a repost from
U.S. Made “Clear Call for Action,” Would not “Attempt to Thwart” Coup Plan
CIA Knew of Generals’ Plan to Assassinate Diem
Reluctant DCI “Faithfully Carried Out Instructions” to Support Coup Plotters
Washington, D.C., May 22, 2025 - Early in the morning of October 7, 1963, the top leadership of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) gathered in the office of the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) to discuss the brewing crisis in South Vietnam and America’s role in it. DCI John McCone warned his colleagues: “Under no circumstances” should “the Agency get into the subject of assassination or other highly sensitive matters with [U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot] Lodge.” The Ambassador had “no concept of security,” McCone added, and tended to use the press to enhance his power, according to a recently declassified account of the meeting published today by the National Security Archive. Twenty-six days later, South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, were executed as part of a military coup d’état that would further destabilize the Southeast Asian country for years to come.
In the years since, the extent of the U.S. role in the coup and assassination has been hotly debated and disputed. For over two decades, the late John Prados shed light on the Kennedy administration’s position toward the Diem coup in a series of National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Books. This new EBB supplements those publications with recently declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the JFK Assassination Files, the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, and the personal papers of George McTurnan Kahin, a prominent scholar on Southeast Asia and early critic of the Vietnam war.
Today’s publication highlights the role of key CIA players—McCone, CIA Far East Division Chief William Colby, CIA Saigon Chief of Station John H. Richardson, and contract officer Lucien Conein—and provides new details on how the coup emerged, almost organically, despite indecision, divisions between the leading agencies, and bitter rivalries among the individual officials in charge. Additional documents declassified last year under the FOIA, including a detailed CIA chronology of the entire episode, show that the U.S. encouraged the coup plotters to take “the earliest possible action” and provided assurances, money and other support that together “constituted a clear call for action.”
Other records published today show that the U.S. was deeply involved with the key players who would ultimately overthrow and kill Diem and his brother, up to and including the day of the coup. While Colby and McCone were clearly opposed to the coup and made the strongest arguments against it, a long-awaited and now fully declassified CIA Inspector General report on the episode recounts how the senior CIA officials were overruled by the President and outmaneuvered by Lodge. In the end, they and their CIA colleagues “faithfully carried out instructions” to support the coup-plotting generals.