(03-20-2025, 01:21 PM)mikesez Wrote:

(03-20-2025, 12:24 PM)Jag149 Wrote: Lots of books written read a bunch over the years. A lot of unproven guesses by many people with second hand knowledge. The below does not sound like someone who "ordered" the CIA to do anything.


(President Kennedy): Monday, November 4, 1963. Over the weekend the coup in Saigon took place. It culminated three months of conversation about a coup, conversation which divided the government here and in Saigon.

(President Kennedy): Opposed to a coup was General Taylor, the Attorney General, Secretary McNamara to a somewhat lesser degree, John McCone, partly because of an old hostility to Lodge which causes him to lack confidence in Lodge's judgment, partly as a result of a new hostility because Lodge shifted his station chief; in favor of the coup was State, led by Averell Harriman, George Ball, Roger Hilsman, supported by Mike Forrestal at the White House.
 
(President Kennedy): I feel that we must bear a good deal of responsibility for it, beginning with our cable of early August in which we suggested the coup. In my judgment that wire was badly drafted, it should never have been sent on a Saturday. I should not have given my consent to it without a roundtable conference at which McNamara and Taylor could have presented their views. While we did redress that balance in later wires, that first wire encouraged Lodge along a course to which he was in any case inclined.

(President Kennedy): Harkins continued to oppose the coup on the ground that the military effort was doing well. There was a sharp split between Saigon and the rest of the country. Politically the situation was deteriorating. Militarily it had not had its effect; there was a feeling, however, that it would. For this reason, Secretary McNamara and General Taylor supported applying additional pressures to Diem and Nhu in order to move them.

(John Kennedy, Jr): Unclear

(President Kennedy): You want to say something? Say something. Hello.

(John Kennedy, Jr): Hello.

(President Kennedy): I was shocked by the death of Diem and Nhu. I'd met Diem with Justice Douglas many years ago. He was an extraordinary character. While he became increasingly difficult in the last months, nevertheless over a ten-year period he'd held his country together, maintained its independence under very adverse conditions. The way he was killed made it particularly abhorrent.

(President Kennedy): The question now is whether the generals can stay together and build a stable government, or whether Saigon will begin... will turn on... public opinion in Saigon, the intellectuals, students, etcetera, will turn on this government as repressive and undemocratic in the not too distant future.

https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/...on-of-diem

He regretted the decision. He viewed it as a choice, that America had, to encourage a coup or to discourage one.  Some in his administration said let's encourage it, some said no let's stick with Diem. In Kennedy's mind, "wait and see what happens" was not one of the options, and neither was "let's leave them alone from now on." In Kennedy's mind we were responsible for what happened in South Vietnam either way.  

Gen Z would call it "main character syndrome".  Kennedy wasn't going to withdraw from that stage when he was the star of it.