CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

A MAJOR DISAGREEMENT WAS BREWING in D.C. over the conduct of a war that was not a war and over whether the U.S. should continue to support it. Powerful and influential officials lined up on each side of the issue. Muttering and grumbling spread throughout the federal government as people jockeyed for position. Backbiting, snitching, struggling to wrest concessions, infighting to press their views. I was fast learning that unconventional warfare encompassed more than SEALs, Green Berets, and foreign intrigue. It also included domestic political intrigue, plotting, and conspiracies in the seats of power. I hadn’t realized before just how dirty a business politics could be.

“Things are going to hell,” DCI McCone said. “Hang on. It’s going to be a hairy ride.”

Buddhist monks and their dispute with South Vietnam president Ngo Dinh Diem proved to be the catalyst that propelled the issue of “yes we will, no we won’t” into crisis. My new friend Jocko Richardson, CIA station chief in Saigon, filled me in on internal politics in South Vietnam. We were lunching on the terrace of the Majestic before I caught my flight back to the United States.

A Catholic, President Diem was growing increasingly unpopular largely because of his discriminatory policies against the country’s Buddhist majority. On top of that, Richardson said, Diem was a power-hungry sonofabitch who consolidated his political strength through staged elections and by banning opposition parties and eliminating rivals through jailing or assassinating them. So far, he had survived two major attacks against him—one in 1960 when factions of the military unsuccessfully tried to force him out of office, again in early 1962 when disgruntled air force pilots dropped bombs on the palace.

“South Vietnam is plagued by corruption and political intrigue—and we Americans are contributing to it,” Jocko said. “President Kennedy is slipping us into a quagmire.”

“From what I understand,” I replied, “JFK wants to pull a Bay of Pigs and get out of Dodge.”

Richardson sipped hot black tea and rubbed lines in his forehead with his fingertips. He looked up at me across the tiny wrought-iron table.

“Bone, I’m telling you this for what it’s worth: Word has it that Henry Cabot Lodge is being appointed new ambassador to Vietnam to replace Fred Nolting. From my point of view, that signals a policy change. I’ve warned the DCI to use caution. Because if State screws this up, the CIA is going to own this war. We’re going to own it, Bone.”

He paused. Sweat beaded on his forehead, although it was a cool morning. “Bone, I’ve also heard talk of a coup against Diem—and talk of assassinating him that may be coming from State and the White House. I don’t much care for Diem either, but someone is fucking Kennedy over.”

Diem’s current imbroglio with Buddhists began on May 8 after he prohibited monks from displaying their flags. South Vietnamese security forces acting on orders from Diem’s security advisor Ngo Dinh Nhu, who also happened to be Diem’s younger brother, fired into a crowd of Buddhist protestors, killing eight of them.

In the weeks after that, Buddhists wearing their saffron robes conducted almost daily protest marches through the streets of Saigon, burning incense, carrying icons, and chanting.

In June, a monk named Thich Quang Duc burned himself to death in protest at a busy Saigon intersection. Photographs of his self-immolation circulated around the globe.

“No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one,” President Kennedy publically proclaimed with honest emotion.

Protests escalated in Saigon with other monks aping Quang Duc’s example and self-immolating. Diem’s brother, Nhu, urged on by his Dragon Lady wife, the de facto First Lady since President Diem was unmarried, launched nationwide raids on Buddhist pagodas. He killed thirty Buddhists. More than two hundred were wounded and 1,400 arrested. The cremated remains of Quang Duc, considered a sacred relic, were confiscated. The raids caught U.S. officials back in Saigon and in Washington flat-footed.

“It’s hitting the fan,” DCI McCone said. “Bone, I want you to go back over there now. Get with Jocko Richardson to see what the hell is going on.”

Richardson, I discovered, was under a load of stress. He looked much older when he picked me up at the airport than when I last saw him. During the days after my arrival we observed events as they played out while I attempted to provide McCone a comprehensible picture of the situation. If things were fucked up in Washington, they were bleeding over tenfold into Saigon.

As Jocko predicted, Henry Cabot Lodge’s arrival in June to replace Nolting as U.S. ambassador signaled a dramatic change in policy. A firm believer in the “Domino Theory,” Lodge insisted the U.S. had to take a stand somewhere; it might as well be in Vietnam as in Mexico or Central America.

The new ambassador seemed convinced the U.S. could not defeat the communists with Diem in office. Jocko intercepted a dispatch Lodge sent to Washington in which he supported disgruntled Viet officers who were apparently plotting a coup to overthrow Diem.

In response, Secretary of State Dean Rusk advised Lodge not to push the coup plot “pending final decisions which are being formulated now.”

“We kill Diem,” Jocko said to me, “and it’s a point of no return in Asia.”

I agreed. “Ho Chi Minh will exploit it to infiltrate NVA into South Vietnam. We’ll have no choice but to send in combat troops.”

“That’s what Lodge is pushing for.”

In Washington, the choosing of sides and the plotting continued. Lining up with Lodge were McGeorge Bundy, special assistant to the president for national security affairs and a chief architect of U.S. policy in Southeast Asia; Averell Harriman, undersecretary of state for political affairs; and Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

“A pit of vipers, the bunch,” Jocko opined. “They’ll bite you when you’re not looking.”

On the other side were Jocko Richardson, who opposed a coup against Diem and argued for patience; Bureau Chief Far Eastern Division William Colby, who opted against abandoning Diem, although he had become disillusioned with the way the struggle against the communist National Liberation Front was proceeding; DCI John McCone; and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, both of whom feared supporting a coup made the U.S. responsible for South Vietnam and whatever came afterward.

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara likely stood with Kennedy on whichever side the president finally landed.

So far, JFK remained committed to backing Diem, arguing that Diem had been a U.S. ally for nearly a decade now and that there was no guarantee that whoever replaced him would be any better. Nonetheless, the Buddhist uprising was weakening Kennedy’s commitment and forcing him to straddle the fence.

“I think we want to make it our best judgment,” he hedged over the question of whether or not to support a coup against Diem, “because I don’t think we have to do it.”

Ambassador Lodge considered Jocko a symbol of American support for Diem. He attempted to have Richardson fired as Saigon station chief in back-channel letters to the president. McCone warned Kennedy that the ambassador was so eager for a coup that he might act unilaterally.

Dean Rusk’s State Department transmitted Cable 243 to Averell Harriman, with a copy to Bundy, stating that—and I only got the gist of it through sources—if “Diem remains obdurate … we must face the possibility that Diem cannot be preserved.”

I was back in Langley when a dramatic confrontation between Ambassador Lodge and Jocko in Saigon ended with Richardson’s recall to Washington and his replacement by a new station chief who took orders from Harriman and Lodge’s military assistant, an Army Special Forces officer named James Michael Dunn. Dunn, I discovered through the DCI, was known to be in touch with Colonel Big Minh and other plotters against Diem.

Sending Jocko home was a public signal that the U.S. had withdrawn support for the South Vietnam regime. I also took it as a sign that Kennedy may have caved and would allow the coup to proceed.

In the predawn of November 1, 1963, Colonel Big Minh made his move. Ambassador Lodge received a frantic phone call from Diem, demanding, “What is the attitude of the U.S. toward this coup attempt?”

The ambassador equivocated: “I’m not well enough informed at this time to be able to tell you,” he replied.

Rebel soldiers dragged pudgy little Diem, his brother Nhu, and a Catholic priest out of a church where they were hiding and shoved them into the back of an armored personnel carrier. The APC stopped at a railroad crossing, where all three were executed with bullets to the backs of their heads.

On November 22, 1963, three weeks after Diem’s murder, bullets from another assassin felled President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. When I heard the news, I trudged through the underground passageway that connected the CIA headquarters building to the auditorium. The auditorium was unoccupied. It was one of my favorite places when I had some thinking to do. I stood at a window overlooking the grounds outside. I couldn’t help considering how the president who became the most fervent supporter of military special operations may have himself become its victim.

DCI John McCone approached quietly from behind and stood next to me looking out the window. He was the first to speak.

“Maybe we were blind,” he said. “Maybe we should have anticipated this.”