Madame Nhu - Visiting The United States

Visiting The United States

When Acting U.S. ambassador William Trueheart warned that development aid might be withheld if the repression orchestrated by the Ngôs continued, Madame Nhu denounced it as "blackmail". Nhu and Diệm, fearing a cut in aid, sent Madame Nhu to the United States on a speaking tour. She departed South Vietnam on 9 September in an expedition that brought widespread international scorn to her family's regime. She had predicted "a triumphant lecture tour". She left on 17 September for the Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting in Yugoslavia, followed by a trip to Italy and possibly to the United States, where she had an invitation to speak before the Overseas Press Club of New York.

Madame Nhu's comments were such that President John F. Kennedy became personally concerned. He asked his advisers to find means of having Diệm gag her. McGeorge Bundy thought her comments were so damaging that it would only be acceptable for Ngô Đình Diệm to remain in power if she were out of the picture. The National Security Council deemed her a threat to U.S. security, and told the then United States Ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. to seek her permanent removal from South Vietnam.

There was also speculation that she could turn up at the United Nations in New York and embarrass South Vietnam and the U.S. Bundy said in a meeting that "this was the first time the world had been faced with collective madness in a ruling family since the days of the czars" and her comments provoked much debate on how to get Diệm to silence her.

In Madame Nhu's first destination, Belgrade, she said that "President Kennedy, is a politician, and when he hears a loud opinion speaking in a certain way, he tries to appease it somehow", referring to the opposition to her family's rule.

The issue resulted in an awkward confrontation when U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Maxwell Taylor, traveled to Vietnam for a fact-finding mission about the progress of the war. One of the purposes of the mission was to achieve, in the words of President Kennedy, "a visible reduction in influence of Nhus, who are symbol to disaffected of all that they dislike in GVN. This we think would require Nhus' departure from Saigon and preferably Vietnam at least for extended vacation."

In the 29 September 1963 meeting with Diệm, McNamara bemoaned "the ill-advised and unfortunate declarations of Madame Nhu", who had described U.S. military advisors as "acting like little soldiers of fortune". McNamara said that such comments would damage bilateral military cooperation and deter American officers from helping the South Vietnamese forces. Lodge denounced the comments and said, "These men should be thanked, not insulted." However, one of his aides lost his composure and asked if "there were not something the government could do to shut her up." Diệm was stunned by the comments and retorted that "one cannot deny a lady the right to defend herself when she has been unjustly attacked", saying his sister-in-law was entitled to freedom of speech. But McNamara reinforced the point, noting to Diem that "This is not satisfactory. The problems were real and serious. They had to be solved before the war could be won."

Madame Nhu arrived in the United States on 7 October, and her arrival was greeted by the United Nations' launching of an inquiry into the repression of Buddhists in South Vietnam. Kennedy had resisted the temptation to deny her an entry visa and his administration soon came under a flurry of verbal attacks.

Despite the United States Vice President Lyndon Johnson's advice for her to stop damaging relations with inflammatory remarks, Madame Nhu refused to back down, describing herself a "scapegoat" for American shortcomings and failures. She went on to accuse the administration of betraying her family, saying "I refuse to play the role of an accomplice in an awful murder ... According to a few immature American junior officials—too imbued by a real but obsolete imperialist spirit, the Vietnamese regime is not puppet enough and must be liquidated." She accused the Americans of undermining South Vietnam through "briberies, threats and other means" to destroy her family because they "do not like" it. She further mocked Kennedy's entourage, asking why "all the people around President Kennedy are pink?"

She denounced American liberals as "worse than communists" and Buddhists as "hooligans in robes". Her father did not share the same beliefs and followed her around the country rebutting her comments, denouncing the "injustice and oppression" and stating that his daughter had "become unwittingly the greatest asset to the communists." She predicted that Buddhism would become extinct in Vietnam.

In the wake of the tumultuous events, Madame Nhu appeared on NBC-TV's Meet the Press on 13 October 1963, defending her actions and those of the South Vietnamese government. "I don't know why you Americans dislike us ... Is it because the world is under a spell called liberalism? Your own public, here in America, is not as anti-Communistic as ours is in Vietnam. Americans talk about my husband and I leaving our native land permanently. Why should we do this? Where would we go? To say that 70 percent of my country's population is Buddhistic is absolutely true. My father, who was our ambassador to the United States until two months ago, has been against me since my childhood."