8. Anatomy of the November 63 coup

The frustration kept mounting when the US couldn't convince the regime to change its policy during the late summer of 1963. When the various parties suspected that Diem Nhu meant business dealing secretly with Hanoi, the wake up call was rude. Rumors of coup(s) filled the air in Saigon parallel to rumor of neutralism. As has been known, the average Vietnamese didn't see what's the big fuss is all about. The only group not amused was the army generals, a worried lot during that period. For them, their future hung in the balance. All those years of blood and sweat to fight Communism, and now their own political leaders they serve wanted to betray them and shake hand with the reds.

The Saigon army went through a peculiar itinerary. It has served many political masters, first the French during the Indochina War then the anti-Communist Diem propped up by the Americans. It wasn't an easy act for many of the top officers who were torn between their sense of patriotism, free of domination from a colonial power but not subservient to an unpopular and despotic  Diem, in the fight against the totalitarian North. In other words the army like any other group had to choose side during the mid 1940's and 50's. But its decision to support any regime had a tremendous consequence not only for its own survival but also for maintaining stability of the nation.

Unlike the various religious military sects that switched allegiance like changing shirts during the Indochina struggle, the regular army and its top brass were aware of the kind of loyalty they must exercise. You can't fight against the VC one day and be their political ally the next. As a national force, the South VN army or ARVN was the last line of defense and in principle a well disciplined organization to maintain security, law and order, i.e the cohesion of the South. And the military generals supposedly took pride in its professionalism realizing that the people of South VN depended on its steadfastness as well as its political impartiality.

VN generals weren't really trusted by Diem Nhu and the feelings were mutual. The relationship was never been smooth to say the least. Although some of its popular officers like then colonel Duong Van (big) Minh rallied behind Diem to defeat the sects during the first years of the regime, Diem remembered the Nguyen Van Hinh episode. He was almost unseated by the pro Bao Dai air force general at the very start of his tenure. In his nine years as leader of the South, Diem was subjected to countless coups and plots by his military. It was to become for the Ngo brothers a constant reminder that generals and colonels, as any other group must be controlled and bought to dissuade them from being hostile.

It's not hard for any observer to notice that there was no effective way of conducting a war against a formidable enemy while the government and its military leaders were at odds and suspicious of each other. And sometimes the officers took their role too seriously when they in fact conducted themselves as warlords and created their own fiefdom by dismissing orders from the civilian authorities. In a society where democracy was (and is) an alien concept, the military in VN had difficulty knowing the limit of their power. The challenge is more acute when a war was being fought. VN military generals behaved as prima donas when they got involved in politics and they were no different than their civilian counterparts, minus a formal decent education. They fought against the common enemy, against the regime and among themselves. And they didn't do well in all of those fronts.

Diem as usual was perceptive in his analysis of other people weakness. He had misjudged many friends and foes alike, but towards his own [army] generals, the blanket assessment he had was, to say the least, unflattering. And most people, including the Americans had to agree. For that reason Diem was seeking to divide the military brass by pitching  one against another to weaken their effectiveness to harm the regime. He isolated or 'deactivated' some of the generals he thought must be plotting against him instead of fighting the war. Like general 'big' Minh and others from the 'French' school. Again it was a tragic shortcoming that plagued the war effort until the collapse of the South as a viable alternative to Ho Chi Minh.

In hindsight, it's too convenient to blame the military and its lack of character for losing the war. Any different perception wouldn't change the outcome of the conflict. But we weren't there yet during the Diem final days. More had to come later during the generals' period of governance, in the continuing saga of the South until the final defeat in May 1975. And we should not compare South VN military leaders to Israel's both in military prowess and political achievement.

After the pagoda raids, generals Don and Minh openly seek to contact American officials for their support in an eventual coup. The Americans had no choice but to wait for the VN to come forward with a definite plan to oust the Ngo brothers. If Diem has to be replaced, it would better be a VN initiative. And during that time, there was no shortage of coup attempts from the military. Ironically it was Dr Tran Kim Tuyen, the security chief of the regime who laid the groundwork back in 1962 for a successful ouster of Diem Nhu.

From his innermost vantage point in the regime apparatus, Tuyen was well placed to ponder the chance of survival for the regime and he didn't see much hope. He tried to canvass the top generals to prepare a coup in early summer of 1963. He sought out the help of colonel Do Mau, the army security chief, a loyal Diem supporter and general Tran Thien Khiem of the Joint Chiefs. It was a smart move with Do Mau on his side, for all military intelligence to be relayed back to the Presidential Palace would be secured.  Tuyen didn't go far in his effort when Nhu got wind of his swift about face. Tuyen was dismissed and sent to Cairo as a consul in the VN embassy in Egypt. In any case generals Don and Minh never believed in Tuyen as a genuine coup leader against his own boss and they were suspicious of Do Mau as well as of Khiem, an obscure military leader who saved Diem from an earlier coup attempt in November 1960.

General Don the handsome Army chief of staff had no real miltary power at his disposal, the same for general Minh who was in 1963 just a military advisor to Diem, a purely symbolic title in the army. With a few other senior officers from the 'French school' like Le Van Kim, the intellectual related to Don as his in-law, retired and deactivated by Diem and general Tran Van Minh, called little Minh for his small physical stature, the plotters had some brains but not much in terms of military muscle. The main obstacle for a successful coup was the obvious diligence and distrust of Diem Nhu. They still had quite a number of loyal field commanders in all parts of the country. especially the III military corps which comprised the key area of the capital Saigon, under general Ton That Dinh, a favorite of Diem. Adding to the confusion was a long list of generals who sat on the fence, waiting for the tide to shift before committing their troops to either side.

Generals Don and Minh had to be careful not to arouse suspicion from those officers who might just be on the opposite camp. What they needed to do was to convince the 4 corps commanders throughout VN and the various military unit officers, namely the army divisions around Saigon to align themselves with the plot. Sometimes they had to woo, to cajole and played on their ego. General Dinh was one of the key players to be brought in that way. As a young military upstart, he had political ambition to become minister in the Diem cabinet. So Don suggested to him to submit the idea to president Diem, only to be rebuffed. Dinh didn't take the refusal lightly and he joined the anti-Diem group. In any case, Dinh although a Diem shoo-in officer wasn't highly considered by Diem. 

There was an anecdote that showed how Diem regarded his officers. He complained to Nhu one day (without naming Dinh) that although of royal family blood Dinh had no diploma and didn't know how to express himself in public. Other key generals gave some promise of support but no firm commitment, like general Nguyen Khanh the II Corps commander, a favorite of the Americans to succeed Diem, and general Do Cao Tri, the I Corps commander. The situation was very fluid and as a prognostic of the outcome, anything could happen that would change the equilibrium of the forces of both sides.

Washington was very impatient to relay its not so subtle intention favoring a coup to the generals, through its embassy during that summer, especially through Henry Cabot Lodge. The 'Diem must go' school was hardened in its conviction after the Buddhist raids in August 21st. State Department officials sent a momentous cable to the Saigon Embassy directing Lodge to give Diem an ultimatum to make concession to the Buddhist monks and to get rid of Nhu or else...

Much had been debated about that memorandum sent 3 days after the storming of Nhu Special Forces to suppress his opponents. It created quite a storm in the US administration circle immediately after the cable was sent. And more recriminations were voiced years later. The fact must be clear that the anti-Diem officials in the State and the White House like Roger Hilsman, the assistant secretary for Far Eastern affairs, Averell Harriman Under secretary of State for Political affairs and a few others like George Ball and Michael Forrestal from the NSC wanted to surreptitiously forward a drastic policy measure to a converted ear, i.e ambassador Lodge without seriously discussing the political impact at the highest level of the US government.

In hindsight I feel amazed by the continuing heated arguments about that small cable sent on the 24th of August 1963. Had the ouster of Diem brought peace and stability to the region, we wouldn't talk about the way it was sent or the fact that it was not officially cleared by President Kennedy. It was a blame 'in retrospect' and Roger Hilsman and the rest were just scapegoats for a failed policy, whether US directives towards Diem were sent in August or September that year, or whether they were properly discussed ad infinitum by the policymakers beforehand or not. But there's no doubt that the green light was given to Lodge to speed up the planning to overthrow Diem in August 1963.

Kennedy and other high officials from his administration supposedly had second thoughts about the instructions contained in the cable. But they didn't seem to backtrack from their position or send another memo to Lodge denying the first memo. When years later the turn of events became sour, the same officials who fast-tracked the policy instructions to Lodge then felt particular misgivings about the decision to depose Diem and Nhu. They admitted that the policy in the cable was a serious blunder that predestined an open-ended engagement of US troops into VN with the result that we know now. It was interpreted as the single most serious flaw in the US decision making process during the entire war.

The cable incident revealed a more troubling fact that the US government was dead lost in its policy orientation vis-a-vis the viability of Diem and his regime. The most serious flaw I think was the lack of decision towards Diem rather than the way it was relayed. US officials were evenly divided over how to deal with Diem, right from the early days of the Kennedy administration. State Dept people adhered to the anti-Diem school. Well known Kennedy men like Harriman, Hilsman and Ball were allergic to Diem Nhu. And they had their point man in Saigon in the person of Henry Cabot Lodge, the US ambassador in VN.

There were no outright Diem backers in the US, except for Nolting who was removed and being replaced by Lodge. The CIA people like William Colby and his director McCone were reluctant Diem supporters. The Defense officials were in between although general Harkins was leaning towards the regime. But these men just asked the basic same question about the alternative to Diem and his regime. Did the generals or the civilian politicians have a better chance to prosecute the war and do a better job?  And who are they? The unfortunate thing was that nobody knows the answer. Being optimistic the Americans had some hope that some generals would come forward as some kind of Bonaparte and save the day for Washington decision-makers.

The Americans curiously had long dropped the idea of a civilian government emerging from a post-Diem era. They adopted the prediction model of a military government to replace Diem in order to aggressively wage the war against the North. The actual generals who volunteered to oust Diem by contacting the US officials didn't give Washington reason to be cheerful. The anti-coup faction in the US had some cause for real concern. Not one of the coup organizers seemed capable of filling Diem's shoes as a viable future leader of South VN. If the State Dept people  were gong ho to replace Diem, the rest of the US administration, the Defense officials, the CIA were pessimistic of a coup, even if it succeeds. In another word, US policy towards VN was in total disarray during late summer of 1963. And time was running out for a solution.

The weekend following the pagodas raids, Roger Hilsman and other State officials secretly drafted instructions to the US embassy in Saigon telling 'VN military commanders of US support in case of a breakdown of the central government'. General big Minh through his contact man general Don wanted assurances from the US not to thwart a coup attempt in the coming weeks. All he wanted was American moral support and the continuation of economic aid from Washington. It was a done deal for the US. Like it or not, the US was part of the plot to oust Diem. It had no other choice but to hope for the coup to succeed. Otherwise the alternative would be to withdraw in humiliation. American officials had gone past the stage of evaluating the personalities of different coup leaders. They had reservations about most of them but they couldn't handpick any of them. The ball was on the generals court now. They had the time and date of their choosing to launch the attack against their own government. 

Confusion reigned for the next few weeks while all the conspirators figured out how to coordinate the different coup factions against the Diem regime. As usual the generals wanted to be the first group to get credit to topple Diem and save the country. The Tuyen-Do Mau faction was still planning to strike first, being the earliest to  prepare for a coup. Now they have an added figure in colonel Pham Ngoc Thao, the chief inspector of the Strategic Hamlet Program, a maverick and highly dubious character who was suspected to have communist ties. If this faction failed in its task to oust Diem, the regime will be alerted to subsequent attempts fomented by other groups, to the detriment of all Diem opponents, according to general Don calculation. His difficulty was to unite and synchronize the myriad conspiracy plans. And dates had to be revised many times. For the Americans, it was just another proof that the generals couldn't make up their mind, and it didn't bode well for the new military junta later on. Ambassador Lodge compared them to 'spaghetti noodles that have to be moved when they curled under pressure'. He told the French envoy Lalouette that if the generals failed to deliver, he would look for the colonels to do the job!

Diem Nhu didn't stay idle during all this. They were plotting their own coup by devising a coded name counter plan called Bravo I. Their own spy network had ample information about the coup plotters and their plans. Moreover secrecy among gossipy generals and their entourage was hard to keep. On July 11th, Nhu even summoned the top generals in the country to warn them about risking their own neck if they try to mount another coup. It was before the pagodas incident. Don And Minh were in a very tenuous situation because leaks got out from all sources and they thought that even the Americans might be double-crossing them! These worries were confirmed when on Sept 1st, the Times of VN the English newspaper of the regime headlined: ' CIA financing planned coup d'etat'. Frankly the generals didn't need that.

The plot and counter plot got thicker like a John Le Carre novel when Nhu intended to lure his opponents into a trap by preempting them with his own coup, Bravo I. He asked his most loyal general, Dinh the commander of the Saigon area to fake a coup, sometime in October, just after the VN's national holiday of the 26th. With deployment of the Special Forces outside of the capital to distract his adversaries, Dinh's troops would occupy Saigon and stage a revolt to attract the real plotters to expose them and force them to react. With goon squads and fake anti-Diem units killings a few Americans and Vietnamese, and liberating a few political prisoners, Diem Nhu after a few days in hiding would come back with Dinh troops to restore calm and order. That should be the second part of the scheme called Bravo II. And Nhu opponents would face another fait accompli situation. Nhu wanted to repeat the same tactics of the pagodas raid and blaming the army once again.

Nhu's problem was that general Dinh and others couldn't keep up with his bizarre plans. These were treacherous moves which seemed attractive on paper but not easy to execute. Even the bombastic and macho airborne commander Dinh felt uneasy about their feasibility. He could hardly accept Nhu, a dilettante political strategist although much feared and respected, now getting involved in military matters. Dinh may not possess Nhu's intellect but he has a big ego too. Although most observers thought Dinh was loyal to the Diem family until the end, things began to change when Dinh noticed that he couldn't bet on a mad and losing side. The plan from Nhu was too fantastic to succeed and even if it did, it would create chaos and civil war in South VN. But still the other plotters didn't trust general Dinh.

Don had another general to worry about, the operation officer of the Joint Chiefs, Tran Thien Khiem, a professional conspirator who was part of the original coup, the Tuyen-Do Mau group. He was the most low key and obscure figure of the November coup although he played a central role due to his function as the operational officer of the Armed Forces. Khiem had the enviable position to be part of all the groups involved in the critical events at the time. He was a trusted Diem supporter who saved the regime back in 1960 during another coup attempt. He stuck his finger with Tuyen for unseating his own boss that he saved and he also got involved with Don and Minh as part of the more 'senior and wiser' generals to oust Diem. That's no small acrobatic feat for someone in VN to wear competing hats in that period. Khiem even became ambassador in Washington under general Khanh tenure, as a sign of disapproval for his role in the plot against Diem. And during Thieu regime, he later was appointed prime minister. And better, he was suspected to be a long time CIA agent.

Finally under Khiem's urging, Don and Minh started to make the ball rolling and put into action the long awaited coup. Khiem had some 'proofs' that Nhu secret talks with the North were serious enough to warrant the decision to get rid of the 2 brothers. Everything was in place, the different factions agreed to coordinate their plans under the leadership of big Minh. The date was set for sometime in November. And the rest of the events did create monumental changes to VN, unfortunately not for the better. At that moment in Saigon, tragedies were about to unfold. Looking back, Vietnamese and Americans surely feel now a sense of loss, of unfinished mission and guilt. Even as a small victim of Diem repression, I feel that the overthrow of Diem and his tragic death was 'the big mistake' among other mistakes of the war. And I will have to try hard to be fair to the coup leaders.