1960 South Vietnamese Coup Attempt - Background

Background

The revolt was led by 28-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Vuong Van Dong, a northerner, who had fought with the French Union forces against the Vietminh during the First Indochina War. Later trained at Fort Leavenworth in the United States, Dong was regarded by American military advisers as a brilliant tactician and the brightest military prospect of his generation and he served in the Airborne Division. Back in Vietnam, Dong became discontented with Diem's arbitrary rule and constant meddling in the internal affairs of the army. Diem promoted officers on loyalty rather than skill, and played senior officers against one another in order to weaken the military leadership and prevent them from challenging his rule. Years after the coup, Dong asserted that his sole objective was to force Diem to improve the governance of the country. Dong was clandestinely supported by his brother-in-law Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Trieu Hong, the director of training at the Joint General Staff School, and Hong's uncle Hoang Co Thuy. Thuy was a wealthy Saigon-based lawyer, and had been a political activist since World War II. He was the secretary-general of a minority opposition party called the Movement of Struggle for Freedom, which had a small presence in the rubber-stamp National Assembly.

Many Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) officers were members of other anti-communist nationalist groups that were opposed to Diem, such as the Dai Viet Quoc Dan Dang (Nationalist Party of Greater Vietnam) and the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang (VNQDD, Vietnamese Nationalist Party), which were both established before World War II. The VNQDD had run a military academy in Yunnan near the Chinese border with the assistance of their nationalist Chinese counterparts, the Kuomintang. Diem and his family had crushed all alternative anti-communist nationalists, and his politicisation of the army had alienated the servicemen. Officers were promoted on the basis of political allegiance rather than competence, meaning that many VNQDD and Dai Viet trained officers were denied such promotions. They felt that politically minded officers, who joined Diem's secret Catholic-dominated Can Lao Party, which was used to control South Vietnamese society, were rewarded with promotion rather than those most capable.

Planning for the coup had gone on for over a year, with Dong recruiting disgruntled officers. This included his commander, Colonel Nguyen Chanh Thi. In 1955, Thi had fought for Diem against the Binh Xuyen organised crime syndicate in the Battle for Saigon. This performance so impressed Diem—a lifelong bachelor—that he thereafter referred to Thi as "my son". However, the Americans who worked with Thi were less impressed. The CIA described Thi as "an opportunist and a man lacking strong convictions". An American military advisor described Thi as "tough, unscrupulous, and fearless, but dumb". There is some dispute as to whether Thi participated in the coup of his free choice. According to some sources, Thi was still an admirer of Diem and was forced at gunpoint by Dong and his supporters to join the coup at the last minute, having been kept unaware of the plotting. According to this story, Thi's airborne units were initially moved into position for the coup without his knowledge.

Many months before the coup, Dong had met Diem's brother and adviser Ngo Dinh Nhu, widely regarded as the brains of the regime, to ask for reform and de-politicisation of the army. Dong said that the meeting went well and was hopeful that Nhu would enact change. However, a few weeks later, Dong and his collaborators were transferred to different commands and physically separated. Fearing that Diem and Nhu were trying to throw their plans off balance, they accelerated their planning work, and decided to move on October 6. However, they were then scheduled to go into battle against the communists near Kontum in the II Corps in the central highlands, forcing a postponement. According to the historian George McTurnan Kahin, Dong was without a command by the time the coup was held.

The Americans started to notice and become alarmed at increasing reports of political disillusionment in the military officer corps in August. An intelligence report prepared by the US State Department in late August clamed the "worsening of internal security, the promotion of incompetent officers and Diem's direct interference in army operations ... his political favoritism, inadequate delegation of authority, and the influence of the Can Lao". It also claimed that discontent with Diem among high-ranking civil servants was at their highest point since the president had established in power, and that the bureaucrats wanted a change of leadership, through a coup if needed. It was said that Nhu and his wife were the most despised among the civil service. The report predicted that if a coup was to occur, the objective would probably be to force Nhu and his wife out of positions of power and allow Diem to continue to lead the country with reduced power, should he be willing to do so. The intelligence analysis turned out to be correct.

The US Ambassador Elbridge Durbrow, who had been in the post since 1957, had a long record of trying to pressure Diem into political reforms. He felt that South Vietnam's political problems were due to Diem's illiberalism and thought the communist insurgency would be more easily defeated if Diem reached out to a broader cross-section of society, cracked down on corruption, cronyism, abusive public servants, and implemented land reform. However, the South Vietnamese president saw authoritarianism as the solution to political problems and opposition, and the US military hierarchy in Vietnam agreed, leading to frequent disputes between Durbrow and the Military Assistance Advisory Group. Durbrow frequently reported to Washington that Diem's strong-arm tactics against opposition only created more dissent and opportunities for the communists.

Around this time, Durbrow began to advise Diem to remove Nhu and his wife from the government, basing his arguments on a need to cultivate broad popular support to make South Vietnam more viable in the long term. His key suggestions included Nhu being sent abroad as an ambassador and "altering the nature of the Can Lao Party". As Nhu and the Can Lao were a core means of his keeping power, Diem did not follow Durbrow's advice.

On September 16, after another fruitless meeting with Diem, Durbrow reported to Washington: "If Diem's position in country continues to deteriorate ... it may become necessary for US government to begin consideration alternative courses of action and leaders in order achieve our objective." In another State Department Report, it was concluded that a coup would become more likely "if Diem continued to remain uncompromising and if the opposition felt that the United States would not be unsympathetic to a coup or that U.S.-Vietnamese relations would not be seriously damaged." As it turned out those in Vietnam discontented with Diem reached the same conclusion, that the US would not mind them toppling the president.

The coup was organised with the help of some VNQDD and Dai Viet members, civilians and officers alike. Dong enlisted the cooperation of an armoured regiment, marine unit and three paratrooper battalions. The marine battalion was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Pham Van Lieu. The operation was scheduled to launch on November 11 at 05:00. However, the airborne soldiers were not aware of what their officers had in store. They were told that they were heading into the countryside to attack the Vietcong. Once they were on their way, the officers claimed that the Presidential Guard, who were meant to guard the presidential palace, had mutinied against Diem.