19. The Overthrow and Assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem
Vietnam and its ongoing mess entered America’s national conversation after the Burning Buddhist’s photo appeared on the front page of newspapers across the US. As President Kennedy put it: “No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one“. People questioned America’s support for Diem’s government, and Kennedy did not oppose a coup that overthrew it a few months later.
On the night of November 1-2, 1963, units of the South Vietnamese army attacked the presidential palace, and captured it after a bloody siege. President Diem and his advisor and younger brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, surrendered after they were promised a safe exile. They were placed in the back of an armored personnel carrier that was to take them to a military airbase. Instead, their captors decided that assassination was a better – and more permanent – solution. So the sibling were murdered by South Vietnamese officers en route to the airbase.