Infighting
The decision to authorise the cable prompted significant infighting in the Kennedy administration. This began on a Monday morning meeting at the White House on August 26. Kennedy was met with angry comments by Rusk, McNamara, McCone and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Maxwell Taylor, all of whom denied authorising the cable. Kennedy was reported to have said "My God! My government's coming apart." Taylor felt insulted by the final line of the cable which asserted that only the "minimum essential people" had seen its contents. During an acrimonius exchange at a midday meeting, he condemned the cable as an "egregious end run" by an anti-Diem faction. Hilsman rebutted Taylor by asserting that Kennedy and representatives of departments and agencies had approved the message. Years afterward, Taylor declared
The anti-Diem group centered in State had taken advantage of the absence of the principal officials to get out instructions which would never have been approved as written under normal circumstances.Taylor claimed that the message was reflective of Forrestal and Hilsman's "well-known compulsion" to remove Diem. He accused them of pulling "a fast one".
Kennedy could no longer stand the arguing among his officials and shouted "This shit has got to stop!" Kennedy was angry at Forrestal and Hilsman; the former for what he deemed to be incompetence and Harriman for indiscretion. When Kennedy angrily criticised Forrestal for proceeding without gaining the explicit approval of McCone, Forrestal offered to resign. Kennedy acerbicly replied "You're not worth firing. You owe me something, so you stick around."
In the end, despite the bitter disagreement, the cable was not retracted. Ball refused to back down, maintaining that "the evil influence of the Nhus" overrode all other factors. Ball later described Diem as "an offense to America" and said that his government should not tolerate "such brutality and crass disregard of world sensitivities”. However, he also admitted that he did not know much about the leading figures in South Vietnam. McCone did not advocate a reversal of policy despite disagreeing with the process in which the telegram left Washington. Taylor also agreed to stand by the original decision despite his disagreement. He said that "You can't change American policy in twenty-four hours and expect anyone to ever believe you again." Kennedy walked around the meeting table and asked each of his advisers whether they wanted to change course. None were willing to tell him to retract his telegram.
Colby recalled that "It is difficult indeed to tell a President to his face that something he has approved is wrong and to do so without anything positive to offer in its place."
As a result, Kennedy chose not to revoke Cable 243, thereby enabling Lodge to proceed in encouraging a coup. The historian Howard Jones called it "a momentous decision".
According to Hilsman, Kennedy "didn't say anything" with regards to reservations about the coup. Kennedy had unanimous but uneasy and unhappy support from his advisers, although in reality only the decision had been made by a vocal anti-Diem minority who had sidestepped their colleagues and avoided getting a consensus to put in place a policy without thorough deliberation. The president was angry with himself and his advisers; him for being pressured into a hasty decision and his advisers for their dishonesty.
Robert Kennedy had discussed the matter of revoking the cable with McNamara and Taylor, but felt pressured into not backflipping on something that the administration had not "fully discussed, as every other major decision since the Bay of Pigs had been discussed". Taylor felt that the cable broke the solidarity of the Kennedy administration, and created a cold atmosphere.
Kennedy later described the cable as a "major mistake", feeling that most of the blame fell at Harriman’s feet. His brother said "The result is we started down a road that we never really recovered from".
Encouraged by the authorization for Lodge to interfere directly in South Vietnam’s governance process, the critics of Diem from the State Department tried to capitalize on the momentum that they had developed.
A midday meeting followed at the White House on the same Monday, August 26. Continuing on from Saturday’s activism, Hilsman recommended pressuring Diem to replace his brother Nhu with a combination of military figures and civilians. Encouraged by the administration's choice to proceed with the telegram, Hilsman said that if Diem retained his brother, Washington should move to remove Diem and start a military-led regime led by General Tran Thien Khiem, the Army Chief of Staff and General Nguyen Khanh, who commanded the II Corps—one of four in South Vietnam—based in the central highlands town of Pleiku.
Kennedy asked Hilsman of the consequences of a failed coup; his adviser said that it would be bad for the US, as Nhu was anti-American. McNamara agreed with Hilsman, and they thought that only Tung's men and some marine battalions remained loyal to Nhu.
The advisors thought that the officer corps would mostly be anti-Diem after the pagoda raids, and said that they would no longer fight if the Ngos stayed in power. They thus concluded that if the coup failed, the communists would win, so the Americans had to either leave Vietnam pre-emptively or be forced out if the coup failed, or to overthrow Diem. Hilsman said that contingency plans for an American evacuation had been made.
Harriman then called for American moves for a coup, with which Kennedy agreed, The president also criticized the media coverage of The New York Times Saigon correspondent David Halberstam, who had debunked Nhu’s false claims that the army had launched the raids, and had been severely critical of the Ngo family.
Kennedy called for "assurances we were not giving him serious consideration in our decision. When we move to eliminate this government, it should not be the result of New York Times pressure."
Taylor remained opposed to any moves towards the deposal of Diem. Years afterward, he said that Diem was "a terrible pain in the neck", but was a devoted servant of his country. Taylor called on Kennedy to support Diem until a better leader had been lined up, pointing out that the officers were divided and therefore could not be relied on to plot and stage a coup.
Hilsman then cited two phone calls on August 24 from Admiral Harry D. Felt, the commander of US forces in the Pacific, calling for backing to the generals to remove Nhu. Felt said that the mid-level officers would not fight if Nhu was not removed. Taylor became angry that Felt had advised the State Department to move against Diem without first consulting the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Taylor then told Kennedy that Americans would not tolerate their officers selecting the president, and thus they should not usurp the cabinet in doing the same in South Vietnam.
When pressed by McNamara as to which generals to support, Hilsman listed only Duong Van Minh, Tran Thien Khiem, and Nguyen Khanh, and said that the trio had some colleagues that they refused to name. Kennedy expressed agreement with Lodge that the Ngo brothers would never part ways, as did officials in Vietnam, but Rusk disagreed, still hesitant to endorse a coup, although he said a decisive action would be necessary either way. Hilsman continued to say that the Vietnamese public blamed the Nhus for the situation and would welcome a coup, which in his opinion, would need support. Rusk said that if Nhu stayed, "we must actually decide whether to move our resources out or to move our troops in". Hilsman ended the meeting by saying to "It is imperative that we act".
According to Jones, the policy was "inherently contradictory: It offered Diem an opportunity to salvage his regime by making reforms at the same time that it undercut his regime by assuring assistance to the generals if they staged a coup."
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