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Interview with William C. Trueheart Library of Congress Interview with William C. Trueheart Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Service, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR WILLIAM C. TRUEHEART Interviewed by: Ted Gittinger, LBJ Library Initial interview date: March 2, 1982 Q: Ambassador Trueheart, can you recall the circumstances of your assignment to the embassy in Saigon? TRUEHEART: Oh, very well. I was, at the time, in London; I was the political-military affairs officer in the embassy in London. Actually the word came to me when I happened to be in Paris, going over for just a couple of days for some talks with the embassy there, and someone called me—I think it was my wife—from London saying that this message had come through asking if I would accept assignment to Saigon as DCM. Of course, I was very pleased at the offer because it meant becoming a deputy chief of mission, which was regarded as a key sort of promotion in the substantive sense. Of course, it was a relatively big embassy. I hadn't any qualifications for it in terms of knowledge of the area; I'd never served in the Far East. In fact, my last six or seven years had all been in European affairs, largely related to NATO and a little bit of time on the Baghdad Pact. And of course the reason for my assignment was that the Ambassador, [Frederick] Nolting, had specifically requested me. I knew this, too, from the message, although I had not had any private communication from Nolting about it. Q: Had you known Ambassador Nolting before? Interview with William C. Trueheart http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001191 Library of Congress TRUEHEART: I'd known him all my life, just about. Actually, my father worked for his father around 1900 or something, briefly. But then we were at Charlottesville at the same time. He was somewhat older than I, but he'd come back to work on his master's degree in philosophy at the same time that I was completing my bachelor's degree in philosophy. And I saw a great deal of him during that period. As a matter of fact, I was in his wedding, which took place about 1940 or something like that, maybe 1939. Also, he had been in Paris and had been my superior in the NATO delegation. So I presume he asked for me because he thought I could do this sort of a job. I think he probably thought of it more as an executive or management job than, as I say, because I knew anything about Vietnam, which I didn't. Of course, he hadn't either when he went out there. This is of course hearsay, but I believe that he had been urged by others to get a new deputy. There was a general feeling that they ought to have a sort of a new leaf in Saigon. Q: Who had been his deputy before you? TRUEHEART: A man named Cunningham. I'm not suggesting there was anything unsatisfactory about his performance or with [Elbridge] Durbrow, who had preceded Nolting. But I think the feeling was that many of the people who were there might have in effect blotted their copybook with [Ngo Dinh] Diem, and a conscious decision had been made that the best policy for the United States was to make a new effort to get along with Diem and to make the best of what we had. There wasn't anything else in sight that would be better. So that was the background. Then the timing was that they let me stay on until I had completed two years in London, which was I think in August. Technically I needed to do this in order to be qualified for some home leave. So I did that, and then I came back to Washington and had a couple of weeks of orientation course and a couple of weeks of leave and went out. Q: What kind of preparation did they give you in that orientation? Interview with William C. Trueheart http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001191 Library of Congress TRUEHEART: Well, it was very general. I mean, the Foreign Service Institute had a two- week course at that time on Southeast Asia, not simply Vietnam. It was quite general. I can't remember details of it, but obviously it was a very rough cut in terms of orientation. It covered, as I say, not simply Vietnam, but it covered Indonesia, the whole area that was then regarded as Southeast Asia, including the island parts. Q: Now, there are stories that Ambassador Durbrow had had his problems, as you have hinted at, with President Diem. Was there any kind of a consensus in the State Department concerning Diem? Was what you just said the consensus, that he was all that was in sight and we had to—? TRUEHEART: I'll tell you, I don't think I could say for sure because I didn't have any feeling that there were violent disagreements. There were certainly some people who were very dubious about Diem. In addition to this particular course, I went around and talked to various individuals who were thought to be especially knowledgeable. For example, I called on [Edward] Lansdale, but he was really quite noncommittal in talking to me and did not tell me anything that would have reflected the negative report he had made. Q: I was going to ask about that— TRUEHEART: Well, that reminded me of it, because he gave me several papers that he had written and speeches that he'd made on the subject, but he didn't really tell me much of anything. Now, whether he felt that in effect his comments had been overridden, a decision had been taken, and therefore he'd drop his positions, I don't know. But in fact it was a pretty uninformative kind of a meeting. Q: You're smiling because I suspect is it you didn't get what you expected to get from General Lansdale? TRUEHEART: No, I'm smiling because I didn't realize at the time, or until long after, anything about this report. Nothing he said to me would have suggested that he had real Interview with William C. Trueheart http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001191 Library of Congress reservations about what we were doing. I didn't know that he did, really. I still have never seen this report. I'm trying to think whether any of the other interviews I had-Q: Did you talk to any of the military people who had been out there with MAAG? TRUEHEART: If I did, I don't recall at the moment, but I must have done [so]. I just don't remember who it was. But I'm pretty sure I talked to several people in the Pentagon, I would think. Q: I was thinking perhaps General Williams, Hanging Sam Williams. TRUEHEART: No, no, I did not talk to him. He's a name I know, but I never met him. Of course, I had meetings with lots of people in Pearl Harbor on the way out. I don't know whether this is the place to throw it in, but it was also during this period that I had my one meeting with LBJ. Is this a good place to throw this in? Q: Proceed, please. TRUEHEART: Again, it's not much of it to tell except the circumstances might be of some interest. I was back here, bear in mind, scheduled to go to Vietnam to fill a job that needed to be filled and so forth. And in the midst of getting ready to go, I was informed that the State Department had decided that the Vice President really ought to have a State Department adviser. Chester Bowles, who was then the under secretary of state, had specifically been talking to him about it and urging him to do this and had, he thought, pretty well persuaded him to take on somebody with this role. The Vice President was statutorily a member of the NSC and he didn't have a staff that had any background for this sort of role. So they asked me if I would be willing to go and be interviewed for this job. Well, I had really mixed feelings about it because I was keen to go on to Saigon because I thought it fitted in with my career development more than anything else. Yet of course I was tempted by this idea of working for the Vice President. Interview with William C. Trueheart http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001191 Library of Congress So, in short, I went over. He had two offices, of course, one in the Capitol and one in the Executive Office Building, I guess, but in any case, he was in his Capitol office. I remember going into a waiting room—there were two or three assistants and secretaries in the outer office—and waiting a very long time, because he had other people with him. I must have waited forty-five minutes or more. [I remember] finally being ushered into the inner room, where much to my surprise, not only was the Vice President but his secretary sitting in the same room with him and not too far away. It was a very dark room. I sat down. As I say, it's the only time I ever spoke to him and I'm sure—he was in his country boy mood.
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