Mc Namara Taylor Mission - Expedition - Meeting With Diem

Meeting With Diem

On September 29, McNamara, Taylor, Harkins, and Lodge visited Diem, having decided against delivering a bluntly worded letter from Kennedy. Diem was accompanied by his Secretary of State Nguyen Dinh Thuan. Diem spoke passionately in defense of his government and chain smoked as he walked around the room pointing to maps. After a two-hour monologue by Diem, McNamara was finally able to speak. He stressed American concerns that political unrest was undermining anti-Vietcong military operations. McNamara emphasized the difficulties being caused by anti-Buddhist repressions were creating for Kennedy's support of South Vietnam due to the arousal of negative public opinion against Diem. He pointed out that Diem's foreign minister Vu Van Mau and his ambassador in Washington Tran Van Chuong had resigned, and that Saigon University was closed. McNamara fell short of asking Diem to remove the Nhus; this was a matter Washington had left to his and Lodge's discretion. McNamara went on to say that Washington did not see value in supporting a government which could not command the confidence of its citizens, but his comments seemed to have little impact on Diem. Diem cut off McNamara and asserted that "Vietnam will be a model democracy" in a few years time. He asserted that this had been facilitated by the Strategic Hamlet Program and was shown in the high turnout in the recent legislative elections. Lodge became irritated at this point and derisively pointed out that Diem's legislators had achieved increased votes because ARVN troops had been bussed around to vote multiple times at various polling booths. Diem himself had risen to power in a fraudulent referendum supervised by Nhu in which he was credited with 133% of the vote in Saigon.

The awkward silence was broken when McNamara raised the issue of Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu. Diem was a bachelor so Madame Nhu was the de facto First Lady, living in the palace. Dubbed the Dragon Lady due to her acerbic nature, she had a long history of anti-American remarks. McNamara complained about her "ill-advised and unfortunate declarations". He removed a newspaper clipping from his pocket in which she was quoted as calling some US officers as "acting like little soldiers of fortune" which she claimed had caused the Americans to pursue a "confused policy". McNamara said that such comment hurt the bilateral relationship and that the American public would be less generous in sending their officers to support the anti-communist counterinsurgency. One of the Americans lost his composure and asked Diem whether "there was not something the government could do to shut her up." Diem appeared to be shocked and demoralised by the stinging question. Lodge pointedly claimed that Madame Chiang Kai-shek had been pivotal in the defeat of the Chinese Nationalists by the communists of Mao Zedong in 1949 and alluded that Madame Nhu could have a similar effect. Diem dismissed this and said that US policy was being undermined by failures in analysis of the situation that he claimed were fuelled by distorted attacks by American journalists in Saigon. He asserted that Madame Nhu's membership in the National Assembly as a citizen of a "free country" allowed her to express her sentiments, alleging that "one cannot deny a lady the right to defend herself when she has been unjustly attacked."

Diem went on to make sensational claims against the Buddhist majority that had his visitors taken aback. He asserted that his kindness towards Buddhists had helped to cause the civil unrest by encouraging them to seek what he felt were special rights. He claimed that the number of Buddhist pagodas in the country had doubled during his rule and said that it was due to his government's funding. For twenty minutes he repeatedly charged the Buddhists of partaking in orgies in the pagodas on a regular basis, without offering proof. He then alleged that "some American services in Saigon" were plotting against him. Taylor later noted that Diem had not realised the seriousness of the meeting and the warnings of the American delegation, recalling that "You could just see it bouncing off him."

Diem asked Taylor for his appraisal of the war, and after being approved by McNamara, a long letter from the general was delivered to Diem on October 2. The letter outlined the major military problems in the Delta, warned of the danger that the Buddhist crisis posed to the war effort, and listed many of the specific steps needed to improve the military effort that later appeared in the report presented to Kennedy. The letter summarised with a terse, tough statement of the American view:

Up to now, the battle against the Viet Cong has seemed endless; no one has been willing to set a date for its successful conclusion. After talking to scores of officers, Vietnamese and American, I am convinced that the Viet Cong insurgency in the north and center can be reduced to little more than sporadic incidents by the end of 1964. The Delta will take longer but should be completed by the end of 1965. But for these predictions to be valid, certain conditions must be met. Your Government should be prepared to energize all agencies, military and civil, to a higher output of activity than up to now. Ineffective commanders and province officials must be replaced as soon as identified. Finally, there should be a restoration of domestic tranquility on the home front if political tensions are to be allayed and external criticism is to abate. Conditions are needed for the creation of an atmosphere conducive to an effective campaign directed at the objective, vital to both of us, of defeating the Viet Cong and of restoring peace to your community.