199. Memorandum From the Public Affairs Officer at the Embassy in Vietnam (Mecklin) to the Ambassador in Vietnam (Nolting)1
SUBJECT
- Lunch With President Diem, Cap St. Jacques, May 17, 1962
The invitation to lunch was issued only 24 hours in advance and presumably was a result of my remark to Minister Nguyen Dinh Thuan a few days earlier that I hoped to renew my 1953-55 acquaintance with Diem. I was taken to Cap St. Jacques in an ARVN helicopter, accompanied by Truong Buu Khanh, director of Vietnam Presse, who was the only other person present during the interview and lunch. Diem told me he had come to Cap St. Jacques earlier that morning for an inspection tour. He said it was the third time he had been there in seven years.
[Page 410]Altogether I spent 4-1/2 hours with the President. As compared with my recollection of seven years ago, I found him remarkably unchanged physically, but distinctly more confident (or uninformed?), relaxed and sophisticated. He remembered me well (asked about Henry Luceʼs health) and immediately promised to make arrangements when I said I hoped to call on Brother Nhu. Khanh told me afterward that he had seldom seen Diem talk to a foreigner so candidly.
The conversation (in French) ranged over everything from corn on the cob (“one of the best things they have in America”) to the personality of Ho Chi Minh (“he looks over your head when you’re with him and does all the talking; if you try to say something, he doesn’t hear you”). The President also talked knowingly for five minutes about Andre Malraux after I presented him with a fancy, two-volume edition of Malraux’ “History of the American People” (in French) in the name of the U.S. Mission to Vietnam.
My intention at the outset was to let the President guide the conversation, to try to establish a rapport at this meeting, and to leave any pitches until another occasion. Diem soon made it clear, however, that he was in a mood for more give and take than that. The substantive results:
Diemʼs personal image. During a discursive recital by Diem on the importance of the President keeping in touch with the people, I remarked that Vietnamʼs new radio facilities now made it possible for him to reach millions of his people at once, as against a few hundred at each personal appearance. He said the new transmitters were tremendously important but that a chief of state should not use the radio too often because the people become bored. “Look what happened to Bao Dai,” he said. I said Bao Dai was no leader and, in any case, had nothing to say. I then suggested that he, Diem, was personally a valuable weapon because the VC have no well-known leader and also because he has a strong following among the villagers of Vietnam. Diem: “Thatʼs the same thing Mr. Nolting says.” He went on to complain that on the occasions when he has made radio speeches—citing his recent May Day message specifically—the foreign press has taken no notice. “Itʼs only when people like Sihanouk spit in their faces that they write about it,” he said.
I said that what counts is reaching his own people, much more than the foreign press, that this is a time of deep crisis for his country and the people needed reassurance. I told him about President Rooseveltʼs fireside chats during World War II, how he so successfully appeared to take the people into his confidence at a moment when their sons and husbands were fighting and dying overseas, just as Vietnamese sons and husbands are fighting and dying today. I said Roosevelt was a great politician who understood how badly the people [Page 411] wanted to know what was happening, what their government was doing, what the problems were, and thus to feel part of the team. I said that in this time of deep crisis in the cold war Presidents Eisenhower and now Kennedy were both using the same technique.
Diem listened attentively to all this, then half shook his head, as though to be rid of an indigestible thought. I said that USIS had a 10minute film of President Kennedy making one of his recent TV/radio talks to the people and asked if he would like to see it. Without hesitation, Diem said yes. Then he added that the palace projector had broken down. I said we would bring one of our projectors. Diem said fine—and confirmed this again later as I was leaving.
(We will, of course, follow through on this as quickly as possible. Would you like to join the act, perhaps by a formal query on when it would be convenient for the President to see the film? Maybe we could combine this with a showing of one or two of the newly completed task force films for village audiences?)
My feeling was that Diem agreed to see the film out of curiosity whether there just might be something to this fireside chat business, not because he had been convinced. In any case, he now returned to his apparent preoccupation with the indifference of the foreign press to his speeches. He said he thought this was the fault of his translators. He said he had long been trying unsuccessfully to find competent Vietnamese-to-English and French-to-English translators. (He added rather cryptically that “the British” had found him a good English-to-Vietnamese translator.) I suggested perhaps USIS could help and the President said fine.
(We will also, of course, pursue this forthwith. My immediate thought is that perhaps we should try to place somebody who would remain—officially and openly—on the USIS payroll and thus possibly provide a channel for exercising some editorial influence on content.)
At this point I felt that Diem was so considerably interested in the problem of communicating that I could risk an adventure. I asked if he had a good speech writer. He said he had none at all, almost as though such a thing had never occurred to him. I expressed surprise and said it was commonplace for chiefs of state and many other top people all over the world to employ professional writers, men who would listen to the bossʼs ideas and then put them down in eloquent language. Diem said this was a good idea. I said perhaps we could help find somebody. Diem said fine. I said of course it should be a Vietnamese? Diem: “I donʼt know a man in Vietnam who could do this.” I said: “You mean you would consider an American?” Diem: “Yes.” Then after a momentʼs thought: “But of course it must be a man we know, with a good background.” I said I would begin a search for the right man immediately, including a query to Washington. He nodded, apparently [Page 412] undisturbed. I asked how to pursue the matter and Diem said that Thaun would handle it. He also reconfirmed all this as I was leaving.
At the Colby cocktail party a few hours later, I ran into Thuan and said I had discussed a number of projects with the President, who had referred me to him to implement, and that I would like to call on him within the next day or so. Thuan said Diem had already told him about “the good conversation he had with you” and that we could get together next week.
(Obviously thereʼs a good possibility that Diemʼs advisors will talk him out of all this, but we do have an asset in the fact that Khanh, a relatively secondary figure, was present.) My feeling is that we should follow through with all possible speed and try to come up with a candidate by the middle of next week. You will know best about the mechanics of the cable to Washington, but I can think of several people who might be invited to make suggestions: USIS Deputy Director Don Wilson, who worked with me here in 1954-55; … Bob Manning, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, also a Time-Life alumnus and my good friend.
One candidate who occurs to me immediately is Howie Simpson, presently Assistant Press Attaché in Paris, who served several years (circa 1953-55) in Vietnam with USIS, who subsequently wrote a good novel about Dienbienphu, “To a Quiet Valley,” and who happens to be unhappy in his present position. Heʼs an unpolished type but intelligent, a fine writer, adequate in French, thoroughly likeable. Iʼm sure some of Diemʼs people would remember him and I think favorably. Heʼs an FSR-3 or 4.
(Assuming anything ever comes of this, there is the obvious problem of the manʼs official position once he gets to Saigon. From our viewpoint, I think it would be most effective for him to be attached to USIS or the embassy where he could keep in close touch with policy considerations, with some kind of cover assignment. But I suppose itʼs at least possible that Diem would resist any kind of direct official tie with the U.S. and perhaps would even insist on our assurance that the man would work wholly independently of officialdom. This, I think, is a question we should consider at some length, and then play by ear.)
The foreign press. Following Diemʼs several unhappy references to the foreign press, I invited him to discuss the problem. Iʼm sure you have heard most of what he said: Sully is a French spy; displeasure at the frequent reference to “American officials” as the source of unfavorable stories; the correspondents’ irresponsible dredging of what Diem calls “Radio Catinat” (meaning the Rue Catinat bars) for information. My impression was that he is no longer angry about his treatment in the foreign press, but resigned to it, perplexed by it, and most reluctant to do anything about it. He volunteered that most of his [Page 413] ministers had “failed” to deal effectively with the correspondents, and that Mme. Nhu had shown a “mauvaise charactere” in her bitter vindictiveness toward the correspondents who have attacked her. He said he had tried to persuade her to forget it, but unsuccessfully.
I told the President about my talk with Thuan earlier this week2 and my commitment to Thuan to make a study of the correspondents’ complaints and then to submit a paper to him about it. I said I had not completed the paper but that it would particularly emphasize one point: that a good many of the correspondents’ complaints would vanish if the GVN would make more of an effort to provide information on military news. I said the correspondents were primarily interested in progress of the war because of the U.S. involvement, and suggested that they would probably pay less attention to political affairs if military news were more easily available. I said I thought the GVN should draw a sharp distinction between political and military news and set up new facilities exclusively for the latter, specifically:
- 1)
- A joint Vietnamese-American center, staffed by an officer from each country, where newsmen could go for assistance on mechanical problems, e.g., promoting transportation to operational areas. I said this would eliminate the present practice of correspondents playing both parties independently for favors, prevent inequities, and hopefully, tend to damp down everything because there would at least be an official place to register gripes. (I didnʼt say so, but my hope is that if we could just achieve this degree of cooperation, the center might eventually become a source of news as well as mechanical assistance.)
- 2)
- A daily ARVN briefing on military events, and establishment of a permanent PIO office with round-the-clock duty officers in the GVN Defense Ministry. I said the present lack of an easily accessible official source, for checking rumors if nothing else, was the main reason why the newsmen listened so attentively to “Radio Catinat”. I said we on the official U.S. side were as much interested in this as the correspondents because it was our policy not to provide briefings and otherwise to refer queries to the GVN, with the result that American newsmen were sore at us, too. I cited the case of last weekendʼs wildly inaccurate UPI story about a battle with 300 VC dead as a horrible example of what happens when there is no easy way to check rumors.
Diem was negative on both pitches. He said the GVN was already doing all it could to provide things like transport to newsmen and complained that he couldn’t always be sure of a helicopter for himself because of military demands. He said a daily briefing was impractical because publication of such fresh news would help the VC and that he had already appointed Dang Duc Khoi to handle press queries. I said that the newsmen had to write stories every day regardless of whether there was an official briefing and that Khoi was a first-class officer, but [Page 414] sometimes unavailable. Diem shrugged and clearly didnʼt want to pursue the subject, so I dropped it. He did agree, however, that my forthcoming paper for Thuan might be useful.
Altogether my feeling was that Diem realizes that his troubles with the press are partly the GVNʼs fault, but that heʼs profoundly suspicious of newsmen, and burned enough so he canʼt bring himself to experiment.
Vietnamese-American Relations. Diem volunteered a long recital of past American errors here which Iʼm sure you have heard (details on request), but he had no complaints about our performance at the moment. He spoke highly of you. He ducked comment on U.S. policy in Laos, but praised our reinforcements for Thailand, which he described as badly infiltrated by Communists. He said he saw no need for expansion of the present U.S. effort in Vietnam, except that he would like more helicopter squadrons. I told him that Education Minister Trinh had said Vietnam could use some 40 high school English teachers and asked if that meant he was thinking about a Peace Corps operation. Diemʼs facial expression showed a trace of alarm as he said no, he didnʼt think the Peace Corps would be suitable.