Episode 29: NOVEMBER 1963: The End of the Age of Innocence ( Assassinations of Ngo Dinh Diem & John F. Kennedy)

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November 1963, was a month that changed the trajectory of American History.  During the summer of 1963, President John F. Kennedy and the Kennedy Administration grew increasingly frustrated with the South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his increasingly dictatorial ways in running the government. When Ambassador , and Republican, Henry Cabot Lodge pushed Diem to remove his brother General Ngo from command of the Army, and Diem refused, a coup by the other Generals in South Vietnam was given a tacit go ahead. That led to the assassination of Diem and the overthrow of his government. After a decade of stability the South Vietnamese government fell into a state of constant chaos.

Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who had met with and supported Diem, knew almost nothing about the permission given for the coup. He only discovered it as it happened. Johnson had been a masterful politician as a member  of the United States Senate. He was a man who dreamed big dreams for his country in domestic policy, but he had not been an expert in foreign policy. As Vice President he had been relegated to the role of a ceremonial representative for the Kennedy administration. The Kennedy's distrusted and disliked him, going so far at one point to have an ambitious  Robert Kennedy send an un-coded message to a foreign government that Johnson in no way spoke for the Kennedy Administration. Johnson even feared he may be dumped from the ticket in the coming 1964 campaign.

On November 22, 1963, just 20 days after the assassination of Diem, everything changed.  A horrific moment in American History unfolded in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald and Lyndon Johnson was catapulted into the White House, having been intentionally kept in the dark, with little working knowledge of what the long term strategy was in South Vietnam. He decided to keep the Kennedy Cabinet in place and listening to their advice he wrestled with what to do in Vietnam. 

Here is the story of this faithful month , November 1963, and how it made an indigenous, civil war in Vietnam,  OUR WAR,  and led to the loss of 50,000 American soldiers, as we struggled to fight back the high tide of communism in South East Asia. 

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