Americans who would start entering the country and the kind of control the funding agreement would give them. One of Diem’s chief complaints was that unaccounted-for and unaccountable U.S. advisors were already too involved in local Vietnamese political affairs. In the provinces there were at least two thousand American advisors—men who were essentially running the rural economic development plan and deliberately bypassing the Saigon government. With the joint funding agreement, more American military advisors would be deployed to Vietnam, and the rural areas would be under more direct administration by foreigners. The situation, which would amount to a new colonialism, was not only intolerable to any self-respecting national government but also helpful to the Viet Cong, who would have further proof that Diem had sold out to the Americans. Diem brought these issues to the U.S. embassy and asked that most of the two thousand advisors be withdrawn.9
Diem was so worried about the problem of American colonialism that he turned to the French for advice. He complained directly to the French ambassador, Roger Lalouette, about the influx of American military personnel. Diem told him that the new American advisors had not been invited and that they did not even have passports.10 Lalouette tried to calm the frustrated Diem and suggested that a “gentle” request that some of the Americans leave would be Diem’s best approach.11 Lalouette, however, had mistaken the American mood, and Diem’s “gentle” request that some of the provincial advisors be removed set off alarm bells in Washington.12 Years later, in June 1970, Roger Lalouette told Ellen Hammer that he had traced the American decision to abandon Diem to this attempt to have American provincial advisors recalled in April 1963.13
The severity of the problem Diem was facing was mentioned in the South Vietnamese newspaper Hoa Binh in 1970. Vietnamese national Tran Kim Tuyen wrote, “Everyone close to Ngo Dinh Diem knew that for him the question of Vietnamese sovereignty was primordial; no question of foreign aid could supersede that.”14 According to Hammer, Diem rejected all American proposals for a large base to be built at Cam Ranh Bay, and he maintained his defiant position on this issue into August 1963; in fact, the famous base received official approval to be built only after Diem was killed.15
William Colby also understood that Diem’s pushback on the Americans was motivated by his concern for South Vietnam’s national sovereignty. In 1961, when the situation in Laos had so deteriorated that Diem was calling for a greater American commitment to stemming the advance of Communism in Southeast Asia,16 Diem was loath to accept American combat forces in his country without an agreement about the definition of their role. He was even willing to accept a division of nationalist Chinese troops from Taiwan if the Americans were unwilling to limit their role to training and advising. The Taiwanese offer went no further because the Americans assured Diem they would respect his boundaries.17
Another reason Americans were hardening toward Diem in the summer of 1963 was his apparent attempt at making peace with the Communists in the spring. Ngo Dinh Nhu had held talks with various Viet Cong leaders, but these had been concerned with negotiating large-scale defections of Viet Cong units.18 Lindsay Nolting observed that this process of chieu hoi, or “open arms”, did not originate with Nhu. The concept had been advanced by Sir Robert Thompson as an effective technique for breaking the solidarity of the Communist insurgent organisation.19 Nolting informed Washington, through normal State Department channels, about Nhu’s contacts with the Communist insurgents, which were no secret.20 DOS replied that Nolting should not interfere with Nhu as long as the Saigon embassy was convinced he wasn’t “selling out”. Nolting was indeed “convinced that Nhu never had any idea of selling out to the Viet Cong. On the contrary, he was trying to get them, or units of the Viet Cong, to sell out, in effect, to the government.”21 Later, in his memoirs, Nolting admitted that there had been some unfavourable reaction to Nhu’s meetings with Communist leaders, especially amongst the enemies he had made in the State Department, who mistrusted Nhu as much as they disliked him.22
American suspicion of a “sell out” was exacerbated by another development. A larger North-South dialogue was being planned before the Buddhist crisis erupted, according to Mieczyslaw Maneli, who spent five years in Vietnam (1954—1955 and 1962—1964) as head of the Polish delegation to the International Control Commission. During the spring of 1963, he wrote, Ramchundur Goburdhun, chairman of the ICC, French Ambassador Lalouette, and Italian Ambassador Giovanni d’Orlandi mentioned to him repeatedly that they were trying to arrange a meeting with him and Nhu on neutral ground.23 This meeting could not be arranged before the Buddhist crisis, Maneli explained, and the protests delayed it. “Nevertheless, a dialogue between us began.”24
In short, a Washington-Saigon separation was already underway before the Buddhist crisis, and the pressure directed at the GVN by American political leaders and newsmen during the crisis, discussed in the previous chapter, widened the distance between the two countries and encouraged South Vietnam to consider talks with North Vietnam. Nolting believed that Diem and Nhu considered these talks because without American support, which diplomat Trueheart had threatened to withdraw during Nolting’s summer holiday, they would have no options for survival left.25 Diem and Nhu were not delusional, as it was clear to Maneli, Goburdhun, Lalouette, and Orlandi that the Americans wished to be rid of them. Through their intervention, Maneli and Nhu finally met at a diplomatic reception attended by the new American ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge. Ellen Hammer was amongst the guests and quickly discerned that something was afoot that excluded the Americans.26
Maneli explained the different views and objectives of the ambassadors who had helped to arrange the meeting.27 Chairman Ramchundur, from India, represented his government’s attitude toward Diem as a model Asian ruler whom they backed completely—a view representative of other nonaligned Asian governments. Ambassador d’Orlandi “was the most reticent of the three in this affair. Italy had no particular interests in Vietnam, outside of the general Western hope of maintaining a reasonable balance of power in Southeast Asia and of making decisions in a more thoughtful and restrained way than was the habit of the impetuous and inexperienced Americans.” French Ambassador Lalouette, on the other hand, “had even more reason for arranging and watching over [Maneli’s] future relations with Nhu. . . . His stakes in the game were incomparably higher and more portentous.” Lalouette’s long-term plan was “to open a dialogue between Saigon and Hanoi, and then a token cultural and economic exchange between the two regions. In this way, the ground would be laid for political talks. Tension, suspicion, and enmity between the two governments would be reduced and peace would be assured.” A lasting peace and a political dialogue were the indispensable conditions for a long-term political solution in Vietnam, according to Lalouette, which would include the unification of North and South, free nationwide elections, and international controls. To achieve these ends, Lalouette proposed that Maneli conduct the necessary talks with Hanoi while he maintained contact on the subject with Saigon.
Maneli realised that the Americans were intent on divorcing themselves from Diem and his family in May 1963, when he sent a report to the Polish government, which would have been passed along to the Soviets, about the French plan to redeem the regime “from the reckless Americans”. In this report, Maneli wrote that the French could not afford to support South Vietnam the way the Americans had been doing. “Thus, they advise this mistress to change her style of living to a less extravagant one: to make peace with the North and the National Liberation Front. The next step will be neutralization: not under the direction of India, but rather Charles de Gaulle. In this way Vietnam, in addition to neutral Cambodia and Laos, will again become a pearl in the ‘grandeur de France.’ ” Maneli called the French scheme “one of the boldest plans in twentieth-century politics”.28
Mieczyslaw Maneli was an interesting and complex man. He had been a partisan fighter in Poland against the Nazis during the Second World War and was eventually captured by the Germans and sent to Auschwitz, whence he escaped with other Polish officers. His patriotism won him a place in the Polish Communist Party after the war, and he worked in various prestigious jobs, eventually earning a law degree in 1954. He received an appointment as associate professor at Warsaw University, and it was from this job that the Polish Central Committee appointed him to the ICC in 1954. Regardless of his close party ties, he was attacked by the Stalinists as a “revisionist” sympathetic to “bourgeois liberalism” because he had spoken out against the intolerance and violence visited on the Polish people in the mid-1950s. He refused to condemn the Israelis after their victory in the Six-Day War, even though he had been pressured to do so, and eventually he was purged from Warsaw University because he was deemed antisocialist. During his tenure as Poland’s ICC ambassador, he was sympathetic to the Communist cause in Vietnam and fully supported Ho Chi Minh’s regime while harbouring open concerns about what the Chinese wanted in Vietnam. In short, Maneli was his own man, and he was a dedicated—if a somewhat unconventional—Communist.29
When Maneli argued for the Diem-Ho rapprochement with the Chinese ambassador to Hanoi, he revealed where he stood regardless of his keen socialist aversion to the Ngo Dinh brothers and their government. He said, “Diem and Nhu, fearing a coup inspired by the Americans, were switching their police and military forces for a defense against the Americans instead of the National Liberation Front.” Then he asked, “Should not the socialist forces, in this new political situation, seek new methods and solutions?”30
When Maneli first broached the subject of talks with the North Vietnamese during one of his routine visits to Hanoi, their response was immediate and exhaustive. Pham Van Dong, the premier, and Ho Chi Minh were ready to begin negotiations at any time, and they had a list of goods they believed could be exchanged for South Vietnamese products to cement a direct economic foundation between the two Vietnams.31 In their conversations with both Maneli and Lalouette, the North Vietnamese dropped all pretence of viewing Diem as a monster and a puppet of the Americans. “In Hanoi, despite all the open, official hostility toward Diem-Nhu, there still existed an atmosphere that could be described as favourable to negotiations and contact with that government. Pham Van Dong even said that Nhu certainly was capable of thinking logically, since he was a graduate of the lycée in Chartres.”32
Ellen Hammer’s interviews with Lalouette and Goburdhun confirmed what Maneli claimed. She discovered that Ho told Goburdhun to convey his sympathy to Diem, “a patriot”, with regard to the terrible position in which the Americans had placed him. Ho had foreseen that Diem, with his independent character, would have a hard time with the Americans, “who liked to control everything”.33 The irony is profound. When all the propaganda was stripped away, the North Vietnamese enemy accepted Ngo Dinh Diem as a Vietnamese patriot and leader. It was his American ally who could find little good in him or his government by this time. The Americans did have, however, a good reason to fear a rapprochement between North and South. When Maneli asked North Vietnamese leaders Pham Van Dong and Xuan Thuy what he should say if Ngo Dinh Nhu invited him for a talk, they said, “Everything you know about our stand on economic and cultural exchange and co-operation, about peace and unification. One thing is sure: the Americans have to leave. On this political basis, we can negotiate about everything.”34
In this conversation, the North Vietnamese leaders tacitly acknowledged that they were responsible for the hostilities in the South, which they expressed a desire to end.35 Further proof of Hanoi’s control over the Viet Cong was made manifest when the foundations were being laid for talks between Hanoi and Saigon.36 During this period, when Diem and his government were most vulnerable to attack—owing in no small part to American vacillation over the Buddhist crisis—the Viet Cong backed off and an unofficial cease-fire was accepted amongst opposing commanders.37 Ellen Hammer explained that, while the talks were not about any detailed agreements—it was far too early in the day for that—they incorporated a recognition of similar actions that both sides could take, such as parallel limitations on military activities. In her discussions with Lalouette, he informed her that it was self-evident that cease-fires being put into place by Viet Cong commanders were to facilitate the talks with the North and to make it plain to Diem that they did not want to take advantage of him while he was having such difficulties with his erstwhile American supporters. In support of this Lalouette understanding, fighting in certain areas had ceased altogether, with local cease-fire arrangements made by each side’s respective commanders.38
Charles de Gaulle recognised the opportunity for France to regain its foothold in Vietnam through a North-South dialogue. In August 1963, when the Americans were feverishly trying to find South Vietnamese generals to throw Diem out of office, the French president publicly called for peace and unity talks between Hanoi and Saigon.39 De Gaulle’s offer—a vague promise of French cooperation though it was—appealed to the older ties that still bound the Vietnamese to the French and the Vietnamese desire for a reunited country.40 Ho Chi Minh followed-up De Gaulle’s offer with a call for a cease-fire.
Ngo Dinh Nhu was cautious about these overtures, because he did not want to lose American support.41 As Lalouette told Maneli, he did “not want to burn his bridges behind him”. But Lalouette thought Nhu was deluding himself that he could maintain his alliance with the Americans. He added, “If he does not rid himself of these illusions he will be lost. It is a tragic mistake.”42 According to Hammer, Lalouette could see that Lodge was deliberately undoing the goodwill Nolting had built between the Kennedy and Diem governments. He urged Lodge not to make a coup, to leave Diem in power, but by that time the French ambassador believed that Lodge had been sent to Vietnam with instructions to remove Diem as soon as he could. It was hopeless, Lalouette told Hammer later, because the Americans “had made up their minds to negotiate from a position of force.”43
Here is another irony to emerge from the breakdown in relations between the Kennedy and Diem governments. At the inception of Ngo Dinh Diem’s fledgling Republic of Vietnam, it was the Americans who defended him against the French; in late summer 1963, it was the French who were trying to save Diem from American impatience and wrath. Lalouette told Maneli that the French believed Diem and Nhu were the only ones who could bring about peace with the North because the Communists still respected their nationalist credentials. He believed in their continued political legitimacy even after they declared martial law in late August and ordered raids on the pagodas of the radical bonzes. He warned Lodge that a coup would cause irreparable harm to the country because any government the Americans put in place would lack the support of most Vietnamese and be even more dependent on the United States. The war would then continue to the detriment of everyone.44
The New York Times attacked the French ambassador for convincing other diplomats to pressure Lodge to soften the American stance toward Diem. According to Hammer, there were also newspaper reports that France was backing Nhu as the man to “lead a great national movement toward reunification”.45 The French position was officially denied in Paris, and assurances were given to the Americans that France had no intention of supporting Ngo Dinh Nhu. Lalouette told Ambassador Lodge on September 10 that he had been summoned to Paris for consultations for a week, but he never returned.46 Even with the recall of Lalouette, the rumours in Saigon and amongst American newsmen about a North-South rapprochement continued.47
Seymour M. Hersh, in his book The Dark Side of Camelot, claimed that the North-South dialogue was the main reason the Kennedy administration removed Diem. Hersh interviewed a good friend of Kennedy, Charles Bartlett,48 about this issue. Bartlett quoted Kennedy as saying: “Charlie, I can’t let Vietnam go to the Communists and then go and ask these people [the voters of America] to re-elect me. Somehow we’ve got to hold that territory through the 1964 election. We’ve already given up Laos to the communists and if I give up Vietnam I won’t really be able to go to the people. But we’ve got no future there. [The South Vietnamese] hate us. They want us out of there. At one point they’ll kick our asses out of there.”49
In this chat with Bartlett, Kennedy exposed many things about his administration. Not least of these was his recognition that his and Harriman’s Laotian neutrality deal had handed the country over to the Communists. Diem and Nhu, regardless of State Department protests and assurances, had been right all along about Laos, and their fears about how Kennedy would treat them were equally well justified. Ambassador Nolting traced Kennedy’s troubles with the Diem government to the abandonment of Laos by the United States. Nevertheless, Hersh’s work ignores this earlier betrayal and focuses on the Ngo Dinh talks with the Communists as the main reason for the November coup.
The Hersh thesis, in its most fundamental form, is that President Kennedy believed he could not win the 1964 elections if South Vietnam had become “neutral” as a result of Nhu and Diem’s dialogue with the North. This was because Kennedy’s adversaries, the Republicans, would quite rightly point out that neutrality was nothing but political doublespeak for having surrendered to the Communists. Kennedy’s Laos neutrality accords would have been hauled out and presented by the Republicans as a case in point as to what neutrality really meant when the Democrats used such terminology.50 Hence domestic political considerations were permitted to befuddle sound foreign policy. Hersh touched upon an old theme here, but it is a theme that continues to be relevant, even in the post-Vietnam era.
Hersh’s argument has some credibility,51 but it represents only the proverbial tip of a very deep-set iceberg. The Kennedy administration’s double-mindedness in its policy toward Diem’s GVN had its beginning in the bitter animosity that arose between Diem and Harriman over the Laos neutrality accords. As this work has shown, Averell Harriman was an extremely powerful man, and he had powerful and respected colleagues ranging from the eloquent Galbraith, who had the president’s ear, to the persistent Roger Hilsman. His strong dislike of Diem probably numbered the South Vietnamese president’s days well before the Buddhist crisis and the talks with the North Vietnamese. Nolting maintained that, while Kennedy truly liked President Diem and did not want to see him ousted, the American president’s loyalty to the man was nevertheless weak. Regardless of his good intentions toward Diem, he could not stand up to the pressures exerted by Harriman and his cohorts in the State Department as well as those from the American press and the upcoming election.