323. Letter From the Charge in Viet-Nam (Trueheart) to the Director of the Viet-Nam Task Force (Cottrell)1
Dear Cott: I am enclosing a copy of a proposed letter from President Diem to President Kennedy.2 During a long meeting yesterday,3 the President mentioned to the Ambassador that he was planning to send such a letter in response to President Kennedy’s message on the occasion of Vietnamese National Day.4 Fritz indicated interest and Diem offered to send him a copy. The enclosure arrived this morning with a covering note stating that Diem planned to send the letter “soon”.
Fritz did not have a chance to do anything about this prior to his departure for Honolulu. Accordingly, when I saw Thuan on another matter this afternoon, I took it on myself to mention the letter and to say with appropriate expressions of difference that I felt bound to let him know as a friend and on a strictly personal basis that I thought such a letter would be badly received in Washington. Thuan had obviously not seen or heard of the letter and expressed considerable interest in it. (It is of course patently a Nhu production.) I gave him a brief sketch of the contents, mentioning particularly the references to the Civil Guard and to American domestic politics.5 I said that, whatever might be the validity of the statements regarding the Civil Guard, I thought they would not be understood in Washington at a time when we had embarked on a [Page 738] greatly increased effort to assist the GVN. The reference to alleged policy differences between the Republican and Democratic administrations was also not likely to be helpful to the GVN, in my opinion. Finally, I repeated that I had no wish to undermine my usefulness in VietNam, but I felt obliged as a friend to indicate what I thought might be the Washington reaction to such a communication. Thuan appeared to take this very well and gave me a most friendly pat on the back as I departed. Whether he will be able to do anything about the letter is another matter.
Best personal regards.
Sincerely yours,
- Source: Washington National Records Center, RG 84, Saigon Embassy Files: FRC 66 A 878, 320 GVN-U.S. Secret; Official-Informal.↩
- Not found attached to the source text, but a copy of the proposed letter is in Department of State, Viet-Nam Working Group Files: Lot 66 D 193, Cambodia, Oct-Dec 1961. The copy bears several marginal notations, including, “This is message Thuan gave Trueheart, but which was never officially sent-and never will be, we hope.”↩
- A nine-page memorandum of the conversation Nolting and McGarr had with Diem from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on December 14, which was called by Diem to explain “his new concept of the danger facing South Vietnam,” is attached to McGarr’s memorandum of December 18 to Nolting. (Washington National Records Center, RG 84, Saigon Embassy Files: FRC 66 A 878, Internal Security 1961)↩
- For text of this letter, dated October 24 and released by the White House on October 26, see Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961, pp. 680-681.↩
- Apparently a reference to Diem’s contention in his letter that the Eisenhower administration’s failure to understand properly the “phenomenon of modern underdevelopment” led to a reduced role for the Civil Guard and his expression of gratitude to “the new Democratic Administration for having better evaluated the mission of the Civil Guard and for permitting it to be trained at present by MAAG.” Diem also stated that the “chief reason for the long continued American refusal to convert the Civil Guard into a real guerilla army is a certain opinion to the effect that I entertained a sinister plan to create a personal army with the American money.”↩
- Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩