Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: On what date was Ngo Dinh Diem assassinated?
The arrest and assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm, the president of South Vietnam, marked the culmination of a successful CIA-backed coup d'état led by General Dương Văn Minh in November 1963. On 2 November 1963, Diệm and his adviser, his younger brother Ngô Đình Nhu, were arrested after the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) had been successful in a bloody overnight siege on Gia Long Palace in Saigon. The coup was the culmination of nine years of autocratic and nepotistic family rule in South Vietnam. Discontent with the Diệm regime had been simmering below the surface, and exploded with mass Buddhist protests against long-standing religious discrimination after the government shooting of protesters who defied a ban on the flying of the Buddhist flag.
The papers identified General Edward Lansdale, who served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as a "key figure" in the establishment of Ngo Dinh Diem as the President of South Vietnam, and the backing of Diem's regime thereafter. As written by Lansdale in a 1961 memorandum: "We (the U.S.) must support Ngo Dinh Diem until another strong executive can replace him legally."
Đôn: Why are they dead? Minh: And what does it matter that they are dead?[24]
After Diệm's assassination, South Vietnam was unable to establish a stable government and several coups took place after his death. While the United States continued to influence South Vietnam's government, the assassination bolstered North Vietnamese attempts to characterize the South Vietnamese as "supporters of colonialism".
At the age of four, on November 2, 1963, after the South Vietnamese coup d'état, in which both her Father Ngô Đình Nhu and Uncle Ngo Dinh Diem were assassinated, she was forced to leave her country and eventually arrived in Rome, Italy, accompanied by her two brothers. At that time her mother Madame Nhu and sister Ngo Dinh Le Thuy were in the middle of a good-will tour in the United States on behalf of the Vietnamese government.
4. (Ngo Dinh) Diem would not last 24 hours without (Ngo Dinh) Nhu who handles the bribes and manipulates the power base necessary for his survival. ...
In Thomas Ahern's monograph, he stops short of any admission that the agency was an actor in the coup that overthrew Saigon leader Ngo Dinh Diem. Within the monograph it is noted that on the morning of the coup the US military command in South Vietnam advised the CIA that Saigon was quiet, and that the CIA should stop reporting a coup was imminent or in-progress. The CIA also reportedly recognized that Diem would have political problems as early as August 1954. It is reported that policy surrounding Diem was set with this in mind. Relations with Diem’s brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, began as early as 1952, also signaling that the CIA predicted political problems with Diem. Despite having the benefit of expert warnings, it is clear that the CIA acted beyond the scope of it experts.
During the presidency of Richard Nixon, a US government investigation was initiated into American involvement in the assassinations. Nixon was a political foe of Kennedy, having narrowly lost to him in the 1960 Presidential election. Nixon ordered an investigation under E. Howard Hunt into the murders, convinced Kennedy must have secretly ordered the killings but the inquiry was unable to find any such secret order.[36]
Upon learning of Diệm's ouster and assassination, Hồ Chí Minh reportedly stated: "I can scarcely believe the Americans would be so stupid." The North Vietnamese Politburo was more explicit:
By the end of the sixth week after this report was written, both Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu are dead.
CIA personnel were involved in attempted assassinations of foreign government leaders such as Fidel Castro. They provided support to those that killed Patrice Lumumba. In yet another category was noninterference in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) "Coup d'état" in which President Ngo Dinh Diem was killed.
An 8 May 1973 memorandum states that "An Inspector General report of investigation of allegations that the Agency was instrumental in bringing about the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam. The allegations were determined to be without foundation."
Burial there was reserved for French governors and colonial officials, high-ranking Vietnamese politicians, generals, former war heroes, celebrities and prominent members of the South Vietnamese society. In 1955 it was named Mac Dinh Chi, after the renowned Vietnamese scholar and diplomat Mạc Đĩnh Chi (1280-1350). South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were interred there in unmarked graves following their assassinations. The famous French correspondent for Time and Newsweek magazines François Sully and the American missionary Grace Cadman were also buried there.
According to the "Pentagon Papers", the U.S. government played a key role in the 1963 South Vietnamese coup, in which President Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated. While maintaining "clandestine contact" with Vietnamese generals planning a coup, the U.S. cut off its aid to President Diem and openly supported a successor government in what the authors called an "essentially leaderless Vietnam":
Aside from the Fielding burglary, there are few other activities the Plumbers were known to have been engaged in. Hunt reportedly looked into the Ted Kennedy-Chappaquiddick incident and Liddy reported purported Kennedy administration involvement in the assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.
Hunt's White House duties included assassinations-related disinformation. In September 1971, Hunt forged and offered to a "Life" magazine reporter two top-secret U.S. State Department cables designed to prove that President Kennedy had personally and specifically ordered the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother, Ngô Đình Nhu. Hunt told the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973 that he had fabricated the cables to show a link between President Kennedy and the assassination of Diem, a Catholic, to estrange Catholic voters from the Democratic Party, after Colson suggested he "might be able to improve upon the record."
Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, three weeks after the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem. Kennedy adviser Roger Hilsman stated that "The Kennedy administration had developed a concept for fighting guerrilla warfare, an idea for a political program into which military measures were meshed, but we had failed so far to convince the Diem regime or even the top levels of the Pentagon to give it a fair trial."
In 1962, Bigart was sent to South Vietnam, where he stayed for six months. He soon realized that the war was a mistake, stating "I never thought we'd be stupid enough to send ground troops over there in the first place, after the experience in Korea". He made enemies by bucking the pressure to report optimistically. He was expelled from South Vietnam by President Ngo Dinh Diem for persistently criticizing him, his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, and sister-in-law Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu.
In the wake of Diệm's victory over the Bình Xuyên, he was lionized in the American media, notably by publisher Henry Luce in "Life": "Every son, daughter, and even distant admirer of the American Revolution should be overjoyed and learn to shout...'Hurrah for Ngo Dinh Diem!'...Diem's political assets...are just what his country needs...He is a Roman Catholic and a simon-pure Vietnamese nationalist, thus doubly proof against communist force...back Diem to the hilt."
Dr. Khương was responsible for teaching many successful politician and leaders in VietNam such as Prominent lawyer-Minister Tran Ngoc Lieng Trần Ngọc Liễng, Prime Minister/Vice President/President Tran Van Huong Trần Văn Hương, etc. Dr. Khương was responsible to establish and recommend Ngo Dinh Diem to United States Boston Catholic Cardinal Cushing which later introduced to him to President [Eisenhower] and Senator [John F. Kennedy]. This introduction and mentoring ultimately get Ngo Dinh Diem recognized by the French government and Emperor Bao Dai Bảo Đại.
Đôn ordered another general to tell reporters that the Ngô brothers had died in an accident. He went to confront Minh in his office.[24]
In November 1963, American intelligence officer Paul Christopher investigates the assassination of US President John F Kennedy. Believing that the Kennedy White House was behind the assassination of Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, Christopher deduces that Vietnamese leaders had Kennedy assassinated as revenge. When one of Kennedy's former advisers threatens Christopher not to discuss the matter with anyone else, Christopher quits the Agency and heads to Vietnam to find the truth.
--In "Tears", Paul Christopher wakes up ten days after the JFK killing and intuitively and instantly knows "who had arranged the death of the President"—the family and followers of recently assassinated South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem and his two brothers. In real life, the wife of one of Diem's murdered brothers attracted media attention for predicting the JFK assassination ("Anything that happens in Vietnam will find its equivalent in the United States"), and later telling reporters that JFK had got what he deserved.—JFK is the only real-life President mentioned by name in a McCarry novel.
The Ambassador is a novel by Australian author Morris West. It was first published in 1965. The novel is fictionalisation of the period leading up to and shortly after the Coup d'état against and assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.
The reason for Dan's exclusion from further Bảo Đại and then Ngo Dinh Diem cabinets is disputed. Dan said that it was due to Diem being appointed by Bảo Đại, but the government maintained that it was because he was holding out for a more important ministry, having allegedly rejected an offer to become the Minister for Social Welfare. For his part, Dan later claimed that he rebuffed Diem because he ‘never intended to cooperate with Diệm’, who he asserted could not administer a government that could modernise Vietnam in a democratic manner, but instead was set on feudal and nepotistic rule. Dan claimed that upon his return to Vietnam in September 1955, Diem’s officials sought him out at the airport to arrange a meeting at the Norodom Palace. Dan claimed that he reprimanded Diem for running a nepotistic regime and relying on the counsel of his younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, and stated his intention to contribute to South Vietnamese politics by organising ‘a constructive, legal opposition’. According to the historian Jason Picard, Diem viewed Dan’s publications and remarks as disrespectful and a challenge to his political authority.