WASHINGTON
FEW IN WASHINGTON WOULD RISK taunting Averell Harriman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs. His slashing personal attacks and long memory for insults made him an opponent to be feared. In one 1963 Oval Office meeting, Harriman was telling President Kennedy that Henry Luce’s publications—Time and Life magazines—were accusing the Kennedy administration of undercutting the president of South Vietnam. “They are pushing the idea that we are trying to undermine Diem,” Harriman told Kennedy.
“In other words,” Michael Forrestal said, “they’ve got you figured out, Ave.”
There was smothered laughter. Forrestal, thirty-five, could get away with wisecracks at Harriman’s expense. He was like a son to his eminence. In 1946, when Forrestal was eighteen, Ambassador Harriman made him assistant naval attaché at the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Forrestal’s father, James, was defense secretary in the Truman administration and engineered a U.S. Navy commission for his son. Harriman extracted the prep school graduate from a troubled home. Michael’s mother suffered from alcoholism and emotional problems. His father’s manic behavior led to his dismissal from the Pentagon and a controversial leap from the psychiatric wing of Bethesda Naval Hospital. Forrestal remained under Harriman’s wing through Princeton, Harvard Law, and a partnership at a Wall Street law firm. Kennedy personally invited Forrestal to join his White House team. He was the National Security Council’s specialist on Far Eastern affairs. The more important role, Kennedy said, was to serve as “emissary to the sovereignty, Averell Harriman.” As Harriman became Kennedy’s top disarmament negotiator, he took Forrestal with him to Moscow. In a meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, Harriman was going to present new documents. But he fumbled and dropped the key to his briefcase. Forrestal dropped to the Kremlin floor to search for it. He was joined by the Soviet premier. They found the key in the cuff of Harriman’s pants.
Forrestal lived at Harriman’s N Street home in Georgetown, an assembly point for American opponents of Ngo Dinh Diem. John Kenneth Galbraith stayed there while on leave from his post as ambassador to India. In a series of letters to Kennedy, his former undergraduate student at Harvard, Galbraith was the first to urge removal of the president of South Vietnam because of his refusal to include Western political values in his Asian government. “Without doubt Diem was a significant figure in his day,” Galbraith wrote on October 9, 1961. “But he has run his course. He cannot be rehabilitated. It is a cliché that there is no alternative to Diem’s regime. It is a better rule that nothing succeeds like successors.” In agreement at Harriman’s dinner table was George Ball, undersecretary of state for administration, who always viewed Diem as a “third-rate dictator” and identified himself as an “anti-Diem activist.”
All this was background grumbling in the foreign policy ranks until Quang Duc dropped the match on the mixture of gasoline and kerosene. One of Diem’s key supporters, Ambassador Frederick “Fritz” Nolting, saw the move against the president of South Vietnam as a matter of political expediency. “Harriman actually thought a coup would be a quick way to bring the Vietnam struggle to a successful conclusion,” Nolting said. “They were fed up with Diem; they were tired of the criticism by the media, they were impatient with the slow progress of pacification—and the 1964 presidential election was approaching.”
Forrestal and Roger Hilsman, head of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, visited South Vietnam in early 1963. They had then endorsed Diem and the view that his army was winning the war in a report to the president. But when Hilsman replaced Harriman as assistant secretary of state for the Far East, Hilsman converted to the anti-Diem church. So did Forrestal. It would fall to Forrestal, as Harriman’s cat’s-paw, to dupe Kennedy into approving an army coup against Diem. When the humiliated Forrestal realized what he had done, he submitted his resignation to the president. Unwittingly, perhaps, Forrestal became the middleman in a byzantine ploy by Harriman to win presidential approval for the overthrow of Diem while Diem’s most important administration supporters, including the president, were escaping the awful August weather of Washington.
Kennedy was at sea off Hyannis Port, where his family owned a collection of homes and boats. Kennedy enjoyed H. Upmann Petit Coronas even though the cigar had become contraband under the trade embargo with Fidel Castro. The day before he signed the 1961 ban on Cuban goods, press secretary Pierre Salinger purchased 1,200 of the little Upmanns for the president. White smoke drifted in the sea air while Kennedy read the newspapers. No matter where, Kennedy could not escape WHCA—the White House Communications Agency. It was part of the long tail of Air Force One, helicopters, military aides, machines, and staff. A flotilla of reporters watched him through binoculars.
His first document of the day was Forrestal’s compilation of the president’s intelligence checklist for Vietnam. U.S. intelligence remained uncertain about Saigon government control. “We cannot determine as yet who is calling the shots—Diem or the Nhus,” the checklist said. According to one source, Diem was making the decisions, although Nhu was credited with the Buddhist crackdown and imposition of martial law. Lodge believed division within the military would produce fighting between competing factions in the event of a coup. “General Don tends to confirm this,” the checklist said. Forrestal, in a second cable, gave Kennedy the complete cables from Phillips, Conein, and Lodge. General Kim’s offer to move against the Diem government—if Washington approved—was emphasized. Conein’s report that Diem was still in charge and had approved the Buddhist crackdown was not discussed. “It is now quite certain that Brother Nhu is the mastermind behind the whole operation against the Buddhists and is calling the shots,” Forrestal cabled Kennedy. Harriman, Hilsman, and Forrestal now agreed that Washington could not tolerate Nhu in a dominant position in Saigon, Forrestal said. It was not “quite certain” by any means, but Forrestal slanted it to Harriman’s opinion. “Averell and Roger now agree we must move before the situation in Saigon freezes,” Forrestal told Kennedy. “Lodge recommends wait and see,” Forrestal cabled Kennedy at 4:50 P.M. “Harriman and I favor taking action now.”
It was Kennedy’s first inkling that an urgent and crucial decision was looming. They wanted presidential approval for a go-ahead on a coup against the Diem government. It was finally spelled out in a cable to Lodge that had been drafted by Hilsman. Things seem to be roaring along. He had just talked to Lodge in the Oval Office nine days earlier. Lodge had been in Saigon for only three days. What was supposed to be a painstaking assessment of Diem’s situation had apparently been shelved. In State Department lore, the August 24 draft became known as the infamous Cable 243—a number arbitrarily assigned by the telex operator. It instructed Lodge to demand concessions from Diem, including the exile of his brother Nhu and Nhu’s bombastic wife.
“If, in spite of all your efforts, Diem remains obdurate, then we are prepared to accept the obvious implication that we can no longer support Diem,” the cable said. “You may also tell appropriate military commanders we will give them direct support in any interim period of breakdown central government mechanism.” In case Lodge felt he was being set up to take responsibility for some disaster, Harriman added a spine-stiffening promise. “You will understand we cannot from Washington give you detailed instructions as to how this operation should proceed,” the cable said, “but you will also know we will back you to the hilt on actions you take to achieve our objectives.”
Forrestal called Kennedy in Hyannis and read him the cable draft after a copy was sent to the president. “The only people who had functioned on [approved] it were the Department of State,” Forrestal said.
“Can’t we wait until Monday when everybody is back [to work in Washington]?” Kennedy said.
“Averell and Roger,” Forrestal replied, “really want to get this thing over right away.”
“Well,” Kennedy said, “go and see what you can do to get it cleared.” Specifically, Kennedy told Forrestal to get McCone’s views.
Diem’s most important defender, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, was out of reach, hiking somewhere in the Grand Teton Mountains of Wyoming. The Pentagon view was later offered by Army General Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. By law, military approval was not required. Politically appointed civilians control the American military. Taylor found out Saturday night about Cable 243 only after it was sent. “Our position was that Diem is certainly not ideal. He is a terrible pain in the neck in many ways. But he is an honest man. He is devoted to his country. And we are for him until we can find someone better—looking under the bushes for George Washington, as I used to call it,” Taylor said.
Forrestal had become positively slippery as he pushed Harriman’s plan through the bureaucracy. He got Defense Department approval of Cable 243 by deception. He duped Deputy Defense Secretary Roswell Gilpatric, who was at his farm on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. According to Forrestal, the draft was “favored” by Kennedy, Rusk, and Harriman already. Although Gilpatric had reservations, he was not about to buck his leaders. He viewed it as strictly a State Department matter, he said later. Taylor’s view was very close to the position of Director John McCone of Central Intelligence. McCone’s was similar to that of William Colby, the CIA Far Eastern chief, who foresaw Diem’s departure as the start of endless and dangerous turmoil in South Vietnam. But with McCone out of town, approval was up to Deputy Director Richard Helms. “It’s about time we bit the bullet,” Helms wrote in approving the draft.
Cable 243 needed the approval of Secretary of State Dean Rusk. But he was in New York watching New York Yankee pitcher Whitey Ford blank the Chicago White Sox, 3–0. Acting in Rusk’s place was the number two man at State, George Ball, another opponent of Diem. Harriman and Hilsman tracked Ball down on Falls Road Golf Course in Montgomery County, Maryland. Ball called Kennedy in Hyannis. This would be Kennedy’s approval for a coup against Diem, Ball concluded. “He knew what it meant,” Ball said. “The president on the whole seemed favorable to our proposed message, although he recognized the risk that if the coup occurred, we might not like Diem’s successor any better than Diem himself.” Then again, a Diem successor would not be responsible for Quang Duc’s suicide, the suppression of religion for 70 percent of the population, and a Saigon press corps that was eroding Kennedy’s political standing with American voters.
Despite the misgivings, Kennedy approved with two provisos. “If Rusk and Gilpatric agree, George, then go ahead,” Kennedy said, according to Ball. Rusk left Yankee Stadium and traveled to the American ambassador’s office at the United Nations, where he read Cable 243. Rusk saw the draft as a fait accompli. He was not about to buck the system. “If Ball, Harriman, and President Kennedy were going to send it out, I wasn’t going to raise any questions,” Rusk said.
Forrestal called Kennedy. Everybody was onboard, he told the president. That was untrue. Neither McNamara nor McCone approved. Rusk acted only after he assumed Kennedy approved Cable 243. Harriman had eluded Diem’s supporters by playing the system with a virtuoso’s flair.
“Send it out,” Kennedy said.
Ball signed the cable. But in the corner reserved for the identity of the communicator, there was the neat signature of Averell Harriman. It was sent at 9:36 P.M. Saturday night—9:36 A.M. Sunday in Saigon. By that evening, Lodge had requested a change in his instructions. “Believe chances of Diem’s meeting our demands are virtually nil,” Lodge said. “Therefore, propose we go straight to the generals with our demands without informing Diem.” Lodge had yet to talk with Diem, let alone explain he was doomed unless Diem accepted the new demands from Washington. The most important recommendation he was empowered to make by Kennedy ten days earlier was complete: Diem must go. Harriman quickly approved Lodge’s request.
On Monday morning at the White House, McNamara and McCone were livid. Bobby Kennedy was also upset when he had been left out of the Saturday deliberations. The attorney general was aligned with McNamara and McCone in supporting Diem. “An end run” was the way Taylor described Harriman’s machinations. When everyone calmed down at the National Security Council meeting, Kennedy went around the room asking his most senior advisers if Cable 243 should be rescinded or recalled. The president said there was still time, even if the Saigon generals had gotten Lodge’s approval for a coup. “The president polled the meeting, going the rounds one by one. Was there anyone who favored backing off?” Hilsman said. “There was not.”
After the meeting Kennedy angrily criticized Forrestal. The president had specifically told him to get McCone’s approval. Without it, Kennedy said Forrestal should have held Cable 243 until Monday. Kennedy rejected Forrestal’s offer to resign. “You’re not worth firing,” Kennedy told Forrestal. “You owe me something, so you stick around.” Kennedy would later blame himself and Harriman for the chain of events triggered by Cable 243 over the next three months. “I should not have given my consent to it without a roundtable conference at which McNamara and Taylor could have presented their views,” Kennedy said. Diem’s overthrow began “with our cable of August in which we suggested the coup. In my judgment, that wire was badly drafted. It should never have been sent on a Saturday.”
During the ensuing three months of Saigon turmoil, Kennedy’s resentment about Cable 243 deepened.
“The fact of the matter is that Averell was wrong on the coup,” he told Undersecretary of State Ball. “We fucked that up.”