9. The death of Diem and Nhu

The generals decided on November 1st as the date to launch the attack on Diem although they still had some normal business to attend to. Tran Van Don has told his American CIA contact, colonel Lucien Conein to keep ambassador Lodge in town, so not to arouse any suspicion from Diem Nhu. They even received that day admiral Harry Felt the Pacific Fleet chief during a courtesy visit in Saigon. Don attended the meeting in the Presidential Palace that morning. He wanted to keep Diem in Saigon to effectively launch the coup. During their conversation, Diem did raise the question of an attempted coup and talked in an unusually direct manner to Lodge. 

The president seemed to know about the impending army revolt but was unable to give names. Maybe he was keeping some hope that both he and Nhu would prevail or convince Lodge and the US to change their mind. Before Lodge and Felt departed, Diem suddenly unleashed the most important phrases.  Diem said to Lodge that 'I would rather be frank and settle questions now than talk it about after we have lost everything. Tell president Kennedy that I take all his suggestions very seriously and wish to carry them out but it is a question of timing.' Some Diem supporters later insisted that Diem had really accepted the US offer to make peace with the Buddhists and ask Nhu to leave. It was another proof of his goodwill and real intention to improve. Or was it another trick for Diem to buy some more time? In any case Lodge couldn't change the turn of event. The coup was a few hours away and it was too late for Diem. He shouldn't wait until the last minute to back down.

At 1:30 pm, while the participating generals and officers were gathering at the Army HQ for a luncheon meeting, the key areas in Saigon were occupied like the airport, police headquarters, central Post Office. A few hours later Diem Nhu realized that their counter coup had failed. General Dinh already switched side and abandoned them to their fate. Colonel Tung the Special Forces commander was brought to the Army HQ and forced to tell Diem that he had surrendered. He was executed right after. Navy captain Ho Tan Quyen a Diem loyalist and commander of the VN navy was also shot by his officer in the very early hours of the coup. The insurgent troops were preparing for the assault against the main objective, the presidential guard units who were defending Diem at Gia Long Palace.

At 3:00pm, Diem phoned to the rebel HQ and talked to Don about reforms and a new government. Don told him it was too late and Diem had to surrender unconditionally and he promised safe conduct for the 2 brothers and their families. Minh repeated the same message as other generals did one after another. When Nhu phoned later he got the same answer.

At 4:00pm, Khiem reached the Palace and warned Diem that it was encircled by military units ready to attack. Don ordered 2 fighter planes to bomb the garrison defending Diem. They launched rockets and received heavy triple As in return.

At 4:30 pm, Diem phoned ambassador Lodge and the conversation was reported many times over. Essentially Diem wanted to sound out about the US attitude towards the coup organizers. Lodge did his best to give a straight answer. He changed the subject and offered the two brothers safe conducts to leave VN. Lodge seemed to worry about Diem and Nhu safety. Diem didn't bother to react to Lodge suggestion.

At 4:45pm, Tung before his execution, was ordered to tell Diem that the situation was hopeless and al resistance would be futile. General Minh warned that if the 2 brother didn't surrender, the Palace would be bombed in 5 minutes. Diem Nhu were unfazed by Minh's threat. But other reports indicated that Diem was ready to resign after these critical conversations with the generals. But he was prevented by Nhu who believed rightly or wrongly that they would be liquidated by the rebels if they surrendered.

Exploiting the confusion that reigned during the early hours of the siege, Diem Nhu walked away from he Gia Long Palace and entered a small car with the Republican Youth director Cao Xuan Vy and drove to Cho Lon, at the residence of Ma Tuyen, a republican youth loyalist of Chinese descent. They spent the night there. Diem frantically worked the phone until dawn the next day to look out for support from general Huynh Van Cao, the 4th Corps commander and other units around Saigon. But the loyal troops were cordoned off from Saigon by the rebels.

Nhu suggested to his brother to go their separate ways. Diem towards the Mekong Delta of general Cao and he would go north to the II Corps of general  Nguyen Khanh. Nhu logic was that if one of the two will be arrested, the coup leaders would not dare eliminating him for fear of reprisal from the remaining escaped brother. But Diem didn't want to separate from Nhu. It must have been tense and touching moments for until the end Diem still tried to protect his younger brother. Diem said to Nhu: 'if they catch you, they will kill you on the spot because they hate you. You stay with me, I will protect you. We've been through a lot since the last many years. We better stick together'.

Around 5:00am on November 2nd, Diem Nhu went to church not far from their hiding place to have confession and they attended mass for the last time.  At about 7:00am, captain Do Tho a Diem aide in the escape group phoned to his uncle Do Mau, a plotter to arrange for president Diem to be picked up by a military convoy. Minh hurriedly ordered general Mai Huu Xuan and colonel Lam, the Military Police chief to prepare for the two brothers to be transferred to the coup HQ, from Cho Lon. They used a M113  amphibious vehicle to transport Diem Nhu back to saigon. When the convoy arrived at the church, Nhu angrily protested that '...the transport vehicle was unfit for a president, and we are not prisoners'. Diem thought that he could go back to the Gia Long Palace before meeting the rebel leaders at the Army HQ. Xuan responded that there is no possibility to go back to the Palace for 'security reason'. It was the same answer he used when I was detained on August 25th!  After some haggling the two were forcibly shoved into the M113 , in an undignified way. And their fate was sealed in that armored vehicle.

During that time general Minh conferred with a few of the plotters about Diem's future. Many versions were told about what happened next. The most credible account was that Minh already gave the secret order to his aide captain Nhung to kill the two brothers before they went out to receive them in Cho Lon. Some other sources told a different story, that Minh was too undecided to make such a  critically important decision alone, without a vote from each and every one of the coup leaders. With his weak character, Minh must have preferred to share the burden of the murder of Diem Nhu with them. While the meeting took place to decide  about Diem Nhu's fate the convoy was doing big circles in the streets of Saigon awaiting a verdict from the deliberation.

According to the second version, the coup organizers decided by a vote of 10 out of 12 in favor of death for Diem Nhu. But the mystery just thickened. Many of them were curiously missing during the fateful vote, like the sophisticated Tran Van Don, his mild-mannered Le Van Kim, Nguyen Khanh the last minute coup member and also absent was Nguyen Van Thieu, the 5th division army commander which was given the mission to attack the Presidential Palace. Thieu becoming president 4 years later vehemently denounced Minh for killing Diem. It looked like Minh had set up a kangaroo court , with all his backers around him to decide beforehand that Diem Nhu must be eliminated and presented the more reluctant plotters with a fait accompli. In the end all the fingers pointed to big Minh as the man who ordered Diem's murder. But we will never know who really gave the order to kill, for the coup organizers had sworn not to tell the truth, so to avoid individual responsibility. By doing so they had the smart idea to be blamed collectively in the eyes of history! It was a callous act unworthy of Minh and the rest of the junta and it didn't bode well for the military regime replacing Diem.

When the convoy arrived at the JGS HQ and they opened the vehicle back hatch the two brothers were already dead. It was a gruesome execution that we don't need going into details. Some of the generals were genuinely shocked by the bloody murder of the two brothers. Others much less so. When Don asked Minh on the spot about the circumstances of their killings, Minh shot back: 'it's none of your business! They are dead...' But intelligent coup leaders like Don realized that it was a tragic blunder that might already explained the failure of the new military government. With the continuous wrangling and suspicion, its existence will be short lived. Nobody seemed to be happy about the swift success of the coup, except the ordinary people on the streets of Saigon. Looking back at the pictures of the coup leaders, who were part of the Revolutionary Military Council, during press conferences and official appearances, they all expressed grim and grieving faces, as if they just attended some sort of funeral. Now the new leaders had a lot of damage control to work on and some explaining to do. And a lot of internal bickering about who's to blame for Diem's death.

Washington still didn't know about the brothers' murder and president Kennedy gave a direct order to find them. The message was relayed to the CIA contact Lucien Conein. He headed back to the JGS HQ and talked to Minh and inquired about Diem Nhu fate.
'They committed suicide' says Minh. 'Somehow they escaped from the Palace to Cho Lon. They were in a Catholic church. And they killed themselves.' 'Look' Conein says. ' You are a Buddhist. I am a Catholic. If a priest holds Mass for them tonight, everybody is going to know that he didn't commit suicide. That story won't hold water.' And it was All Souls' Day when Catholics pray for all who have died without atoning for their sins.

Back in Washington November 2nd, 1963, 9:35 am, the White House Cabinet Room. Kennedy: 'It's hard to believe he'd committed suicide given his strong religious career.' Ngo Dinh Diem 's spiritual career included years in New Jersey seminary, daily Mass and Communion and a commitment to sexual abstinence. Suicide is a mortal sin in Catholic theology, warrant for eternal damnation. Diem's death was not his choice. Roger Hilsman, one of JFK advisors, clings to the suicide story: ' He's a Catholic but an Asian Catholic' Hilsman says. JFK: 'He's what?' Hilsman: ' He's an Asian Catholic. suicide, and not only that, he's a, a mandarin. It seem to me not at all inconsistent with Armageddon'. Hilsman the State expert on Far Eastern affairs trying to explain the Diem enigma!

A few hours later when the news were confirming Diem's murder, the president tried to understand; 'If big Minh ordered the execution, then, then, uh I don't know. Do we think he meant to?'
'There's some suspicion' Hilsman says. 'Some think he did' Bundy says. 'Some think he did' repeats Hilsman. The president says: 'Pretty stupid'. He may refer both to Minh's lack of character by killing Diem and Hilsman's lack of explanation.

I remember vividly the episode when I heard on the radio about the news of Diem's suicide on the afternoon of November 2nd. Then, there was a press conference by Tran Tu Oai, the spokesman for the junta that I remembered listening. He and others tried to spin a few days later to the press that there was a fight (the French word he used was escarmouche) between  Nhu and some officers before boarding the M113. Nhu as general Oai explained, tried to kill himself by seizing the pistol from an officer and accidentally was killed. As for Diem he tried to prevent his brother from the act and during the 'melee' was also shot 'accidentally'. So to summarize it was 2 accidental suicides!

I was still traumatized by my own experience with Diem Nhu a few months earlier to shed tears on their death. But with hindsight I really admit that their assassination was the most shameful act of the military in VN. The murders were horrible enough but the way the new plot leaders tried to justify what really happened was beyond me. First they talked about suicide from a very religious person, Ngo Dinh Diem. I understand that big Minh was a Buddhist and he may be ignorant about religious matters. But how about the rest of the group? There were plenty of Catholics in the military and they should know better. Even a high school kid would know it. Secondly they changed their version and talked about accidental suicide, as they demonstrated in a flimsy way in the press conference. And then people noticed later on the pictures in the New York times that the two brothers had their hands tied behind their back drowned in blood lying inside the armored vehicle. As some commentators said: ' It's pretty difficult to commit suicide with their hands tied from behind!'

There are no sufficient words to describe the abject incompetence of the new military leaders and their abnormal mediocrity while facing the desperate gravity of the country situation. By killing Diem and covering up their intention in an amateurish way, they showed an image of deceit and bloodiness that handcuffed their future actions. Most of them had already doubts about the political legitimacy of their role and the effectiveness of their administration.The people of South VN and their US ally will be very disappointed shortly long after. Nothing came out from their stay in power. During the next 3 months, all they did was picking their nose and waiting for another general to oust them. The chaotic situation in VN had just dragged on for another few years.