Mysterious tape of JFK speaking with Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. about Vietnam

[Douglas Caddy]

Luke A. Nichter wrote on Facebook today:

I've been a little slow to post something about this, in part because it's a strange experience to have a book come out during a pandemic. It's caused interest to be spread out over a much longer time -- since we've had nothing else on our minds since it was released in September (!)

This is a story about a mysterious tape of JFK speaking with Ambassador to Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. The tape itself has a mysterious origin after officially not existing, then turning up decades later at the JFK Library in Boston. It offers new clues about how the U.S. became involved in Vietnam. The tape has been overlooked by every major history of Vietnam that I am aware of -- including the recent PBS series by Ken Burns.

This is a link to a 5 minute video that includes the tape:

 

JFK & Vietnam | Full Measure

 

 

Edited March 20, 2021 by Douglas Caddy

[Douglas Caddy]

Jay Veith on Facebook: You and I discussed this many times, but who is Lodge referring to that will kill everyone?

Luke A. Nichter:  He's referring to what he was told at the South Vietnamese Embassy the night before, when he had dinner with Madame Nhu's parents. He doesn't identify who would do the assassinating, but repeats more than once that they -- Diem, Nhu, and Madame Nhu -- were likely to be killed in a coup.

[Douglas Caddy]

Luke A. Nichter observes: The fuller story is in the book, but this provides a good overview.

 

 

 

[Cliff Varnell]

Pres. Kennedy: I assume that probably this fellow’s [Diem’s] in an impossible situation to save. I don’t know whether we’d be better off - whether the alternative would be better. Maybe it will be. If so, then we have to move in that direction.

This was 9 days before the infamous Cable 243 green-lit the coup against Diem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_243

Damning.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 22, 2021 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

Face it:  On August 15. 1963, JFK was way in over his head.

Ellen J. Hammer, A Death in November, pg 156:

<quote on, emphasis in the original>

When [Diem and Nhu] had first claimed that Americans were active behind the scenes in the agitation spreading in Saigon, they had sounded paranoid – a favorite word among Americans for Diem and Nhu that summer.  But who could disbelieve [David] Halberstam, with his excellent sources in the Central Intelligence Agency, when he reported that the CIA had been openly sending its agents into the pagodas and making daily contact with Buddhist priests and “other participants in this crisis”?  These agents were acting under orders – and they did not go to the pagodas to discuss the finer points of Buddhism.

<quote off>

No, the CIA's Far East cowboys weren’t discussing the finer points of Buddhism – they were teaching American-style public relations.

Roger Hilsman:  Buddhists bit – tasted a little bit of political blood.  Bit harder – tasted more political blood -- and then finally began to use American television.  None of them spoke English but their signs were all in English.

(36.53)

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

Definitely damning. It seems like JFK is just being lead along. At least damning to JFK's narrative of events.

1 hour ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Pres. Kennedy: I assume that probably this fellow’s [Diem’s] in an impossible situation to save. I don’t know whether we’d be better off - whether the alternative would be better. Maybe it will be. If so, then we have to move in that direction.

This was 9 days before the infamous Cable 243 green-lit the coup against Diem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_243

Damning.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 22, 2021 by Kirk Gallaway

[David Andrews]

On 3/21/2021 at 8:04 PM, Cliff Varnell said:

 

JFK on the Diem government @43:40 in the Vietnam: A Television History doc -- "...With changes in policy, and perhaps personnel..."  When people hear that in a meeting at work, they start sending out resumes.

Edited March 23, 2021 by David Andrews

[Kirk Gallaway]

On 3/22/2021 at 8:58 PM, David Andrews said:

JFK on the Diem government @43:40 in the Vietnam: A Television History doc -- "...With changes in policy, and perhaps personnel..."  When people hear that in a meeting at work, they start sending out resumes.

JFK: with changes in policy and perhaps personnel

 

 Call Human Resources Dave!!!, We need new personnel!

"Personnel", Now that's what they mean by JFK's "communication skills", that people always rave about and emulate.

In fact I thought somewhere I heard the same quote from Alan Dulles!

Sorry, Just a little gallows humor between Dave and I!

********

JFK on Diem :An impossible situation to save..

Yeah, like a month old mango! Even pigs brains might be a better alternative now1

[David Andrews]

18 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

JFK: with changes in policy and perhaps personnel

 

 Call Human Resources Dave!!!, We need new personnel!

"Personnel", Now that's what they mean by JFK's "communication skills", that people always rave about and emulate.

In fact I thought somewhere I heard the same quote from Alan Dulles!

Sorry, Just a little gallows humor between Dave and I!

 

Diem and Nhu essentially did it to themselves.  They divided South Vietnam between Buddhists and non-Buddhists, and persecuted the traditional faith, making it look like the US was supporting the Christianization/secularization of a newly reformed and unstable society.  To Kennedy it might have seemed like unasked for neocolonialism.  I'm surprised the US right-wing press didn't call it a JFK plot to "Catholicize" SVN.

Edited March 27, 2021 by David Andrews

[Kirk Gallaway]

33 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

Diem and Nhu essentially did it to themselves.  They divided South Vietnam between Buddhists and non-Buddhists, and persecuted the traditional faith, making it look like the US was supporting the Christianization/secularization of a newly reformed and unstable society.  To Kennedy it might have seemed like unasked for neocolonialism.  I'm surprised the US right-wing press didn't call it a JFK plot to "Catholicize" SVN.

True, if he wasn't sure before he knew he had to get out by this time. He was already in ankle deep. He does seem somewhat sympathetic to Diem though.

[David Andrews]

The more I look at the old films, and the interview comments of people like Lodge and Hilsman, the more it seems that Diem and Nhu (and Madane Nhu) were an embarrassment to the US establishment.  Diem picked up Catholic anti-communism at Notre Dame but not the graces of a pluralistic society.  Lodge was too embarrassed, or too disgusted, to send a US plane to take Diem and Nhu out of the country, which would seem to be his job as ambassador.  That's the extremity of the new "It's their war" principal.

I'd like to know more about what we were doing to create a free market economy in South Vietnam.  If we had worked harder at that and invested more quickly, could multinational corporatism have contained Diem and recreated South Vietnamese society?  Jobs at PepsiCo could have been the social support system lacking under Diem.  But we preferred to make it our war.

I suspect that Kennedy sidestepped his way into approving a coup supported by the military, State and CIA.  I don't think Lodge and Hilsman were running any cables behind his back on the fatal weekend.  JFK ought to have assured Diem and Nhu's safe escape, for the honor of the failed experiment, as we'd been grooming Diem since university.  But I feel that Diem and Nhu were responsible for an unstable SVN and increased support for communism in the south and north.  They made a free society ungovernable.

Edited March 27, 2021 by David Andrews

[Cliff Varnell]

2 hours ago, David Andrews said:

The more I look at the old films, and the interview comments of people like Lodge and Hilsman, the more it seems that Diem and Nhu (and Madane Nhu) were an embarrassment to the US establishment.  Diem picked up Catholic anti-communism at Notre Dame but not the graces of a pluralistic society.  Lodge was too embarrassed, or too disgusted, to send a US plane to take Diem and Nhu out of the country, which would seem to be his job as ambassador.  That's the extremity of the new "It's their war" principal.

I'd like to know more about what we were doing to create a free market economy in South Vietnam.  If we had worked harder at that and invested more quickly, could multinational corporatism have contained Diem and recreated South Vietnamese society?  Jobs at PepsiCo could have been the social support system lacking under Diem.  But we preferred to make it our war.

I suspect that Kennedy sidestepped his way into approving a coup supported by the military, State and CIA.  I don't think Lodge and Hilsman were running any cables behind his back on the fatal weekend.  JFK ought to have assured Diem and Nhu's safe escape, for the honor of the failed experiment, as we'd been grooming Diem since university.  But I feel that Diem and Nhu were responsible for an unstable SVN and increased support for communism in the south and north.  They made a free society ungovernable.

 

Factually incorrect.

May 8, 1963. Hue, South Vietnam.  Buddhist protesters crowded around a radio station when two explosions killed eight people.  The Catholic Diem regime blamed the Viet Cong; the Buddhists blamed Diem.

JFK and the Unspeakable, James Douglass, pg 130-1

<quote on, emphasis added>

Dr. Le Khac Quyen, the hospital director at Hue, said after examining the victim's bodies that he had never seen suchinjuries. The bodies had been decapitated. He found no metal in the  corpses, only holes. There were no wounds below the chest. In his official finding, Dr. Quyen ruled that "the death of the people was caused by an explosion which took place in mid-air," blowing off their heads and mutilating their bodies...

...In May 1963, Diem's younger brother, Ngo Dinh Can, who ruled Hue, thought from the very beginning that the Viet Cong had nothing to do with the explosions at the radio station.   According to an investigation carried out by the Catholic newspaper, Hoa Binh, Ngo Dinh Can and his advisers were "convinced the explosions had to be the work of an American agent who wanted to make trouble for Diem." In 1970 Hoa Binh located such a man, a Captain Scott, who in later years became a U.S. military adviser in the Mekong Delta. Scott had come to Hue from Da Nang on May 7, 1963. He admitted he was the American agent responsible for the bombing at the radio station the next day. He said he used "an explosive that was still secret and known only to certain people at the Central Intelligence Agency, a charge no larger than a matchbox with a timing device."
<quote off>

JFK suffered back/throat wounds without exits that left no metal in his body.

 

[Cliff Varnell]

30 years ago I had a girlfriend Kim who is the daughter of an officer in Nhu's police corps.  She's Buddhist.  13 at the time of Diem's overthrow, Kim said there was no strife between Catholics and Buddhists until it was ginned up by the Central Intelligence Agency.

By the time JFK green-lit the coup the Catholic/Buddhist strife was calming down.

Ellen J. Hammer, A Death in November, pg 278:

<quote on, emphasis added>

On Thursday, October 31, General Don went to Gia Long Palace and talked with both Diem and Nhu.  He inquired about the petition he and General Dinh had given Diem in September, asking for cabinet posts and policy changes.  He was told that since everything had resumed to normal there was no need for changes…

General Don was busy on Thursday with last-minute preparations for the coming action.  That was the day [activist professor] Buu-Hoi went with two Buddhist monks to see Ngo Dinh Nhu.  They asked him to intervene with Diem to set free “all Buddhist dignitaries, laymen and students still under detention,” and Nhu “promised to obtain from the president a favorable answer to this request.”

The news was announced in an official press release.  It would be a banner headline on the front page of the Times of Vietnam the next day.

This was awkward news for the generals.  The Buddhist issue, which had been slipping away ever since the arrival of the mission from the United Nations {Oct. 24], seemed to be disappearing before their eyes, and a convenient excuse for their coup with it.

<quote off>

 

James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, pgs 201-2

<quote on>

In Saigon on Friday morning, November 1, Ambassador Lodge and Admiral Harry Felt, Commander in Chief of the Pacific, met with President Diem, as rebel troops were gathering outside the city…

“Tell President Kennedy that I take all his suggestions very seriously and wish to carry them out but it is a question of timing.”

This was the response from Diem that Kennedy had been waiting for, and Lodge recognized it.  In his comment on Diem’s statement, Lodge cabled: “If U.S. wants to make a package deal, I would think we were in a position to do it.  The conditions of my return [to Washington] could be propitious for it.  In effect he said: Tell us what you want and we’ll do it.”

A milestone had been reached.  Diem had finally responded to Kennedy in a hopeful way through a reluctant ambassador, and Lodge had conveyed the message to Washington with a supportive comment.

However, Lodge buried Diem’s message to Kennedy near the end of his report.  Moreover, he did not send the report on his breakthrough conversation with Diem until 3:00 PM, an hour and a half after the coup had started.  He also chose to send this critical cable by the slowest possible process rather than “Critical Flash,” which would have given it immediate attention in Washington.  As a result of Lodge’s slow writing and transmission of Diem’s urgent message to Kennedy, it did not arrive at the State Department until hours after the rebel generals had laid siege to the presidential palace.  It was too late.

<quote off>

Edited March 28, 2021 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

This is why Diem was overthrown.

"Today's World Report: Truce Moves Reported In Viet Nam," New York World-Telegram & Sun, (Friday), 25 October 1963, p.6:

"LONDON - The government of South Vietnam and Communist North Viet Nam are apparently making exploratory contacts that could lead to a truce, diplomatic sources said. There was no official confirmation…Diplomatic sources said the current moves were believed to be aiming at some sort of truce arrangement with possible wider ramifications." <quote off>

[David Andrews]

Buddhists weren't Diem's only issue, but they were his most visible issue worldwide.  It's that antipathy, plus Diem's other sins, that estranged him from the SVN military, and eventually the American military, with the predictable result that Kennedy dropped him and gave the Military and CIA a greenlight.  Diem was chiefly embarrassing to the US because he could not govern, couldn't build coalitions.  Cliff shows Diem was anxious to follow American dictates at the end, so who's to say that that truce wasn't one of them.  Ask the Native Americans how much stock we put in truces.

Edited March 28, 2021 by David Andrews