SAIGON
UNDERCOVER CIA AGENT LUCIEN CONEIN, known to many as Luigi, clipped his protection into place. No, it was not a Walther PPK or Kevlar body armor. For this crucial secret meeting, Conein placed around his throat the white paper that kept the bits of tooth from the dentist’s drill spraying his shirt. “I would sit down in the dental chair and I’d have the little napkin around my neck, and I had my mouth wide open,” said Conein. Waiting for him in the office was not the dentist but General Tran Van Don. The Paris-born Don was the most sophisticated member of the band of generals plotting the overthrow of the president of South Vietnam. Don and Conein shared a dentist, so his office seemed an ideal covert setting. Sitting in the chair with his mouth open, Conein was ready if the secret police crashed in while Don slipped out the back. It seemed everyone was being tailed as the tension in Saigon rose during the fall of 1963. President Diem and his brother, Nhu, suspected Americans and Vietnamese. “So in case anything happened, I was being treated,” Conein said. “That’s the way many meetings were held.”
Waiting for the meeting details in Washington close to nine thousand miles away was President Kennedy. Since October 2, the coup that fizzled on August 31 was up and running again, with the same cast of characters. Instead of pushing the generals to act, as earlier, in October the American government took a passive approach to the plot: The United States would merely agree not to “thwart” the new coup; it would not actively encourage the generals. In reality, Ambassador Lodge approved all of Conein’s trips to the dentist. The resumption of dealing with those plotting the coup marked the revival of a dual strategy. Lodge continued to press Diem for a diplomatic accommodation. He wanted to talk Diem into compromises with the Buddhists or some other action that might minimize the American president’s political pain. At least Diem should get Madame Nhu to shut up. Meanwhile Conein, Lodge, and Kennedy encouraged the generals.
Lodge agreed to a second fruitless session with President Diem but then refused any further contacts despite being urged to deal with Diem by Kennedy. “Do not see advantage of frequent conversations with Diem if I have nothing new to bring up,” Lodge cabled Kennedy on September 13. “Believe mere repetition of points already made would look weak. Visiting Diem is an extremely time-consuming procedure and it seems to me there are many better ways in which I can use my waking hours.” To end recurring palace embarrassments heaped on Kennedy administration policies in South Vietnam, Lodge openly urged the removal from office of Diem and his brother Nhu. “The ship of State here is slowly sinking,” Lodge messaged Secretary of State Rusk. “The time has arrived for the U.S. to use what effective sanctions it has to bring about the fall of the existing government and the installation of another.”
After the first coup collapsed on August 31, Kennedy temporarily suspended the plotting by Lodge. “A certain anxiety has been expressed outside the Department on whether it is clear that [coup planning] is definitely in suspense,” Rusk said in an eyes only cable to Lodge. “I am sure you share our understanding that whatever course we may decide on in the next few days, no effort should be made to stimulate coup plotting.” That pleased former ambassador Nolting. He warned the president of the treachery and immorality of plotting just because Diem was unpopular in the American media. Nolting, Defense Secretary McNamara, and Director McCone of Central Intelligence opposed the coup. They feared displacing Diem would produce endless political chaos that would weaken the fight against communist North Vietnam’s Viet Cong. Kennedy’s suspension of the plotting caused resentment in the Averell Harriman camp, where they urged Lodge to keep pushing a coup. “I have the feeling that more and more of the town is coming around to our view that if you in Saigon and we in the [State] department stick to our guns, the rest will also come around,” said Hilsman, Harriman’s deputy, in a letter delivered by hand to Lodge. Rusk, the secretary of state, sent a pointed reminder to Lodge to cease and desist.
Kennedy’s caution vanished when Conein “accidentally” bumped into General Tran Van Don at Tan Son Nhat airport. Don arranged for Conein to meet with Big Minh, the leader of the coup forces. Chances for a coup’s success had improved because it appeared General Ton That Dinh—Diem’s most trusted commander of forces around Saigon—“may join us,” Don told Conein. Dinh’s willingness came after Kennedy ordered Lodge to bribe the young general. The coup plotters also sought to divide Dinh from Diem. They manipulated Dinh’s ego to the point that he demanded Diem make him minister of the interior. Diem reacted angrily, telling Dinh to stay out of politics. Diem then ordered Dinh to Da Lat for a cooling-off period. The exchange occurred in front of the other generals during a palace meeting in which they pressed the weakened president to include them in an expanded government. Diem refused. Angered with his brief exile, Dinh talked about deserting Diem. Troops under Dinh’s command could decide the outcome of a coup. Dinh realized he had been “played for a fool,” Don told Conein. Even so, Dinh’s allegiance was still very iffy. There was no mention of an American bribe in Conein’s reports to Washington.
More coup details came from General Big Minh. He was the hero of the 1954 Battle of Saigon, in which all of Diem’s enemies were vanquished. When Minh refused to respond—too busy tending his orchids, everyone said—during the 1962 coup attempt, Diem permanently sidelined him. Minh was humiliated, and his anger fueled a desire for revenge. According to Conein, Minh needed quick approval. “General Minh stated that he must know American government’s position with respect to a change in the government of Vietnam within the very near future,” Conein reported October 5. “He did not expect any specific American support for an effort on the part of himself and his colleagues to change the government, but he stated he does need American assurances that the USG will not attempt to thwart his plan.”
Big Minh, a warrior not known for his intellect, had put forth a clever ploy probably designed by far more clever General Don, the army chief of staff, or even by Ambassador Lodge, who was trying to find a way around Kennedy’s unease over the violent overthrow of an American ally. To a wavering Washington, the general offered the perfect rhetorical compromise. Rather than encouraging or discouraging a coup—the issue that divided Kennedy’s advisers—Kennedy would agree not to “thwart” one. It was an ideal option B, a masterstroke worthy of Lodge’s bureaucratic genius. There is no hard evidence that Lodge was behind the ploy. But during a 1979 interview, when questioned about dealings with the coup plotters, Lodge said, “General Tran Van Don and General Minh, these generals, I use to see them all the time and they couldn’t possibly have been under any kind of doubt as to what I was doing because I told them what I was doing.” Lodge’s statement implied that the ambassador himself—not just his CIA cutout—was personally involved in the overthrow of Diem.
Minh said the plotters had no political ambitions, adding with a laugh, except maybe General Dinh. Conein funneled more and more facts, mainly from General Don, through Lodge to White House meetings. The same day as Conein’s meeting with Big Minh—October 5—Kennedy fired back approval of the revised approach. McGeorge Bundy, the adviser on national security affairs, cabled Kennedy’s approval of Lodge’s recommendation. “There should, however, be urgent covert effort with closest security under broad guidance of Ambassador to identify and build contacts with possible alternative leadership as and when it appears. Essential this effort is totally secure and fully deniable.”
Four days later, Kennedy elaborated. “While we do not wish to stimulate a coup, we also do not wish to leave impression that U.S. would thwart a change in government or deny economic and military assistance to a new regime.” That was a green light for Lodge and Conein. Those visits to the dentist produced the names of the plotters and detailed plans for before and after Diem’s overthrow. As the reality of a coup d’etat loomed, Diem’s supporters became agitated with the upbeat reports from Lodge and Conein. Only two days before the November 1 coup, Defense Secretary McNamara and General Taylor were warning Kennedy that removal of Diem would produce political chaos and a series of coups by competing generals.
“We ought to take our association [with the coup] out of the very amateurish hands that have been controlling it so far,” McNamara told Kennedy. “And those hands, particularly the ambassador and Conein. I don’t think Conein’s reports have been sound reports. He’s reported a lot of gossip without proper evaluation.” Kennedy sought to defend Conein, noting his close relationships with the generals involved in the coup. “They won’t talk to other people,” Kennedy said. McNamara refused to back down. “We are like a bunch of amateurs. I hate to be associated with this, dealing with Conein,” McNamara said. He took aim at Lodge, who had been the subject of a series of favorable news stories from Saigon by reporters seduced by the ambassador. “We’re dealing through a press-minded ambassador and an unstable Frenchman—five times divorced. [Conein was married five times but divorced only four.] This is the damnedest arrangement I have ever seen. This is what we have to stop.” This passionate outburst was the high point of McNamara’s opposition in this period before the coup. Kennedy seemed to sense a loss of control of Saigon.
“We’ve got a lot of variety of opinion at this table,” Kennedy said. “Everybody more or less has some unanimity about reservations about Lodge’s conduct. But he’s there and we can’t fire him, so we’re going to have to give him direction. We’ve got to get him to end up where we want him to go and not end up where he wants us to go.”
When news of McNamara’s attack on Conein filtered back to Saigon, Lodge dismissed it as Ivy League criticism of a daring CIA agent who caroused in the sporting palaces of Saigon with some of the generals. Lodge and Mike Dunn, his personal assistant, were both combat veterans who admired the coarse Conein. “If you were a graduate of Exeter or Andover and then Harvard, Luigi wouldn’t be necessarily your chosen role model for your eldest son,” Dunn said.