Arrest and Assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem - Surrender and Debate

Surrender and Debate

See also: 1963 South Vietnamese coup

At 13:30 on 1 November, Generals Dương Văn Minh and Trần Văn Đôn, respectively the Presidential Military Adviser and Army Chief of Staff, led a coup against President Ngô Đình Diệm, assisted by mutinous ARVN officers. The rebels had carefully devised plans to neutralise loyalist officers to prevent them from saving Diệm. Unknown to Diệm, General Đính, the supposed loyalist who commanded the ARVN III Corps that surrounded the Saigon area, had allied himself with the plotters of the coup. The second of Diệm's most trusted loyalist generals was Huỳnh Văn Cao, who commanded the IV Corps in the Mekong Delta. Diệm and Nhu were aware of the coup plan, and Nhu responded by planning a counter-coup, which he called Operation Bravo. This plan involved Đính and Colonel Tung, the loyalist commander of the Special Forces, staging a phony rebellion before their forces crushed the "uprising" to reaffirm the power of the Ngô family. Unaware that Đính was plotting against him, Nhu allowed Đính to organise troops as he saw fit, and Đính transferred the command of the Seventh Division from Cao's IV Corps to his own III Corps. This allowed Colonel Nguyễn Hữu Có, Đính's deputy, to take command of the 7th Division based at Mỹ Tho. The transfer allowed the rebels to completely encircle the capital and denied Cao the opportunity of storming Saigon and protecting Diệm, as he had done during the previous coup attempt in 1960. Minh and Đôn had invited senior Saigon based officers to a meeting at Tân Sơn Nhứt Air Base, headquarters of the Joint General Staff (JGS), on the pretext of routine business. Instead, they announced that a coup was underway, with only a few, including Tung, refusing to join. Tung was later forced at gunpoint to order his loyalist Special Forces to surrender. The coup went smoothly as the rebels quickly captured all key installations in Saigon and sealed incoming roads to prevent loyalist forces from entering. This left only the Presidential Guard to defend Gia Long Palace. The rebels attacked government and loyalist army buildings but delayed the attack on the palace, hoping that Diệm would resign and accept the offer of safe passage and exile. Diệm refused, vowing to reassert his control. After sunset, the 7th Division of Colonel Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, who later became the nation's president, led an assault on Gia Long Palace and it fell by daybreak.

In the early morning of 2 November, Diệm agreed to surrender. The ARVN officers had intended to exile Diệm and Nhu, having promised the Ngô brothers safe passage out of the country. At 06:00, just before dawn, the officers held a meeting at JGS headquarters to discuss the fate of the Ngô brothers. According to Lucien Conein, the US Army officer and CIA operative who was the American liaison with the coup, most of the officers, including Minh, wanted Đôn to have an "honorable retirement" from office, followed by exile. Not all of the senior officers attended the meeting, with having already left to make arrangements for the arrival of Diệm and Nhu at JGS headquarters. General Lê, a former police chief under Diệm in the mid-1950s, strongly lobbied for Diệm's execution. There was no formal vote taken at the meeting, and Lê attracted only minority support. One general was reported to have said "To kill weeds, you must pull them up at the roots". Conein reported that the generals had never indicated that assassination was in their minds, since an orderly transition of power was a high priority in achieving their ultimate aim of gaining international recognition.

Minh and Đôn asked Conein to secure an American aircraft to take the brothers out of the country. Two days earlier, U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., had alerted Washington that such a request was likely and recommended Saigon as the departure point. This request put the Kennedy administration in a difficult position, as the provision of an airplane would publicly tie it to the coup. When Conein telephoned David Smith, the acting chief of the Saigon CIA station, there was a ten minute delay. The U.S. government would not allow the aircraft to land in any country, unless that state was willing to grant asylum to Diệm. The United States did not want Diệm and Nhu to form a government in exile and wanted them far away from Vietnam. Assistant Secretary of State Roger Hilsman had written in August that "under no circumstances should the Nhus be permitted to remain in Southeast Asia in close proximity to Vietnam because of the plots they will mount to try to regain power. If the generals decide to exile Diệm, he should also be sent outside Southeast Asia." He further went on to anticipate what he termed a "Götterdämmerung in the palace".

We should encourage the coup group to fight the battle to the end and destroy the palace if necessary to gain victory. Unconditional surrender should be the terms for the Ngô family since it will otherwise seek to outmaneuver both the coups forces and the U.S. If the family is taken alive, the Nhus should be banished to France or any other country willing to receive them. Diệm should be treated as the generals wish.

After surrendering, Diệm called Lodge by telephone for the last time. Lodge did not report the conversation to Washington, so it was widely assumed that the pair last spoke on the previous afternoon when the coup was just starting. However, after Lodge died in 1985, his aide, Colonel Mike Dunn said that Lodge and Diệm spoke for the last time around 19:00 on 2 November moments after Diệm surrendered. When Diệm called, Lodge "put on hold" and then walked away. Upon his return, the ambassador offered Diệm and Nhu asylum, but would not arrange for transportation to the Philippines until the next day. This contradicted his earlier offer of asylum the previous day when he implored Diệm to not resist the coup. Dunn offered to personally go to the brothers' hideout to escort him so that the generals could not kill him, but Lodge refused, saying, "We just can't get that involved." Dunn said, "I was really astonished that we didn't do more for them." Having refused to help the brothers to leave the country safely, Lodge later said after they had been shot, "What would we have done with them if they had lived? Every Colonel Blimp in the world would have made use of them."

Dunn also claimed that Lodge put Diệm on hold in order to inform Conein where the Ngô brothers were so the generals could capture them. When confronted about Dunn's claim by a historian, Conein denied the account. It was also revealed that Conein had phoned the embassy early on the same morning to inquire about the generals' request for a plane to transport Diệm and Nhu out of Saigon. One of Lodge's staff told Conein that the plane would have to go directly to the faraway asylum-offering country, so that the brothers could not disembark at a nearby stopover country and stay there to foment a counter-coup. Conein was told that the nearest plane that was capable of such a long range flight was in Guam, and it would take 24 hours to make the necessary arrangements. Minh was astounded and told Conein that the generals could not hold Diệm for that period. Conein did not suspect a deliberate delay by the American embassy. In contrast, a U.S. Senate investigative commission in the early 1970s raised a provocative thought: "One wonders what became of the U.S. military aircraft that had been dispatched to stand by for Lodge's departure, scheduled for the previous day." The historian Mark Moyar suspected that Lodge could have flown Diệm to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, which was under American jurisdiction, before taking him to the final destination. Moyar speculated that "when Lodge had offered the jet the day before, he had done it to induce Diệm to give up at a time when the outcome of the insurrection was very much in doubt. Now that the coup clearly had succeeded, Lodge no longer needed to offer such an incentive."