Kennedy’s Coup: A White House Plot, a Saigon Murder, and America’s Descent into Vietnam

Cheevers (Act of War) argues in this persuasive political history that the 1963 coup that removed South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem from power set the stage for America’s deepening involvement in the Vietnam War. Throughout the 1950s and early ’60s, Diem attracted support from the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations by serving as a bulwark against communism in South Vietnam. A schism between the countries developed after the May 1963 massacre of Buddhists demanding that a Vietnamese government radio station honor the Buddha’s birthday, which coincided with the Kennedy administration’s sense that Diem’s efforts against the Vietcong were weakening. In early November 1963, with American support, Diem was ousted and killed by his generals. “Feeble new regimes rose and fell,” Cheevers writes, and “the chronic chaos... then provided a rationale for the United States to bomb North Vietnam.” To support his panoramic portrait of these events, Cheevers draws liberally from CIA and State Department documents and sources including journalist David Halberstam and former U.S. senator Henry Cabot Lodge, wrestling the material into a consistently gripping narrative that reads like an espionage novel. This sheds new light on a well-covered historical moment. Agent: Mel Berger, WME. (Feb.)