Kennedy Doesn’t Have People Killed. He Has Them “Neutralized.”
When South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother were assassinated in November, 1963, their deaths were ruled suicides even though their hands were bound behind them and they were shot in the back of the neck. JFK claimed he didn’t order their deaths. He merely wanted them “replaced.”
John F. Kennedy was a lot like a Mafia kingpin when he wanted to have someone whacked. He never uttered the word “kill” or “murder” or “assassinate.” Instead, he spoke in code, using words like “neutralize, negate, replace.”
Those words are bandied around a lot after President Kennedy takes office in 1961, usually when referring to Fidel Castro in Havana. JFK follows in the footsteps of his predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower, in trying to “neutralize” the budding young communist at America’s doorstep in Cuba.
Nothing is going right for Kennedy. His indecisiveness in providing air support for anti-Castro forces that invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 proved disastrous. Castro wiped out most of the invading force and captured the rest. The U.S. looked like floundering fools.
The following year, Kennedy goes to Vienna, Austria, for a summit meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and gets laughed out of the room. The summit was meant to defuse tensions that were brewing over Cuba and Berlin. Khrushchev totally dominates the meeting, humiliating Kennedy with threats of nuclear war. Kennedy responds to the threats by warning Khrushchev that a nuclear war could kill 25 million people, to which Khrushchev shrugs and replies, “So what? More than 25 million Russians died in World War Two, yet we’re still here.”
A flabbergasted Kennedy can only mutter, “Well, it’s going to be a cold winter.” Khrushchev roars with laughter and says, “We Russians are used to cold winters. We have very heavy coats. How about you Americans?”
Khrushchev’s laughter is still ringing in JFK’s ears as he slinks out of the room.
Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev (left) bullies and intimidates JFK at the Vienna Summit in June, 1962. Later, Kennedy vows to stop the communists in Vietnam.
A few months later, it’s the Cuban missile crisis caused by the Soviets installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. Kennedy dreads facing off with Khrushchev again. In order to get him to remove the missiles, Kennedy has to agree to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey that are aimed at the Soviet Union. Kennedy’s political opponents in Washington are livid. Communists are winning at every turn. Russia is even ahead in the space race.
Vietnam Rears Its Ugly Head.
And now, Vietnam is making headlines. The Viet Cong, led by Ho Chi Minh, another bearded communist rebel leader, is winning the civil war there. The war had been grinding on since 1954 when Ho Chi Minh’s forces defeated the French at the battle of Dien Bien Phu and expelled all foreigners. Fearing a “domino effect” of Asian nations toppling over into communism, the U.S. took up the battle and began supporting an opposition government in South Vietnam, led by President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother and chief counselor, Ngo Dinh Nhu.
Just as we had done with Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, the U.S. chooses the wrong guy to back in Vietnam. Diem is a devout Catholic in a nation that is 70% Buddhist. He brutally represses the Buddhist majority. Kennedy wonders how we’ll ever defeat the communist rebels with a leader like Diem who’s at war with his own people.
Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc sets himself on fire in protest. Madam Nhu mocks his actions, offering to “bring matches and gasoline” if anyone wants to do a repeat performance.
In the summer of 1963, things get really bad in Vietnam as Buddhists take to the streets in protest. The Kennedy administration urges restraint, but Diem doesn’t listen. He responds with brute force by attacking and burning Buddhist pagodas and arresting more than 1,400 protesters. A Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc further inflames the situation, literally. He goes to a busy intersection in Saigon and sets himself on fire to protest Diem’s actions. The world is horrified at the image of the burning monk – except for one. Enter the Dragon Lady (as she’s called by the New York Times). Madam Nhu, the gorgeous, glamorous and loud-mouthed de facto first lady of Vietnam, wife of Ngo Dinh Nhu, who is President Diem’s brother and chief counsel. Nhu is South Vietnam’s version of Bobby Kennedy.
The always vocal Madam Nhu responds to the burning monk incident with a callous statement: “Let them burn! If the Buddhists wish to have another barbecue, I will be glad to supply the gasoline and a match.”
This is too much even for the Kennedy boys. Although they have a connection with the Diems and the Nhus through their Catholicism, the Vietnamese brothers finally crossed the line. Diem and Nhu are through.
JFK Orders a “Change” in South Vietnam. Now, It Becomes America’s War.
JFK directs the State Department to send a top-secret cable to U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge in Saigon. “We are launched on a course from which there is no respectable turning back,“ to which Lodge responds, “The overthrow of the Diem government.”
The coup is set in motion.
Ambassador Lodge has breakfast with Diem, assuring him he has nothing to fear. Lodge is a cold-blooded liar. The following morning, Diem and his brother Nhu are taken from a Catholic church, shot and stabbed to death.
Kennedy never uttered the word “kill” or even “overthrow,” yet both occur.
At first, the Kennedy administration claims that the brothers committed suicide. But then someone leaks photos showing Diem shot in the head and Nhu’s body with more than 20 bayonet holes.
While the murderous coup is unfolding in Saigon, Madam Nhu is convalescing from eye surgery at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles. She had been on tour in the U.S., speaking at conservative conferences across the country. Just a few days earlier, she had been at a John Birch Society rally in Dallas, at the invitation of General Edwin Walker. Also attending the rally was none other than Lee Harvey Oswald.
Early on the morning of November 2, 1963, Madam Nhu receives news of her husbands murder in a phone call from the presidential palace in Saigon. Her first thoughts are for her two children who are still in Saigon. She fears that they also will be killed. She calls Marguerite Higgins, a journalist she had met and befriended in Saigon, trying to get answers – and help for her children.
Higgins offers to help, and at two o’clock that morning calls Roger Hilsman, a Kennedy advisor and assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs.
“How does it feel to have blood on your hands?” Higgins asks him.
“Revolutions are rough. People get hurt,” Hilsman responds callously.
“Even children?” she replies.
“What do you mean?” Hilsman says with a twinge of alarm.
“The Nhu children are still in Saigon. Their mother is in Los Angeles unable to help them. She fears they’re also going to be murdered. That would be very embarrassing for the U.S.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Hilsman says then hangs up. Within three days, the children are safely ensconced in Italy waiting for their mother to arrive.
Madam Nhu (right) blames JFK for the assassination of her husband and implies that JFK might one day suffer the same fate. Some conspiracy theorists suggest that she collaborated with Fidel Castro in Kennedy’s death.
While Madam Nhu is extremely grateful for the U.S. rescuing her children, she is unforgiving of President Kennedy. She puts the blame squarely on him for her husband’s murder.
“Whoever has the Americans as allies does not need enemies,“ Madam Nhu says as she leaves the U.S. to join her children in Italy. She predicts a bleak future for the U.S. in Vietnam. “My family has been treacherously killed with either official or unofficial blessing of the American government. I can predict to you now that the story is only at its beginning.”
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