Imperial Camelot: John F. Kennedy and the Advisory Effort for Regime Change in South Vietnam, 1962-1963 A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Millersville University of Pennsylvania In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts By Shane M. Marino © 2018 Shane M. Marino May 2018 This Thesis for the Master of Arts Degree by Shane Michael Marino has been approved on behalf of the Graduate School by Thesis Committee: Dr. John M, McLarnon III (Signature on file) Research Advisor Dr. Tracey Weis (Signature on file) Committee Member Dr. Abam B. Lawrence (Signature on file) Committee Member May 10, 2018 Date ii ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS IMPERIAL CAMELOT: JOHN F. KENNEDY AND THE ADIVSORY EFFORT FOR REGIME CHANGE IN SOUTH VIETNAM, 1962-1963 By Shane M. Marino Millersville University, 2018 Millersville, Pennsylvania Directed by Dr. John McLarnon This thesis uses government documents, oral histories, and secondary sources to explore changes in the Kennedy administration’s Vietnam policy to determine the factors that contributed to the decision to support a coup d’état in 1963 that overthrew the President of the Republic of Vietnam and subsequently led to his assassination. The thesis specifically looks to connect administrative changes in organization and personnel to changes in policy that ultimately determined the fate of the Ngo Dinh Diem regime. In general, this thesis reveals that rejection of military intervention led to the adoption of a kind of political aggression that envisioned covert regime change as an acceptable alternative to the use of combat troops. Ultimately, this thesis raises the question of whether political aggression may, in the end, be just as destructive as military aggression. Signature of Investigator: ___Shane M. Marino__ Date: __May 10, 2018__ iii Introduction On the morning of January 28, 1961, Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs Walter W. Rostow alerted President John Fitzgerald Kennedy to a report on Vietnam from United States Air Force Brigadier General Edward G. Lansdale. After reading the memorandum, Kennedy remarked to Rostow that “This is the worst yet. Ike never briefed me about Vietnam.”1 The president then ordered Rostow to follow up on the report and summon Lansdale to the White House. This brief exchange at the outset of the Kennedy presidency was instructive of circuitous nature of foreign policy in 1961-63: briefed on an issue by a representative of the National Security Council (NSC), Kennedy then requested that departments of State and Defense work cooperatively on a plan to save South Vietnam from being overrun by Communist insurgents. That effort, however, would expose incompatibilities in outlooks of the military establishment and foreign service, as well as differences between the president and the men whom he entrusted to faithfully execute his vision for counterinsurgency. When Kennedy found his staff to be highly dysfunctional, he effected changes in organization and personnel that restored the State Department’s authority in foreign policy and ensured that the NSC would adhere to Kennedy’s preference for nonmilitary solutions. Yet, while Kennedy empowered certain elements in the Washington establishment, he failed control their excesses and indiscretions. Vietnam policy in the Kennedy administration testifies to the indispensability of strong executive leadership in crafting workable policies out of bitter controversies. The situation in Vietnam in the early 1960s would surely have tested the mettle of even the most experienced leaders, but Kennedy seemed to be either distant or absent from the policymaking process, creating a situation in which internal politics determined the character of foreign policy. With the 1 president on the sidelines, the various wings of the executive bureaucracy vied for influence through and endless stream of proposals and counterproposals that simultaneously undermined the effectiveness of policies that needed to carefully balance the interests of two nations whose people lived worlds apart from each other. After failures in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia damaged the reputation of military and intelligence community, the Department of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) found themselves playing second fiddle in foreign policy to the NSC and State Department. By 1962, the latter were under the control of ambitious men emboldened by the president’s elevation of them to positions of dominance, creating a dangerous situation in which decisions of high international significance might be undertaken without executive approval. A study of the political and diplomatic history of the Kennedy administration vis a vis its Vietnam policy reveals that the decision to overthrow of the Saigon regime in Vietnam in November 1963 was a direct product of Kennedy’s administrative style and geopolitical vision. 2 I Points of Divergence Two separate yet interrelated aspects of South Vietnam’s security and national development came to sharply divide Ngo Dinh Diem, the President of the Republic of Vietnam, from his American allies in 1962-63. The first grew out of out a policy dispute that had emerged in 1961 as the central point of contention among both Diem and his allies as well as between American leadership in the White House, State Department, and military establishment. In the early fall of 1961, President John F. Kennedy dispatched a fact-finding mission under the leadership of General Maxwell D. Taylor and Walter W. Rostow, Kennedy’s Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs. The main purpose of the Taylor-Rostow mission was to consider, among other things, the advisability of military intervention on Saigon’s behalf. Various schemes for deployment of combat forces had dominated policy discussions in the spring and summer, as a wide cross-section of Kennedy’s advisors pressed the need for troops to secure the Republic of Vietnam and ensure the Diem regime’s viability. Middle and high-level authorities from the NSC and JCS, as well as the Defense and State departments, incessantly advocated for an infusion of American military power into South Vietnam, either directly or indirectly, unilaterally or multilaterally. Kennedy had always exhibited hesitancy to accept his advisors’ militant prescriptions, and a steady stream of memoranda and position papers written in support of such measures made the president even more determined to formulate a dynamic approach to South Vietnam. With that view in mind, Kennedy dispatched an interdepartmental study group to Saigon in the fall of 1961 for a frontline analysis.2 3 The Taylor-Rostow mission spent a week in Saigon during late October and submitted its recommendations to Kennedy at the beginning of the following month. What emerged from the negotiations that formalized the mission’s policy as National Security Action Memoranda (NSAM)-111 was a recurrent disagreement over the character of intervention. Running back to the previous administration, a debilitating degree of discord existed between officials in both Washington and Saigon over whether to continue aid deliveries to the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) on an unconditional basis. Although South Vietnam’s president, Ngo Dinh Diem, had never enjoyed a truly stable position, a combination of external and internal crises invigorated certain elements in the State Department and intelligence community that believed Diem had to either be forced to reform or removed from power if the RVN was to survive. Over the course of 1959-1961, glaring deficiencies in leadership moved some American officials to seriously question Diem’s ability to unify his people and defeat the Viet Cong. First, at the Fifteenth Plenum of the Workers’ Party of Viet-Nam (Đảng lao động Việt Nam) in January 1959, the party’s Central Committee proposed Resolution 15, a revolutionary policy of reunification that authorized political agitation and the use of military force to liberate South Vietnam and adjoin it to its northern neighbor. Resumption of an armed struggle suspended at Geneva in 1954 became official policy when the Central Committee approved Resolution 15 in May 1959. Subsequently, at the Third National Congress in September 1960, the party explicitly joined revolution in South Vietnam to the ongoing effort of building socialism in the North. To lead this struggle, the party elected Lê Duẩn as its first secretary, a party official who had spearheaded the push for a policy of reunification upon returning from a secret inspection of South Vietnam the previous year. Finally, in December of 1960, the Vietnamese Communists established the National Liberation Front (NLF), a secret organization 4 designed as the vehicle for the clandestine prosecution of armed uprising in South Vietnam aimed at uniting disaffected Vietnamese and toppling the Diem regime. Through this, the Communists sought to depose Diem and unify the two Vietnams while avoiding an open breach of the Geneva Accords, thus maintaining the perception that the conflict was a civil war. What followed was a gradually expanding insurgency fueled by the infiltration of guerilla bands into South Vietnam through neutral Laos. Much of this fighting force was comprised of refugees from South Vietnam who had escaped to the North during the ceasefire of 1954. Over the course of 1959-63, tens of thousands crossed the seventeenth parallel, returned to their homelands, and renewed the war from which they had fled.3 The second factor that damaged faith in Diem’s viability was the reemergence of open hostility between the premier and his military leadership. Just as Ho Chi Minh and Lê Duẩn were inaugurating the insurgency, Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) commanders were scheming to depose Diem on their own. The roots of discord between Saigon and the military ran deep, but the proximal cause stemmed from Diem’s autocratic tendencies and incompetence as a military administrator. In the first case, Diem had exhibited effectiveness in eliminating opponents within the political apparatus, government bureaucracy, and ARVN command structure during 1956-59.