SAIGON
TEN-YEAR-OLD ALAN AND NEAL DUNN were scooping geckos into tennis ball cans when they heard the clanking of what turned out to be an Army of Vietnam M24 tank. From the tennis court inside the U.S. ambassador residence, they watched the 75mm gun swivel and belch thunder and fire. The blast wave washed over the twin boys, who arrived the day before the attack on President Ngo Dinh Diem. “Oh, boy,” Alan said to himself, “this is going to be such a great place to play army.” Just then their mother yelled, “You two get in here right now!” Rumor later said the arrival of Mike Dunn’s family—his wife Fran and twin boys—was the signal to General Big Minh to launch the coup. There was no such signal that the overthrow of Diem would begin November 1. Lodge and Kennedy had expected it to start on November 2, Friday. November l was also All Saints’ Day. In Washington and Saigon, both Catholic presidents met their obligation to attend Mass. Only Diem would attend Mass on November 2, All Souls’ Day, or as it was known in Vietnam, the Feast of the Dead.
Earlier that day, Lodge attended a conventional departure ceremony for the visiting commander of the Seventh Fleet, Admiral Harry Felt. The Pacific commander leaned over and whispered to Lodge: “Will there be a coup?” “There isn’t a Vietnamese general with hair enough on his chest to make it go,” Lodge told Felt, clearly irritated. He was disappointed in August when the coup fizzled. Big Minh and General Tran Van Don had refused to give an exact date, and there had been hiccups. General Harkins, the American military commander who wanted Diem to remain in power, had been cut out of coup planning cables between Lodge and Kennedy. When Don approached Harkins, the American officer said the United States was opposed to Diem’s overthrow. Alarmed that U.S. support was suddenly faltering, Don contacted Conein, who in turn set up an airport meeting between Lodge and Don. Lodge assured Don that Conein had been representing the official view and it was unchanged.
President Diem, host of the ceremony for Admiral Felt, invited Lodge to the palace to ask about rumors of a coup he was now expecting. Now he seemed more willing to reach some sort of accommodation. “Please tell President Kennedy that I am a good and frank ally and I would rather be frank and settle questions now than talk about them after we have lost everything,” Diem told Lodge. “Tell President Kennedy that I take all his suggestions very seriously and wish to carry them out, but it is a question of timing.” Lodge thought Diem had caved. “In effect he said: Tell us what you want and we’ll do it.” He cabled details of the meeting to Washington but with the lowest message priority. It arrived in Washington at five P.M.—a day after coup events were almost finished in Saigon. To Lodge, Diem’s surrender came too late. The next time they talked, Diem was under siege.
The swish of an overhead artillery shell announced the coup to Lodge, just as he was sitting down with the newly arrived Dunns for lunch. Marine helmets and flak jackets were supplied to his wife Emily and Fran Dunn and the two boys. They all were placed in cast-iron bathtubs in the residence’s bathrooms. Gunfire and aerial bombardment around the palace grew heavy. “We’re all going to die,” Emily said. Lodge and Dunn, with radio nets installed, decided to stay in the residence rather than at the embassy. Conein reported in. As planned, he had raced to coup headquarters near Tan Son Nhat airport. General Don had ordered generals and colonels to attend a staff meeting at the officers club. Once the doors were closed, General Minh sorted supporters of the coup from its opponents. Military police with machine guns filled the room as Minh asked for a show of support by standing. Those seated were forbidden to leave. Minh told Conein if the coup failed, they planned to flee to Cambodia. “You’re coming with us,” Minh said. As requested by Don, Conein brought a bag full of almost 5 million piasters, worth $70,000.
As Gia Long Palace came under attack, Diem and Nhu sought to rally their military supporters outside Saigon by radio and telephone as they had in 1960. This time there was little response. One of Diem’s first calls was to the young general he had groomed for just this moment. An aide told Diem that Brigadier General Ton That Dinh was unavailable. Diem called again and got Dinh on the line. Diem demanded that Dinh and the other generals show their loyalty to the government in time of war. With other officers listening, Dinh launched a series of American-inspired obscenities, cursing Diem, his brothers, and Madame Nhu.
“You are finished,” Dinh told Diem. “It is all over.”
Dinh, bribed by Kennedy, had joined the coup late. According to Conein, Don was prepared to “neutralize” Dinh at the first sign of hesitation. One of the last efforts to woo him and his troops meant the bribing of a soothsayer to tell Dinh that the Ngo brothers faced a terrible fate. Dinh “was the key to the generals’ coup,” Conein informed them from Big Minh’s headquarters. “When he agreed, the coup began.”
Lieutenant Commander Bobbi Hovis, a U.S. Navy nurse, wandered into the middle of the Saigon chaos. She took minute-by-minute notes that wound up in the Navy History and Heritage Command files. “The next thing I knew bullets were flying,” Hovis said. “Three aircraft were dive-bombing Diem’s palace. As they released their bombs, antiaircraft fire was being returned from the palace. I saw one man shot. A bullet went through the back window of his car, through his chest and out the windshield. They were firing that [105mm] howitzer right into the palace. We heard [the] clank, clank, clank of tank treads. I crawled on my stomach so as not to present a target. I could just peer over the [balcony] railing. I counted twenty-seven tanks mustering right below our quarters. Between the thick cordite and smoke and the deafening blasts and concussion, we all had headaches.” In Washington, Bundy and Forrestal monitored the incoming cables. In a record of the meeting, Forrestal said the coup was coming off better than anyone expected. “Bundy then commented that Diem was still holding in the palace, adding that no one wanted to go in for the kill,” the report said.
At the residence, Lodge made contact with Diem about 4:30 P.M. Vietnamese accounts said the coup leaders offered Diem safe conduct before the conversation with Lodge. Dunn was listening on the second phone and taking notes. Most histories contain Dunn’s account of the exchange, with Diem demanding to know the U.S. position on the army rebellion. Lodge ducked a straight answer and tells Diem he is worried about his safety. “I have a report that those in charge of the current activity offer you and your brother safe conduct out of the country if you resign. Had you heard this?” Years later, Dunn said his memo covered only a small portion of the exchange. Diem starts off by demanding protection from the U.S. Marine battalion he knew was heading for Saigon. Lodge says he is unaware of any Marines. Diem then asks Lodge to halt the coup. Not within his power, Lodge replies. “It became intense when Lodge asked him to resign,” Dunn said. Diem says Lodge has no standing to make such a request of a democratically elected president. “I am the president of the Republic of Vietnam!” he shouts. “I will never leave my people.”
Lodge praises Diem for his courage but seeks to focus on his survival. “Now I am very worried about your physical safety,” Lodge says.
Left out of Dunn’s official memo was Lodge’s offer to Diem of the ambassador’s personal protection, an option that did not depend on the army generals bombarding the palace. According to Dunn, he and Lodge discussed taking Diem and Nhu to the embassy. It was the same protection Kennedy urged Diem to accept in the message carried secretly by Congressman Macdonald in September. With American flags flying, Dunn would take the embassy’s Checker limousine to the palace, where he knew the rebel officers were laying siege. “I knew them, they knew me. I was the American ambassador’s man.” He was certain he could recover the Ngo brothers and bring them to the safety of the embassy. For a combat soldier with Dunn’s background, it would have been a piece of cake. Instead, Diem refuses Lodge’s offer of ambassadorial protection.
As the situation at the palace worsened, brother Nhu offered a plan to rally support outside Saigon and launch a countercoup. They could split up, one going north to the highlands while the other headed south to the Mekong Delta. “We will have a greater chance of success if we take different ways,” Nhu said. “Moreover, they will not dare kill one of us if we are captured as long as the other remains free.” Diem rejected the plan. They decided to leave together. Nhu assembled escape supplies. In a suitcase, he placed $1 million in large U.S. denominations. He also added eighty-eight pounds of gold in two-pound ingots. (Details of the heavy, bulging case—later seized by Big Minh—were reported to Washington in a 1964 note by Lodge to Rusk. “I advised [the military junta leader] not to make this public lest it shake confidence here in all the generals,” Lodge said in a top secret letter delivered by hand.) As the palace was not fully surrounded, Diem and Nhu walked out a side gate and got into a small, unassuming French sedan.
They were driven to a home in the Chinese suburb of Cholon only twenty minutes away. They were greeted by community leader Ma Tuyen, who offered the brothers tea and chicken soup. The hospitality he showed them would later lead to prison and the confiscation of his home. A communication system was rigged so that Diem could contact coup headquarters. If the generals called back, they would think Diem and Nhu were still in the palace. Throughout the night, Diem and his aides made at least five telephone calls to coup headquarters. The generals called had no idea Diem had left the Gia Long and was hiding in Cholon. At about four A.M. November 2, a nephew of Diem called coup headquarters and asked for General Don. He refused to speak to Big Minh, and the coup leader became furious. The president, the nephew said, wanted to surrender with full honors, a graceful exit from power, and safe conduct to another country. Politely Don refused. Diem himself then called and asked for Don. He, too, refused to talk to Big Minh and was once again denied honors and safe conduct. Once more Diem called and asked for Big Minh and repeated the request. A cursing Minh hung up on Diem. On his third call, Diem agreed to surrender and asked only for safe conduct.
This time Big Minh was elated. After putting on his formal uniform, Minh organized a military convoy, including his army sedan and three jeeps. At headquarters, a large table was covered with green felt. Conein thought they were preparing a press conference with newsreel cameras to capture Diem’s transfer of power to Big Minh. Conein decided to avoid the press. Before he left, Minh asked for an American plane to take Diem and Nhu into exile. “Not in the books,” Conein said. “This shows direct support.” Kennedy’s order, sent by Rusk to Lodge, prohibited U.S. support—including aircraft—to either Diem or the rebels.
So Conein called his CIA boss, acting station chief David Smith, who raised another objection—this one from Lodge. “I assumed he talked to the ambassador,” Conein said later. Lodge wanted a carefully scripted flight: If Diem and Nhu were exiled, Lodge wanted them taken initially to Saipan, where Americans could control their movements. But if asylum was granted by Japan or France, Diem and Nhu should be flown there directly without the normal refueling stops in Karachi or Rome. According to Conein, the fear was that the Ngo brothers would leave the plane, form a government in exile, and rally a countercoup. The station chief told Conein it would take twenty-four hours to get an Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker from Okinawa. It could fly nonstop to Paris, Saipan, or some other distant destination out of countercoup range that offered to take in the Ngo brothers.
When he told Big Minh of the twenty-four-hour delay, the general smiled. “That’s fine,” Minh said, according to Conein. With his glistening brass and colorful decorations, Minh was ready for his close-up. Some years earlier, he’d had gold-rimmed replacements installed to fill the holes in his mouth caused by Japanese pliers. His convoy pulled away, leaving Don in charge. The air went out of Big Minh’s optimism when his convoy quickly learned that Diem and Nhu had fled the Gia Long Palace. “Big Minh is a very proud man, and those of you who have been to Southeast Asia know that face is very important,” Conein said in secret Senate testimony in 1975. “At the last moment, he lost face, going up there in all his splendor with the sedan and everything.”
In a rage, Big Minh returned to headquarters. With some but not all of the officers, he demanded a vote on killing Diem and Nhu. “The pig must die,” he said in French. The rest of the debate was in Vietnamese. Some wanted to preserve Diem as well as his brother. Minh voted to kill the Ngo brothers—if he could find them.
At his hideout in Cholon, Diem knew his duplicity with Big Minh had reduced his chance for survival. Dunn saw the Saigon leader as resigned to his fate. “I think he fully expected to go down with the ship,” Dunn said. That conclusion stemmed from his discussion with a German priest, Father Hans DeJager, who helped organize Chinese supporters of Diem. Because Dunn was Catholic, DeJager sought the friendship of Lodge’s right hand. According to Dunn, DeJager recounted a conversation he had had with Diem hours before the coup began. “I think time has run out on us,” Diem said to the priest. “The sands of time have run out, and it only remains for me to do my duty.”
In the house in Cholon, Diem heard the bell from the nearby Church of St. Francis Xavier. It was about 5:15 A.M., and the bell was calling the faithful to the Feast of the Dead—All Souls’ Day for Kennedy. “We will go to Mass,” Diem announced to his brother and a handful of aides. In minutes his aide, Captain Do Tho, drove a Land Rover in the darkness to the front of the rococo church. Inside, it was bright from the glow of candles. In the first Mass of the day, Father Jean Tabert led them to recall their sins, plead for forgiveness, and look forward to justice through God’s mercy at the final judgment. In Latin, Father Jean intoned the Catholic liturgy: “Dies irae, dies illa. Day of wrath, O day of mourning.”
Diem and Nhu sat in the front pew and took communion. Afterward they talked to Father Jean before adjourning to the parish priest’s house. Inside, Diem made a last phone call to Lodge that never made its way into declassified U.S. documents. Mike Dunn would be forever haunted by the exchange between Lodge and Diem. Dunn revered Lodge but had an emotional tie with Diem.
“Where are you?” Lodge asked. When Diem told him he was at the church in Cholon, Lodge excused himself, left the room, and handed the phone to Dunn, who talked to Diem. “He was desperate,” Dunn said. “He knew they [the generals] were going to kill him. He wanted our help.” Lodge returned and again, as he had the previous afternoon, offered Diem the protection of the embassy. But there was no offer to come and get him. When the call ended, Dunn immediately pressed Lodge to let him take the embassy limousine and bring Diem and Nhu to the American compound. It was a twenty-minute trip to a location unknown by the coup soldiers.
“They’re going to kill him,” Dunn told Lodge.
“We can’t,” Lodge replied. “We can’t get involved.” Perhaps he was following Kennedy’s last order not to support Diem once the coup started. Then again, Lodge had shrugged off White House orders all along. Once again he was making the decisions. When they learned Diem had been killed, Dunn tried to discuss the day’s events with Lodge. But Lodge cut him off, looked at his watch, and shifted the discussion to dinner with his wife and the Dunn family.
“What time are cocktails?” Lodge asked.
Over a period of many years, many meals, and many drinks, the author heard Dunn frequently defend Lodge’s decision as a mistake. “I firmly believe and would swear on my mother’s honor, that he never foresaw that they would assassinate him.” After Lodge died in 1985, Dunn admitted Diem’s death was no miscalculation. Lodge’s refusal was a calculated decision to rid Kennedy of this defiant would-be priest. He described it as a gangland murder.
“It was a hit,” Dunn said.