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(1) Both Diem's admirers and his critics have portrayed him as an exponent of 'traditional' ideas and practices. During the 1960s, authors in both camps treated Diem's devotion to Confucianism as proof of a premodern cast of mind; compare, for example, journalist Denis Warner's scathing account of his rule, The last Confucian (New York: Macmillan, 1963) with Anthony Bouscaren's hagiography, The last of the mandarins: Diem of Vietnam (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1965). According to some authors, Diem's 'traditional' Confucian habits were reinforced by a Catholic identity which inclined him to favour ancient forms of government; see Bernard Fall, The two Viet-Nams: A political and military analysis, 2nd rev. edn (New York: Praeger, 1967), p. 236. Scholars who have written about Diem since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 have been more sophisticated in their analyses of him and his ideas, but their conclusions about the 'traditional' nature of his Confucian and Catholic convictions are strikingly similar to those proffered earlier. For recent critiques of Diem in this vein, see Neil Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 235; William Turley, The Second Indochina War: A short political and military history, 1954-1975 (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1986), p. 13; George Kahin, Intervention: How America became involved in Vietnam (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1987), p. 93; and Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A history, 2nd rev. edn (New York: Penguin, 1997), p. 229. For examples of post-1975 accounts which portray Diem's affinity for 'tradition' in a more sympathetic light, see Ellen J. Hammer, A death in November: America in Vietnam, 1963 (New York: Dutton, 1987), p. 52; and Pham Van Luu, 'The Buddhist crises in Vietnam, 1963-1966' (Ph.D. diss., Monash University, 1991), pp. 102-3.
(2) Philip E. Catton, Diem's final failure: Prelude to America's war in Vietnam (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2002), p. 2.
(3) For claims that Diem was politically isolated during the 1940s and 1950s, see John Mecklin, Mission in torment: An intimate account of the U.S. role in Vietnam (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), p. 31; Robert Shaplen, The lost revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), p. 111; and Frances Fitzgerald, Fire in the lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), p. 82; George Herring, America's longest war: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975, 4th edn (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2002), p. 59; and Ross Marlay and Clark Neher, Patriots and tyrants: Ten Asian leaders (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), p. 119.
(4) Ronald Inden, Imagining India (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), especially pp. 1-48.
(5) Consider the following statement by the author of a best-selling textbook on the Vietnam War: 'Not perceiving the extent to which the French and Vietminh had destroyed traditional political processes and values, [Diem] looked backward to an imperial Vietnam that no longer existed. He had no blueprint for building a modern nation or mobilizing his people' (Herring, America's longest war, p. 59).
(6) In the spring of 1946, a short-lived alliance of convenience between the Viet Minh and non-communist parties in northern Vietnam broke down, sparking a wave of fighting and a brutal Viet Minh elimination campaign. See Francois Guillemot, 'Au coeur de la fracture vietnamienne: L'elimination de l'opposition nationaliste et anticolonialiste dans le Nord du Viet-nam (1945-1946)', in Le Viet Nam depuis 1945 : Etats, marges et constructions du passe, ed. Christopher E. Goscha and Benoit de Treglode (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, forthcoming).
(7) For Bai's maneuvers and Diem's 1933 appointment and resignation, see Bruce Lockhart, The end of the Vietnamese monarchy (New Haven: Yale Council on SEA Studies, 1993), pp. 60-86.
(8) Ibid., pp. 87-92.
(9) For the Japanese intrigues involving Vietnamese nationalists during 1940-45 see Ralph Smith, 'The Japanese period in Indochina and the coup of 9 March 1945', Journal of Southeast Asian Studies [henceforth JSEAS], 9, 2 (1978): 268-301; Kiyoko Kurusu Nitz, 'Independence without nationalists? The Japanese and Vietnamese nationalism during the Japanese period, 1940-45', JSEAS, 15, 1 (1984): 108-33; and Tran My-Van, 'Japan and Vietnam's Caodaists: A wartime relationship (1939-1945)', JSEAS, 27, 1 (1996): 179-93. Diem's involvement with the Japanese during 1943-44 is discussed in Vu Ngu Chieu, 'The other side of the 1945 Vietnamese Revolution', Journal of Asian Studies, 45, 2 (1986): 299, 306. On Diem's dispatch of an envoy to Cu'o'ng De, see Cu'o'ng De, Cuoc do'i, cach mang (Saigon: Nha in Ton That Le, 1957), pp. 137-8. For the founding and subsequent repression of the Dai Viet Phuc hu'ng Hoi, see Francois Guillemot, 'Revolution nationale et lutte pour l'independance au Viet-Nam: L'echec de la Troisieme Voie "Dai Viet", 1938-1955' (These de doctorat, Ecole Pratiques des Hautes Etudes, 2003), pp. 206-7. Diem's escape from Huein the summer of 1944 is in Nitz, 'Independence without nationalists?', p. 117.
(10) For the planning and aftermath of the Japanese coup of March 1945, see Masaya Shiraishi, 'The background to the formation of the Tran Trong Kim Cabinet in April 1945: Japanese plans for governing Vietnam', in Indochina in the 1940s and 1950s, ed. Takashi Shiraishi and Motoo Furuta (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1992), pp. 113-41. Shiraishi proves conclusively that Diem received the second of two telegrams which Bao Dai sent to him after the coup, and also demonstrates that he turned down the Emperor's request of his own volition. However, the reasoning behind his decision remains unclear. Shiraishi cites Japanese sources which suggest that he was counselled by his idealist allies to reject the premiership on the grounds that original independence plans had been diluted. However, Stein Tonnesson uses French documents to argue that Diem's refusal was a ploy to increase his leverage, and he shows that Diem became angry when he realised that the offer would not be made again; Stein Tonnesson, The Vietnamese Revolution of 1945: Roosevelt, **** and de Gaulle in a worm at war (Oslo: International Peace Research Institute, 1991), p. 285.
(11) The specific date and circumstances of Diem's detention in 1945 are unclear. According to French intelligence, Diem was seized in the city of Phan Thiet while travelling to Hanoi as a member of a delegation appointed to represent a coalition of Southern Vietnamese nationalist groups. See 'M. Ngo Dinh Diem, nouveau President du Conseil Vietnamien', June 1954, Archives de la Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, Paris [hereafter MAE], Serie Asie-Oceanie, 1944-1955, Sous-serie Indochine, dossier 157.
(12) Karnow, Vietnam, pp. 232-3; see also Marguerite Higgins, Our Vietnam nightmare (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), pp. 157-8; and Shaplen, Lost revolution, p. 110. One of Ho's aides later claimed that the Viet Minh leader feared that keeping Diem in detention might alienate nationalists in his native Central Vietnam; George Boudarel and Nguyen Van Ky, Hanoi: City of the rising dragon, tr. Claire Duiker (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), pp. 90-1. A claim that Diem's release was secured by Catholic Bishop Le Hu'u Tu', is in Doan Doc Thu' and Xuan Huy, Giam muc Le Hu'u Tu' va Phat Diem, 1945-54: Nhu'ng nam tranh dau hao hung (Houston: Xuan Thu, 1984), p. 117.
(13) Diem had earlier acknowledged that he would have joined Ho's government in exchange for a measure of control over Viet Minh security policy; see Ellen J. Hammer, The struggle for Indochina, 1940-1955 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966), pp. 149-50; and Memorandum of Conversation, Edmund S. Gullion, 8 May 1953, Foreign Relations of the United States [henceforth FRUS] 1952-1954, vol. 13 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1982), pp. 553-4.
(14) The relevant French sources are described in Tran Thi Lien, 'Les catholiques et la Republique Democratique du Viet-Nam (1945-54): Une approche biographique', in Goscha and de Treglode ed., Le Viet Nam depuis 1945.
(15) On the establishment of the Front, see Guillemot, 'Revolution nationale', pp. 474-8; for its collapse, see Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam, pp. 210-13.
(16) Guillemot, 'Revolution nationale', pp. 488-91.
(17) Lockhart, End of the Vietnamese monarchy, pp. 165-71; Hammer, Struggle for Indochina, pp. 208-16.
(18) Philippe Devillers, Histoire du Viet-Nam de 1940 a 1952 (Paris: Seuil, 1952), p. 420. Bao Dai's account of the meeting is in Bao Dai, Le dragon d'Annam (Paris: Plon, 1980), p. 190. For Diem's views of the French proposals and his concern about Bao Dai's attitude at the time of this meeting, see Telegram, Hopper to Sec. State, 20 Dec. 1947, FRUS, 1947, vol. 6 (Washington: GPO, 1972), pp. 152-5.
(19) Devillers, Histoire du Viet-Nam, pp. 425-9.
(20) Ngo Dinh Diem, 'Lo'i tuyen bo cua chi-si Ngo-Dinh-Diem ngay 16 thang 6 nam 1949', reprinted in Con du'o'ng chinh nghia: Doc lap dan chu: Hieu trieu va dien van quan trong cua Tong thong Ngo Dinh Diem, vol. 1 (Saigon: So, Bao chi Thong tin, Phu Tong thong, 1956), pp. 221-2.
(21) Ibid.
(22) Significantly, the 16 June 1949 statement seems to have been the only document authored by Diem prior to 1954 which was re-published by his government after he became leader of South Vietnam.
(23) The assassination orders were intercepted by the French, who then informed Diem that they would be unable to protect him; see Telegram, Heath to Acheson, 28 July 1950, United States National Archives II, Record Group 59, State Department Decimal File 751G.00/7-2850. References to USNA2 materials are from this record group and will be cited by their Decimal File number only.
(24) Translation of Letter, Ngo Dinh Diem to Wesley Fishel, 3 June 1951, Michigan State University Archives, Wesley R. Fishel papers, Box 1184, Folder 33. Fishel is not specifically identified as the recipient of the letter, but the content and date strongly suggest that Diem wrote it to him.
(25) Telegram, Gullion to Sec. State, 24 Jan. 1951, FRUS, 1951, vol. 6 (Washington: GPO, 1977), pp. 359-61; see also Telegram, Heath to Sec. State, 28 July 1950, USNA2, 751G.00/7-2850. According to Gullion, who was the Charge d'Affaires at the US Embassy in Saigon in 1950 and who knew Diem and Thuc, the Bao Long scheme envisioned a joint regency shared by Cu'o'ng De and the Empress Nam Ph'o'ng, who--unlike her husband--was Catholic.
(26) Cu'o'ng De's final effort to end his exile is described in Hammer, Struggle for Indochina, p. 275. For his acknowledgement that he and Diem had discussed how the Prince might play a political role in Indochina, see Memorandum of Conversation, Dallas Coors, 8 Jan. 1951, USNA2, 794.00/1-851. The repatriation of his remains in 1956 is in The Times of VN Weekly, 21 Apr. 1956, p. 8.
(27) Interview with Professor Ralph Smuckler, Washington DC, June 2001.
(28) For Fishel's account of his Tokyo meeting with Diem and Thuc, see 'Memorandum on Ngo Dinh Diem', 28 Aug. 1950, included as an enclosure to Report, Spinks to Dept. of State, 2 Sept. 1950, USNA2, 751G.00/9-250. (Thanks to Joseph Morgan for providing a copy of this document.) This memorandum is unsigned, but other State Department records make it clear that Fishel was in fact the author; see the January 1951 memorandum cited in note 26. The Japanese contact who arranged all the meetings in Tokyo involving Diem, Cu'o'ng De and Fishel during the summer of 1950 was the liberal writer and adventurer Komatsu Kiyoshi; see Fishel's memorandum cited here and Demaree Bess, 'Bright spot in Asia', Saturday Evening Post, 15 Sept. 1956, p. 130.
(29) Telegram, Acting Secretary of State to Saigon Embassy, 28 Sept. 1950, FRUS 1950, vol. 6 (Washington: GPO, 1976), pp. 884-6.
(30) Telegram, Acheson to Saigon, 16 Jan. 1951, FRUS, 1951, vol. 6, p. 348. A slightly different version of the exchange between Diem and Bao Dai's representatives is recounted in Memorandum of Conversation, William O'Sullivan, 15 Jan. 1951, USNA2, 751G.00/1-1551.
(31) Diem's explanation of why he decided to return to the US in late 1950 is in D. M. Coors, 'Conversation with Mr. Ngo Dinh Diem, prominent Vietnamese Catholic leader', 26 July 1951, USNA2, 751G.00/7-2651.
(32) Ibid.; see also the telegram of 28 Sept. 1950 cited in note 29.
(33) Joseph Morgan, The Vietnam lobby: The American Friends of Vietnam, 1955-1975 (Chapel Hill. NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), pp. 1-14.
(34) For example, in a 1951 memorandum Diem wrote to a Catholic member of Congress, he described the Catholic dioceses of Phat Diem and Bin Chu in northern Vietnam as a 'Third Force zone' populated by people who 'understand true Western values' and who 'are not anti-West but anticolonialist'; Ngo Dinh Diem, 'Indo China', memorandum of July 1951, enclosed in letter, Rep. Edna Kelly to Sen. Mike Mansfield, 20 July 1951, University of Montana Mansfield Library, Mike Mansfield Archives, Series IV, Box 221, Folder 14. (I am grateful to Don Oberdorfer for providing me with a copy of this memorandum.)
(35) In the 1960s, it was often alleged that US support for Diem had been orchestrated primarily by the powerful Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York; Robert Scheer, How the United States got involved in Vietnam (Santa Barbara, CA: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1965), pp. 20-5. More recent arguments along these lines have been less conspiratorially minded, but they still maintain that religion was the core of Diem's appeal to Americans; see, for example, Seth Jacobs, '"Sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem": Religion, Orientalism and United States intervention in Vietnam, 1950-1957' (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 2000).
(36) For example, in two speeches delivered towards the end of his stay in the US, Diem made only one passing reference to Christianity; Ngo Dinh Diem, 'Recent developments in Indochina' (Address delivered to the fifth Annual Meeting of the Far Eastern Association, Cleveland, Ohio, 1 Apr. 1953) and 'Talk by Mr. Ngo Dinh Diem before Southeast Asia Seminar, Cornell University' (20 Feb. 1953). Copies of both of these speeches are available in the Cornell University Kroch Library.
(37) For an overview of the US technical assistance programme to the Associated States, see the Mutual Security Agency pamphlet entitled 'US technical and economic assistance to the Far East: A part of the Mutual Security program for 1952-1953' (Washington: MSA, March 1952). (A copy of this pamphlet is contained in USNA2, RG59, US State Department Lot Files, Box 1, Entry 1393.) The classic account of Point Four and its consequences is Robert Packenham, Liberal America and the Third World: Political development ideas in foreign aid and social science (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973).
(38) Paul L. Dressel, College to university: The Hannah years at Michigan State, 1935-1969 (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1987), pp. 276-7.
(39) Letter, Wesley Fishel to MacDonald Salter, 14 March 1952, MSUA, Fishel Papers, Box 1184, Folder 14.
(40) Fishel's letter describing the proposal seems not to have generated much interest at the MSA in 1952; however, the ideas Diem and Fishel outlined were eventually realised in the technical assistance programme that Michigan State set up in South Vietnam after Diem came to power in 1954. See John Ernst, Forging a fateful alliance: Michigan State University and the Vietnam War (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1998).
(41) William O. Douglas, North from Malaya: Adventure on five fronts (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1953), pp. 147-210; see pp. 180-1 for Douglas' sympathetic representation of Diem as an 'honest and independent' alternative to the French. Like Douglas, Mansfield and Kennedy had also travelled to Indochina and become converts to the Third Force cause. Other Americans present at the lunch meeting included: Bill Costello, a reporter for CBS News; Ray Newton, an official of the American Friends Service Committee; Edmund S. Gullion of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, who had met Diem during his earlier stint as Charge d'Affaires at the US Mission in Saigon; and Gene Gregory, who had also served in the Embassy in Saigon and had arranged to introduce Diem to Douglas after the latter's return from Indochina. The luncheon was also attended by Hoang Van Doan, Bishop of Bac Ninh in northern Vietnam. This information is from author's interview with Gene Gregory, **** City, Mar. 2002 and letter, Douglas to Diem, 8 May 1953, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, William O. Douglas Papers, Box 1716.
(42) Don Oberdorfer interview with Mike Mansfield, 28 Aug. 1998. (I am grateful to Mr Oberdorfer for permission to use this quotation here.) Mansfield likely meant to say 'Vietnam' rather than 'South Vietnam', since the latter did not exist as a distinct political entity in May 1953. On the dinner see Memorandum of Conversation, Edmund S. Gullion, 8 May 1953, FRUS 1952-1954, vol. 13, pp. 553-4. The date on this document (both the published version and the original in the US National Archives) is 7 May 1953. However, based on other documents produced at the time, I believe that the luncheon actually took place on 8 May; see the letter from Douglas to Diem, cited in note 41, which dates the meeting on the eighth. See also the enclosures in Letter, Kennedy to Dulles, 7 May 1953, USNA2, 751G.00/5-753, which show that Kennedy's office made an urgent request to the State Department on the morning of 8 May for immediate answers to questions about the current US policy on Indochina.
(43) See the Memorandum of Conversation cited in the previous note.
(44) Telegram, Dillon to State Dept., 24 May 1954, FRUS, 1952-1954, vol. 13, pp. 1608-9.
(45) Times of Viet Nam Weekly, 17 Mar. 1956, p. 7; Georges Chaffard, Indochine: Dix ans d'independance (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1964), p. 30.
(46) Ibid., pp. 27-30; and 'Ngo Dinh Luyen', undated biographical summary, MAE, serie VLC, sous-serie Sud-Vietnam, dossier 22. On Can, see Cao Van Luan, Ben giong lich su, 1940-1965 (Saigon: Tri Dung, 1972), pp. 180-9.
(47) 'Ngo Dinh Nhu', in Souverains et notabilites d'Indochine (Hanoi: Editions du Gouvernement General de l'Indochine, IDEO, 1943), p. 62; 'Curriculum Vitae of Mr. Ngo Dinh Nhu', undated, Texas Tech University, The Vietnam Archive, John Donnell collection, Box 2, Folder 22, Box 2 [hereafter 'Donnell papers']. Nhu seems to have retained his job at the National Library during the period in which Hanoi was under the control of the Viet Mirth; see 'Lich-su' day du ve gia-dinh Cu Ngo-D.-Diem', Saigon Moi, 23 June 1954.
(48) Author's interview with Gene Gregory, **** City, Mar. 2002. One of Nhu's associates later recalled accompanying him on a visit undertaken on Diem's behalf to a Catholic region near the Lao border in 1946; A. J. Langguth, Our Vietnam: The war, 1954-1975 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), p. 87. A Catholic source reports that Nhu was forced to flee by sea from Hanoi to the diocese of Phat Diem upon the outbreak of war in December 1946, and from there managed to travel overland to Hue; Doan Doc Thu' and Xuan Huy, Giam muc Le Hu'u Tu, p. 116.
(49) Emmanuel Mounier, Personalism, tr. Philip Mairet (London: Routledge and Paul, 1952), pp. 17-19 (individualism) and 103-5 (social order). The views of Mounier and other French Personalists can be distinguished from American Personalism, which flourished in Boston in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries under the intellectual leadership of Borden Parker Bowne. Although both brands of Personalism drew inspiration from Roman Catholic theology, American Personalists tended to be more staunchly idealist than their French counterparts, who acknowledged the independent existence of material reality even as they argued it should not be overemphasised. See 'Personalism' in The encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards, vol. VI (New York: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 106-9; and 'Personalism' in The Cambridge dictionary of philosophy, ed. Robert Audi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 575.
(50) In translating Personalism as nhan vi, Nhu was following the lead of Father Bu'u Du'o'ng, a Catholic priest and scholar who coined the term in lectures he delivered during the 1940s. See Nguyen Trai, 'The government of men in the Republic of Vietnam' (unpublished manuscript, 1962), p. 139; a copy of this document is available in Widener Library at Harvard University. It is not clear whether Nhu actually studied with Mounier in France; some of his Vietnamese associates claimed he had, but he denied it on at least one occasion. See 'Nhu and Personalism', undated notes, Donnell papers, Box 3, Folder 14.
(51) Ngo Dinh Nhu, 'Su' gop su'c cua ngu'o'i Cong-giao vao hoa-binh o' Viet-Nam' (Speech delivered on 18 Apr. 1952 at Dalat Military Academy), reprinted in Xa Hoi [henceforth XH], Feb. 1953, pp. 5, 14, 18-22.
(52) Ibid., p. 21.
(53) The precise date and circumstances of the formation of the Can Lao party remain mysterious, but it seems certain that the party was established prior to Diem's return from his exile in 1954; he told Wesley Fishel in 1955 that it had been formed sometime around 1952. See Memorandum, Fishel to Collins, 7 Mar. 1955, FRUS, 1955-1957, vol. 1 (Washington: GPO, 1985), p. 111.
(54) The syndicalist inclinations of the Can Lao party and its founder were later explicitly acknowledged by party officials: 'The program of the Can Lao Nhan Vi follows syndicalist lines, advocating co-management of national industries by representatives of capital and labour and workers' participation in the profits and technical development of industries. The party has taken a strong position of support for agrarian reform for the same reason, namely that possession is a right of the worker'; Times of Vietnam Weekly, 25 Feb. 1956, p. 9.
(55) Edmund S. Wehrle, '"No more pressing task than organization in Southeast Asia": The AFL-CIO approaches the Vietnam War, 1947-1964', Labor History, 42, 3 (2001): 277-95; Times of Vietnam Magazine, 4 Mar. 1962, pp. 18-19. Significantly, the Confederation's Vietnamese name (Tong lien doan Lao dong Viet Nam) did not indicate the group's Christian affiliation; this undoubtedly reflected Bu'u's determination to attract non-Christian workers as well as Christians, and also his own identity as a Buddhist.
(56) 'Tong-lien-doan Lao-dong V.N.', XH, Feb. 1953, pp. 31, 34; 'Ban kien-nghi cua Lien-hiep Nghiep doan Trung-Viet go'i Tong-lien-doan Lao-dong V.N.', XH, July 1953, p. 16; Dan Sinh, 'Tim hieu to-chu'c ho'p-tac-xa', XH, 15 Sept. 1953, p. 23; Dan Sinh, 'Muc-dich va phu'o'ng-phap huan-luyen', XH, 10 Nov. 1953, pp. 33-4; and Dan Sinh, 'Mau sac to-chu'c ho'p-tac-xa cac nu'o'c', in the same issue, pp. 28-9.
(57) Hammer, Struggle for Indochina, pp. 281-6, 300-1.
(58) For the planning of the September Congress, see Guillemot, 'Revolution nationale', pp. 628-32.
(59) A detailed account of the Unity Congress is contained in Telegram, Kidder to Dept. State, 22 Sept. 1953, USNA2, 751G.00/9-2253. For published accounts, see Tieng Doi, 8 Sept. 1953; Le Monde, 8 Sept. 1953; and Donald Lancaster, The emancipation of French Indochina (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), pp. 275-7. Bao Dai did not mention the September conference in his memoirs, but he did acknowledge rebuffing a request for a Congress made by Nhu and others during the summer of 1953; Bao Dai, Dragon d'Annam, pp. 312-13. For the announcement of the creation of the Movement for National Union and Peace, see Phong Thuy, 'Y-nghia va gia-tri cuoc Dai-hoi Doan-ket ngay 6-9-53', XH, 15 Sept. 1953, p. 2.
(60) For details on the October Congress proceedings, see Vietnam Presse, 31-36 (12-17 Oct. 1953) and Le Monde, 17-20 Oct. 1953.
(61) See Diem's letter published in Le Monde, 25-6 Oct. 1953. The efforts of Nhu and his allies to stake out a distinct political position in advance of the October Conference are detailed in Sturm to Dept. of State, 'Press conference held by protagonists of "National Congress" of early September 1953', 16 Oct. 1953, USNA2, 751G.00/10-1653.
(62) Telegram, Dillion to Dulles, 14 Oct. 1953, USNA2, 751G.00/10-1453; the meeting took place on 12 October. As early as September, Diem was described by an American source as confident that he and Bao Dai were about to reconcile (Smith to Saigon and Paris, 14 Sept. 1953, USNA2, 751G.00/9-1453).
(63) The circumstances of the second meeting were reported in Vietnam Presse, 45 (27 Oct. 1953); see also Le Monde, 28 Oct. 1953. Bao Dai's query about Diem's willingness to serve was reported to US officials by a member of the imperial entourage (Telegram, Dillion to Dulles, 28 Oct. 1953, USNA2, 751G.00/ 10-2853).
(64) Guillemot, 'Revolution nationale', pp. 627-34.
(65) Bao Dai, Dragon d'Annam, p. 328. Bao Dai implied that this exchange with Diem took place in lane 1954; however, contemporary sources show that Diem had accepted Bao Dai's offer during an earlier meeting in mid-May (Telegram, Dillion to Dept. State, 24 May 1954, FRUS 1952-1954, vol. 13, p. 1608).
(66) Early formulations of this theory are found in Chaffard, Indochine, pp. 19-20, 26-9 and Robert Scheer and Warren Hinkle, The "Vietnam Lobby"', Ramparts, July 1965, pp 16-24. In his memoir on Vietnam, US official Chester Cooper noted that some Americans had concluded that the CIA was backing Diem as early as the spring of 1953; Chester Cooper, The lost crusade: America in Vietnam (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1970), p. 120. Allegations of US influence also appear in Townsend Hoopes, The devil and John Foster Dulles (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), p. 251; Marilyn Young, The Vietnam wars, 1945-1990 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), p. 44; Kahin, Intervention, p. 78; and Jacobs '"Sink or swim"', pp 100-16.
(67) David Anderson, Trapped by success: The Eisenhower administration and Vietnam, 1953-1961 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), pp. 41-64, especially pp. 52-5.
(68) Bao Dai, Dragon d'Annam, p. 329.
(69) Ngo Dinh Diem, 'Tuyen bo khi nhan lap Chanh-phu (Ba-Le, 16-6-1954)', in Con du'ong chinh nghia, vol. 1, p. 13.
(70) Ngo Dinh Diem, Hieu-trieu quoc-dan khi ve to'i Saigon, ngay 25-6-1954', in ibid., p. 16.
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