Reaction To The 1963 South Vietnamese Coup - Lodge Reaction

Lodge Reaction

Lodge cabled Washington after the coup, optimistically declaring, "The prospects now are for a shorter war, thanks to the fact that there is this new government, provided the generals stay together. Certainly officers and soldiers who can pull off an operation like this should be able to do very well on the battlefield if their hearts are as much in it".

Lodge described the coup as a "remarkably able performance in all respects" and was disappointed that officials in Washington were not as enthusiastic as he had hoped. He was gratified and proud in spite of a cable requesting an explanation for the deaths of the Ngô brothers "that have caused shock here". General Taylor noted that upon hearing of the death of Diệm, Kennedy rushed from the room where he was meeting with his advisers with "a look of shock and dismay ... which I had never seen before". Arthur Schlesinger recalled that Kennedy was "sombre and shaken". Kennedy penned in a memo that the assassination was "particularly abhorrent" and blamed himself for approving Cable 243 which authorized Lodge to explore coup options in the wake of Nhu's attacks on the Buddhist pagodas. Kennedy's reaction did not draw sympathy from his entire administration, some of whom believed he should not have supported the coup and that coups were uncontrollable, leaving assassinations a possibility. His national security adviser Michael Forrestal said that the deaths "troubled him deeply" "as a moral and religious matter".