Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Vietnam, Volume I

42. Memorandum of a Conversation Between the Chargé in Vietnam (Elting) and President Diem’s Adviser (Ladejinsky), Saigon, December 12, 1958¹

Saigon, December 12, 1958

Ladejinsky came in to see me following his return from the United States on December 10. He was in extremely good spirits because of the reception he had received, particularly in the State Department.² As he put it, he had not realized how many friends he has and “the doors were all wide open to me and couldn’t have been more so.” This reception had a most important effect since Ladejinsky has renewed confidence in himself and the worries he had about his own future position have been effectively dispelled. He now feels that he is much freer to say what he should to Diem because he does not have the same worries about where he would get another job. Before he left here, his morale was low and he had a feeling of having to rehabilitate himself somehow by eventually getting back into work for the government. Now all the compulsion has left him because he feels that he was received with open arms in the State Department, particularly by Secretary Robertson and the people in FE, and no more rehabilitation is required. Moreover, certain congressmen, whom he knows well, let him know that they would assure him interesting jobs if he wanted to come back. Finally, the Ford Foundation made him an interesting offer to go to India which he turned down but which he feels could be revived if he wished.

In addition to the above, Ladejinsky did a piece for the Reporter Magazine and has a commitment to do another for Foreign Affairs and an offer from the editors of the New York Times for him to submit a piece on Viet-Nam.³

Ladejinsky said another thing he found when he got back was that the President had really missed him. As he put it, “Diem has simply got used to me.” He had several hours with the President the very evening of his return and two long sessions yesterday, which he outlined to me as follows:

First of all, the President was very pleased to have the statement⁴ which Secretary Robertson had prepared for Ladejinsky to bring back with him, setting forth United States Far Eastern policy. Diem is now persuaded that we will stand firm and have no intention of making concessions to the communists. Ladejinsky was also impressed by the sincerity of Secretary Robertson’s remarks about the abilities and activities of President Diem, and he passed these on to Diem. In addition, he put it to the President as forcefully as he could that while Viet-Nam stands higher than it ever has in the United States and in the State Department, nevertheless he must not think that he can ask for increased military aid. Ladejinsky explained in very great detail to Diem that the whole trend now in Washington is in the other direction—with persons like Mike Mansfield insisting on the need for reduction of military aid. I commented that his efforts along these lines were extremely helpful to us and I hoped would convince the President that he would be wasting his time even to try the sort of end runs that he did last year.

Ladejinsky then said that one of the things he has always stayed away from and which the Vice President warned him about was internal politics. Now, however, the President had sent him on a special mission to the United States to find out what the climate of opinion is about Viet-Nam. He had found that it was unexpectedly good except that everyone raised the question of dictatorship and civil rights. Now, for the first time, Ladejinsky feels he has not only an opening to talk about civil rights to the President but even an obligation to do so as a part of his reporting on his mission. He intends to do it in a written report which, in a new mood of independence and self-confidence, I believe will be a forthright statement of the situation. He intends to recommend that the President adopt a definite policy of progressive liberalization in the field of civil rights and intends to point out that in his opinion, Diem has the opportunity thereby to make himself the real leader of Southeast Asia. I encouraged him to be as forthright as possible since there were so few opportunities of this sort for any of us ever to speak to the President about such matters, and it would be tragic to miss any chance to do so.

1. Source: Department of State, Saigon Embassy Files: Lot 62 F 52, 361.3 1956–58. Secret. Elting sent a copy of this memorandum of conversation to Kocher under cover of an official-informal letter, December 12, which reads as follows: “I enclose a copy of my memorandum of conversation with Wolf Ladejinsky upon his return from the United States. You and Secretary Robertson and Jeff and everyone else certainly did a terrific job in getting over your ideas, and I can’t tell you how useful it is going to be to have Wolf so completely convinced of the correctness of the facts as we believe them to be. There’s no question about it, he has great influence with the President and he will now speak with the authority of a person who has been received with open arms and taken into the bosom of the family, so to speak. “I don’t know what you all did to him, but Wolf certainly has stars in his eyes now. We will keep you informed in detail as the story unfolds.”
2. Ladejinsky apparently met with officials of SEA on October 30 and with Robertson and others on November 7. No reports of these conversations have been found. A briefing paper for the November 7 meeting from Kocher to Robertson, November 4, is Ibid., FE Files: Lot 60 D 90, Vietnam. Kocher mentions the scheduled October 30 meeting in a letter to Elting, October 29, not printed. (Ibid., Saigon Embassy Files: Lot 65 F 98, 350.1 Vietnam, 1956–58)
3. An article by Ladejinsky entitled “Vietnam: The First Five Years”, appeared in The Reporter a year later: volume 21, No. 11, December 24, 1959, pp. 20–23. See also “Agrarian Revolution in Japan”, Foreign Affairs, October 1959, pp. 95–109.
4. Not found.