I'd like to start out, maybe to start out the questions on how you viewed the rising opposition to Diem inside of South Vietnam in '63, and maybe you can get into describing Diem, what kind of impression he made on you when you first met him. And his brother and his brother's wife. How's that sound?

Fine.

Okay?

All right.

Do we have speed?

Okay, Stan.

Okay?

All right we're going, we're rolling now, Governor.

Good.

How did you view the rising opposition to Ngo Dinh Diem inside Vietnam in 1963?

I was very much worried about it. Of course, at that time I was...

Excuse me. Could we just start again? Could...?

Oh yes, that's right.

Would you, I want to ask the question, could you...start the subject. How did you view the rising opposition to Ngo Dinh Diem inside South Vietnam in 1963?

I was very much concerned by the rising opposition to Diem in the spring of 1963. Of course, by that time, I was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and had been for some months and I didn't follow the situation as closely as I had before. But, uh...you remember in the spring there were...he...

Particularly his brother Nhu, was very discriminatory against the Buddhists. He wouldn't allow the Buddhist flags to fly. And...he did a number of things...which made them extremely angry. And then there was that immolation...that self-immolation of the man that burned himself to death in the middle of one of the squares of...

I think that was along about May or June. And...after that Diem made some sort of an agreement with the Buddhists that he would treat them better in the future. But instead of that he went right ahead, and his brother Nhu rather did.

And there were a number of incidents which were most unfortunate and particularly the one which occurred in July when they violated the pagodas...think they burned one of them down and they put in prison some of the Buddhist priests and the nuns and...

And when there was a demonstration of the youths they put...arrested them...he did it with his own troops. Nhu had some troops of his own, special forces and he tried to blame the army for it. And the United States made a very definite statement at that time divorcing itself from these events against the Buddhists, indicating that we felt that the Buddhists should have the same privileges that all of us had.

What kind...?

But Nhu was doing Diem a great deal of damage at that time and I thought that it was almost disastrous. And I felt that really Diem had to either, had to get rid of Nhu or else he wouldn't be able to rule.

What kind of impression did Diem make on you when you talked to him?

Well, I first him in...when I went on the quick trip to the Far East, and, it must have been April, 1961 before I took on the Laos negotiations. And I met him he impressed me as being a man of real intelligence and determination.

I met his sister in law, Madame Nhu, who was known as the Dragon Lady, She was a very charming lady at the time. I didn't meet Nhu. And I think that was before the influence of Nhu was felt as seriously as it was later on. I don't recall it in any event.

But, it came to a point where...Nhu was being...having disastrous influence on Diem's administration, and he was losing support. There was a very large Buddhist population, as you know, in Vietnam there was at that time...

What was behind...?

By the way you know of course that Diem was a Catholic and he had, he had, one of his brothers was a Catholic priest, he was a Bishop, I think.

What was behind the decision to appoint Henry Cabot Lodge as Ambassador to Saigon? Do you think that, that President Kennedy saw the appointment of a Republican as a way of protecting himself in the event that Vietnam fell?

Oh, I don't think that President Johnson was thinking about Vietnam...

President Kennedy. I'm sorry.

I don't think that President Johnson had any idea at that time of Vietnam falling. I think he picked Lodge 'cause he thought that it was good to have the situation a bipartisan, after all, Eisenhower and Dulles had had commitments in Vietnam.

And I think he thought it was a way to strengthen the situation politically plus the fact that he had respect, I think, for Lodge as an administrator and he'd done very well in the work he'd been assigned to before and of course, he must have known him when he was a Senator.

What did you think of Lodge's appointment?

I thought, I agreed with Johnson, I thought, I saw no reason why that wasn't a good appointment.

Let's talk a little about the, this controversial telegram that was sent on August 24, 1963. Reportedly, you and George Ball and Roger Hilsman and Mike Forrestal drafted the, a cable telling Lodge to support efforts to overthrow Diem, if I have it right. Uh. What was your role in this affair?

Well...there was that telegram and I think it was July 25th, which was sent out, finally, under Ball's signature, as I recall it, Hilsman, who was Assistant Secretary of State for the Far East and Mike Forrestal, who was the President's advisor on the Far East, came to me.

Sorry.

Could we have that again? There was just real traffic...

Sorry. There was a truck outside.

...question again?

I didn't hear it. I'm sorry, we'd have, we have to do the whole thing again.

Want to do the whole thing again?

Yeah, let me just pose the question again. There was a controversial and famous telegram that was sent on August 24, 1963 to Lodge telling him to support the efforts to overthrow Diem and that telegram was supposedly signed by George Ball, Roger Hilsman, Mike Forrestal and yourself. What was your real role in that affair?

Well, this, this, this telegram of July 24th was drafted by Hilsman, I think, and I don't know what part Forrestal had in it. The two of them then brought it to me. I was then Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

George Ball, Saturday it was...George Ball was out on the golf course, so we went out to the golf course. He was playing golf with Alex Johnson. And the five of us sat down and read it and Ball and Johnson both approved it. Johnson was one of the advisors at that time.

And then it was up to...up to Ball to, to get it clear because it was his signature was the one that would send it out because Dean Rusk was out of town for some reason or other. You remember at that time, I was not very close to the daily operations, I'd just come back from Moscow where I'd negotiated the Limited Test Ban Agreement and I was involved with other things. But, as I've told you, I was very much concerned over the way Diem...was allowing Nhu to, to...to get all of the Buddhist population against him. And it was very serious.

Now this telegram, as I recall, gave Lodge a choice of talking to...not a choice but a line of action. He first was to talk to Diem about removing Nhu. And, nobody I think had any objection to Nhu, to Diem... wanted to...getting rid of Diem...if Nhu was...eliminated and his wife was eliminated. His wife had been playing a very bad role in...prejudicing a great many people by her behavior.

I'm sorry, but I think if you used the word "eliminated" there, it's going to have a very, uh, wrong connotation.

Oh yes, we better [inaudible] the word "eliminated."

Let's just do it, do it again.

Let me start it again. May I?

[incomprehensible]

Yeah, forget this, and say that uh...

There's people talking in the...

All right, so let's just stop...

Okay. Sto...

We'll start the whole thing again...This, this telegram...

Just a second.

Okay, Stan.

On August 24, 1963, a cable was sent to Lodge, instructing him to support efforts to overthrow Diem. The cable was signed by, drafted by, George Ball, Roger Hilsman, Michael Forrestal and yourself. What was your real role in this affair?

My role in this telegram of July 24th was rather limited. It was drafted by Hilsman, I think, in the first instance, Forrestal may have had something to do with it. They brought it to me on a Saturday afternoon and we tried to find George Ball because Dean Rusk was out of town.

We found him on the golf course, playing golf with Alex Johnson. They both read it and both approved it and then it was up to George Ball to...to, to get it cleared. I dropped out of the situation. The...the telegram was not quite what you indicated it was.

It was instructions to, not instructions, but suggestion to him that he should talk to Diem about getting rid of his his brother Nhu. His brother Nhu was antagonizing the Buddhist population.

He had been responsible for violating the pagodas and arresting the nuns and the priests and in other ways discriminating against them. And it was a crisis situation...that was getting worse and worse. We'd come out in public opposition to what had been done in the message that had been published the day before.

And included the statement the army had nothing to do with it, it was Nhu's own personal...he had a personal bunch of operators that, Special Forces, I think called it. And if he did not...agree to point out...if he didn't agree to Nhu that...that he'd loose the whole support of the...very large section of the...Vietnamese people. And then Lodge was saying if he did refuse, why...he should talk to the military and see how they felt about it, see whether they would want to undertake to organize a coup.

We would stay out of it entirely but...it would only be if they were already prepared to...do it. Now, nobody at that time that I know of wanted to see Diem moved out of the situation. It was Nhu that they wanted. Nhu and his wife, Madame Nhu, they felt , people felt were damaging to the situation. George Ball reports that he called up President Kennedy on the telephone at Hyannisport and read him the telephone, telegram. And the President approved it.

It was approved in the, according to records that I have...it was approved by Ros Gilpatric who was Deputy Secretary of Defense and it was also approved by General Cabell, who was number two in the CIA. All those approvances, as I understand it, were gotten ahead of time. The telegram went and Lodge did not want to talk to Diem. He didn't think it was any use because he didn't think that Diem would get rid of his brother. He thought he was too dependent on him.

And we also found that...the...military were not in unity on this subject and were not in a position to move and the subject was discussed for some days. There was a Security Council meeting about it, I think on the...remember...the 29th of July...and the subject was discussed...a number of different times.

So the telegram itself had no direct effect except it started the subject going and it was...continued to be a subject of discussion until the finally, the military did undertake to take over the government in October, if you remember...and Lodge never did talk to Diem about eliminating, not eliminating, but getting, I shouldn't use that word, but getting rid of his brother and his sister. He was too dependent upon them and Lodge didn't think it was worthwhile.

But Lodge agreed over the period that...Diem was losing so much popularity that...he would, was losing public support and the situation was getting to be a very serious situation which he fully agreed.

There was a later cable that seemed to indicate that the Washington did not want to see Diem overthrown...but...

I don’t think there was any such telegram. There was a telegram about a...meeting...they wanted to be sure that...we had no connection with any coup. And wanted to make sure that...if the generals did it, they would be informed that we would support them if they did it but it would be on their own.

Let me re-pose that question. To what extent during that period was Lodge operating on his own in Saigon? Or was he very tightly controlled by Washington?

I wouldn't know that. I wasn't there and I wasn't in daily contact with. I've no idea. I think Lodge generally carried out instructions except he refused to talk to Diem about...his brother. He thought if he did that it would just create a lot of difficulty and achieve nothing.

But...he did have a man, as I remember it, Conein, who was, who was close to the officers. He did keep in touch, through him, with some of the thinking of the officers on it during that period but I don't recall those details, I was not involved in the day to day transactions.

It's been suggested that one of the reasons why there was a certain encouragement of support, at least for the opposition to Diem, was that Nhu was secretly contacting Hanoi. Does this chord strike?

That I...?

No. That Nhu, that Diem's brother Nhu, was secretly contacting Hanoi.

Oh yes. I heard that rumor but I didn't pay much attention to it...Because I didn't see any future to these men...were working for themselves...and had their own future in mind and there wouldn't been any future to them in dealing with the North. Oh, I thought that that was just a rumor without a foundation.

To what extent do you think the United States was responsible for Diem's overthrow? And death?.

Well, they the United States did certainly tell the...did...let the generals know that if they did decide that Diem was so damaging to the war effort and the unity of the country, that we would support them. We took no...the United States took no direct part in the coup or participate in any shape, form or manner. But only told them that if they did do it, they would continue to have American support.

But do you think that was a...?

But I think that if Diem and Nhu continued in the way they had...there would've been some sort of a blow up...it couldn't go on the way it did.

Well, would you say that there was, that the United States shared some responsibility for their overthrow?

Well, I think you're talking about...the...can't answer that question that way. I can say that the that there were very few people in the government that have...have any confidence at all in Nhu and believed that Diem would, would play a losing game...the war couldn't be won with a divided country which it was becoming under this...under Nhu's influence.

But in looking back do you think that, that Diem's overthrow and the role that the United States played in that, however indirect that role might have been, deepen the American commitment to Vietnam. Did that get us on the way to more involvement?

I think we got committed to Vietnam by Dulles in 1954 when he supported the start of the support of Diem. And I don't know that our commitment was increased or decreased by it. We were supporting the government of South Vietnam and that doesn't seem to me that it made any difference in our commitment one way or the other. We were...anxious to see the South Vietnamese government survive the attacks of the VC and control the country and also, later on, the attacks of the North Vietnamese.

Cut. Just stop for a minute.

Did he see the appointment of a Republican as a way of protecting himself in case that Vietnam fell?

Okay.

Just a second, you ready?

You all ready? Running?

We're rolling, speed.

Okay, do it.

Just answer it, you don't have to...

All right, go ahead, what is it? You...?

What was behind the decision to appoint Henry Cabot Lodge, as Ambassador to Saigon? Did President see the appointment of a Republican as a way of protecting himself in case Vietnam fell?

I don't know whether he was thinking of Vietnam falling or whether he was thinking of public opinion in supporting what he was doing. I think he wanted to make the Vietnam situation as bi partisan as possible. He believed in bipartisanship in international affairs. And, of course, he knew Lodge and he had respect for him. I think he made the appointment because be thought he would do a good job as well as help politically in getting public support and...congressional support.

Okay, now I want to take you up to um, thirty-six.

And what is thirty-six.

Well, I'll tell you the question.

You think of anything else I can say on that, Chet, on the, except the twenty n...

On a, on a Lodge telegram?

Telegram. Yes, I think the telegram was all right, wasn't it?

Well I think this, I don't understand, how do you feel about it?

I don't know, I think it was, I think it was all right. I don't want to go over all that again.

Okay.

What?

Adjustments were made.

...adjustments?

Okay.

...this way.

All right?

Rolling?

Okay.

Governor, at the end of 1963, when Lyndon Johnson became President you were shifted out of East Asian Affairs. Why did this happen and how did you feel about it?

Well, I wasn't shifted out of East Asian Affairs... the President decided to replace uh Roger Hilsman...it wasn't because, as far as I remember, it wasn't because he was dissatisfied with Hilsman and his views on Vietnam, it was because he felt he was quite rude in one of the White House...one of the meetings and was a little too arbitrary in his positions. He was a very positive man.

And he replaced him with Bill Bundy. Bill Bundy had been my recommendation as a successor to myself, but Rusk had picked Roger Hilsman, and I thought that was a good appointment so I was very much...I was gratified that Bill Bundy. I thought he was worthwhile.

But Rusk decided that he wanted to have Bill Bundy report to him directly rather than through me and that meant that I was cut out entirely from the Vietnamese affair. And I was then Under Secretary of Political Affairs. The...there was no particular reason for me to resign, 'cause that particular subject was taken out and President Johnson asked me to pay special attention to Africa. He thought African affairs were being neglected.

And I had the whole world to deal with except Viet...I was taken out of Vietnam but not the Far East at all. I went to Australia. I had problems with Soekarno. I had problems with Malaysia. There were all sorts of problems that I was involved in...which I was concerned with...which were important. Korea, of course, and Vietnam...not Vietnam but Taipei.

So that, I'd plenty to do. But I was not involved in any of the decisions. I stayed out of it completely and I thought, I think...that Dean Rusk wasn't...didn't agree with some of the things I thought about Vietnam and I was very glad to be active in other matters and therefore I cannot talk about what happened in those following days until the President asked me to get involved in trying to get peace going, and then I became very much involved in that subject.

I'll get to that in a minute. I just want to ask you one more question about...the Johnson Administration in Vietnam...Wasn't there at that time a tendency on Johnson's part to shift the center of policy making and control out of the State Department and into the White House on Vietnam?

The um, I would say that it wasn't taken out of the State Department. Dean Rusk was a very loyal supporter of President Johnson and he carried out President Johnson's wishes and desires. And I think what is a fairer way to say it...is that President Johnson paid much more attention to the details of Vietnam than...as time went on.

Could you discuss President Johnson as a personality and how his character shaped the management of the war in Vietnam? What did he want in Vietnam?

He didn't...he was not at all concerned with international affairs as compared to his Great Society. His Great Society was the thing that was very close to his heart. I knew Johnson well and he was...he'd been a young Congressman...in fact, he had a job under President Roosevelt in charge of the youth movement, before he became a Congressman.

And it was unfinished business of the New Deal and the Fair Deal and he wanted to see that carried through. And he had the ability to get legislation...which no other President had...because of his experiences as Majority Leader of the Senate. And he...used to talk to me about some of his plans. He was very proud of the improvement in education which...he'd been a schoolteacher himself.

These things were very close to his heart. The Civil Rights legislation. For a Texan, his views on civil rights were extraordinarily liberal. And the... Medicare...he was...which President Truman had been trying to get through Congress unsuccessfully. He did a very generous thing. He went to Mr. Truman at independence and had that piece of legislation which Truman had worked for signed in Truman's library.

So I can say that his emotions were involved with the...He'd never had too much experience with international affairs. And this thing was forced on him. He was a man of action. He wanted to see it won and wanted to see it. He'd had some advisors that told him that no President had ever lost a war...that was...need for a Texan. And he was very much annoyed with this situation, I think, interfered with his main interest as President. And that would be my size up about it and he wanted to get the war over as rapidly as possible...

Who do you think?

...and, of course, win it.

Who do you think...I'm sorry, would you repeat that? He wanted to get the war over and what?

And win it.

Now, who were Johnson's closest advisors? On Vietnam.

I wouldn't know that because I wasn't around at that time. He had a number of people within the administration and he had a number of friends on the outside that he used to consult. He used to consult Abe Fortas...consult Clark Clifford, I think...He had another group that used to come in occasionally like Dean Acheson and Joe Fowler, others, he would ask them, try to get their advice to see whether they had anything new in ways of dealing with it. And in a way, it was, became a weakness because these outsiders really didn't know the details of the war sufficiently to have a judgment. I think it rather confused the situation.

Let me just ask you one question. You said earlier that the President wanted to win the war. And you told us earlier that your own view was that you really didn't feel it was a winnable war, if I can...that's correct. Did you feel it was a winnable war?

I...

Did you feel that the war in Vietnam could be won, in those terms?

Well, I was out of it.

In your own view.

And I'm not, I don't know...my view was that we should have negotiations as rapidly as possible. I think the reports that came from MACV, which was the military headquarters in the embassy were distorted. I used to see the press. Their view was sounder and much more knowledgeful. I also used to see some of the juniors, some of the majors and colonels who were on the ground.

And some of the junior State Department people. And their reports of how the war was going were quite different from those that came. And I was very much concerned that the war was not going well. But I had no connection with it and...this was one of...as a man concerned with American welfare that was disturbed by it.

I also had been disturbed about it much earlier. Remember I didn't think we should've supported the French in Indochina. I never felt that...Indochina was of major interest. I thought Ho Chi Minh was a Tito type who was not expanding China's influence and would not...I never believed in the Domino Theory. I thought it was a specialized situation just as perhaps, Yugoslavia is in Europe.

In the summer of 1965, you went to Moscow to explore with uh Kosygin the possibility of a Vietnam settlement. Could you describe that meeting and what was the Soviets'...

Yes, I went there...I'm not sure just why I was sent...but I did think the President wanted me to talk with the Russians and see how they felt about it and see whether I could get any suggestions from it. It was a general talk in the beginning And Mr. Kosygin was very much...very unhappy about certain changes that he felt had occurred between the Kennedy Administration and the Johnson Administration.

He was very much against the...very much concerned by our support of the NLF, you remember...that was Multilateral Nuclear Force in Europe...and he gave me quite a talking to about that. He was against Germany playing a more important role. On Vietnam, he was he thought we were making a mistake.

He thought...we didn't have any real government there that was...the people supported. And he thought the other side was speaking for the people. But he was very...he thought that we ought to have a settlement. He'd like to see the war finished. And he said we ought to look at the four points that the North Vietnamese had given us and turn them around and look them over. If you didn't like them...make some other suggestions.

And he offered this as voluntarily. He said that uh, he thought if negotiations started the North Vietnamese could be induced to accept the 17th parallel in connection with the settlement. That indicated to me that he felt that the South could be kept independent from the North for a period of years, as far as North Vietnam was concerned.

But, he didn't offer to take any leadership in it. He indicated that the Chinese were more for war and he didn't indicate that he was ready to take any leadership. But I found, and when I got involved in the process of trying to get negotiations going, that the Russians were always ready to help and the Chinese were trying to block that and keep the war going.

During the Christmas bombing pause of 1965, in late 1965, there was a pause that started that lasted thirty-seven days, President Johnson sent you to twelve countries, during that period, to explore peace possibilities. Could you describe this mission to us a bit?

Well, he called me on the telephone and said, Averell...

I'm sorry, could you start again...say Johnson called me on the telephone.

Yes...Johnson called me on the telephone and he said Averell, have you got your bag packed? And I said, it's always packed where do you want me...what do you want me to do? And he said , well, I've got Bob McNamara right here and he's got a plane waiting for you and I want you to go out... and he explained what he wanted me to do.

Uh, he wanted to...he called me back a second time, and in the meantime, Rusk had indicated that...I'm not sure these trips were good. And he said, don't let Rusk interfere, I want you to go. I want you to handle it the way you did other jobs for me and report directly to me. He said, you went to Chile and you did the job for me there and you didn't have any press about it.

I don't want it to look as if this a...just a...political gesture on my part. I want to really, have it handled...and that I'm sincere in wanting a settlement. And I think at that time he'd come to a point where he did want to have a settlement, but...but he wanted to have negotiations started in appropriate way. So...I asked him which country he wanted me to go first. He said, well you know those people. I want you to go and see the people...in Eastern Europe.

I decided that it was too soon to go back to Moscow, and after a lot of consideration, Rusk wanted to keep the negotiations with Hungary to himself, I decided to go to Poland. Poland was one of the three members of the Control Commission and I had a certain influence.

And so I left that same evening. He insisted that I go that same day. He was in a rush because he didn't want the pause to start too long. And I had a little difficult landing because the communication...hadn't arrived there but I got there...at I think...ten o'clock in the morning and I saw the Prime Minister Reputski that same day. I spent most of the day with him and I say Gomulka who was the Party head.

And then there was a...an assistant...secretary of foreign affairs...no, Marcowesk, Mikolowski . He was later ambassador here. And he attended all the meetings. They showed great interest in it asked me all sorts of questions. I used the fourteen points that Rusk had just announced, that stated opposition very fairly and indicated that we were quite ready to negotiate. And they took it seriously.

Uh...Gomulka was, whom I had met in Moscow before, before their organization was formed actually, so I knew him [incomprehensible] he was quite critical of our...keeping the war going. But the others were, certainly under his instructions, did everything they could. I later found out that...that uh, our friend Mikolowski went, he told me later on, he left Moscow, he left Warsaw even before I did, and he went first to Moscow and they encouraged him.

He went to Peking and they were infuriated. And he said he'd never had as tough talks with anyone, as he had with them...Finally, they said, of course...couldn't stop him going, he told me they'd, he'd been kept two days in one of the airports for no particular reason. He just sat in the airport for two days. It was quite obvious, they'd sent their people on ahead to prepare the North Vietnamese to...oppose what he was doing.

He reported that he was there for two weeks and they began to weaken as he kept talking to them about it and he thought that if we'd kept the talks going for a couple of months, they might've changed. Remember they were taking the position at that time Hanoi was taking the position at that time, before any talks could take place, we had to stop the bombing without any conditions. And, of course, that was something that was very difficult for President Johnson to accept. He wanted to know what was going to happen. So, in any event, I went on...

Sorry.