254. Editorial Note
Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge met with President Kennedy on August 15, 1963, from 11 to 11:35 a.m. at the White House. (Kennedy Library, President’s Log Book) No record of their discussion has been found. Lodge subsequently recalled that when he met with President Kennedy on this occasion, he found the President “very much concerned by what was going on in Vietnam. He referred particularly to the famous Associated Press picture of the Buddhist monk, Quang Duc, burning himself alive. I suppose that no news picture in recent history had generated as much emotion around the world as that one had. President Kennedy referred to that picture, to the overall importance of Vietnam, and to what was going on in Saigon—to the fact that apparently the Diem government was entering a terminal phase. He also mentioned the extremely bad relations that the Embassy had with the press. He said, ‘I suppose that these are the worst press relations to be found in the world today, and I wish you, personally, would take charge of press relations.”’ (Oral history interview with Henry Cabot Lodge, August 4, 1965; Kennedy Library, Oral History Program)
William J. Miller’s biography of Lodge, Henry Cabot Lodge, pages 337-338, also contains an account of this meeting based on Lodge’s recollections