Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume IV, Vietnam, August–December 1963

77. Telegram From the Embassy in Vietnam to the Department of State¹

Saigon, September 9, 1963, 11 p.m.

455. Eyes only for Secretary. CINCPAC POLAD exclusive for Admiral Felt. Here is a report of an hour and fifty minute conference with Diem.

1. I read him paraphrase of Deptel 331² describing the situation in the United Nations, saying that I was glad to hear that Madame Nhu was not going to present the Vietnamese case. He said he could not understand where this report had originated. She was not going to present the Vietnamese case, but she did reserve the right to conduct press conference in New York to defend herself against all the outrageous things which had been said against her.

2. I then read paraphrase Deptel 335³ on the situation in the Senate and gave him copy of the unclassified telegram describing the views of Senators Church and Lausche.⁴

3. After finishing this description of conditions in the UN and in Congress, I said it was obvious that public opinion could not condone the idea that American loss of lives and American aid were being expended for the repression of human rights. The President had expressed doubts that victory was possible without a change of policies and it was my personal view that without some change of policy the suspension of aid would become a very real possibility.

4. I said I had noted that Mr. Nhu desired a Congressional investigation. It was my observation that whenever a foreigner tried to put himself between the President and Congress he risked to lose a great deal. In fact I had never seen a case in which this procedure had done other than injure the foreigner. He denied that Mr. Nhu was asking for a Congressional investigation. Mr. Nhu had merely said that it was up to Congress to decide whether to have one or not.

5. I then said that it was vital to get a change of personnel and a change of policies. My first advice to him was that Mr. Nhu should go away, not returning at least until end of December—after the appropriations had been voted. He looked at me aghast and said “why it would be out of the question for him to go away when he could do so much for the Strategic Hamlets.” When I said many regarded him as the head of the Secret Police and the director of the Aug 20 raids, Diem said: “He has been very unjustly accused. He was not the one who organized the raid of Aug 20. He was always the influence in favor of a flexible solution of the problem. He is the only man in the Cabinet who is neither a technician nor a lawyer nor a bureaucrat. If American opinion is in the state that you describe then it is up to you, Ambassador Lodge, to disintoxicate American opinion;” the French word he used is: “desintoxiquer”.

6. I said I recognized that it was part of my job to try to straighten American opinion and that I would be only too glad to do so if he would give me something with which to work.

7. I then brought up the matter of eliminating censorship of the press. This started him off on a long harangue about the Buddhist problem, about how they were in a state of evolution with the young men in their late thirties and early forties of which he mentioned particularly Tri Quang and the other fellow Tran Van Nhan. They could write and speak very well, but now the whole thing had been settled by the understanding which he had reached with the regular leaders of the Buddhist movement. When I said that these were considered to be puppets he said how could anybody say that, they were the people who were in the job and were not put there by me.

8. Finally I got him back to the question of censorship. He said as far as the Vietnamese press was concerned the journalists did their own censorship and there was no censorship in advance, that whenever the government saw something that was bad for the morale of the Army or totally untrue then they would take it out. As far as the foreign press was concerned there was practically no censorship at all, the foreigners were using planes and using mail and that it was actually impossible to control.

9. Whenever I tried to get back either to the departure of Nhu or the lifting of the censorship of the press he would start off on something else. One of his topics was the fact that he had asked the US Govt for its agreement on their new Amb a week ago and got no answer. It was obviously extremely annoying to him that Tran Van Chnong and Mrs. Chnong were still in the Vietnamese Emb in Wash. FYI: Can the Dept tell me something about this?

10. He said that his representative proposed to show in New York that the pagodas had been turned into bordellos, that they had found a great deal of female underwear, love letters and obscene photographs. That the virgins were being despoiled there. They knew of one priest who had despoiled 13 virgins. This apparently was part of the “crisis of growth” of the Buddhist movement.

11. He said that out of 4700 pagodas in the country only between 20 and 30 had been searched and the only one that had been damaged was the Xa Loi Pagoda which had to be touched because “they were using the tower in order to drop things on peoples heads.” Only 70 prisoners remained.

12. I then once again got back to the need for new policies and new people in the GVN in order to change the thinking in the Western world, notably in Wash. Whereupon he started off on the situation in Hue. He said that in particular the USIS was extremely offensive, that they were printing and distributing tracts to students telling the students to demonstrate on behalf of the Buddhists and to conduct strikes; that they were abusing diplomatic immunity in that they were using houses which possessed diplomatic immunity to print and distribute these tracts. That Asher, Chief of the USIS at Hue, had incited two professors to tell the most barefaced lies. He hoped something could be done about the USIS.

13. Speaking of the recent student strikes he said that this was a Communist plot, that the Communists had abandoned the idea of taking over the countryside and then leaving the cities for dessert. Because of the success of the Strategic Hamlet Program they were going after the cities first.

14. I then read from the Dept’s 355⁵ which said that the Associated Press quoted Bishop Thuc as saying that the US has spent $20 million trying to replace Diem. Diem said Thuc shouldn’t have said this but he wondered whether it was true. “I will speak to him about it.”

15. I then read him the passage from the Dept’s 355 in which Reuters quotes Bishop Thuc as saying the Buddhist monks were not suicides but murder cases and were killed with a hammer. He had no comment at all.

16. When I got up to go he said he had had a meeting of Generals recently who told him the war was going very well in spite of all the trouble they had had. As I parted he said he thanked me for coming in and said he would carefully consider all the things that I had said. I reiterated that I hoped very much that there would be changes in personnel and in policy in order to make continued support of the war possible.

17. Although I stated what I intended to state many times, I did not feel he was really deeply interested. He seemed totally absorbed with his own problems here and was justifying himself and attacking his enemies. Perhaps this is all part of his medieval view of life. He is constantly preoccupied with fighting back, which is a commendable trait in many ways but makes it hard to get a new idea across to him.

Lodge

1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, SOC 14-1 S VIET. Secret; Immediate. Received at 2:38 p.m. Repeated to CINCPAC. Passed to the White House and CIA at 4:30 p.m.
2. See footnote 5, Document 72.
3. Document 63.
4. In telegram 341 to Saigon, September 6—1:54 p.m., the Department informed the Embassy that Senator Lausche stated on the Senate floor that he agreed with President Kennedy’s view “that there must be a change of policy by the South Vietnamese Government and possibly a change in personnel.” Senator Church’s remarks from the CBS News report of September 8 to the effect that “he may move to cut off all foreign aid to South Vietnam unless the Diem government begins drastic reform,” were also quoted in the telegram. (Department of State, Central Files, POL 1 S VIET-US)
5. Dated September 7, not printed. (Department of State, Central Files, SOC 14-1 S VIET)