Double Seven Day Scuffle - Reaction

Reaction

The indignant reporters stridently accused the Diem regime of causing the altercation, whereas the police claimed that the journalists threw the first punch. Embassy official John Mecklin noted that even Diem's media officials were privately skeptical about the veracity of the testimony of Nhu's men. In a heated meeting at the embassy, the press corps demanded that William Trueheart, the acting US Ambassador to South Vietnam in the absence of the vacationing Frederick Nolting, deliver a formal protest to Diem on behalf of the American government. Trueheart angered them by refusing to do so and blaming both sides for the confrontation. In his report to Washington, Trueheart asserted that the uniformed policemen had tacitly helped their plainclothed counterparts, but he also had "no doubt that reporters, at least once fracas had started, acted in belligerent manner towards police". Trueheart contended that since the journalists had a long history of bad blood with the Diem regime, their word could not be taken over that of the Vietnamese police.

Since the embassy was unwilling to provide government protection against police aggression, the journalists appealed directly to the White House. Browne, Halberstam, Sheehan and Kalischer wrote a letter to US President John F. Kennedy, asserting that the regime had begun a full-scale campaign of "open physical intimidation to prevent the covering of news which we feel Americans have a right to know". The protests did not garner any Presidential sympathy for the journalists, but instead resulted in trouble from their media employers. UPI's Tokyo office criticised Sheehan for trying to "make Unipress policy" on his own when "Unipress must be neutral, neither pro-Diem, pro-Communist or pro-anybody else". Emanuel Freedman, the foreign editor of The New York Times reprimanded Halberstam, writing "We still feel that our correspondents should not be firing off cables to the President of the United States without authorization."

The incident provoked reactions from both the Buddhists and the Diem regime. A monk called on the US embassy to send a military unit from the American advisors already present in Vietnam to Xa Loi Pagoda, the main Buddhist temple in Saigon and the organisational hub of the Buddhist movement. The monk claimed that the attack on Arnett indicated that Xa Loi's monks were targets of assassination by Nhu's men, something that Trueheart rejected, turning down the protection request. Xa Loi and other Buddhist centers across the country were raided a month later by Special Forces under the direct control of the Ngo family. On the part of the South Vietnamese government, the de facto first lady Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu used her English language mouthpiece newspaper, the Times of Vietnam, to accuse the United States of supporting the failed coup attempt against Diem in 1960.